Communicating with the public ("Nuclear music etc")

["Björn Cedervall" <bjorn_cedervall@hotmail.com>]

Dear Radsafers,

As a professional in the radiation safety field etc I have often been 
involved in communicating with the public about nuclear energy,
radiation effects etc. I have found it valuable to inform
myself about the types of information people get (like for instance 
"nuclear music") who are not radiation professionals. And in addition to 
understand their language including substitutes for words used in 
science, as well as their perception of nuclear/radiation issues.

Without some understanding of this, it is not possible to communicate 
radiation/nuclear stuff with some people at all (and then there is 
another fraction that you never reach for a mix of reasons). We may talk 
about 1x10E-7 etc when communicating risk and as a response get "but is 
it dangerous?". This gap in communication stems from two problems that 
sometimes run hand in hand:
1. Differences in educational background and experiences.
2. The emotional vs. the rational brain functions that we all have.

If we really want to reach out in the society and discuss topics
relating to our profession - we must understand these issues
better. I have found that with some people - the numbers about
radiation don't matter at all - the bottom line becomes trust.
Without an understanding of the media fallout (music, newspapers,
TV, whatever) one can forget communication with a large fraction
of the population. Therefore, the exact use of words in all sorts
of public media demand attention. A certain word may mean one thing
to a professional and an entirely different thing to the public. A
good linguistic excercise in the radiation field is reading the texts of 
Rosalee Bertell carefully (but I admit that the reading is boring. I 
probably put an end to her media attention in Sweden through a couple of 
articles BTW). 

The public media have a wide range of more or less sophisticated 
techniques to distort messages and people's perceptions. Furthermore,
if you are not prepared about this alternative description of the
world - and become interviewed - chances are that you may fall into
a semantic or other trap that will be suitable for the next alarm
and headlines. We usually get little of this training (public
communication) at our universities when studying physics etc - but 
fortunately some of this can be learned.

For those of you who have not been out in public media: I can assure you 
that it is a challenge that goes far beyond having the numbers correct. 
Part of this challenge is linguistic. In addition, it is
necessary to understand what people think that they already "know"
(because it is difficult to sell a message that is contradictory to the 
previously held ideas that people may have).

If the cover of a CD record shows birds flying into a "cloud"
above a nuclear power plant and they come out on the other side as
"skeletons" (actually this example comes from a postcard that I
have) this creates a myth that lives its own life. Again: We need
to know about these phenomena to reach the public, politicians
and others outside our own groups. Professional communication
is complex and demanding.

I remember once, a year after the disaster in Chernobyl, a 50 year
old engineer commented the time I spent on writing in public media:
He was essentially saying that "one doesn't have time to do things like 
that - one must work also". What I was doing was explaining
things like individual vs. collective risks, informing people about 
background radiation, correcting stuff like "micro" that became "mega", 
and confusion between dose and dose-rate (major Swedish
newspapers). Public perception and understanding was always a major 
consideration in this (work).

You can be sure that I will bring our list with "nuclear music"
to some record store and try to get hold of some of those valuable
contributions (thanks).

bjorn_cedervall@hotmail.com
Depts. Medical Radiation Biology and Medical Radiation Physics,
Karolinska Institutet, Box 260,
S-171 76 Stockholm,
Sweden

>Let's keep this a professional forum, everyone.  As a government
>employee noted in private e-mail to me, some subscribers are only
>allowed to be RADSAFE subscribers because of its professional nature.  
>If threads such as the nuclear music thread are allowed to run
>rampant, many of our colleagues would be unable to maintain their
>subscriptions.

>Thank you in advance for your cooperation!
>
>Melissa Woo
>RADSAFE List-owner/manager


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