Different concepts of risk – A challenge for risk communication

Although communication belongs to the everyday activities of humans, there is no common understanding of what communication means. Several concepts of communication developed in the communication sciences are described and analyzed in their consequence for the communication about risk. It is shown that successful communication has a set of requirements: a common set of signs and symbols and common moral understandings, experiences, and values. This is a fundamental problem of risk communication because research on risk perception has shown that the understanding of the term ‘risk’ varies substantially between lay people and scientific experts. While the scientific risk concept is evidence-based and focused, the public addresses uncertainty and a wider range of potential problems. Accordingly, risk communication has to address a wider range of topics, not only factual evidence and probabilities, but also the problem of the definition of expected negative outcomes and the evaluation of these outcomes. Not only the problem of how to define risks plays a major role in risk communication, but also institutional performance, expertise, and experience – gaining institutional trust is one of major challenges of risk communication. As a consequence, the understanding of risk communication, where experts inform the public about risks, has a high risk to fail. Modern concepts of risk communication propose a different conceptualization of the problem: Risk communication is not a task where bits of information are transported from the sender to the recipient of the communication but a process, where both sender and recipient interact in order to develop a common frame for the understanding of the problem.