Peter Sandman
Comments and Questions
Index

  2008        2007      2006      2005

  2004      2003      2002      2001  

• The dangers of excessive warnings … and of over-reassurance
• Risk communication is a type; outbreak communication is a subtype
• How should the public cope with outrage and uncertainty – and how do I cope?



• Was Hillary Clinton’s Obama endorsement good outrage management?
• Pesticide spraying against West Nile Virus
• Convincing people incinerators have improved
• Risk communication and Web 2.0
• Selling fire protection



• Labeling BGH in milk
• Media coverage isn’t proportional to mortality statistics – and it shouldn’t be
• Good reputation and bad reputation: Are there positives that can offset the negatives of outrage?
• Responding to damaging rumors when the information is confidential
• Was it good or bad crisis communication for Hong Kong to shut down its primary schools because of a flu outbreak?



• Lessons from the Westland beef recall
• Vaccination and autism: Responding to the Hannah Poling case
• You can’t hector people into pandemic preparedness
• Alberta’s oil royalty: The industry’s risk communication mistakes
• Honesty as strategy

• What can you say when you want to work with groups that detest each other?
• Managing outrage about the release of a convicted rapist



• Helping drinking water systems talk about serious and not-so-serious violations
• Measuring public versus expert risk perceptions and outrage
• How morale affects safety
• The movie “Awake” – and talking to people about anesthetic awareness
• Landlord-tenant relations and indoor air quality controversies



• Outrage about depleted uranium
• Origins of the risk communication seesaw principle
• Does taking the thimerosal out of vaccines reassure people or scare them?
• Working with inexperienced regulators
• (1) What’s unique about pandemic communication? (2) What’s new in risk communication?



• Where do “risk tolerance” and “risk appetite” fit in risk management and risk communication?
• Role of leadership in homeland security crisis communication
• Panflu risk communication to foreign-born populations
• Tamiflu redux
• Empathy in risk communication



• Elvin Semrad, humanistic psychotherapy, and risk communication
• Fischhoff’s seven stages of risk communication
• Searching my site
• Asking people to wait in line for medicine in a crisis
• MRSA “superbug” risk communication



• What’s unique about “counterterror risk communication”?
• Christine Todd Whitman’s defense of EPA re: post-9/11 air quality
• Presenting to Boards of Directors
• When a regulator is making “impossible” demands
• Health department policies on releasing information



• Melamine risk communication: acknowledgment and anticipatory guidance
• Corporate Tamiflu stockpiling
• Are empathy and compassion really what matters in mid-emergency?
• What do I think about the controversy in the pandemic prep community about my role and my integrity?
• Why do I want the government to control all the Tamiflu? (I don’t.)



• Why is this such an old-fashioned website?
• Pandemic preparedness and the poor: Are we urging people to do more than they can?
• Is a flu pandemic likely to raise issues of social stigma? How can risk communication help with stigma?
• Is it good or bad risk communication to warn Asian students that they are at “high risk” of contracting bird flu from food?
• Risk communication and outdoor education

2006

• Talking about animal culls
• Risk communication and the legitimacy of counterterrorism



• The role of outrage in regulatory reform
• Lessons of the O.J. Simpson/Rupert Murdoch/Judith Regan controversy
• Defining risk: Why not include benefits too?
• Why it’s hard to persuade people to add pandemics to the long list of things they’re worried about
• Aren’t the outrage factors just aspects of risk perception?



• Pandemic flu good communication example file
• Risk communication and corporate social responsibility
• Pandemic flu misinformation “Hall of Shame”
• Risk communication in facility siting controversies
• Is emergency preparedness getting too much attention?



• Putting extremists on a Community Advisory Panel
• Talking about “high-path” and “low-path” avian flu
• How much should we trust what WHO says about pandemic phase?
• Telling 9/11 emergency responders to wear their masks — and explaining later what went wrong
• How do we “know” if they’re telling us the truth about BSE — or about anything?



• Localized geographical identifiers: How to say “This Means You!”
• What does it mean to “manage” terrorism — and the fear of terrorism?
• Motivating disaster preparedness
• End-of-the-world risk communication
• Notes from the Beirut evacuation



• Outrage about global warming
• Wearing personal protective equipment around hazardous waste sites: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
• Is mid-crisis consultation possible?
• Talking to poultry consumers about bird flu: How reassuring is too reassuring?
• “Mild” versus severe pandemics — public health versus emergency response



• Why do people keep smoking?
• Preparing for a severe pandemic
• Fake Tamiflu
• Activism versus education, sensationalism versus inspiration
• Talking to wildlife rescuers about their bird flu risk



• Measuring pandemic fear, panic, denial, and apathy
• Coming out of the closet about pandemic preparedness
• Risk communication seminars
• More on Tamiflu stockpiling ethics and psychology
• Message points for a pandemic flu school flyer for parents



• Just-in-time pandemic preparedness
• Outrage management and school-parent relations
• Risk communication versus media relations
• Doctor-patient risk communication: persuasion or just the facts?
• Outrage about risk to the elderly



• Surgical masks: Another pandemic risk communication controversy
• Pandemic risk and the U.S. poultry industry
• Family pandemic preparedness and family pandemic communication
• The “outrage factors”

2005

• Likelihood of a severe pandemic — the hunger for a number
• The flu pandemic issue-attention cycle — where does skepticism fit?
• Analogies in risk communication

  

• Talking to a local government official about pandemic flu
• Talking to healthcare workers about pandemic risks
• Trusting in your government’s pandemic planning
• Flu Wiki
• Pandemic preparedness: the individual, the government, and the world of finance



• The worst risks
• Stressing non-medical pandemic preparedness (while the feds stress medical preparedness)
• Risk communication for children
• (1) How do I define “panic”? (2) What about risk communication to emergency responders?
• Some flu pandemic adjustment reactions



