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Risk Communication as Government Agency Organizational Practice

The dynamics of organizational risk communication is an understudied topic in risk research. This article investigates how public officials at six government agencies in Sweden understand and relate to risk communication and its uses in the context of agency organizational work on policy and regulat...

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Autor principal: Boholm, Åsa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6849713/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30884551
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/risa.13302
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author Boholm, Åsa
author_facet Boholm, Åsa
author_sort Boholm, Åsa
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description The dynamics of organizational risk communication is an understudied topic in risk research. This article investigates how public officials at six government agencies in Sweden understand and relate to risk communication and its uses in the context of agency organizational work on policy and regulation. Qualitative interviews were used to explore the practitioners’ views on some key topics in the academic literature on risk communication. A main finding is that there is little consensus on what the goals of risk communication are; if, and how, uncertainty should be communicated; and what role is to be played by transparency in risk communication. However, the practitioners agree that dissemination (top down) to the public of robust scientific and expert knowledge is a crucial element. Dialogue and participation is used mainly with other agencies and elite stakeholders with whom agencies collaborate to implement policy goals. Dialogue with the public on issues of risk is very limited. Some implications of the findings for the practice of risk communication by government agencies are suggested.
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spelling pubmed-68497132019-11-15 Risk Communication as Government Agency Organizational Practice Boholm, Åsa Risk Anal Original Research Articles The dynamics of organizational risk communication is an understudied topic in risk research. This article investigates how public officials at six government agencies in Sweden understand and relate to risk communication and its uses in the context of agency organizational work on policy and regulation. Qualitative interviews were used to explore the practitioners’ views on some key topics in the academic literature on risk communication. A main finding is that there is little consensus on what the goals of risk communication are; if, and how, uncertainty should be communicated; and what role is to be played by transparency in risk communication. However, the practitioners agree that dissemination (top down) to the public of robust scientific and expert knowledge is a crucial element. Dialogue and participation is used mainly with other agencies and elite stakeholders with whom agencies collaborate to implement policy goals. Dialogue with the public on issues of risk is very limited. Some implications of the findings for the practice of risk communication by government agencies are suggested. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019-03-18 2019-08 /pmc/articles/PMC6849713/ /pubmed/30884551 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/risa.13302 Text en © 2019 The Authors Risk Analysis published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Risk Analysis. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Research Articles
Boholm, Åsa
Risk Communication as Government Agency Organizational Practice
title Risk Communication as Government Agency Organizational Practice
title_full Risk Communication as Government Agency Organizational Practice
title_fullStr Risk Communication as Government Agency Organizational Practice
title_full_unstemmed Risk Communication as Government Agency Organizational Practice
title_short Risk Communication as Government Agency Organizational Practice
title_sort risk communication as government agency organizational practice
topic Original Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6849713/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30884551
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/risa.13302
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