In contemporary times, policy makers and risk managers find themselves required to
make decisions about how to prevent or mitigate complex risks that face society. Risks, such as
global warming and energy production, are considered complex because they require knowledge
from multiple scientific and technical disciplines to explain the mechanisms that cause and/or
prevent hazards. This dissertation focuses on these types of situations: when experts from
different disciplines and professions interact to coordinate and legitimize risk characterizations.
A review of the risk communication literature highlights three main critiques: (1) Risk
communication research historically treats expert groups as uniform and does not consider the
processes by which they construct and legitimize risk understandings. (2) Risk communication
research tends to privilege transmissive and message-centered approached to communication
rather than examine the discursive management and coordination of different risk
understandings. (3) Rather than assuming the taken-for-granted position that objective scientific
knowledge is the source of legitimacy for technical risk understandings, risk communication
research should examine the way that expert groups legitimate their knowledge claims and
emphasize the transparency of norms and values in public discourse.
This study performs an in-depth analysis of the case of cesium chloride. Cesium chloride
is a radioactive source that has several beneficial uses medical, research, and radiation safety applications. However, it has also been identified as a security threat due to the severity of its
consequences if used in a radiological dispersal device, better known as a “dirty bomb.” A recent
National Academy of Sciences study recommended the replacement or elimination of cesium
chloride sources. This case is relevant to the study of risk communication among multidisciplinary
experts because it involves a wide variety of fields to discuss and compare terrorism
risks and health risks.
This study uses a multi-perspectival framework based on Bakhtin’s dialogism that
enables entrance into the discourse of experts’ risk communication from different vantage points.
Three main implications emerge from this study as seen through the lens of dialogism. (1) Expert
risk communication in cross-disciplinary situations is a tension-filled process. (2) Experts who
interact in cross-disciplinary situations manage the tension between discursive openness and
closure through the use of shared resources between the interpretative repertoires, immersion and
interaction with other perspectives, and the layering of risk logics with structural resources. (3)
The emergence of security risk Discourse in a post-9/11 world involves a different set of
resources and strategies that risk communication studies need to address.
In the case of cesium chloride issue, the interaction of experts negotiated conflict about
the characterization of this isotope as a security threat or as being useful and unique. Even
though participants and organizations vary in how they characterize cesium chloride, most
maintained some level of balance between both characterizations—a balance that was
constructed through their interactions with each other. This project demonstrates that risk
characterizations risks shape organizational decisions and priorities in both policy-making and
regulatory organizations and private-sector and functional organizations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2010-08-8320 |
| Date | 2010 August 1900 |
| Creators | Andreas, Dorothy Collins |
| Contributors | Barge, James K. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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