Abstract
Communication plays a prevailing role in nuclear emergency
management, and media becomes the principal information tool and bridge
between the general public and the emergency management teams. In this
paper we investigate the influence of communication in a hypothetical nuclear
event causing radiological contamination in the food chain. For research
purposes, we use TV news to measure the communication effect on the public
acceptance of food legal norms and of management options for the food chain.
The results show that, although newsworthy, one instance of news will be
mostly interpreted as support of already existing opinions and can only
influence opinions that are not directly connected to personal life. An
association is found between the influence of the communicated news and
some socio-demographic variables: region and habitat. Risk perception also
proves influential: a higher risk perception is associated with a lower
occurrence of change in response after the communication.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 217-233 |
| Journal | Internatonal Journal Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| State | Published - Aug 2011 |