This page has two purposes.
- For readers who are new to risk communication, the page will give you a quick introduction to the field and suggest other introductory articles you may want to read first.
- For readers who are familiar with risk communication but new to my approach and my website, the page will orient to you the way I see the field and the way I have organized the site.
The most important fact about risk communication is the incredibly low correlation between a risk’s “hazard” (how much harm it’s likely to do) and its “outrage” (how upset it’s likely to make people). If you know a risk is dangerous, that tells you almost nothing about whether it’s upsetting. If you know it’s upsetting, that tells you almost nothing about whether it’s dangerous.
Based on this distinction, I categorize risk communication into four tasks:
- When hazard is high and outrage is low, the task is “precaution advocacy” – alerting insufficiently upset people to serious risks. “Watch out!”
- When hazard is low and outrage is high, the task is “outrage management” – reassuring excessively upset people about small risks. “Calm down.”
- When hazard is high and outrage is also high, the task is “crisis communication” – helping appropriately upset people cope with serious risks. “We’ll get through this together.”
- When hazard and outrage are both intermediate, you’re in the “sweet spot” (hence the happy face) – dialoguing with interested people about a significant but not urgent risk. “And what do you think?”
The sweet spot is easy, so I don’t write about it much.
The other three are tough – but they’re tough in different ways. Thus, the strategies and skills required for effective precaution advocacy, outrage management, and crisis communication are also different.
To figure out how to do good risk communication, you must first figure out where you are on the risk communication “map.” How high do you think the hazard is (or is likely to get)? How high do you think the outrage is (or is likely to get)? So which toolkit do you need – precaution advocacy, outrage management, or crisis communication?
I have cherry-picked the writing on this website and identified the columns, articles, and Guestbook entries I think are most helpful in each of these three corners of my risk communication map.
So if you know you’re looking for help arousing concern about a serious hazard, look at the Precaution Advocacy Index.
If you know you’re looking for help reassuring people about a small hazard, look at the Outrage Management Index.
And if you know you’re looking for help guiding justifiably upset people through a serious hazard, look at the Crisis Communication Index.
There’s one more topical index on this website, the Pandemic Flu and Other Infectious Diseases Index. That one cuts across my other categories. Warning people about an infectious disease risk they’re ignoring is precaution advocacy; calming them about an infectious disease risk they’re over-reacting to is outrage management; guiding them through a serious outbreak, epidemic, or pandemic is crisis communication.
A lot of what’s on this website isn’t in any of the four topical indexes. Some pieces don’t quite fit into any of the four. Some I left out because they cover the same ground as others … and not as well. Some (especially in the Guestbook) struck me as too narrow.
If you want to look through everything on the site, you need to check the four complete lists:
- List of my website columns
- List of my articles on the Web
- List of articles by others using my work
- List of Guestbook entries
Finally, if you want to read some more introductory articles on risk communication and the basics of my “Risk = Hazard + Outrage” approach, try the following.
Topical Sections in Introduction and Orientation
Risk Communication Overviews
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Risk Communication: Evolution and Revolution
In Solutions to an Environment in Peril, Anthony Wolbarst (ed.) (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 164–178
Back in the 1980s, Vincent Covello and I gave back-to-back presentations on risk communication as part of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lecture series. When Tony Wolbarst of EPA decided to collect the presentations into a book, he offered everyone a chance to revise and update. Vincent and I decided to merge our efforts into a single article on the state of risk communication, based loosely on what we had said originally plus what we now consider important. The result is a pretty good overview of the shared opinions of two well-seasoned practitioners.
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A chapter in Encyclopedia of the Environment, 1994
Being asked to summarize the whole of risk communication in a short encyclopedia article was a challenge (even a decade ago, when much less was known). For me the biggest challenge was to summarize risk communication, not just my approach to it. I think I partially succeeded.
Hazard versus Outrage and
the Four Kinds of Risk Communication
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Presented to the National Public Health Information Coalition, Miami Beach FL, October 21, 2009
Posted: January 2, 2010Although this six-hour seminar was entitled “Three Paradigms of Radiological Risk Communication,” NPHIC asked me to go easy on the “radiological” part and give participants a broad introduction to my approach to risk communication, mentioning radiation issues from time to time. So that’s what I did.
