Best Practice Risk Communication and Conclusion

Abstract

This chapter concludes the book. In Chap. 1, this book set out to explore the role of power and expertise in risk communication about public health and safety as it relates to policy making. We examined current debates around expertise in Chap. 2 and used these to critique the social amplification of risk framework from the power perspective in Chap. 3. The policy evaluation risk communication framework was central to this study (see Adekola 2018). Thus, in this book, we used the Policy Evaluation Risk Communication framework to analyse three public health risk debates (the smoking, MMR vaccine and sugar debates in the UK) to investigate the roles that power and expertise have played in shaping these debates (see Chaps. 4, 5 and 6). Further discussion and cross-case analysis of the empirical findings was carried out in Chap. 7 and the study’s empirical findings were then used to advance existing conceptualisation of the social amplification of risk framework, in Chap. 8.