A Phenomenological Perspective on Ethical Duty in Environmental Communication

This article examines the framing of environmental risks and natural disasters in factual entertainment television programs of the early 2000s, a hybrid form combining techniques from documentary with techniques such as dramatic reconstructions and computer-generated imagery from entertainment genres. Using qualitative frame analysis, it examines a range of factual entertainment television programs' framing of environmental risk and natural disasters in terms of their attitudes, representation of human participants and visual composition. The article considers the similarities and differences in the framing of natural disasters as factual entertainment compared to the framing of natural disasters in news, documentary and fiction film. It argues that such programs offer representational frames both consonant with and distinct from other media and concludes that they problematically offer a predominantly fatalistic response to environmental risk, constructing natural disasters as voyeuristic spectacles for vicarious entertainment.     

风险学与安全减灾─—从参加“风险科学与管理”国际研讨会谈起

阐述建立风险学的重要性，探讨了开展安全减灾风险评价与管理的关键问题。概要介绍国内外风险水平的表征、识别方法及指标体系，并提出风险管理的基本原则。引入风险地图、危机管理、风险数学、应急与预警等现代概念及方法，基本反映了在瑞典召开的“新区开发中的风险科学与管理”国际会议的内容。     

风险学与安全减灾─—从参加“风险科学与管理”国际研讨会谈起

阐述建立风险学的重要性，探讨了开展安全减灾风险评价与管理的关键问题。概要介绍国内外风险水平的表征、识别方法及指标体系，并提出风险管理的基本原则。引入风险地图、危机管理、风险数学、应急与预警等现代概念及方法，基本反映了在瑞典召开的“新区开发中的风险科学与管理”国际会议的内容。     

Bereavement and mourning after a shipping disaster: The case for intervention

This paper describes the help given by the social services department of a shipping company to bereaved families following a shipping disaster. In the absence of clear, factual and prompt information from an authoritative source, there is a tendency for bereaved individuals to deny their loss and thereby delay the process of mourning and eventual recovery. Appropriate intervention and support can help to overcome this tendency as was seen in the Madasa case.     

Emergency centers in Israel: A small community organizes to cope with war related crises*

This paper focuses on community-wide emergencies caused by war-related events in Lebanon at the beginning of June 1982. Mobilization for the "Peace for Galilee" campaign began on Friday, 4th June. Overnight, families were disrupted, husbands and sons were in danger, and within 24 hours there were notifications of casualities and deaths. Families in crisis became a widespread phenomenon. In Herzlia, as in many other communities, a new service - the Emergency Center - emerged under the auspices of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the Municipality. The authors describe this process of getting organized, the populations served, how the Center was staffed, the role of citizen volunteers, and the types of interventions used to help vulnerable families as well as soldiers home on leave. Stress is placed on the unique type of short-term co-operation achieved between social workers of the local Department of Social Welfare, the staff of the Department of Community Services (especially its Volunteer Bureau), the local liason officer of the Israel Defence Force, the municipal government, and public-spirited volunteers. Mention is made of conditions which made possible the activation of such a service within hours, of the Center's capacity to serve all segments of the population, and of how it was deactivated within a few weeks when the emergency ended. On the basis of lessons learned from this experience, the paper ends with a number of specific recommendations. The authors hope that such innovative forms of crisis-intervention will become part of the helping technology widely available at the community level in future years.     

Chemical Controversy: Canadian and US News Coverage of the Scientific Debate about Bisphenol A

This study analyzes how newspapers covered the scientific controversy surrounding the health effects of exposure to Bisphenol A (BPA). Specifically, it examines whether framing, sources of scientific information, and balancing of competing sides in the debate differed across national political contexts and journalistic approaches. In regard to the former, it compares coverage in Canada (represented by the Globe and Mail), which had banned BPA in baby bottles and cups, to coverage in the United States (represented by the New York Times and Washington Post), which had not. In regard to the latter, it compares coverage in two US newspapers that took a conventional journalistic approach (the New York Times and Washington Post) to coverage in a US newspaper that launched an investigative series regarding BPA (the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). The study concludes by considering what the findings suggest about how social forces shape coverage of scientific controversies involving environmental issues.     

