Framing Risk: Audience and Reader Factors

Abstract

News stories of recent years often involve science and technology, either directly or indirectly — from the Chernobyl incident in the former Soviet Union to progress in understanding AIDS. This experimental study asks: how do lay readers respond to the risk implicit in such stories? The four factors that emerged from analysis can be described as the proposition that science and technology are expensive and risky (rationalist factor), the idea that science and technology can have negative effects (effects factor), concerns associated with control and dependency (control factor), and fear that science and technology can be misused (utilization factor).