Fair warning: These are not professional videos. NPHIC member Joe Rebele put a camera in the back of the room and let it run. You won’t lose much listening to the MP3 audio files on this site instead.
- Part One is a 90-minute introduction to the hazard-versus-outrage distinction and the three paradigms of risk communication.
- Part Two runs 155 minutes. It discusses the seesaw and other risk communication games (thus completing the introductory segment), then spends a little over an hour each on some key strategies of precaution advocacy and outrage management.
- Part Three is a 72-minute rundown on some key crisis communication strategies.
See especially Part One.
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Food Safety Risk Communications
(Note: This link launches an MP3 audio file from this site.)Presented at the Maple Leaf Food Safety Symposium, Mississauga Canada, October 23, 2009
In August 2008, Listeria contamination in Maple Leaf packaged deli meats killed 21 elderly consumers, one of the largest food poisoning disasters in Canadian history. As one small part of its recovery efforts, Maple Leaf Foods sponsored a food safety symposium in October 2009, bringing together producers, retailers, and regulators to talk about lessons learned and ways to protect against Listeria. My presentation on “Food Safety Risk Communication” was inserted as respite from the technical material in most of the other speeches. I did my usual introduction to hazard versus outrage and the kinds of risk communication, and then offered a few food-specific examples (until I ran out of time). Audience comments and questions weren’t recorded; that’s what the occasional moments of dead air are. -
Presented to the European Respiratory Society international conference, Vienna, Austria, September 14, 2009
The European Respiratory Society invited me give a 20-minute presentation on pandemic communication at its annual conference, as part of a panel on various aspects of pandemic H1N1. I pleaded for an extra hour right afterwards to go into more detail for those who wanted it. Some 20,000 respiratory disease doctors attended the conference; roughly 2,000 of them were at the panel; about 200 followed me to a smaller room for my extra hour (which I did jointly with my wife and colleague Jody Lanard, an M.D.). Only the panel presentation is posted on the ERS website. It’s mostly an introduction to the basics of risk communication (hazard versus outrage; precaution advocacy versus outrage management versus crisis communication), with some quick comments on the implications for pandemic communication. The meat was in the hour that followed, which unfortunately wasn’t recorded. Interview with Dr. Peter Sandman
Posted on the National Public Relations website, March 9, 2009
Canadian PR firm National Public Relations was one of the sponsors that brought me to Vancouver in March 2009 to give a two-day risk communication seminar (jointly with my wife and colleague Jody Lanard), organized by the University of British Columbia. As part of the event, the company taped this seven-minute interview with me on the basics of my “Risk = Hazard + Outrage” formula. The tape was posted (and labeled a “podcast”) on the National Public Relations website, and the link was emailed to conference participants and National Public Relations clients. If you prefer listening to reading, this is an okay introduction.
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Managing Outrage and Crises: Dealing with Risk by Understanding Your Audience
Published in Food Technology News (Guelph Food Technology Centre), June 2007
Over the past year I have given a presentation and a seminar at the Guelph Food Technology Centre in Guelph, Ontario. This article by Cliona Reeves is adapted from bits and pieces of the two. It focuses on the distinction among precaution advocacy (high-hazard, low-outrage), outrage management (low-hazard, high-outrage), and crisis communication (high-hazard, high-outrage). I have written about this distinction myself, particularly in “Four Kinds of Risk Communication.” But this article adds value in that it’s a little more detailed, a little more current, and particularly focused on food examples. The “quotations” in the article are actually mostly paraphrases, but Cliona checked with me before publication and they do capture my meaning, if not always my exact words.
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How much risk do you live with?
Published in the Vancouver Sun, March 9, 2007
Once a month or so I get interviewed for a newspaper article on risk perception. The articles all cover the same ground: “The scary risks aren’t necessarily the ones that kill you. Here are some stunning examples. And here’s why the experts say we’re so foolish.” I don’t usually bother to post these articles. But this one struck me as unusually well done. It also focuses a lot on a hypothesis that most such articles ignore: risk homeostasis – the notion that people want as much risk in their lives as they want, and therefore compensate for safety improvements by taking more risks. On the other hand, this article – like most – steadfastly ignores a point I made to the reporter (as I always do): It isn’t really foolish to consider “outrage factors” like voluntariness, morality, and trust relevant to how acceptable a risk is; it isn’t really sensible to ignore these factors and focus exclusively on mortality statistics.
