26th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop
Boulder, CO, 15-18 July 2001.
Throughout the 1990s, the Internet has exploded into a medium that is competitive with television, radio, and print media. As with any medium, the Internet can be utilized for risk communication. More than any other medium, however, the Internet can also be used for a lot more than simple risk communication: It excels at recruitment of activists to generate political pressure on risk management policy decision-makers. It is thus altering the always uneasy relationship between risk assessment science and risk management policy.Since 1997, I have been analyzing the use of the Internet in communicating about risk and in generating political pressure concerning hazards. As such, this is an extension of my long-standing interest in how print media represent hazards and disasters. My work on Internet risk communication has proceeded through a number of case studies, among them the plutonium on board the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, chaparral fire hazard in Southern California, and a landslide incident there.
In the case studies explored thus far, what emerges is the rôle of the Internet in social risk amplification and risk attenuation. That is, in some cases (e.g., Cassini), social concern about a risk is inflated far beyond the estimates of probability and consequences coming from the professional risk assessment community. In other cases (e.g., chaparral fire hazard), social concern about a hazard assessed as relatively large in probability and in consequences is soothed to a level enabling risky behavior (e.g., buying view homes in pyrogenic vegetation). Very interestingly, the Internet is used precisely to contest the legitimacy of conventional risk assessment science, with an eye toward generating political activism to impact risk management policy.
A huge difference between the Internet and traditional print and broadcast media is its interactivity. This interactivity permits significant empowerment of motivated individuals. Because of the exponential expansion in communication that the forward button allows, a very small number of people can generate large-scale awareness and political activism in a very short time in service of their take on a given hazard. For example, tracing forwarded UseNet messages on Cassini back to their originators, I found that the entire controversy started with a handful of activists (from 2 to 11 people, depending on definitions). These individuals amplified the risks of plutonium on spacecraft, which proved very costly to NASA's Cassini science budget and which may alter the nature of outer solar system exploration in the future. The attenuation of perceived risk in the case of chaparral fire hazards in the mountains of Southern California was initiated ultimately by a single Malibu realtor disgruntled over Mike Davis' popularization of that hazard in The Ecology of Fear.
The Internet also seems to vary in its effectiveness as a risk communication medium, depending on the specific "channel" used. The Web is certainly the glamorous part of the Internet, with its full-color displays and multimedia capabilities. Its effectiveness as a medium, however, is limited by its need for an audience actively searching for information or following links. Oddly enough, the most effective "channels" of the Internet in risk communication seem to be the relatively homely ones: e-mail, listservers, news groups, and chats. These channels are far more ubiquitously used by people to get information out than are web pages (which are more technically demanding). And they require little initiative from their more passive audiences: You get messages by e-mail (whether you want them or not) from friends, associates, and spammers. If some message about a risk catches your eye, it is extremely easy to send it to dozens of your "closest Internet friends," who may themselves pass it on to their address lists, listservers, news groups, and chat buddies.
In many ways, people utilizing the Internet to communicate their takes on particular risks seem to have an innate mastery of the principles laid out in the Natural Hazards Informer article, "Public Information for Earthquake Hazards" (Sarah Nathe, Paula Gori, Marjorie Greene, Elizabeth Lemersal, and Dennis Mileti, November 1999). As recommended in that article, activists explain complicated phenomena in non-technical terms (and thereby often amplify or obfuscate their nature).Also, in these debates, there is often an attempt to recruit credentialed scientists at odds with the majority opinion in the relevant field of assessment science. This plays to the recommendation that "information must come from various, credible sources."
Similarly, the information coming from risk activists is consistent and repeated in many different media. These media include various Internet "channels," such as the web, e-mail, listservers, chats, and news groups. These Internet media are reïnforced by print and broadcast stories that may be triggered by a web page or a demonstration. The anti-Cassini activists were particularly adroit at mixing the various media, though this mixing of media channels was also seen in the other cases.
The Informer article comments that, while messages on broadcast media "...are somewhat effective, people like to have a written document to which they can refer as they think about their risk." The Internet creates such documents, particularly in the case of web pages, but also in the more ephemeral e-mail and related channels, many of which can be printed.
The article also notes that public education "...information should tell people what they can do before, during, and after a disaster." The Cassini and Anaheim Hills landslide activists were especially good at packaging their recommendations into tight, easy to accomplish steps.
The last "immutable law of effective public education" given in the Informer article states that "discussion with peers helps people to believe the information and act upon it. The anti-Cassini activists were exceptionally cognizant of this. They encouraged people to forward their messages to others and inject them into chatrooms, listservers, news groups, and cross-linked web pages. In these Internet meeting places, these messages would nearly always trigger a lot of debate (and further forwarding). People unfamiliar with the situation often became interested in it. If they were curious enough to search for more information, they found it conveniently provided online and in videos they could order online. Through these discussions, some became concerned enough to take one of the suggested actions to stop the launch or flyby, such as e-mailing and telephoning the president and Congress and local councilpeople, signing petitions, going to demonstrations, and writing letters to local news editors.
