ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of visual images in communication about risk in printed news media, drawing on material from the European news media's commemorative coverage in 1996 of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant ten years earlier. The Chernobyl accident was a topic which produced a considerable amount of visual representation in the news media. In the Swedish case, it was clear that photographs were far more prominent in the presentation of stories concerning Chernobyl than they were in coverage of the other types of hazard, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), traffic accidents, air pollution, chemical waste and domestic nuclear power plants. Visual material presented in the media seems very much to challenge the idea of Chernobyl as an 'accident', an event accountable for in terms of 'science'. This image is an illustration of the inherent problem of ambiguity in photography and the medium's dependency on accompanying verbal explications.
