Risk Society and Designing Panic Buttons

I am interested in Meghans comments on how the media influences the perception of risk in different societies although I think the political nature of society is quite important. When trying to weigh up the potential risks that society is facing it is important to remember how risk is mediated. What society perceives as risk and to what degree it threatens the staus quo is driven by the media and the power base. Generation of a sense of risk in a society can be a very powerful tool for a political agenda to be realised and perpetuated. In Nazi Germany, for example, the society came to believe the idea that their livelihoods were at risk from the activities of the Jewish community and that the Holocaust was an acceptable answer, the Nazi propaganda machine used media to disribute this message. In the cold war the clash of Capitalist and Communist ideologies created fear that one could take over another leading to a race to build up nuclear weapons to protect their societies. The arrival of this devastating new war technology could be justified by each side communicating the risk of total anhialation that may happen if either side couldn't match the others power. The threat to Western society by a foreign power was also used to justify the Vietnam war where the media was key to sending the right messages back home from the battlefield to guarantee the support of society. More recently, the war in Iraq was justified through the media as a way of reducing the risk to society of weapons of mass destruction.


The power of the media in influencing the perception of risk in society seems to become stronger over time with technology as our lives become busier with more messages from more outlets it becomes harder to know what is the reality of the risk. Many people now would say that climate change has been proven to be caused by human generated Carbon Dioxide emissions and this message has been put around the media in British society since the mid-seventies and has gradually gained popularity. This risk is different from those presented by the political regimes justifying war and holocaust in that it supposedly threatens the global community at large rather than nations but it has still been mediated through political manipulation of the media. In the seventies the scientific community were predicting an ice age after observing a drop in global temperatures. At the time Margaret Thatcher was trying to promote nuclear power in response to energy security, she mistrusted the Middle East and the mining industry, the two main sources of fuel for power stations at that time. A documentary about climate change featured a Swedish Scientist who tentatively suggested that global temperatures may be increased by higher levels of atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. Thatcher went to the Royal Society to offer money to scientists who could prove this concept through research as it would help her arguement for nuclear power and against oil and coal powered energy. Ever since then society perceives that the world may be at risk from the amount of Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. No doubt by the middle of this century another political agenda will promote through science a radically different view of climate change.

The Risk Society and Beyond (lecture notes)
The Great Global Warming Swindle (vieweable in 8 parts on you tube)