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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze how the Swedish mass media constructed Sweden and Swedes during the first days after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative content analysis of newspaper articles from four of the largest newspapers in Sweden was conducted.FindingsThe results show that the tsunami was framed as a Swedish disaster almost exclusively focusing on Sweden, Swedish victims and Thailand, and that there was a division between "us" and "them". Two categories of "us" and "them" were identified in the coverage: on the international level Sweden, i.e. "us", was glorified and contrasted with "inferior" countries such as Thailand, "them"; on the national level, the distinction between "us" and "them" was not as obvious, but by including particular experiences and practices and excluding others, lines are drawn between "us" – ethnic Swedes – and "them" – everyone else. The conclusion of the paper is that mediated frames of catastrophes are influenced by stereotypes and nationalistic values.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is based on a qualitative analysis and it is not possible to generalize to other cases. Additional quantitative studies would therefore be of value.Practical implicationsThis study can be used in the education of crisis and disaster managers to make them aware of how underlying norms guide news coverage and encourage them always to consider information based on mass media reports critically.Originality/valueThis paper gives new theoretical and empirical insights into the way in which disasters contribute to recreating and maintaining the historical division between regions and people, on both a national and an international level.

One of the most important aspects of crisis communication is that of reaching the target population in a severe and often chaotic situation. Therefore, crisis communication has to be customized not only to the situation but also to the population. The aim of this study is hence to investigate the preparedness of Swedish municipalities to communicate with people who have foreign backgrounds at times of crisis. A sample of 55% (n=160) of all Swedish municipalities were questioned regarding whether their crisis communication plans are adapted to this population segment and whether any preparedness measures have been taken. The results show that Swedish municipalities do not consider people with foreign backgrounds in their crisis communication to any great extent. However, the studied municipalities can be categorized as Active, Intermediary or Passive, and one important difference between the three groups is whether they have previous experience of crises where people with foreign backgrounds have been involved.

Intro -- Contents -- Notes on Contributors -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- 1: Introduction -- Risk Research: From Technical Calculation to Critical Thinking -- How It All Began: Experiments, Surveys, and Ethnography -- The Sociological Turn: More Theory Than Practice -- Challenges and Research Strategies in Social Scientific Risk Research -- The Logic of the Book -- Part I Visual and Ethnographic Methods -- Part II Narrative, Biographical, and Mixed Analyses -- Part III Surveys and Statistical Methods -- Part IV Discourse and Semantic Analyses -- Concluding Remarks -- References -- Part I: Visual and Ethnographic Methods -- 2: Seeing Risk and Risking Seeing: Studying Audiences in Participatory Visual Research -- Introduction -- Framing Methodology -- Studying the Risk of Risk: An Autoethnographic Account -- The Analysis -- Discussion -- Conclusion -- References -- 3: Key Points of Interactive Research: An Ethnographic Approach to Risk -- Introduction -- Previous Research -- General Method: Ethnography and Participant Observation -- Co-production and Average Collaboration Versus an Interactive Research Approach -- Case Study Jakarta -- Conclusions -- References -- 4: Virtual Ethnography: Managing Pharmacological Risk and Uncertainty in Online Drug Forums -- Introduction -- Online/Offline in Research -- Netnography as a Cocktail of Tools and Techniques -- The Research Process: Tools and Issues -- Analytical Dimensions -- Data Collection as Circular Process -- Managing Research Ethics in Online Studies -- Results and Analysis -- Conclusions -- References -- Online sources -- Part II: Narrative, Biographical and Mixed Analyses -- 5: The Domestic Cycle Approach as Methodological Strategy in Risk Research -- Introduction -- The Domestic Cycle -- Taking the Domestic Cycle Approach into Disaster Risk Research.

Understanding and managing risk and uncertainty is a central task in contemporary societies characterised by rapid social, technological and environmental change. This book presents research approaches used by scholars who all share a passion to gain new insights in how individuals, organisations and societies approach uncertain futures and their potential dangers. The contributions illustrate the usefulness of particular methods and methodologies for researching risk in order to advance the understanding and management of social, technological and environmental challenges. With research strategies and approaches from sociology, psychology, history, linguistics, anthropology, and gender studies, Researching Risk and Uncertainty provides guidance and inspiration to students and scholars across a range of disciplines interested in risk, disaster and social crisis.--

We investigate whether terrorist activity abroad affects worry regarding terrorism in Sweden, and the possible mediating effect of news media. Terrorism uses violence to obtain political or social objectives: in addition to the impact on the immediate victims, terrorism affects a much wider audience emotionally by spreading fear and insecurity. Previous research shows that terrorist attacks in a country cause worry for the people in that country; however, little is known about the relationship between public worry and terrorist attacks abroad. This study draws from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), the Swedish press archive Mediearkivet, and the Swedish National Annual Survey (SOM), producing a theoretical model using Generalized Structural Equation Modelling (GSEM). The results show that public worry about terrorism co-varies with the frequency of terrorist activity occurring in the wider geo-cultural region, even if outside of the country of residence. It also shows that public worry is affected not only by single, impactful attacks – so-called 'one-off' attacks – but also by an increase in the number of total (even if less individually impactful) attacks in the region. Notably, media coverage ameliorates the impact of terrorism on public worry to some degree. For policy makers these results are particularly important since they show that even in countries free of terrorist events, public fear needs to be managed.

The present study considers the correlation between parenthood and worry about the consequences of climate change. Two approaches to gauging people's perceptions of the risks of climate change are compared: the classic approach, which measures risk perception, and the emotion‐based approach, which measures feelings toward a risk object. The empirical material is based on a questionnaire‐based survey of 3,529 people in Sweden, of whom 1,376 answered, giving a response rate of 39%. The results show that the correlation of parenthood and climate risk is significant when the emotional aspect is raised, but not when respondents were asked to do cognitive estimates of risk. Parenthood proves significant in all three questions that measure feelings, demonstrating that it is a determinant that serves to increase worry about climate change.