• Pandemic preparedness — what’s a doctor to do?
• A variant on Risk = Hazard + Outrage
• The ethics of Tamiflu
• Inadequacies in Katrina response
• Corporate emergency response



• Apologizing to employees
• Myanmar takes note of bird flu
• Managing outrage about healthcare errors
• Is there an epidemic of fear?
• Giving children frightening bird flu information



• Selling a house near mobile telephone towers
• Homeland Security's color coding as an excuse not to warn people about bird flu
• Should you acknowledge the little bit of truth on the other side of an argument?
• People getting themselves ready for a flu pandemic
• Thimerosal, autism, and misleading toward the truth



• The math behind the U.S. Tamiflu supply
• Arousing outrage about aging
• More sources on when to release risk information
• Asbestos warnings and the Libby miners
• Bird flu cover-ups



• (1) Does public involvement reduce public concern?
  (2) Talking management into an involvement program
• Talking to engineering clients about risk
• “We all know what part of their bodies risk assessors pull those numbers out of.”
• Magnitude of the communication problem during a flu pandemic
• Risk communication in the face of class action litigation



• Coping with violence
• What can individuals do to prepare for a bird flu pandemic?
• WHO’s new pandemic influenza phases
• Weight, health, and CDC risk communication
• Critical Mass Theory and risk perception

  

• Outrage about exercise limitations when air pollution is high
• Communication plans for flu pandemics
• (1) Dead bodies — crisis communication or outrage management?
  (2) Two-way communication with apathetic publics
• Cloned cattle and preventive outrage management
• Why people can’t understand toxicity



• “Hazard + Outrage” versus “Impact × Probability”
• People’s need for health emergency information
• A non-zero standard for anthrax (or any risk)
• Learning tsunami lessons and punishing the guilty; protecting tourism versus protecting lives
• Bioterrorism risk communication — what are people interested in learning?



• More on “Talking about Dead Bodies”
• How “Risk = Hazard + Outrage“ relates to the psychometric paradigm of Slovic et al.
• “Talking about Dead Bodies” — some reactions from PAHO
• Risk communication versus public relations (in theory and in practice)
• Talking about “risk” without implying causality



• Alerting employees about chemical risks
• Risk communication and the drug industry
• Organizational culture and organizational prerequisites for risk communication
• Health communication versus risk communication
• Controlling, coordinating, coping, and planning

2004

• Gay rights as a risk communication problem
• Company crisis communication plans
• How would risk communication have averted the Iraq war?
• Flu vaccine risk communication
• The “outrage” concept and black-and-white thinkers
• Getting out preparedness information before a crisis



• The role of marketing in risk communication
• Telling people something they do all the time is more dangerous than something they’re newly worried about
• (1) Web-based risk communication; (2) mental models
• Talking about risks that have never happened
• Is outrage part of risk or part of risk perception?



• Testing cows for BSE
• Over-reacting to risk and irrationality
• Corporate stonewalling and consumer warnings
• Really, really irrational stakeholders
• Mad cow risk communication

2003

• Telling corporations obvious things
• Flu: A touch of the panic
• Root/risk philosophies
• Interview in The Sun
• Appearance of mobile telephone base stations
• Some knotty dilemmas of public consultation
• “Be first, be right, and be credible”



• Taking responsibility for the 2003 blackout
• Improving safety by firing employees
• Philanthropy, Bribery, Blackmail, Reparations, and Penance
• Media censorship
• Media coverage of SARS and monkeypox



• Informing the public versus informing terrorists and criminals
• Scaring people about terrorism
• Checklists for emergency communications
• Talking about dioxin
• What are the components of hazard?



• Panic (and even fear) can do real harm
• Communicating a health concern
• Template for risk communication planning
• When people are under-reacting to a risk
• Emergency how-to warnings



• Evacuation feasibility — the attractions of fatalism
• Why the sudden interest in smallpox?
• SUVs and risk communication
• GM foods and risk communication
• Smallpox vaccination: Can we trust the government?

2002

• Research funding and trustworthiness
• Dealing with abusive stakeholders
• Silicone breast implants (1)
• Silicone breast implants (2)
• Silicone breast implants (3)



• Reporting undesirable events
• Coping with employer irrationality about safety
• The Service Approach
• Misleading connotations of the word “outrage”
• Communication now about possible future terrorism



• Crisis communication versus risk communication
• Anthrax, politicians, and PR
• Risk communication for government emergency responders
• Graduate work in risk communication
• Where outrage stands on various theoretical frameworks

2001

• What did Rudy Giuliani do right?
• Risk to children and other specially vulnerable populations; also environmental justice
• Workplace safety — how organizational culture affects whether employees take risk seriously
• Guilt and ego as drivers in environmental risk controversies



• Bioterrorism and anthrax — candor (even about “what-ifs”) reduces panic
• Aftermath of September 11 — first thoughts on terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, apathy, denial, and risk communication
• Mobilizing outrage on environmental causes — anger as antidote to apathy
• Transparency and information overload (especially in Australia)
• Apology, forgiveness, and greed



• Advocacy for the disabled — shame, oppression, and outrage
• Public relations versus stakeholder relations
• Radon risk communication, the natural-versus-industrial distinction, and risk comparisons
• Community right to know — how activists use it and how companies respond
• Military risk communication



• Outrage and outrage management in other cultures — international risk communication
• Impact of outrage (including employers’ outrage) on employee safety
• Risk communication at a coal-fired power plant — hazard management versus outrage management; lawyers versus admitting fault
• Risk communication bibliography — recommended books
• Development in South Africa — corporate outrage can lead to “insensitivity” to public outrage