Login to
Secure login for NCZR members.
Tools and databases for securely exchanging research data.
Contacts
- Dr Helen Clough
- Dr Rob Christley
- Mr John Mehers
Epidemiology and the Social Amplification of Risk
The predominant activity in risk assessment is the modelling of physical hazards. Yet recent major risk events, such as the Sudan 1 food contamination scandal, show how important the social response can be in comparison to physical harm. Withdrawals of product, loss of reputation, reductions in trust, additional testing and inspection regimes, and such like can often be just as consequential as physical injury.
Our main basis for understanding the social response to risk events is the Social Amplification of Risk Framework due to Kasperson et al (1988). But this remains a qualitative model, and is accepted even by its authors (for example Kasperson et al 2003) as a ‘framework’ for organising a set of insights, rather than a theory that will predict or explain social response to risk in a testable way.
In this collaborative project with Dr. Jerry Busby in Lancaster University Management School, we tackle the problem of how we can make the concepts that appear in social risk amplification models more precise and more quantitative. In particular, we are exploring a variety of techniques from epidemiology, which have been developed in the context of the study of disease: the motivation for this proposal is the face-value correspondence between various qualities of risk amplification and various features of epidemic models.
For example, notions of susceptibility and infection seem to be analogous to concepts of sensitivity and concern, 'super-infectives' resemble certain social institutions such as the broadcast media, and the recrudescence of infection resembles the recrudescence of concern and ‘ripple effects’ found in risk amplification.
This is broadly similar to previous social network theories, but goes beyond the modelling of networks of individuals to networks that include organisations and institutions (for example, government-led institutions and the media).
Related publications
Mehers, J. P., Clough, H. E. and Christley, R. M.. A review of diffusion models for the social amplification of risk of food-borne zoonoses. Proceedings of the European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA)/Society for Risk Analysis Europe (SRA-E) annual conference, September 22nd-25th, 2008.