I tend to be rather pessimistic about how traditional media and the new Internet media are used in hazards contexts. While the exponential communication of risk messages and the resulting political pressure are impressive in their empowerment of individual activists, risk amplification and attenuation in these new media become tantamount to demagoguery.
Lately I've been looking around for more positive uses of the Internet during disasters. I have found a lot of use of the Internet to communicate the impact of a disaster to the outside world, as in the cases of the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, the Chi-Chi earthquake in Taiwan in 1999, and, most recently, the Peruvian quakes this year. Many of these messages are delivered through e-mail and channels dependent on it.Most touchingly, there may be lists of the names of the deceased, their genders, ages, and where they died, as seen now with the Peruvian quakes. Similarly, there is much use of the 'Net to solicit assistance and specify the kinds of help that would be most useful.
Also, professionals use the 'Net to communicate their findings about a given disaster to audiences wider than the peer-reviewed journals they normally use for dissemination. In all of these activities, the Internet is being used in ways that may actually save human life, either in a given disaster or in similar ones later. It is also being used to ease the terrible pain of loss, as in the memorial lists of the deceased and people sharing their own feelings and experiences. In these cases, we see survivors and professionals taking command of these new media and delivering their messages in forms they can control, without depending on the interestsof conventional media companies.
In conclusion, the Internet offers a very promising, though demographically still incomplete, new path for risk communication. For risk managers and risk assessors, the web offers an outlet to get information into the hands of those actively looking for it, as do news groups. E-mail and listservers offer the possibility of communicating with an ever-widening circle of passive information recipients and is one of the most interesting channels of all to watch. Risk activists, however, have been the most successful users of the Internet's advantages in the entire hazards community. Activists, however, have often used the Internet to amplify or to attenuate risks in public perceptions with an eye to generating public pressure on risk management policy makers. Risk assessors need to become at least as adroit in Internet risk communication. There are bright spots in Internet risk communication, however, as seen in disaster self-reportage, calls for help, emotional catharsis, and professional analyses published online.
Throughout the 1990s, the Internet has exploded into a medium that is competitive with television, radio, and print media. As with any medium, the Internet can be utilized for risk communication. More than any other medium, however, the Internet can also be used for recruitment of activists to generate political pressure on risk management policy decision-makers. It is thus altering the always uneasy relationship between risk assessment science and risk management policy.Since 1997, I have been analyzing the use of the Internet in communicating about risk and in generating political pressure concerning hazards. As such, this is an extension of my long-standing interest in how print media represent hazards and disasters. My work on Internet risk communication has proceeded through a number of case studies, among them the plutonium on board the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, chaparral fire hazard in Southern California, and a landslide incident in Southern California.
In the case studies explored thus far, what emerges is the rôle of the Internet in social risk amplification and risk attenuation. That is, in some cases (e.g., Cassini), social concern about a risk is inflated far beyond the estimates of probability and consequences coming from the professional risk assessment community. In other cases (e.g., chaparral fire hazard), social concern about a hazard assessed as relatively large in probability of occurrence and in consequences is soothed to a level enabling risky behavior (e.g., buying view homes in pyrogenic vegetation). Very interestingly, the Internet is used precisely to contest the legitimacy of conventional risk assessment science, with an eye toward generating political activism to impact risk management policy. In most of these cases, there is an attempt to recruit credentialed scientists at odds with the majority opinion in the relevant field of assessment science, a tactic seen in many other social issues than just hazards.
Perhaps more interesting than the risk amplification and attenuation content of Internet risk communication is its mechanism. Because of the exponential expansion in communication that the forward button allows, a very small number of people can generate large-scale awareness and political activism in service of their take on a given hazard. Tracing forwarded UseNet messages on Cassini back to their originators, I found that the entire controversy started with a handful of activists (from 2 to 11, depending on definitions). These individuals amplified the risks of plutonium on spacecraft, which proved very costly to NASA's Cassini science budget and which may alter the nature of outer solar system exploration in the future. The attenuation of perceived risk in the case of chaparral fire hazards in the mountains of Southern California was initiated ultimately by a single Malibu realtor disgruntled over Mike Davis' popularization of that hazard in The Ecology of Fear. The Internet also seems to vary in its effectiveness as a risk communication medium, depending on the specific "channel" used. The Web is certainly the glamorous part of the Internet, with its full-color displays and multimedia (sound, movies, text, graphics, and animation) capabilities. Its effectiveness as a medium, however, is limited by its need for an audience actively searching for information or following links. Oddly enough, the most effective "channels" of the Internet in risk communication seem to be the relatively homely ones: e-mail, listservers, news groups, and chats. These channels are far more ubiquitously used by people to get information out than are web pages (which are more technically demanding). And they demand little initiative from their more passive audiences: You get messages by e-mail (whether you want them or not) from friends, associates, and spammers. If some message about a risk catches your eye, it is extremely easy to send it to 50 of your closest Internet friends, who may themselves pass it on to their address lists, listservers, news groups, and chat buddies.
Details on this research may be found at: https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/research.html