Effective risk communication is essential in the field of health to ensure patients understand the information being presented to them by medical professionals and appreciate the level of risk involved in treatments. Cardiovascular disease, being the leading cause of death worldwide, is relevant to consider when examining risk communication in a health setting. Those afflicted with cardiovascular ailments are both high in number and exposed to information communicating risk. This research aims to identify presentation formats that are more effective communicating risk information to recovering cardiovascular patients at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. The formats’ effectiveness is measured by gauging the population’s understanding of the material and perception of the information as it relates to risk and motivation. The research draws on Max Weber’s concept of rationality and subsequent scholars who developed social judgment theory, the heuristic-systematic model, expected utility theory, protection motivation theory, and the extended parallel process model. Utilizing an experimental research design, risk information handouts and questionnaires are distributed to, and completed by, a stratified sample of cardiovascular disease patients. Effective presentation formats are examined, and the results identify comparatively effective presentation formats for minimizing and maximizing risk perception. The results also identify presentation formats’ impact on a patient’s level of motivation to avoid / indulge in behaviours that may maximize or minimize risk. The results, synthesized herein, suggest a model (communicative cardiovascular physician-patient model of message preparation-perception), which may contribute to the effectiveness of risk communication between physicians and cardiovascular disease patients.

Introduction: The mass print media are a widely-distributed, and often primary, source of health information for the public. Health information in newspapers can amplify or attenuate readers’ perceptions of risk depending on how it is presented. This thesis examines how health information related to wind energy was communicated in Ontario newspapers and includes separate analyses for the presence of fright factors, readability, emergent themes, and emotional tone and sensationalism. As an emerging technology, public understanding of and response to associated health risks and uncertainties towards wind energy can be influenced by media coverage. Methods: Five geographically discontinuous wind energy installations in Ontario and their surrounding communities were selected based on 2006 Canadian Census data. Newspapers serving each community were identified and searched for articles from May 2007-April 2011 on the topic of health effects from wind energy developments. A total of 421 articles from 13 community and 4 national/provincial newspapers were retrieved. In Study #1, a directed content analysis was used to develop a coding instrument based on fright factors known to affect the public’s perception of risk. In Study #2, each newspaper article was analyzed for text readability using the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) readability formula. In Study #3, and as a qualitative component, a semi-directed content analysis was used to find emerging themes and subthemes. Finally, in Study #4, a list of loaded and positive words, informed from previous studies on sensationalism in media reporting and a random sample of newspaper articles included in this study, and the frequency of their appearance was used as a quantitative measure of sensationalism. Results: Study #1: The most commonly reported fright factors were ‘dread’, ‘poorly understood by science’, ‘involuntary exposure’, and ‘inequitable distribution’, occurring in 94% (n=394), 58% (n=242), 45% (n=188), and 42% (n=177) of articles, respectively. The fright factors of ‘dread’, ‘poorly understood by science’, ‘inequitable distribution’, and ‘inescapable exposure’ occurred more frequently in community newspaper articles than in national/provincial ones (p<0.001). Although the total number of occurrences of each fright factor increased following the Green Energy Act, only ‘dread’ (p<0.05) and ‘poorly understood by science’ (p<0.01) increased significantly. Study #2: The mean reading grade level (RGL) of 421 articles on wind turbines and health was at the post-secondary education level (X±SEM; 13.3±0.1). Articles from community and provincial newspapers were written at almost a full RGL lower (13.2±0.2 and 13.1±0.2) than those from national newspapers (13.9±0.2) (p<0.05). Additionally, opinion pieces such as editorial columns were written at a lower RGL than fact-based news articles (13.0±0.2 and 13.5±0.1, respectively; p<0.01). Study #3: The majority of newspaper articles described health effects of wind turbines in general, rather than specific, terms. The most commonly cited causes of health complaints were inadequate setbacks (27%, n=114), noise (21%, n=90), shadow flicker and vibrations (12%, n=49), and electrical exposure (6%, n=27). Other, non-health concerns such as environmental damage (28%, n=117), property values (20%, n=86), aesthetic concerns (18%, n=77), financial burden (18%, n=74), were prevalent and juxtaposed with health issues in 28% of articles (n=118). Concerns with the quality and availability of scientific evidence were frequent in the newspaper articles (34%, n=143), with many articles promoting a moratorium on wind energy developments until further research is conducted (25%, n=103). Study #4: Newspaper articles emphasized negative rather than positive/neutral tone, with community newspapers publishing a higher proportion of negative articles than provincial or national newspapers (X2=6.11, df=1, p<0.05). Conclusion: These findings suggest that the health information related to wind turbines in Ontario newspapers contains a large quantity of fright factors that may produce fear and anxiety in readers, is written at a reading grade level that is too complex for the majority of the Ontario population to fully understand, contains inconsistent information on health effects that often links health concerns with non-health concerns, and is often negative in tone. The influence of the Ontario newspaper media on reader’s risk perceptions of wind energy in Ontario will be important to determine empirically.

