Hoover Anna Goodman
Rev Environ Health. 2017 Mar 1;32(1-2):165-169. doi: 10.1515/reveh-2016-0048.
Risk communication can help reduce exposures to environmental contaminants, mitigate negative health outcomes, and inform community-based decisions about hazardous waste sites. While communication best practices have long guided such efforts, little research has examined unintended consequences arising from such guidelines. As rhetoric informs stakeholder sensemaking, the language used in and reinforced by these guidelines can challenge relationships and exacerbate stakeholder tensions.
This study evaluates risk communication at a U.S. Superfund site to identify unintended consequences arising from current risk communication practices.
This qualitative case study crystallizes data spanning 6 years from three sources: 1) local newspaper coverage of site-related topics; 2) focus-group transcripts from a multi-year project designed to support future visioning of site use; and 3) published blog entries authored by a local environmental activist. Constant comparative analysis provides the study's analytic foundation, with qualitative data analysis software QSR NVivo 8 supporting a three-step process: 1) provisional coding to identify broad topic categories within datasets, 2) coding occurrences of sensemaking constructs and emergent intra-dataset patterns, and 3) grouping related codes across datasets to examine the relationships among them.
Existing risk communication practices at this Superfund site contribute to a dichotomous conceptualization of multiple and diverse stakeholders as members of one of only two categories: the government or the public. This conceptualization minimizes perceptions of capacity, encourages public commitment to stances aligned with a preferred group, and contributes to negative expectations that can become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Findings indicate a need to re-examine and adapt risk communication guidelines to encourage more pluralistic understanding of the stakeholder landscape.
风险沟通有助于减少对环境污染物的接触，减轻负面健康影响，并为基于社区的危险废物场地决策提供信息。虽然沟通的最佳实践长期以来一直指导着此类工作，但很少有研究探讨这些指导方针所产生的意外后果。由于言辞影响利益相关者的意义建构，这些指导方针中使用和强化的语言可能会挑战关系并加剧利益相关者之间的紧张关系。
本研究评估美国一个超级基金场地的风险沟通情况，以确定当前风险沟通实践所产生的意外后果。
本定性案例研究梳理了来自三个来源的6年数据：1）当地报纸对场地相关主题的报道；2）一个旨在支持场地未来使用愿景规划的多年项目的焦点小组记录；3）当地一位环境活动家撰写的已发表博客文章。持续比较分析为该研究提供了分析基础，定性数据分析软件QSR NVivo 8支持一个三步过程：1）初步编码以识别数据集中的广泛主题类别；2）对意义建构结构的出现情况和数据集中出现的模式进行编码；3）对跨数据集的相关代码进行分组，以检查它们之间的关系。
该超级基金场地现有的风险沟通实践导致将多个不同的利益相关者二分概念化为仅有的两类之一的成员：政府或公众。这种概念化淡化了对能力的认知，鼓励公众对与首选群体一致的立场做出承诺，并导致负面期望，而这些期望可能会成为自我实现的预言。
研究结果表明有必要重新审视和调整风险沟通指导方针，以鼓励对利益相关者格局有更多元的理解。
