Sensational Media and Risk Perception: Investigating Media Coverage of Gutter Oil Crisis
Date Issued
2016
Date
2016
Author(s)
Ting, Yi-Nien
Abstract
For these years, food safety scandals are rampant in Taiwan. The government needs to understand public''s opinions about food risk (and food safety) for more robust policies. Current Taiwanese news media is fond of reporting sensationally. Does public''s attitude towards risk being influenced by sensational news? What kinds of people are more influenced than others? This study investigated the influence of gutter oil crisis on public''s food risk perception and related individual factors. Media credibility partly decide how sensational news influences risk perception. If using distrusted sensational talk show as materials, there is no significant difference of raise of risk perception among high sensational group and low sensational group. But using TV news (which is more trusted than the sensational talk show) as materials, participants'' risk perception increases more in the high sensational group than in the low sensational group. Besides, as past studies found, government trust is a crucial factor of the issue of food safety. This study showed that risk perception has unstable negative relationship with governmental trust. This study estimated food safety by using concept of risk perception. The risk perception scale with two dimensions (Dread and Unknown) was translated and modified. Two dimensions correlate with governmental trust. This means that the modified scale has certain degree of criterion validity. But structure of this scale is not very stable which needs to be clarified in the future. Finally, two related suggestions are proposed for possible future direction.
Subjects
risk perception
food safety
sensational news
risk communication
trust
involvement
gutter oil crisis
Type
thesis
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