News Media Discourse and the State of Public Opinion on Risk

With reference to the 'theoretical crisis' of those media researchers who have come to the conclusion that much of their work has been undermined by a fuller recognition of the complexity of symbolic production and exchange, this paper presents a critical summary of the potential for 'new audience studies' to call into question some of the basic premisses of theories of risk communication. This may give practitioners reason to jettison the popular view that risk controversies result from the discrepancies between expert and lay perceptions of the magnitude of hazards. Moreover, it certainly might be used to alert them to the possibility that media representations of risk, at least in their own terms, may have little bearing upon people's everyday worries and concerns. Risk communication researchers would do better to focus upon the specific dynamics of the political and economic interrelationships between news sources and their vested interests, in securing the power to influence the symbolic representation of public issues.