Environmental Communication as a Discipline of Crisis

This essay interprets Cox's keynote as a call for environmental communication to reorient itself as a form of ideological criticism and identifies the potential pitfalls of heeding that call. First, the author revisits key arguments surrounding the practice of ideological criticism in Communication Studies and articulates their relevance to discussions about the mission and purpose of environmental communication. Second, he suggests that an uncritical embrace of the rationale for a “crisis discipline” may perpetuate problematic assumptions about communication, both as a social practice and as a scholarly discipline. Third, he argues that such problems may be sidestepped by making environmental crisis itself a central concept and object of environmental communication inquiry, such that environmental communication does not merely respond to crisis but becomes a discipline of and about crisis. A focus on the dynamics of crisis, the author concludes, entails a persistent concern with judgment in its political, scholarly, and pedagogical contexts.     

The challenge of validating vulnerability estimates: the option of media content analysis for identifying drought-related crises

For an integrated assessment of the vulnerability of societies to drought it is necessary to set the benchmark at a level where the impacts of droughts lead to a state of affairs that departs from normal conditions, i.e. a crisis event. This article aims to improve the understanding of drought-related crisis events on the basis of a twofold media content analysis. This approach enables us to test when increased vulnerability in fact leads to a crisis situation and offers an improved understanding of the intensity and the extent of crisis events. To this end, we first outline our perspective on crisis and give an overview on existing approaches to identify crisis events. We then outline our two-step approach of media content analysis aimed at developing a crisis data set for the case study regions Andhra Pradesh (India), Southern Portugal and the Volga region (Russia). Using the Factiva news database and information by regional newspapers, a crisis data set is generated enabling us to define the occurrence and extent of drought-related crisis events in the case study regions. Moreover, based on attributes of drought impacts reported by news sources, we categorize the extensiveness of a specific drought. As a key result, our findings suggest that Southern Portugal, the case study region which is expected to be less susceptible to drought events than the other case study regions, faced the most extended crisis events.     

Nuclear crisis relocation: Issues for a host community-the case of Greenfield,Massachusetts, USA

US civil defense planning for nuclear attack since 1974 has emphasized the doctrine of crisis relocation. Under this doctrine, some 150 million people would evacuate from urban areas and other probable targets to rural host communities. The population of the latter would stay put to assist the relocatees. Local communities would be responsible for the welfare of up to ten times their normal population for an indefinite period of time.This study examined certain implications of crisis relocation for the town of Greenfield, Massachusetts, USA, a typical host community. Various assumptions were articulated regarding the timing of events, the season of year, weather, and social behavior. Assumptions were favorable to the success of crisis relocation. Nevertheless, Greenfield would face impossible burdens in attempting to provide fallout protection, water, food, medical care, and civil order. Additional pressures would arise from adjoining communities which are functionally dependent upon Greenfield for normal goods and services, but which would receive their own allotment of relocatees. Crisis relocation is not taken seriously in Greenfield and virtually no preparations have been made to implement it.     

Lessons learnt from a crisis event: How to foster a sound safety culture

Recent events in the nuclear industry have blamed a declining safety culture both on the utility and regulatory side as the major responsible. Confidence in the nuclear industry can be dramatically affected by such events. In this context, the present paper analyses a recent crisis event that involved a research reactor. It shows the time history of the event and how its escalation brought to a temporary shut down of the reactor. In-depth analysis of the event pointed out safety culture deficiencies within the organization. The paper presents the key elements in the ensuing organizational change process and describes the different phases (short and long term approaches), players and measures involved in the process that the organisation set up to address deficiencies and improve safety culture. The case represents an interesting example from which important lessons can be learnt. In particular, staff motivation in terms of involvement in improvement activities is considered central in managing safety.