Communicating the harms associated with participation in national screening programmes is not a straightforward process. In a previous study, we interviewed Danish women in the age group 23–55 and found that they tended to reject or downplay the harms presented in an information pamphlet related to cervical cancer screening. This phenomenon we termed the ‘Perception Gap’. In this article, we revisit the original data and draw on theoretical frameworks of governmentality and risk to elucidate the dynamics behind this perception gap. We found that the information material, itself, has minimal influence on how individuals understand and give meaning to the benefits and harms of screening. Instead, culturally and socially constructed logics of cancer and screening were essential to the women’s meaning-making of cancer screening. We argue that the perception gap emerges from governmental power, as participants were not passively governed, but internalised prevailing norms and aligned their attitudes with socially constructed expectations that position screening participation as the only responsible way to manage health. This leaves little room for individuals to pursue individual preferences that conflict with this collectively constructed notion. We found that non-participation itself was constructed as implying that the individual bears responsibility for potential burdens such as later development of cancer. We argue that the collectively constructed concepts of cancer and screening identified in this article, as well as how they are used in governance, need to be addressed and critically challenged before harms of screening can be effectively communicated and meaningfully incorporated into decision-making.

Deciding to get children vaccinated against COVID-19 is not something families ‘just do’ in contexts where neoliberal values shape social norms and governance. Vaccination decisions are socially situated, involve multiple actors, and require careful consideration of competing risks in relation to expectations of ‘good’ parents. Informed by theoretical approaches to emotion and risk, our study contributes to understanding parents’ perspectives of their own and children’s roles in vaccination decision-making in the neoliberal context of Canada. We analysed semi-structured interviews with 48 parents with at least one child over 11-years-old using a feminist discourse analysis approach. We apply theory about emotion and risk to map participant accounts onto three cultural expectations of ‘good’ parents that were consistent with neoliberal values during the pandemic. First, we found participants reiterated discourses about individualised responsibility when describing vaccine risk assessment with or for children within family units. Second, they reflected on pandemic constraints, which were in tension with expectations for individualised risk management – for example, collective responsibility to get vaccinated, social pressure, and blame. Third, participants evidenced socialising children towards supposedly rational and individualised choices. We conclude by discussing how the ways families do vaccine decision-making are structured by and reproductive of neoliberal values, reproducing widespread acceptance of governmental deferral of responsibility for communal health threats onto individuals.

The notion of risk is decisive in childhood vaccination campaigns, yet parental and paediatricians’ understandings of risk are not necessarily congruent with formalised risk assessments. Likewise, formalised risk assessments tell us little about the (risk) work that policies entail for their target groups. We draw on the concept of risk work to examine how parents of infants and paediatricians negotiate vaccine-related risks in paediatric consultations. This study uses qualitative data collected between 2023 and 2025, including ethnographic observations of 243 consultations in Austrian paediatric clinics and 43 interviews with parents and paediatricians. Our findings illustrate risk work in paediatric consultations in three situations: tinkering with policy recommendations, negotiating the number of vaccinations per appointment, and prioritising vaccines. We found that risk work in vaccination consultations involved relational evaluative practices in which parents and paediatricians negotiated multiple risk objects, objects at risk, and risk relationships. In these interactions, they continuously balanced and reconfigured personal, social, and institutional dimensions of risk. These contingent understandings of risk were frequently not in line with formalised models of risk assessment. Exploring this divergence was vital against the background of recurrent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases and the growing polarisation concerning what counts as acceptable risks in vaccination practices.

This study examines the influence of perceived social acceptability on engagement in risk talk. This study views risk perception as a socially negotiated phenomenon, where perceptions and discussions of risk are not just personal but also shaped by community norms and shared understandings. If people perceive a risk as widely accepted, they may be less likely to engage in conversation on that risk. We tested this question using linear regression and structural equation modelling (SEM) on multiple recreational risks with varying levels of social acceptance. The results indicate that a higher perceived social risk acceptability is associated with less engagement in risk talk. This relationship appears to operate mainly through risk willingness and risk perception. A small, robust effect remains, however, even when controlling for these factors. The SEM suggests a directional pattern between risk perception, risk talk, and social, informational, and benefit-related factors, consistent with risk perception functioning less as an independent driver and more a conduit for these factors. Illustrating the interplay between social acceptability, risk talk engagement, risk willingness, risk perception, and risk knowledge, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of individual and social dynamics in the context of the social processing and diffusion of risk understandings.

Detention under mental health law is based on professional assessments of risk but impacts on patients’ trust. Little attention has been paid by sociologists to the operation of risk, trust and racism during mental health detention processes. Our study addresses this gap through thirteen qualitative interviews with professionals, conducted in England in 2023 focusing on the mental health detention of British African Caribbean men: a group disproportionately detained. Data were analysed using thematic analysis and the SILENCES framework. Participant accounts highlighted mistrust between British African Caribbean men and mental health services. This group’s mental health was seen to be affected at a macro level by poverty, drug misuse and racism, as well as cultural mistrust and bias. Negative assumptions of British African Caribbean men were seen to operate at a meso level through institutional practices within risk management processes that discriminated against them, leading to coercive treatments and poorer outcomes. Micro level factors were largely absent from interviews. Participants stressed the need to rebuild trust with British African Caribbean communities, but the strategies they described overlooked the macro and meso factors identified elsewhere within interviews. The article is significant in highlighting cultural drivers of (mis)trust between mental health services and British African Caribbean men at macro and meso levels.

