did I get started in the field?
The year 1981 was an important year for my career and for the field of risk, high concern, and crisis communication. At the time, I was a program director for the Technology Forecasting and Social Change program at the National Science Foundation (NSF). One morning I received a call to report immediately to the Foundation director. I was provided few specifics to prepare, only being told the meeting was urgent and related to a congressional inquiry.
My brain’s fight or flight system activated, and I felt adrenaline and cortisol – the brain’s stress hormone – flooding through my bloodstream. Had I done something seriously wrong? Had one of my projects been awarded a Golden Fleece Award?1 Had someone filed a claim against me for bias in awarding grants? Was this meeting a turning point in my career? I was experiencing a high concern situation.
To prepare for the meeting with the Foundation Director, I wrote several talking points related to my imagined worst‐case scenarios. I arrived at his office. He was cordial and friendly. In the room were other Foundation program directors.
The Director briefed us that Congress had appropriated several million dollars per year to the NSF to start a new program of interdisciplinary research on decision‐making communications about technological risks. The Congressional appropriation arose in part because of concerns among some members of Congress that the public was overreacting to industrial accidents, such as the nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. These overreactions could negatively affect the development of important new technologies. The Director said one of us needed to drop whatever they were doing, personal and professional, and get the new program up and running. He identified three tasks that needed attention.
The first task of the new program director would be to write a white paper identifying gaps in knowledge about communications related to technological risks, to target where research was needed, and to describe how the Foundation would be spending Congressional monies to improve the knowledge base. This white paper would need to be delivered to Congress the following week.
The second task would be to develop a report for Congress on the quality of work by Federal government agencies and offices related to communications about technological risks. This would require the new program director to relocate for weeks, and perhaps months, to various agencies, including the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Office of the Science Advisor to the President, the Food and Drug Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Reports about the work of these agencies would need to be delivered to Congress by the end of the year. The Director speculated that it was unlikely these Federal agencies and offices would welcome this oversight.
The third task would be to determine how to spend the millions of dollars about to be appropriated. Support would be needed for creating a new professional society and a new peer‐reviewed scientific journal. Grants would need to be awarded quickly for quality work. All research grants would be reviewed personally by the NSF Director and likely would receive scrutiny by Congress and the White House.
The Director turned his gaze on the group and asked for a volunteer. There was silence in the room. There was lots of fidgeting. He asked again for a volunteer. Again, silence.
His eyes fixed on me. He said I was already the director of the closest existing Foundation program; that I had an interdisciplinary academic background, which was needed for the job; and that he had reviewed the evaluations of my work at the Foundation and they proved I was a person who could do the job. He pointed out that I had a head start: I had already done a case study on communications in the aftermath of industrial accidents, including the nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island.
I volunteered. Little did I know that I was present at the founding of what would become the field of risk communication. I would become one of the first presidents of the Society for Risk Analysis and I would help launch the journal Risk Analysis, one of the leading scientific publishers of original risk communication research.2 This chapter relates the history of this ever‐developing field as new interdisciplinary research builds upon theory and expands our understanding of how individuals and society understand and communicate risk.
4.2 Introduction
The story of the development of the theory and application of risk communication reveals the basis for current best practice. In one of the most comprehensive recent reviews to date of this history, Lundgren and McMakin (2018) summarized the history of risk communication as one that moved from a rather simplistic, linear, and mechanistic, one‐way, and send‐to‐receiver approach to a much more sophisticated approach that emphasized the importance of two‐way communication; exchanges of information; stakeholder engagement, involvement, participation; relationships and partnership building; consensus building; and constructive dialog.3 This more sophisticated approach drew from the work of communication researchers and practitioners from a diverse set of disciplines, including the behavioral sciences, social sciences, engineering, medicine, public health, industrial hygiene, linguistics, and neuroscience.
In what is now a classic article of the history of risk communication, Fischhoff (1995) identified (somewhat tongue in cheek) eight historical phases or stages in the development of risk management and risk communication practice.4 They were:
Stage 1: “All we have to do is get the numbers right.”
Stage 2: “All we have to do is tell them the numbers.”
Stage 3: “All we have to do is explain what we mean by the numbers.”
Stage 4: “All we have to do is show them that they’ve accepted similar risks in the past.”
Stage 5: “All we have to do is to show them it’s a good deal for them.”
Stage 6: “All we have to do is treat them nice.”
Stage 7: “All we have to do is make them partners.”
Stage 8: “All of the above.”
Fischhoff noted that all the principles, strategies, and tools developed in Stages 1–7 have some degree of merit. For example, it is important to know how best to present risk data and facts. Data and facts do not speak for themselves, especially when opposed by strongly held beliefs.
In a review of the history of risk communication practice, Leiss (1996) identified three historical phases in risk communication practice.5
4.2.1 Historical Phase 1: Presenting Risk Numbers
In the United States, Phase 1 covered the period from approximately the mid‐1970s to the mid‐1980s. Researchers and decision‐makers focused on how best to present numerical estimates of risk to people with limited background in numerical concepts. Researchers and decision‐makers also focused on how best to use risk comparisons for establishing risk management priorities.
Leiss’s Phase 1 corresponds to Fischhoff’s Stages 1 and 2. Historical Phase 1 included attempts to communicate risk‐related numbers in 1979 at Love Canal – a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, infamously known as the location
