Risk communication, the West Nile virus epidemic, and bioterrorism: responding to the communication challenges posed by the intentional or unintentional release of a pathogen in an urban setting

Covello, Vincent T.

doi:10.1093/jurban/78.2.382

Cited by 385 publications

(288 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Estos se han dirigido fundamentalmente a comprender los factores sociales y culturales que influyen en la percepción, así como identificar las estrategias más efectivas para comunicar estos riesgos (Covello et al 2001, Renn et al 2007, Vallejos y Oñate 2013. En este sentido, se señala que la conciencia respecto a los riesgos que implica la contaminación a la salud se ha incrementado en los últimos años.…”

Section: Revisión De La Literaturaunclassified

Representaciones Sociales De La Contaminación Del Aire Y Las Estufas De Leña en Diferentes Niveles Socioeconómicos De La Ciudad De Temuco, Chile

Escobar

Boso

2018

Rev. Int. Contam. Ambie.

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Palabras clave: redes semánticas naturales, conciencia, conducta ambiental RESUMEN La contaminación del aire es una problemática urgente a nivel nacional, ya que afecta la salud de millones de personas. Temuco es la tercera ciudad más contaminada de Chile, en la que el uso residencial de estufas de leña es la principal fuente de contaminación atmosférica. Pese a los esfuerzos por revertir esta situación, la reducción de emisiones no ha disminuido como se esperaba. En parte, una posible explicación de este fenómeno radica en las percepciones que tienen los usuarios de las estufas de leña sobre su uso y sobre la problemática de contaminación en Temuco. Este estudio busca describir las representaciones sociales de la contaminación del aire y de las estufas de leña desde la visión de sus usuarios, quienes residen en la ciudad de Temuco. Se empleó un diseño transeccional descriptivo, con la técnica de redes semánticas naturales. Los resultados muestran que los participantes vinculan la contaminación del aire con el humo, las enfermedades y el esmog. Por otra parte, las estufas de leña se asocian al calor, a la calefacción y a la contaminación. Los resultados reflejan una creciente conciencia del vínculo entre contaminación, enfermedad y estufas de leña. Además, estas estufas muestran en sus atributos un carácter multifuncional más allá de entregar calor para el hogar, sino también para cocinar y secar la ropa. Los sectores económicos muestran visiones diferenciadas sobre las estufas de leña y su vínculo con la contaminación del aire.Key words: natural semantic networks, consciousness, environmental behavior ABSTRACT Air pollution is an urgent problem at national level, as it seriously affects the health of millions of people. Temuco is the third most polluted city in Chile, with the residential use of wood stoves as the main source of atmospheric pollution in this area. Despite the efforts to reverse this situation, the emissions reduction has not decreased as expected. A possible explanation for this phenomenon might be the stakeholders' perceptions about the use of woodstoves and about contamination issues in Temuco. This study aims to describe the social representations of air pollution and woodstoves from the perspective of their users whom reside in Temuco. A transectional descriptive design was employed according to the natural semantic network technique. The results show that participants associate air pollution with smoke, diseases and smog. On the other

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Section: Revisión De La Literaturaunclassified

Representaciones Sociales De La Contaminación Del Aire Y Las Estufas De Leña en Diferentes Niveles Socioeconómicos De La Ciudad De Temuco, Chile

Escobar

Boso

2018

Rev. Int. Contam. Ambie.

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“…fluoride as a toxin forced on an unknowing population). 20,22 Communicating early and often may risk generating extra media attention, but it enables experts to capture the issue. 1,4,22 Use your communities…”

Section: Communicate Early and Oftenmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[20][21][22] It is more useful to plan to accommodate early overreactions to allow them to subside as swiftly as possible.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Communicating about risk: strategies for situations where public concern is high, but the risk is low