This article traces evolving understandings of risk in pregnancy and early development by exploring 35 years of media reporting on the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD), an influential biomedical field. DOHaD transformed expert and lay understandings of risk by studying impacts of early life experiences on the risk of adult chronic disease. This article draws on a Discourse-Historical approach and uses the coverage of DOHaD as a case study to examine how understandings of risk have evolved and been mediated through language in the UK, US and Australian media. The analysis detects a major shift in the coverage. While reporting initially focused on some risks of early experiences for adult disease, with time the media identified a growing range of risks and harms for the future health of the foetus. The expansion of ideas of what constitutes a risk was associated with new attributions of blame, initially singling out mothers, but increasingly also grandmothers and fathers, as responsible for the health of future generations. These findings highlight the social and cultural context as well as discursive practices that brought about the expansion of the meaning of risk and blame in relation to early life development, pointing to widespread societal concerns about reproduction.

This study explores the experiences of third sector organisation (TSO) staff in supporting people who were homeless to access healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with 10 TSO staff members, the analysis illustrates how the activities of TSO staff to identify and address factors which inhibited healthcare access can usefully be conceptualised as ‘risk work.’ This risk work was seen across the different stages of the process of accessing healthcare: helping people identify a need for healthcare, guiding people as they navigated the system of services, facilitating the practicalities of access and supporting interactions with the NHS. The work of these staff encompassed all three aspects of risk work (translating risk, minimising risk and caring in the context of risk). The strongly relational focus of TSO staff’s ways of working meant that the element of social relations (caring in the context of risk) was seen to underpin the success of their work. Risk work was also carried out both in a client facing way to support people who were homeless to access services, and in a system facing way to support services to be more accessible. This challenges the typical conceptualisation of healthcare access as a bilateral interaction between the patient and the healthcare system, and instead demonstrates the value of TSO staff as a third-party actor supporting access.

Prostate cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide, leading the European Commission to suggest prostate cancer screening with prostate specific antigen (PSA) as part of their policy for more and better screening. Screening with PSA is, however, contested due to ambiguous evidence of whether benefits outweigh negative consequences. Treatment may cause incontinence and impotence, potentially threatening masculinity. Learning that one is at risk for prostate cancer could instigate a sense of vulnerability among men who are eligible for screening. The uncertainty associated with screening with PSA, combined with the threat to masculinity, would potentially stop men from participating. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate perspectives that men in Norway have on prostate cancer screening before it is implemented as a national screening programme. Our study encompassed 10 focus groups with 48 men aged 54–85 in Norway. Seven groups included men diagnosed with prostate cancer. Data were analysed with reflexive thematic analysis. We identified two main themes: 1) Prostate cancer screening was beneficial despite uncertainties, and 2) Organized screening with PSA made threats to masculinity acceptable. Participants were positive towards screening because they saw early detection as beneficial. The simplicity of screening through a blood test concealed the complexity of the screening outcome and its consequences. Having an organised screening programme for prostate cancer appeared to our focus group participants as an opportunity enabling men to take care of their health without jeopardising their masculinity.

This qualitative study investigates steroid use among Malay men in Malaysia, focusing on their motivations, perceptions of risk, and the negotiation of masculinity within fitness and social media cultures. The widespread promotion of hyper-muscular male bodies on platforms like Facebook and Instagram has intensified pressure to conform to idealised masculine physiques. In response, many men turn to anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) – despite their regulation under Malaysia’s Poisons Act 1952—as a quick means to enhance appearance and performance. Drawing on Zinn’s theory of risk-taking and Giritli Nygren and Olofsson’s concept of Doing Risk, the analysis focuses upon how users rationalise steroid use within local cultural and social contexts. Based on in-depth interviews with Malay AAS users in Klang Valley public gyms, the findings reveal a tension between physical ideals and health awareness. Participants actively manage risks through peer knowledge, alternative remedies, and selective engagement with medical advice. Steroid use emerges not simply as a deviant act, but as a socially embedded strategy for constructing masculine identity and achieving bodily ideals. This study highlights how risk, health, and masculinity intersect in the everyday lives of Malay men navigating modern gym and media cultures in Malaysia.

This research explores the emotionality of narratives on outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases following the COVID-19 pandemic. It relies on an emotional-discursive approach interested in outbreak narratives’ emotion orientations, and focuses more specifically on narratives’ potential to (re)direct conduct through the use of emotional notions. Taking the 2024 Montréal measles outbreak as a case study, we relied on a joint methodology combining the analysis of media items (n = 65) and social media conversations (n = 545 Reddit comments). Narrative and emotional-discursive analyses of the data identified four outbreak narratives, each describing the outbreak by relying on emotional notions promoting ways to (re)direct conducts: 1) an epidemiological narrative supported by the emotional notion of re-emerging disease and promoting acts of collaboration; 2) a vaccine hesitancy denunciation narrative supported by notions of anti-science and neglected children and promoting confrontation, exclusion and education; 3) a post-pandemic narrative supported by the emotional notion of COVID-19 and promoting preparation; and 4) a globalisation narrative supported by the notion of a borderless world and promoting self-protection. Our research points to the emotional aspects of perspectives on vaccination by exposing diverse emotional notions which constitute the discursive landscape surrounding vaccination, and by showing various emotional modes of (re)directing vaccine-related conduct. We argue that polarising discourses on vaccination prominent during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak have only slightly changed since the pandemic. The emotional-discursive complexity of the issue of vaccination is discussed.