2010
President Obama’s handling of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Why aren't people more worried about cell phone health risks?
WHO: Hyping the pandemic or helping the world prepare?
The ethics of risk communication consulting and the BP oil spill
Jim Joyce, Tony Hayward, and how to apologize
The role of public affairs professionals in enterprise risk management
Further debate on whether the CDC misled people about age-specific death rates of pandemic H1N1
Was it wrong to warn people even though the swine flu pandemic was turning out mild?
How did Goldman Sachs become a scapegoat?
Are we learning the right lessons from the Goldman Sachs controversy?
When a government decides swine flu is mild: Talking about crisis management policy changes
Education and training for risk communication
How to do experimental research to test risk communication principles
Meeting the needs of relatives of disaster victims
The Catholic Church’s pedophilia scandal: contrition, dilemma-sharing, and accountability
Applying “Risk = Hazard + Outrage” to financial markets
Intentionally irritating opponents as a tactic
Making health care workers get vaccinated against the flu
Outrage at proposed wood burning regulations
Using a risk matrix to measure enterprise risk perception
My biggest regret: not building a next generation
Talking about uncertainty when hazard levels are unclear
Outrage management via online social media
Making pandemic communications (and all crisis communications) provisional
Why did the CDC misrepresent its swine flu mortality data – innumeracy, dishonesty, or what?
How should WHO have integrated severity into its pandemic communications?
Talking about a shooting … or any awful event that just happened
2009
Warning others after an accident that they could have one too
What should we tell people about vaccination if the pandemic wave is ebbing?
Are people apathetic about the environment, or is it something else?
Why didn’t President Obama get vaccinated against swine flu? Should he have?
Using DDT against malaria in Africa
The emerald ash borer: a very tough precaution advocacy problem
The meme that this pandemic is “like the seasonal flu”
Mandatory vaccination for health care workers
Research to prove that outrage management works
Empathy, Les Havens, and Elvin Semrad
Agricultural risk communication and human health
Coping with the outrage at healthcare reform “town hall meetings”
Role of faith organizations in pandemic preparedness/response
The importance of telling people about pandemic flu precautions
Am I late urging people to prepare for a possibly severe pandemic?
Using public health concerns and public health departments to sell climate change action
Pandemic prioritizing: Vulnerable people versus essential people
Do I really think people should have Tamiflu on hand? Yes.
Outrage management for receptionists and operators
How do you engage people in mid-crisis long-term planning? Is it even possible?En Français: Comment faites-vous pour amener des gens à la planification à long terme, au milieu d’une crise? Est-ce même possible?
Swine flu worst case scenarios: warn people now or wait till things start getting nasty?
En Français: Pires scénarios de grippe porcine: avertir les gens maintenant ou attendre que les choses commencent à mal tourner?
WHO’s “Outbreak Communication Guidelines” – and calling a pandemic a pandemic
Managing the outrage of extremists
Selling pandemic prep to family and friends
En Français: Vendre l'état de préparation à une pandémie, à la famille et aux amis
Visualizing a mild pandemic: The risk comparison to 36,000 U.S. annual flu deaths
En Français: Visualiser une pandémie légère: la comparaison de risques avec 36,000 décès annuels aux États-Unis, causés par la grippe [saisonnière]
Do I tweet? (Just how far behind am I really?)
Is swine flu moving slowly? Did the authorities overreact? What should the key messages be now?
What’s in a name: H1N1 versus swine flu
Trying to get Tamiflu in case of a swine flu pandemic
Credit default swaps, financial meltdown, and risk communication
Apologizing to outraged people (when they don’t even know you)
Climate change attitudes: not just apathy versus denial
Using risk comparisons to show a catastrophe is unlikely
Global warming denial or global warming apathy?
Vaccine shortage as a vaccination motivator
Climate change risk communication in a nutshell
2008
Social media and source coordination in pre-crisis and crisis communication
Which media work best in different kinds of risk communication?
Overlapping definitions: “risk communication,” “crisis communication,” and “health education”
Should you tell bystanders about a crisis (or a controversy)?
Framing effects research, the risk communication seesaw, and worst case scenarios
A mercury risk the regulators are more worried about than the community
The dangers of excessive warnings … and of over-reassurance
Risk communication is a type; outbreak communication is a subtype
How should the public cope with outrage and uncertainty – and how do I cope?
Was Hillary Clinton’s Obama endorsement good outrage management?
Pesticide spraying against West Nile Virus
Convincing people incinerators have improved
Media coverage isn’t proportional to mortality statistics – and it shouldn’t be
Good reputation and bad reputation: Are there positives that can offset the negatives of outrage?
Responding to damaging rumors when the information is confidential
Lessons from the Westland beef recall
Vaccination and autism: Responding to the Hannah Poling case
You can’t hector people into pandemic preparedness
Alberta’s oil royalty: The industry’s risk communication mistakes
2007
What can you say when you want to work with groups that detest each other?
Managing outrage about the release of a convicted rapist
Helping drinking water systems talk about serious and not-so-serious violations
Measuring public versus expert risk perceptions and outrage
The movie “Awake” – and talking to people about anesthetic awareness
Landlord-tenant relations and indoor air quality controversies
Outrage about depleted uranium
Origins of the risk communication seesaw principle
Does taking the thimerosal out of vaccines reassure people or scare them?
Working with inexperienced regulators
(1) What’s unique about pandemic communication? (2) What’s new in risk communication?
Where do “risk tolerance” and “risk appetite” fit in risk management and risk communication?
Role of leadership in homeland security crisis communication
Elvin Semrad, humanistic psychotherapy, and risk communication
Fischhoff’s seven stages of risk communication
What’s unique about “counterterror risk communication”?
