ABSTRACT
All of the risk communication efforts, both collective and individual, throughout history have often been easier to imagine and create than to implement successfully. A strong body of research demonstrates that community organizations (businesses, non-profits, religious, schools, etc.) can play a pivotal role in communication campaigns. Given the difficulties of predicting the success of risk communication, those who are responsible for such discussions need to realize that a top-down linear model is less likely to work than one where process, message, and decision output is seen as a community effort than by experts alone. National and international activist groups lend their credibility, voice, and communication channels to the risk communication debates. Because of the inherent and apparent incentives for people in a community of risk to be attentive to information flow and systematically evaluative in their approach to the risks in the community, research often finds this paradigm lacks empirical support.