The HPV vaccine (Gardasil) is a significant advancement in women’s health that garnered both positive and negative media coverage. Since public opinion and population uptake of the vaccine can be influenced by media coverage, the purpose of this study was to assess the discussion and presentation of risk information about HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine in Canadian and U.S. newspapers and news magazines. Using directed content analysis, the reporting of fear-inducing messages about HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine were compared between Canadian and U.S. top-circulating national newspapers between January 2006—December 2007. Significant differences between countries were found in the number of fear messages about cervical cancer (p < 0.05) but not for HPV or the HPV vaccine. Readability was higher than recommended for the public and emotional tone of the articles was progressively negative. Directed content analysis was also used to assess the discussion of risks, fear-inducing messages about HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine in four high circulating North American news magazines from January 2006—December 2007. Risk messages about HPV and cervical cancer focused on threatening illness or injury and reporting on the HPV vaccine emphasized it being poorly understood by science. Newspaper and news magazine articles on HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine included fear-inducing messages. Public health officials and health educators need to be aware of media reporting of fear based risk messages in order to alleviate public anxiety and concern about the HPV vaccine.

The HPV vaccine (Gardasil) is a significant advancement in women’s health that garnered both positive and negative media coverage. Since public opinion and population uptake of the vaccine can be influenced by media coverage, the purpose of this study was to assess the discussion and presentation of risk information about HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine in Canadian and U.S. newspapers and news magazines. Using directed content analysis, the reporting of fear-inducing messages about HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine were compared between Canadian and U.S. top-circulating national newspapers between January 2006—December 2007. Significant differences between countries were found in the number of fear messages about cervical cancer (p < 0.05) but not for HPV or the HPV vaccine. Readability was higher than recommended for the public and emotional tone of the articles was progressively negative. Directed content analysis was also used to assess the discussion of risks, fear-inducing messages about HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine in four high circulating North American news magazines from January 2006—December 2007. Risk messages about HPV and cervical cancer focused on threatening illness or injury and reporting on the HPV vaccine emphasized it being poorly understood by science. Newspaper and news magazine articles on HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine included fear-inducing messages. Public health officials and health educators need to be aware of media reporting of fear based risk messages in order to alleviate public anxiety and concern about the HPV vaccine.

Risk mitigation decisions for civil infrastructure exposed to rare natural and manmade hazards are often impacted by risk aversion, a behavioral phenomenon in which the decision maker's perception and judgment of risk are systematically distorted, resulting in decisions that might be viewed as excessively conservative when compared to those from a traditional minimum expected cost analysis. This study addresses how decisions regarding structural safety are affected by the attitudes of the decision-maker toward risk using decision models, such as cumulative prospect theory, that allow risk-averse behaviors to be modeled quantitatively. Perspectives on the general characteristics of risk-aversion are first drawn from risk pricing techniques in the insurance industry. These perspectives are then refined for structural engineering applications by investigations of decisions involving seismic retrofit of unreinforced masonry structures in San Francisco, CA and aseismic design of a steel moment frame in Vancouver, BC. Risk attitudes when confronting extreme wind hazards are also assessed using a decision by the North and South Carolina Code Councils to waive a provision in the International Residential Code that would have required additional windborne debris protection in residential construction. An examination of risk attitudes toward competing natural hazards is then introduced by comparing decisions related to wind and seismic effects in areas where both hazards may be significant. These investigations have led to tentative conclusions regarding the role of risk aversion in the assurance of structural safety and in code-related decisions and suggest avenues for future study.

