Abstract
More than anything else, Risk and Health Communication in an Evolving Media Environment is a snapshot of a tense moment in the evolution of a field. Times are changing, and with them so do the media and its audiences. By shedding a light on a broad set of contemporary issues in risk, crisis and health communications, this new book, edited by H. Dan O’Hair (with assistant editors Heather Chapman and Megan Sizemore), examines the challenges faced by communicators and those who study them in the second decade of the 21st century.
Risk and health communicators aim to use information to mitigate threat, be it of a rapidly spreading infectious disease, a terrorist attack, air pollution or substance abuse. But the success of even the most carefully crafted campaigns depends to a large degree on the media (Reynolds and Seeger, 2014; Snyder et al., 2004) and the ability to increase exposure to messages (Hornik, 2002). For years, this dependency meant that communicators had to work closely with and provide timely and accurate information to journalists, especially those working in print, radio and television. As a result, most theories of health and risk communication were developed with legacy media in mind.
However, recent changes in media landscapes, including the rise of the Internet, mobile phones and social media, dramatically changed the ways audiences consume (and produce) information. These shifts call to question the relevancy and in some cases legitimacy of some of the practices used by communicators. At the same time, these changes in media have challenged the theoretical assumptions and methodological tools researchers have been using for decades to assess psychological and behavioural media effects. The book takes the reader to a journey through prominent theories (agenda-setting, inoculation and social amplification of risk, to name a few), methods (e.g. surveys, rhetorical analysis, interviews) and case studies (such as Ebola, alcohol abuse and storms). By doing so, it allows the authors of the relevant chapters to reflect upon the flexibility of traditional tools and their ability to adapt to the new media environment.
The book is organized through four parts. Part I, ‘Advances in health communication research’, explores the ability of family members to mediate media messages to their children (Shin et al.), the distinction between knowledge gaps and belief gaps in the realm of legalized marijuana (Hindman), the effect of branding awareness on perceptions regarding campaigns created by pharmaceutical companies (Crosswell et al.) and the challenges facing risk communicators in rapidly developing countries, such as China (Tai et al.).
Part II, ‘Communicating and educating the public and media about risk and science’, explores the changes required when communicating about occupational safety and risk in the workplace (Scholl et al.), the role of climate change educators played by TV meteorologists (Rowan et al.), the need to communicate uncertainty about severe diseases as cancer (Ratcliff et al.) and the use of formative process and summative evaluations in the context of online health information systems (Kreps et al.).
Part III, ‘Situating theory in risk and health communication contexts’, investigates the Keystone XL pipeline coverage in print media through the lens of the social amplification of risk framework and framing theory (Haigh), a discussion of the need for disciplinary pluralism (and especially the inclusion of rhetorical approaches) when analysing risk contexts such as terrorism (Macy-Ayotte), an examination of the ethical considerations required when directing decision making through communications (Bowen and Li) and an attempt to tie together the theoretical frameworks of inoculation theory and risk communication (Ivanov et al.).
Finally, Part IV, ‘Exploring messages and media during extreme events’, explores the role played by meteorologists in guiding behaviours during severe weather events (Bruce et al.), the tension between presenting the West Nile outbreak as unpreventable while recommending individuals to take action to reduce threats (Yu et al.) and the dynamic use of competing and converging narratives by different actors and communicators during epidemic outbreaks (Getchel et al.).
Taken together, these chapters provide a broad examination of the role of media, audiences, governmental agencies and scholars in the contemporary media environment. However, those expecting easy answers at the end of the book will be disappointed as the volume describes a complicated reality. In their chapter on occupational safety communications, Scholl et al. argue that ‘the rapidly changing digital environment makes it difficult to plan very far into the future’ (p. 112). While their argument refers to the challenges facing risk and health communicators, the same applies to those who study its effects. As the media environment keeps changing, so do the needs and tools of communication scholars. And just as hard as building a communication plan for the next 5 years is, so is the development of research tools that will remain simple, agile, flexible and sustainable in the near and far future. In a rapidly evolving reality, such solutions may simply not be realistic. In terms of its approach to describing the current state of the field of health and risk communication, it could be seen as a book about a process, not about providing definite conclusions.
A second theme that recurs in several chapters is the emergence of misinformation in the age of complex media landscapes, especially after the introduction of social media (Lewandowsky et al., 2012). Different chapters discuss how misinformation can influence perceptions and decision making in areas such as climate change (Rowan et al.) or marijuana (Hindman), but its prevalence also shapes the way communicators design their own messages. For example, Getchel et al. discuss how narrative plurality can be a means for manipulation and deception during outbreaks. Similarly, Shannon et al. examine the ethical issues arising when communicating in an environment of ‘fake news’, misinformation and disinformation, and Ratcliff et al. discuss the challenge of communicating about uncertainty in a credible, yet not misleading, way.
The book covers substantial ground in health and risk communications, examining a wide selection of theories, methods, media sources, technologies and contexts. Despite its impressive breadth, it notably lacks a discussion of novel methodological tools, such as network analysis, topic modelling, supervised machine learning and other natural language processing approaches, that allow researchers to cope with the increasingly large and complex corpora and data that result from technological advances in data storage and processing. Instead, the book focuses on more traditional approaches to communication studies, such as in-depth interviews, manual content analysis and cross-sectional surveys, and experiments. The inclusion of novel methods could benefit readers and provide a broader and more comprehensive perspective on the phenomenon, particularly in the age of digital media.
This book could enrich many audiences – from graduate students to teachers and researchers to those who take part in the design and dissemination of risk and health information. It will, in my opinion, fare better with more experienced researchers and communicators than undergraduate students or early researchers as the topics are relatively advanced, and the absence of an epilogue chapter requires the reader to reach her own conclusions based on the arguments presented throughout the chapters. It is also important to note that the edited book may be more useful to those interested in translation research than to the theory and methodology purists, as its strength lies in presenting ways science can be put into practice for meaningful social impact.
The importance and centrality of theory in developing effective health and risk communications was emphasized before (Fishbein and Cappella, 2006). But as times are changing, some of the classic models and theories we have used to describe and explain our social reality may become obsolete or require some amendments to the new media environment. As argued by Scholl et al. in their chapter, communication theories are not developing as rapidly as the technologies they explain. As the mediating role of media keeps evolving in parallel to technological innovations, so do we as scholars need to re-examine and re-evaluate our methodological and theoretical tool belts. By critically examining various theories, methods and contexts in light of changes in media environments, this book serves as an important step in that direction.