Section: Organisational and Strategic Communication
SENSEMAKING OF RISKS: THE AMPLIFICATION OF THE E-COLI OUTBREAK BY ORGANIZATIONS AND BY NEWS MEDIA IN GERMAN
Juliana RAUPP, Free University of Berlin
The paper focuses mediated risk communication referring to the outbreak of E.coli food poisoning in Germany in spring 2011. According to Sandman and Lanard (2011), this is a particularly rich "bad example" of uncertainty communication: overconfident speculations and too little explanation of what was known and what not led to misimpressions and false accusations. The social amplification of risk (SARF) framework (Kasperson, Kasperson, Pidgeon, & Slovic, 2003) is utilized to analyze institutional and mediated risk communication of the E.coli outbreak.
The framework serves to describe risk communication as a collective process of decoding and encoding risk messages. Thus, risk messages are contingent interpretations that affect perceptions about the seriousness or manageability of the threat (Kasperson et al., 2003, p. 17). Risks can be amplified or attenuated, according to divergent interpretations of risk messages. Primary sources, secondary sources , and the news media are considered as amplification stations (Kasperson et al., 2003, p. 37). The SARF framework has been criticized for its mechanistic metaphor and the associated sendermessage- receiver model of communication (Murdock, Petts, & Horlick-Jones, 2003). Taking this critique seriously, this paper integrates an interactionist and sensemaking perspective on communication into the framework. The central research questions here are, how do institutional actors and news media make sense of risks related to the E-coli outbreak in Germany? What kinds of risks are amplified or attenuated? How does this change over the course of time? Two hypotheses structure the examination: Media attenuate risks more than public agencies and organizations, and ripple effects can be charted along temporal and systemic dimensions. We conducted a content analysis of press releases from public agencies and associations, articles in three German newspapers and news items in a TV news program dealing with the E. coli outbreak. In total, 312 items have been analyzed (64 press releases and 248 news items). The research period was nine weeks (May 21, when the outbreak apparently started, to July 28, 2011, two days after the official declaration that the outbreak had come to a halt).
While some media indeed attenuated the threats, the overall picture is less clear. Only some institutional risk messages appeared in the media, and differences between the various media were great. The study demonstrates how mediated risk communication on the E. coli outbreak in Germany developed its own momentum. At the same time, implications for communicating uncertainty can be drawn. Kasperson, J. X., Kasperson, R. E., Pidgeon, N., & Slovic, P. (2003). The social amplification of risk: assessing fifteen years of theory and research. In N. Pidgeon, R. E. Kasperson & P. Slovic (Eds.), The social amplification of risk (pp. 13-46). Cambridge. Murdock, G., Petts, J., & Horlick-Jones, T. (2003). After amplification: rethinking the role of media in risk communication. In N. Pidgeon, R. E. Kasperson & P. Slovic (Eds.), The social amplification of risk (pp. 156-178). Cambridge. Sandman, P. M., & J. Lanard (2011, Aug. 14). Explaining and proclaiming uncertainty: Risk communication lessons from Germany’s deadly E. coli outbreak. Retrieved from http://www.psandman.com/col/GermanEcoli.htm