Burgess, Adam --- "Representing Emergency Risks: Media, Risks and ‘Acts of God’ in the Volcanic Ash Cloud" [2011] ELECD 913; in Alemanno, Alberto (ed), "Governing Disasters" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Governing Disasters

Editor(s): Alemanno, Alberto

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857935724

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Representing Emergency Risks: Media, Risks and ‘Acts of God’ in the Volcanic Ash Cloud

Author(s): Burgess, Adam

Number of pages: 15

Extract:

5. Representing emergency risks:
media, risk and `acts of God' in the
volcanic ash cloud
Adam Burgess

5.1 CRISIS MANAGEMENT, MEDIA AND RISK
AMPLIFICATION
To an extent, at least, we live in a precautionary era whose imagination is
exercised by the possibility of remote threats. As the example of interna-
tional air travel security indicates, we are even prepared to reorganize
aspects of everyday life around them and suffer routine inconvenience
without question. Such responses often originate in demands following
dramatic incidents, intensified by revelations and accusations articulated
through the media. `Something must be done!' is the common cry, with the
underlying message that public health and safety must be paramount, and
not compromised by politics or profiteering. This chapter is a preliminary
consideration of media coverage around the volcanic ash cloud in the
context of the distinctive late modern discourse of risk that has been
influential in framing unforeseen events in the UK, the country, alongside
Ireland, most affected by the unprecedented `cloud of unknowing' in April
2010 (Marley, 2010). Here was a new and unpredictable threat ­ apparently
able to bring down airliners, according to the implication of the flight ban
put in place following the appearance of the cloud. Might the ash cloud
also evoke the kind of media `amplification of risk' (Pidgeon, Kasperson
and Slovic, 2003) and political over-reaction seen in the UK around issues
from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to train crashes and child
murders (BRC, 2006; RRAC, 2009)?
The potential to do so, ...