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A four-wave panel study of West Allis, Wisconsin, homeowners, conducted from 1981 to 1986, found some evidence of a relationship between education and knowledge of energy issues, especially among the more educated readers of newspaper energy stories. There was some tendency—although not strong—for an intitial knowledge gap: the more educated seemed to learn more than did the less educated at first. This difference diminished over the period of the study, a pattern that appears consistent with decreasing media attention to the energy issue during that time. Some other results of this study suggest that further research is warranted into the effects of audience information processing capabilities and techniques on memory for mass mediated information.

This study applies attribution theory to field research into communication and public perceptions of a social group. In particular, audience viewing of various popular Vietnam War films related to attributions audiences made for readjustment problems facing some Vietnam veterans, which in turn related to public opinion about government assistance to Vietnam veterans. Results also suggest that mass media might play a role in the social definition of the meaning of the Vietnam War as the United States comes to closure on that episode in history.

An analysis of 373 daily newspapers in the Midwest found that community structure and an information subsidy from an environmental group affected press coverage of a story about pollution from industrial toxins. A press kit the group sent to some newspapers appears to have influenced the papers to run a story on industrial toxic releases, but it primarily prompted editors to delegate local staff to cover the story. Results indicate that the press' function to report or raise issues concerning industrial toxic releases and related health risks is tempered by community structure and particularly by community reliance on manufacturing.

The purpose of this study was to explore the utility of protection motivation theory (PMT) in the context of mass media reports about a hazard. Content elements of a hazard's severity, likelihood of occurring, and the effectiveness of preventive actions were systematically varied in a news story about a fabricated risk: exposure to fluorescent lighting lowering academic performance. Results of this experiment (N = 206) suggest that providing information about the severity of a hazard's consequences produces greater information seeking. In addition, information about levels of risk, severity, and efficacy combined jointly to produce greater rates of willingness to take actions designed to avoid the hazard. Results are seen as providing general support for PMT and are discussed within the broader framework of information seeking and heuristic and systematic information processing.

In the spring of 1993, about 39% of Milwaukee‐area residents suffered through a nationally publicized illness brought about by cryptosporidium, a parasite that had infested the metropolitan drinking water supply. Our study, based on a telephone survey of 610 local adult residents, indicates that worry about becoming ill in the future with cryptosporidiosis relates more strongly and consistently to public reliance on, and use of, media for cryptosporidium information than do a range of risk perception and experience variables. We propose that more studies should take an audience‐centered approach to understanding risk communication.

Based on the conflict/consensus model of Tichenor, Donohue and Olien, we proposed that mass mediated information signalling that local agents are contaminating the local environment and posing health risks is conflict‐generating information and, therefore, will be controlled in the interest of community stability. We expected such control to vary by community structure. A content analysis of nine months of coverage by 19 newspapers supported the hypothesis that papers in more pluralistic communities were more likely than papers in less pluralistic communities to link contamination from local agents to threats to human health in the community and to frame such stories as problems. Newspapers in less pluralistic communities were more likely to frame local contamination in the context of solutions to the problem and were more likely to link contamination to health risks if the contamination were in a distant community.

Many researchers have studied risk factors related to sexual violence, and few studies have explored what differences account for the various ways women seek information about sexual violence. This study accomplishes this by applying part of the Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model to sexual aggression among young females (18-25 years). The results from a national survey of females show that negative affect (worry and anger combined) showed a direct positive effect on risk information seeking. Also, binge drinking does not make women feel much more at risk from sexual assault. Some differences exist between women in school and out.

This study draws a nexus between heuristic-systematic information processing and the theory of planned behavior through a model of risk information seeking and processing. The model proposes that the form of information processing individuals apply to risk information from the media and other sources affects beliefs, evaluations, and attitudes considered important to making judgments about performing risk-reducing behaviors. This study found that deeper, more systematic processing of risk information is positively related to evaluation strength, attitude strength, and the number of strongly held behavioral beliefs actively considered by respondents when thinking about environmental hazards. The relationships were consistent, appearing across two communities and three risks (two health risks and one ecological risk), and held up under multiple statistical controls.

AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic has created uncertainty and controversy around risk‐related issues such as vaccine mandates. People expressing their opinions on these issues to important others, such as employers, may face significant consequences, such as rewards or rejection. Therefore, people may try to find, avoid, or use information in a way that helps them express risk judgments that are socially acceptable in different social situations. This study investigated how people seek, avoid, and process risk information when they are concerned about their impression management. It also introduced the concept of impression information insufficiency (the perceived gap between the information one has and the information one needs to convey socially acceptable judgments and meet interpersonal needs in social situations) and examined its antecedents and outcomes within the risk information seeking and processing model. We conducted an online survey with 1673 Hong Kong adults during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The results showed that fear and social norms related to greater impression information insufficiency, which thereby was associated with biased risk information seeking, avoidance, and processing.

Using a model of risk information seeking and processing developed by Griffin, Dunwoody, and Neuwirth (1999), this study looks at predictors of the processing strategies that people apply to health risk information. Specifically, this article focuses on one relationship within the model—the relationship between perceived amount of information needed to deal with a risk and heuristic‐systematic processing. Perceived amount of information needed refers to the gap between one's understanding of a risk and the level of understanding that one needs in order to make a decision about that risk. Building on the work of Chaiken (cf. 1980), the Griffin et al. model predicts—and finds—that the larger the gap, the more likely one will process information systematically. The study employs a novel measure of information processing in a survey setting by sending actual information to participants and then asking them how they attended to it; the researchers evaluate this strategy. Finally, the researchers discuss how these findings might help agencies and practitioners create more effective risk messages.