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Public Understanding of Science
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Newspaper reporting of hazards in the UK and Sweden

Gene Rowe

Bristol Business School (the University of the West of England), gene.rowe{at}bbsrc.ac.uk

Lynn Frewer

Institute of Food Research in Norwich

Lennart Sjöberg

University of Stockholm

Public understanding of risks is likely to be informed by the media. We report a cross-national study looking at how newspapers in Sweden and the United Kingdom characterize a variety of risks, focusing on two months around the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. Approximately four times as many reports about risks were found in Sweden as in the U.K., possibly reflecting a Swedish safety culture. The Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) crisis dominated reporting in both countries, especially in the U.K. The proportion and pattern of reports on Chernobyl was similar across countries. However, in Sweden, there was an increase in reports about other nuclear hazards after the anniversary, suggesting that generalization of media concern may have occurred. Generally, BSE was discussed using a greater number of characterizations in the U.K., while Chernobyl was reported using more characterizations in Sweden. Reports about hazards tended to be alarmist rather than reassuring, and rarely used statistics to express degrees of risk.

Public Understanding of Science, Vol. 9, No. 1, 59-78 (2000)
DOI: 10.1088/0963-6625/9/1/304
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 ANN INTERN MEDHome page
L. M. Schwartz and S. Woloshin
The Media Matter: A Call for Straightforward Medical Reporting
Ann Intern Med, February 3, 2004; 140(3): 226 - 228.
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