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After reading the five articles on crisis communication from the Neiman Foundation for Journalism, the one I want to talk about is number two, covering risk. There, Peter Sandman explains that the risk of an emergency event can be divided into two parts: the hazard, meaning how likely it is to hurt or kill people, and the outrage, which describes how people experience the crisis. Either they are emotional, mostly fearful or angry, or they are apathetic and dont care about the potential dangers.
What is interesting, is that often the hazard and the outrage of a risk do not fit together. On one hand, people might be very upset about something that is not really dangerous to them, on the other hand they might choose to ignore very dangerous situations. When communicating in a crisis situation it is then important to realize what kind of emotions the people have towards the crisis and try to steer them into the right direction. This of course is easier said then done, as telling an upset and frightened crowd to calm down will often have the opposite effect.
An example of the disparity beetwen the hazard of a crisis and the outrage of the public was the recent H1N1 flu pandemic. The media covered the story extensively and often insinuated that there could be thousand of deaths, frigthening many people. Governments decided to buy vaccines for many millions, resulting in huge profits for pharmaceutical companies. In the end, it turned out that ne new H1N1 strain was less lethal then the usual seasonal flu, and the vaccines are now rotting in government warehouses.
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