Looking for citizen-centered communication: dialogues between radiological protection or nuclear safety specialists and media professionals

What happens when radiological protection or nuclear safety officials get together with media professionals to talk about public communication on ionizing radiation risks? Do they have common views of the challenges and ways to meet these? This practical article reports on dialogue workshops organized by the EAGLE project in four European countries (France, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia). Common findings are classed and presented by themes, including inter alia: crisis versus everyday communication; mediated versus direct communication; sources, actors, roles and responsibilities; language and format; trust and confidence, balance in reporting and development of risk culture; nuclear industry promotion versus citizen-centered risk communication. The article also presents reflections from an expanded international workshop (RICOMET, June 2015). It echoes the participants in calling for a platform for ongoing dialogue between information sources and transmitters, in the interest of building solid relationships, risk culture and public understanding on ionizing radiation.