Hooker¹,

Capon²,

Leask³

2017

Public Health Research Pr

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In this article, we summarise research that identifies best practice for communicating about hazards where the risk is low but public concern is high. We apply Peter Sandman's 'risk = hazard + outrage' formulation to these risks, and review factors associated with the amplification of risk signals. We discuss the structures that determine the success of risk communication strategies, such as the capacity for early communication to 'capture' the dominant representation of risk issues, the importance of communicating uncertainty, and the usefulness of engaging with communities.We argue that, when facing trade-offs in probable outcomes from communication, it is always best to choose strategies that maintain or build trust, even at the cost of initial overreactions. We discuss these features of successful risk communication in relation to a range of specific examples, particularly opposition to community water fluoridation, Ebola, and routine childhood immunisation. IntroductionPublic and environmental health officers make careful risk assessments about a range of hazards. The question of how to best manage these risks is given equally careful consideration. Best practice in risk management is complex, often requiring policies whose goals are not merely to minimise the harms caused by the hazard itself, but to provide an appropriate balance between a range of interests, such as the need for safe water, air and soil; the need for people to work, and for business to survive and thrive; and the need for communities to have quality of life, enjoyment, security and amenity.After such thought and care, it can be challenging when a carefully crafted policy strategy is thrown into disarray because of public reactions to sensationalised media headlines, or because of public fears about lowrisk, highly beneficial policies. However, such outcomes can be mitigated, and sometimes prevented altogether, by making communicating about risk as critical as risk assessment in the risk management process. Risk Communicating about risk: strategies for situations where public concern is high but the risk is low

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“…Sound reporting of causes not only forms the basis for relevant counter-measures, but also affects risk perception. For example, self-explanatory risks are perceived as smaller than those that are poorly understood (Covello et al, 2001). Regarding counter-measures, the reporting demonstrated a clear tendency of focusing on the responsibility of societal institutions, such as the interplay between politicians, non-governmental organizations and medical practitioners, in reducing the prescription rate.…”

Section: Paper I 'Is It My Responsibility or Theirs? Risk Communicatimentioning

confidence: 98%

“…One line of thinking is that an understanding of evolution makes the mechanisms of antibiotic resistances easier to understand, knowledge that can then be extended to realizations that the consequences of resistant bacteria are partially predictable and partially influenced by one's actions (cf. Covello et al, 2001;Slovic, 1987).…”

Section: Evolutionary Explanations For Antibiotic Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Evolving germs – Antibiotic resistance and natural selection in education and public communication

Bohlin¹

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Bacterial resistance to antibiotics threatens modern healthcare on a global scale. Several actors in society, including the general public, must become more involved if this development is to be countered. The conveyance of relevant information provided through education and media reports is therefore of high concern. Antibiotic resistance evolves through the mechanisms of natural selection; in this way, a sound understanding of these mechanisms underlies explanations of causes and the development of effective risk-reduction measures. In addition to natural selection functioning as an explanatory framework to antibiotic resistance, bacterial resistance as a context seems to possess a number of qualities that make it suitable for teaching natural selection -a subject that has been proven notoriously hard to teach and learn. A recently suggested approach for learning natural selection involves so-called threshold concepts, which encompass abstract and integrative ideas. The threshold concepts associated with natural selection include, among others, the notions of randomness as well as vast spatial and temporal scales. Illustrating complex relationships between concepts on different levels of organization is one, of several, areas where visualizations are efficient. Given the often-imperceptible nature of threshold concepts as well as the fact that natural selection processes occur on different organizational levels, visual accounts of natural selection have many potential benefits for learning.Against this background, the present dissertation explores information conveyed to the public regarding antibiotic resistance and natural selection, as well as investigates how these topics are presented together, by scrutinizing media including news reports, websites, educational textbooks and online videos. The principal method employed in the media studies was content analysis, which was complemented with various other analytical procedures. Moreover, a classroom study was performed, in which novice pupils worked with a series of animations explaining the evolution of antibiotic resistance. Data from individual written assignments, group questions and video-recorded discussions were collected and analyzed to empirically explore the potential of antibiotic resistance as a context for learning about evolution through natural selection.Among the findings are that certain information, that is crucial for the public to know, about antibiotic resistance was conveyed to a low extent through wide-reaching news reporting. Moreover, explanations based on natural selection were rarely included in accounts of antibiotic resistance in any of the examined media. Thus, it is highly likely that a large proportion of the population is never exposed to explanations for resistance development ii during education or through newspapers. Furthermore, the few examples that were encountered in newspapers or textbooks were hardly ever visualized, but presented only in textual form. With regard to videos purporting to explain natural selec...

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Risk communication, the West Nile virus epidemic, and bioterrorism: responding to the communication challenges posed by the intentional or unintentional release of a pathogen in an urban setting

Cited by 385 publications

References 29 publications

Representaciones Sociales De La Contaminación Del Aire Y Las Estufas De Leña en Diferentes Niveles Socioeconómicos De La Ciudad De Temuco, Chile

Representaciones Sociales De La Contaminación Del Aire Y Las Estufas De Leña en Diferentes Niveles Socioeconómicos De La Ciudad De Temuco, Chile

Communicating about risk: strategies for situations where public concern is high, but the risk is low

Evolving germs – Antibiotic resistance and natural selection in education and public communication

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