Information,the antidote for fear

by Ilaria Catastiniand Viviana Poletti

From the fear of nuclear energy to opposition towards biotechnology regarding food upto the psychosis of the Avian flu: what role does the perception of risks and benefits playin forming public opinion? How do the media and press influence public opinion?Howmuch does participation in the decisional process count?

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“Anoccasion tobe fearful is oneof the few thingsthat isn’t scarce in these days which are sadlylacking in certainties, guarantees and security,”wrote Zygmunt Baumann in his essay LiquidFear. The growing amount of uncertainties char-acterizing our society today fosters new dynam-ics of the collective perceptionof risks. The risksaremoreandmoreunknownandglobal, beyondour control and our acts.Themedia today – both traditional and especial-ly the social media on the Internet – plays a fun-damental role in the phenomena related to thecollective perception of risk. With almost oneout of two Italiansusing the Internet andoneoutof three using it actively, 14million Italians sub-scribing to Facebook and an Italian version ofWikipedia with at least 700,000 written entries,the Internet is a vitally important place for dis-cussion in every process of building consensusand for communicationaboutmajor issues. Thespeed of information, especially through the In-

ternet,makes it so that the time for the collectivefears to propagate is often much more rapidthan that which is necessary for scientific infor-mation to be divulged. Particularly when thepropagation of the perception of risk is also as-sociated with an emotional component tied tocultural, affective and ethical-moral factors. (“InGreat Britain, fear that goes back to the darktimes of the Cold War still hovers over the cur-rent debate on nuclear energy, and even today,hinders the construction of a new generation ofnuclear power plants,” declared MichaelZdanowski ofHill &KnowltonLondon). AsDavidByrne of the European Committee for Healthand Consumer Protection stated, the culturaland emotional aspects make it so that “whenfaced with the problem of risk, the collective re-action oftenhas very little to dowith ascertainedfacts, while it is often seemingly incoherently, ifnot actually completely irrational.”The “case” of the Avian flu in 2005-2006 is em-

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blematic: at the idea of a possible pandemicoriginating from the H5N1 virus (which neverbroke out), the Italians reacted by worryingabout it more than any other country in the Eu-ropean Union, as a study conducted by Euro-barometro revealed. Notwithstanding the factthat none of the chickens proved to be infected(just one wild duck and some swans), in a fewmonths thepoultrymarket suffereda collapseofsales reaching70%anddamageestimatedat 800million Euros, bringing the sector to its knees.A real “psychosis” was triggered, resulting inhighly irrational behavior; someshopkeepers re-ported that customers would not even go closeto the frozenmeat section for fear of contagion.However, the perception of risk is not alwaysbased purely on irrational aspects. This is whathas emerged from the American studyGM foodsand the misperception of risk perception by G.Gaskell, N. Allum,W.Wagner,N.Kronberger,H.Torgersen, J.Hampel and J. Bardes (2004). In an-alyzing the opposition from the general publictowardgeneticallymodified food (OGM)and try-ing to verify the hypotheses deriving more froma “lack” of perception of the benefits than froma perception of risks, the authors draw an inter-esting analogy with the case of nuclear energy.One of the defining elements of innovation ornew technology is its capacity to offer benefitssuperior to what had previously been available.In the acceptanceof certainkindsof technology,theperceptionof thebenefits seems to count formore than the perception of the risks: this as-sumption can be demonstrated by the generalacceptanceofbio-technology in the fieldofmed-icine (aimed at relieving pain and curing illness-es), and in contrast, by theopposition tobiotech-nology when it is applied to food products. Inthis second case, since no tangible advantagesareperceived (food is already goodandplentiful)what in fact dominates is diffidence. This as-

sumption was also confirmed by ProfessorLorenzoMontali, social psychology researcher atthe University of Milan-Bicocca: “The applica-tion of biotechnology in the medical field doesnot meet with opposition regarding the publicopinion: people acknowledge and understandthe benefits, and even though they’re aware ofthepotential risks, they regard that on thewholeit’s worth it and that medical biotechnologicalresearch is constantly developing. With regardsto food, the attitude is radically different: peoplethink that biotechnology, at least in Westerncountries, is basically useless, anduselessness isa pre-condition that leads to the development ofa negative attitude.”“The topic of the population’s perception of sci-ence, technology and the risks involved is a top-ic of the modern age; for the first time in histo-ry, we find ourselves in the condition of havingchoices about scientific development and tech-nology thatmust bemadebypeoplewho arenotexperts on thesematters,”Montali continues. Sojust exactly how do people manage this power?What kinds of competencemust they have in or-der to decide whether or not today, here andnow, we should open a nuclear power plant, al-low assisted reproduction or develop new kindsof biotechnology? And what are the forms thatshould be adapted by the private economic ac-tors and public institutions for establishing acorrect and responsibleprocess of involving andinforming the stakeholders?In a study conducted in the United States (enti-tled Public Participation in Hazard Management:TheUseofCitizenPanels in theU.S.),OrtwinRenn,Thomas Webler and Branden B. Johnson ob-served that technicians and experts have tradi-tionally always considered involvement of thegeneral public, even though necessary, to be anintrusion in the decisional process. How to dealwith the problem is often decided first and the

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public is informed only after the fact. The au-thors believe that this is not a winning strategyfor a number of reasons: citizens feel deceivedwhen they are asked to participate and thenlearn that actually, thedecisionhas alreadybeenmade. Experts often do not really know muchabout what is worrying the citizens, about theterritory and the social fabric: the argumentsused forbalancing the riskswith thebenefits arerarely convincing for the citizens. Informing thepublic can help clarify the problems and the im-plications, but in the authors’ opinion, it cannotresolve the conflicts that are not generatedby ig-norance but by the divergence of interestsamong the actors involved (industry, decisions,stakeholders and citizens). However, the at-tempts topropose compensations to citizens forthe added riskshavenot alwaysdemonstrated tobe effective in obtaining public acceptance. In-stead, inviting citizens to takepart in theprocessright from the very start increases the probabili-ties that a certain decision will be accepted. Inorder to bridge the gap of the public’s lack oftechnical and specific knowledge, the way tobuild consensus should focus on information

based on the experts’ opinions, even if discor-dant. The level of discussion regarding the insti-tutions’ competence in risk managementshould focus on the debate about the distribu-tion of the risks and the benefits, and on thecompatibility of the proposed solutionswith theeconomic, political and social conditions. Thiskind of debate is not based on technical expert-ise, even though reducing the lack of scientificinformation can be of help. Success in these sit-uations is obtained by demonstrating that theinstitutions responsible for the risk manage-ment are competent, efficient and open to thedemands of the public.On a higher level, the conflict is then defined bya series of different social and cultural valuesand lifestyles, and by their impact on the riskmanagement. In this case, neither technical ex-pertise nor the institutions’ competence andopenness constitute conditions that are suffi-cient for ensuring acceptance by the generalpublic. In these cases, we must act simultane-ously on both the spreading of information andeducation, and the full involvement of the stake-holders in the decision-making process.

Information, the antidote for fear

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