TY - JOUR
T1 - Tracking the Differentiation of Risk
T2 - The Impact of Subject Framing in CDC Communication Regarding COVID-19
AU - Lambrecht, Kathryn
N1 - Funding Information:
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
PY - 2021/1
Y1 - 2021/1
N2 - Communicating risk amid moments of scientific ambiguity requires balance: Overdelivering certainty levels can cause undue alarm whereas underdelivering them can lead to increased public risk. Despite this complexity, risk assessment is an important decision-making tool. This article analyzes the circulation of the term “risk” in a corpus (74,804 words) of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention communications regarding COVID-19 from January 1 to April 30, 2020. Tracking collocations of the 147 instances of risk in this corpus reveals that experts initially framed risk away from individuals, complicating people’s differentiation between public and personal impacts. Recommendations are offered for how institutions can reframe subjectivity to promote vigilance during pandemics.
AB - Communicating risk amid moments of scientific ambiguity requires balance: Overdelivering certainty levels can cause undue alarm whereas underdelivering them can lead to increased public risk. Despite this complexity, risk assessment is an important decision-making tool. This article analyzes the circulation of the term “risk” in a corpus (74,804 words) of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention communications regarding COVID-19 from January 1 to April 30, 2020. Tracking collocations of the 147 instances of risk in this corpus reveals that experts initially framed risk away from individuals, complicating people’s differentiation between public and personal impacts. Recommendations are offered for how institutions can reframe subjectivity to promote vigilance during pandemics.
KW - COVID-19
KW - communicating expertise
KW - risk communication
KW - scientific certainty
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85091100874&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1177/1050651920958394
DO - 10.1177/1050651920958394
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85091100874
VL - 35
SP - 94
EP - 100
JO - Journal of Business and Technical Communication
JF - Journal of Business and Technical Communication
SN - 1050-6519
IS - 1
ER -