6.2. Believability and Trust

The event is that a specific chemical substance has been leaking from a waste repository for two years. Maybe, do you think that all journalists will report the same way? No right, they generally don’t do it. Let’s look, journalist 1 reported like that “Leak in waste disposal at high-tech Park”. How about journalist 2 is “State-of-the-art technology for monitoring chemical emissions.” Maybe journalist 3 is reporting air pollution by toxic waste dump. Journalist 4 is reporting poisoning the air we breathe, the water we drink. So, same event but different journalists are reporting different things, it’s so interesting.

This chunk explores how the same event can be interpreted and reported in various ways by different journalists. Each journalist has a unique perspective and focuses on different aspects of the story, leading to diverse headlines and coverage. This variance influences how the public perceives the issue.

Imagine a group of people watching the same movie and then discussing it afterward. One person might focus on the drama, another on the humor, and yet another on the special effects. Each person's review will be different based on what they found most interesting, much like how journalists report on the same event.

So, the primary source of risk communications. These are hazards, we know like smoking, genetically modified foods or irrigations of arsenic contaminations or hazardous material or volcanic eruptions okay.

Risk communication primarily involves the dissemination of information about hazards such as smoking, genetically modified foods, and environmental pollutants. Understanding these risks is critical as they can lead to significant health issues and societal concerns.

Consider how doctors communicate health risks to patients. When a doctor explains the risks of smoking, they focus on facts and statistics to help the patient make informed choices, similar to how risk communication aims to educate the public about potential hazards.

The scientific community basically, the first group the senders of the informations what do they do basically, I am talking about the scientist. Okay, they do hazard analysis, what are the hazards, what can go wrong, what are the potential consequences, how likely is it to happen, is the risk is tolerable or not.

Scientists perform thorough hazard analyses to identify risks associated with various events, determine their likelihood, and assess the potential consequences. This process helps categorize risks into levels ranging from low to extremely high, guiding how the issue is communicated to the public.

Think of scientists as risk assessors in a factory. If they find that a machine has a high chance of malfunctioning, they will assess how dangerous that malfunction could be and advise the factory on preventive measures. This assessment parallels how scientists evaluate risks to communicate them effectively.

The source of message, when the senders, they are sending to the transmitter. They actually do amplify, magnify and accentuate the informations, it’s not that what information you pass is go directly but it is the media or the other they actually convert this one in printer pair this one, amplify this one, magnify this one, and then it comes through decoding and recoding.

When risk messages are conveyed, they undergo a transformation where the information is amplified and altered by the media before reaching the audience. This transformation can lead to changes in how the message is perceived, often intensifying the sense of risk.

This is akin to playing a game of 'telephone,' where a message starts off simple and becomes more dramatic and sensational as it is passed along. Just like in 'telephone,' the final message may differ significantly from the original intent.

How people react it depends on how they are perceiving the seriousness of the risk and perceiving their perceived acceptability okay. So, it depends that if this person is getting informations from the mass media. He would think, Oh this flood will happen to me, this landslide will happen to me, will it happen here, what is the probability?

Individuals evaluate risks based on their perceptions of seriousness and how personally acceptable those risks are. Factors like media coverage shape these perceptions, influencing how individuals prepare for potential disasters like floods or landslides.

Imagine a person hearing about an approaching storm on the news. If the coverage focuses on the severity and potential dangers, they may panic and prepare extensively. However, if the coverage downplays the risk, they might not take any action, highlighting the importance of perception in risk communication.

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