Risky business: Covering slow‐onset hazards as rapidly developing news

Causes and consequences of U.S. chain store closings: Attributions in the media

“…Forty-three of the 117 articles mention the loss of employee jobs as a consequence, usually with a numerical estimate of jobs impacted. This pattern is similar to the media framings of disaster stories measured in terms of body counts of victims (Wilkins & Patterson, 1990). Other consequences include the transfering of employees to other stores or a sense of employee uncertainty about their future.…”

“…Media stories generally make attributions that people and corporations are responsible for problems rather than conditions and constraints in the economic, social, and political environment (Wallack et al, 1993;Wilkins & Patterson, 1990). Chen and Meindl (1991) suggest that the business press, in particular, is prone to interpret organizational outcomes in terms of leadership rather than deterministic external forces such as the economic or competitive factors.…”

“…Wilkins and Patterson (1990) describe the tendency of the media to cover slowly developing problems as rapidly developing news events. For example, in some cases retail-store closings may be the outcome of a prolonged period of corporate downsizing; in general, these slow-to-develop stories would be reported in much the same way as more traditional disaster stories.…”

Drought Management Strategies in Spain

“…Many authors have pointed out the importance of the discursive contexts in slow-forming phenomena such as drought, especially if these phenomena have diffuse geographical and chronological limits, and are, thus, open to different interpretations and diagnoses [3,47,48]. It must also be kept in mind that discourses are an indirect source of power [7] and, therefore, that the transformation of hegemonic discourses can help to change values and beliefs concerning the use of water.…”

Is the media the message? Mass media, environmental information and the public

“…The constraints of news media formats and the tight time schedules demand high-impact 'sound bites', welcoming ready-packaged 'events' that visually communicate a dramatic image in the shortest possible amount of time. The dominance of 'news values' over environmental content has led some commentators to see media coverage as more entertainment than information about environmental issues (Wilkins & Patterson, 1990). Yet as with Smith, how exactly 'the media help to shape public perceptions of contending 'expert' assessments of environments risks' (p. 10) is rather proposed than shown through empirical research.…”