Soilikki Vettenranta: Making Sense of Chernobyl Nine Years After: TV News Reception Study of the Environment Disaster

Mediated risk communication is a highly relevant and rapidly developing field of mass communication research. The role of the mass media is crucial when catastrophes happen, as such incidences show how dependent we are on receiving information from the media. But they also show how complicated the situation is for the authorities, the media and for all of us as common citizens with limited knowledge. Vettenranta’s thesis focuses on risk communication as a two-way interactive process of exchange of information, in this case, among members of an audience who have watched an excerpt of TV-news from 1986. The excerpt was about the Chernobyl catastrophe, and partly based on information messages from the authorities. Chernobyl will remain in our memories forever; it has become a symbol for environmental damage to humankind and will remain one. Certainly there is a “before” and an “after” in our history. That is what this study, Making Sense of Chernobyl Nine Years After, so obviously reveals, but it also raises important questions for the future about how we handle situations like this one.