<p>This thesis is a philosophical contribution to the theories on risk communication. The topic of risk communication is approached from several different angles, but with a normative focus on equality and vulnerability.</p><p>Essay I is a comment on risk perception theory and the psychometric model in particular. In risk perception research individual risk taking is described as either a result of valuing the benefits from risk taking or a failure of comprehending the severity or probability of risks. The essay argues that sometimes individuals take risks simply because they are in a vulnerable position and have no other choice. Four factors are identified as crucial in risks from vulnerability: poor outset conditions, lack of reasonable options, hope and liability to disinformation.</p><p>Essay II addresses the democratic approach to risk communication and the ideal of risk communication as a dialogue between more or less equal stakeholders. The Essay argues that even the more innovative and dialogue oriented approaches to risk communication are unequal. This is often blurred by the confusion between the described ideal and the description of these newer approaches. This inequality is analysed in a three-fold way: influence over the communication process; influence over and access to information; and influence over risk decisions. The Essay develops a typology of different risk communication practices and influence distributions and concludes that the form of risk communication most commonly referred in the literature is the most imbalanced kind where all three types of influence falls to the same party.</p><p>Essay III explores the concept of trust, an often-mentioned objective for risk communication. The concept of trust is analyzed from previous philosophical approaches, and the idea of trust as comfortable defocusing is introduced. It is argued that not only the gains for the trustee but also the gains and risks for the truster, generally and in the case from risk communication, can be explained by this notion. It is concluded that public trust for institutions or organizations need not be framed on an individual level. Instead, the vulnerability of trusting can be counter-acted by a delegation of different stances, including both control and trust, among different individuals and institutions in society.</p>

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-158). Also available via the World Wide Web.

When a disaster the magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill takes place, is it natural for the news media stories, investigative reports, and public deliberation to focus almost exclusively on finding the person or group responsible for such a horrendous scene. Rhetorically speaking, the discourse surrounding the event can be characterized as a reductive form of praise and blame rhetoric (epideixis). However, these efforts, while well-intentioned, are troublesome because searches for the one technical cause and the sole personal culpability are thwarted by the sheer complexity of the ecological, technological, scientific, institutional, and communicative network required for such a disaster to take place. Thus, to demonstrate the insufficiency of extant models of disaster in a variety of fields, which tend to privilege human-centered approaches, Dead Man's Switch: Disaster Rhetorics in a Posthuman Age explores the ontology, technical documentation, and rhetorical theory of disasters through a posthuman lens. To find a more critical approach to understanding the nature of disasters in the twenty-first century, I ask the following questions: How do rhetoricians and technical communicators account more fully for the human and nonhuman forces at work in the precipitation of disaster? How do rhetoricians and technical communicators find an approach to ecological catastrophe that goes beyond the mere "environmentalist rhetoric" characterizing the public response? Through the application of several posthumanist theories, my project develops an approach to disaster that complicates traditional ways of approaching causality and blame. I use accident reports, news media stories, and popular literature as data for this project. By examining these texts, my project has broad implications for technical communication, rhetorical theory, and philosophy of rhetoric.

The risk perception as presented by the media is important because it is usually through the media that the general population first receives information about an important event or crisis. The unique position of the media comes with a responsibility to provide a ‘communication bridge’ between the government and the general population. However the editorial choices determining the appropriateness of source, amount, and type of information conveyed to the public during a crisis is influenced by the contextual environment. The issue attention framework proposed by Downs was used to explore the possible links between the trajectory of a crisis and the media response may shed some light on the populations perception of risk during a crisis (the Hong Kong SARS epidemic in 2003) in which WiseNews was used to search the grey literature. The articles identified were classified into 4 categories: incidence, public health information, economy, and sensationalism by date of publication. These categories were then plotted on the Hong Kong hospital admissions and deaths epidemic curves. The study explored the potential link between key events during the Hong Kong SARS epidemic and the specific content of the medial publications. / published_or_final_version / Community Medicine / Master / Master of Public Health

This paper is about the persistent failure of social scientists to bring into the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process socially constructed environmental concerns held by potentially impacted communities. The failure to communicate perceived risks results from a two-communities divide based on both epistemological differences and obfuscation due to vernacular communication. The analysis provides robust modeling variables that can bridge this social-environmental divide. The case involves data collected from members of traditional communities regarding their perceptions of the potential impacts of proposed Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). The study is situated in the Bahamas where the government has approved setting aside 30 No-take MPAs to protect their sea. This analysis is based on 572 interviews conducted during eight field trips with members of six traditional settlements in the Exuma Islands and Cays in the central Bahamas. Confidence in the findings is high because the sample involves 34% of the census population of these settlements and the findings have repeatedly been returned for review and approval by the members of these settlements.