The Effects of Media Coverage of Scientific Retractions on Risk Perceptions

Dilshani Sarathchandra and Aaron M. McCright

SAGE Open, 2017, vol. 7, issue 2, 2158244017709324

Abstract: Media coverage of scientific studies identifying technological risks generally amplifies public risk perceptions. Yet, if subsequent media coverage reports that those studies have been retracted, are risk perceptions reversed or attenuated? Or, once amplified, do risk perceptions remain elevated? Answering such questions may improve our understanding of risk perceptions of some publicly controversial technologies, for example, childhood vaccines and genetically modified (GM) food. We engage with the social amplification of risk framework, especially scholarship on news media as a risk amplification (or attenuation) station. In a between-subjects experiment, we examine the extent to which perceived risk of GM food is influenced by (a) news of a study reporting that eating GM food causes cancer and/or (b) news of its retraction. Whereas initial news coverage amplified all measured risk perceptions, news of the study’s retraction effectively reversed them to nonamplified levels.

Keywords: GM food; risk perception; social amplification of risk; news media; scientific retraction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244017709324 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:7:y:2017:i:2:p:2158244017709324

DOI: 10.1177/2158244017709324

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SAGE Open
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().