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Risk Perception, Risk Communication, and Risk Reporting: The Role of Each in Pandemic Preparedness
Originally presented at a conference on “Avian Flu, a Pandemic & the Role of Journalists,” Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, December 1, 2006
An abridged version
of this presentation was published in the Spring 2007 issue of Nieman Reports. This version is the original transcript, made available to me by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism. I edited it very lightly so it makes sense – but it’s still very much a transcript, not a polished article. Despite the title, the transcript is a pretty good orientation to risk communication the way I see it. -
Four Kinds of Risk Communication
Posted: April 11, 2003
This short column was an early attempt to lay out what I see as the four kinds of risk communication. Some of my labels have changed since 2003. When hazard is high and outrage is low, the job is warning apathetic people about serious risks. I now call that precaution advocacy; the column called it public relations. When hazard is low and outrage is high, the job is calming upset people about small risks. I called that outrage management in the column, and that’s still what I call it. When hazard and outrage are both high, the job is helping rightly upset people bear a dangerous situation. No change in that label either; it’s crisis communication. Finally, when hazard and outrage are both intermediate, the job is chatting with interested people about a real but not urgent risk. The column called that stakeholder relations; I now call it “the sweet spot.”
Spanish translation available
Traducción en Español: Cuatro clases de comunicación de riesgos
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Agency Communication, Community Outrage, and Perception of Risk: Three Simulation Experiments
Risk Analysis, Vol 13, No. 6, 1993, pp. 585–598
My conviction that the “outrage” component of risk influences public responses more than its “hazard” component is grounded in two decades of consulting experience ... and a scant handful of empirical research studies. This article reports most of the latter.
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Risk Communication: Facing Public Outrage
EPA Journal (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), November 1987, pp. 21–22
This is one of the earliest – and the shortest and most often cited – of my articles about the distinction between hazard and outrage. The focus is on the factors that determine whether people will over-react or under-react to a risk.
Spanish translation available
Traducción en Español: Comunicación de riesgos: afrontar el ultraje público
The Seesaw and the Other Risk Communication Games
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Presented to the National Public Health Information Coalition, Miami Beach FL, October 21, 2009
Posted: January 2, 2010Although this six-hour seminar was entitled “Three Paradigms of Radiological Risk Communication,” NPHIC asked me to go easy on the “radiological” part and give participants a broad introduction to my approach to risk communication, mentioning radiation issues from time to time. So that’s what I did.
Fair warning: These are not professional videos. NPHIC member Joe Rebele put a camera in the back of the room and let it run. You won’t lose much listening to the MP3 audio files on this site instead.
- Part One is a 90-minute introduction to the hazard-versus-outrage distinction and the three paradigms of risk communication.
- Part Two runs 155 minutes. It discusses the seesaw and other risk communication games (thus completing the introductory segment), then spends a little over an hour each on some key strategies of precaution advocacy and outrage management.
- Part Three is a 72-minute rundown on some key crisis communication strategies.
See especially Part Two.
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Games Risk Communicators Play: Follow-the-Leader, Echo, Donkey, and Seesaw
Posted: December 13, 2005
This short column considers the four possibilities when you are trying to convince me of X: I could have no prior opinion about X; I could believe X already; I could believe Y instead; or I could be ambivalent, torn between X and Y. Each of these four situations has its own risk communication game, described in the column: follow-the-leader, echo, donkey, and seesaw. Good risk communicators need to master all four games. And they need to know how to decide which game they’re playing – or, if they’re playing several at once, which game is most crucial to their communication goals.
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Advice for President Bartlet: Riding the Seesaw
Posted: July 14, 2001
Readers who were never fans of the “West Wing” television series may not remember when U.S. President Jed Bartlet finally decided to come clean about his multiple sclerosis. The tough question: How to address his desire to run for reelection, despite his illness and despite his having kept it secret. I used this setup as an excuse to write a column about a crucial risk communication strategy for coping with audience ambivalence: the seesaw. When people are ambivalent about X versus Y – for example, when they approve of your presidency and want you back for a second term, but worry that your MS and your dishonesty about it might disqualify you – they tend to go to the side of their ambivalence that is neglected elsewhere in their communication environment. The column outlines the various locations on the seesaw a risk communicator can decide to occupy, and the pros and cons of each. It offers plenty of nonfictional examples as well.