Christine Todd Whitman’s defense of EPA re: post-9/11 air quality
Presenting to Boards of Directors
Melamine risk communication: acknowledgment and anticipatory guidance
Are empathy and compassion really what matters in mid-emergency?
What do I think about the controversy in the pandemic prep community about my role and my integrity?
Why do I want the government to control all the Tamiflu? (I don’t.)
Why is this such an old-fashioned website?
Pandemic preparedness and the poor: Are we urging people to do more than they can?
2006
Risk communication and the legitimacy of counterterrorism
The role of outrage in regulatory reform
Lessons of the O.J. Simpson/Rupert Murdoch/Judith Regan controversy
Defining risk: Why not include benefits too?
Why it’s hard to persuade people to add pandemics to the long list of things they’re worried about
Aren’t the outrage factors just aspects of risk perception?
Pandemic flu good communication example file
Risk communication and corporate social responsibility
Is emergency preparedness getting too much attention?
Putting extremists on a Community Advisory Panel
Talking about “high-path” and “low-path” avian flu
How much should we trust what WHO says about pandemic phase?
Telling 9/11 emergency responders to wear their masks – and explaining later what went wrong
How do we “know” if they’re telling us the truth about BSE – or about anything?
Localized geographical identifiers: How to say “This Means You!”
What does it mean to “manage” terrorism – and the fear of terrorism?
Notes from the Beirut evacuation
Is mid-crisis consultation possible?
Talking to poultry consumers about bird flu: How reassuring is too reassuring?
“Mild” versus severe pandemics – public health versus emergency response
Preparing for a severe pandemic
Activism versus education, sensationalism versus inspiration
Talking to wildlife rescuers about their bird flu risk
Measuring pandemic fear, panic, denial, and apathy
Message points for a pandemic flu school flyer for parents
Just-in-time pandemic preparedness
Outrage management and school-parent relations
Risk communication versus media relations
Doctor-patient risk communication: persuasion or just the facts?
Outrage about risk to the elderly
Surgical masks: Another pandemic risk communication controversy
Pandemic risk and the U.S. poultry industry
Family pandemic preparedness and family pandemic communication
2005
Likelihood of a severe pandemic – the hunger for a number
The flu pandemic issue-attention cycle – where does skepticism fit?
Talking to a local government official about pandemic flu
Talking to healthcare workers about pandemic risks
Trusting in your government’s pandemic planning
Pandemic preparedness: the individual, the government, and the world of finance
Stressing non-medical pandemic preparedness (while the feds stress medical preparedness)
Risk communication for children
(1) How do I define “panic”? (2) What about risk communication to emergency responders?
Pandemic preparedness – what’s a doctor to do?
A variant on Risk = Hazard + Outrage
Selling a house near mobile telephone towers
Homeland Security's color coding as an excuse not to warn people about bird flu
Should you acknowledge the little bit of truth on the other side of an argument?
The math behind the U.S. Tamiflu supply
More sources on when to release risk information
(1) Does public involvement reduce public concern?
(2) Talking management into an involvement program
Talking to engineering clients about risk
“We all know what part of their bodies risk assessors pull those numbers out of.”
Magnitude of the communication problem during a flu pandemic
What can individuals do to prepare for a bird flu pandemic?
WHO’s new pandemic influenza phases
Outrage about exercise limitations when air pollution is high
Communication plans for flu pandemics
“Hazard + Outrage” versus “Impact × Probability”
People’s need for health emergency information
A non-zero standard for anthrax (or any risk)
Learning tsunami lessons and punishing the guilty; protecting tourism versus protecting lives
Bioterrorism risk communication – what are people interested in learning?
More on “Talking about Dead Bodies”
How “Risk = Hazard + Outrage“ relates to the psychometric paradigm of Slovic et al.
“Talking about Dead Bodies” – some reactions from PAHO
Risk communication versus public relations (in theory and in practice)
Alerting employees about chemical risks
Risk communication and the drug industry
Organizational culture and organizational prerequisites for risk communication
2004
Gay rights as a risk communication problem
How would risk communication have averted the Iraq war?
Flu vaccine risk communication
The “outrage” concept and black-and-white thinkers
Getting out preparedness information before a crisis
(1) Web-based risk communication; (2) mental models
Talking about risks that have never happened
Is outrage part of risk or part of risk perception?
Over-reacting to risk and irrationality
Corporate stonewalling and consumer warnings
2003
Taking responsibility for the 2003 blackout
Improving safety by firing employees
Informing the public versus informing terrorists and criminals
Scaring people about terrorism
Panic (and even fear) can do real harm
Communicating a health concern
Template for risk communication planning
Evacuation feasibility – the attractions of fatalism
Why the sudden interest in smallpox?
2002
Dealing with abusive stakeholders
Coping with employer irrationality about safety
Misleading connotations of the word “outrage”
Communication now about possible future terrorism
Risk communication for government emergency responders
2001
What did Rudy Giuliani do right?
Risk to children and other specially vulnerable populations; also environmental justice
Workplace safety – how organizational culture affects whether employees take risk seriously
Guilt and ego as drivers in environmental risk controversies
Bioterrorism and anthrax – candor (even about “what-ifs”) reduces panic
Mobilizing outrage on environmental causes – anger as antidote to apathy
Transparency and information overload (especially in Australia)
Advocacy for the disabled – shame, oppression, and outrage
Public relations versus stakeholder relations
Radon risk communication, the natural-versus-industrial distinction, and risk comparisons
Community right to know – how activists use it and how companies respond
