Community Structure
and Press Coverage or Health Risks
from Environmental Contamination
Abstract and Executive Summjary
Robert J. Griffin
Center for Mass Media Research
College of Communication,
Journalism and Performing Arts
Marquette University
Milwaukee WI 53233
Sharon Dunwoody
Center for Environmental Communications
and Education Studies
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison WI 53706
June 1993
Note: Although the information in this document has been funded wholly or in part b;
Environmental Protection Agency under assistance agreement CR817599 to Marquette University.
necessarily reflect the views of the Agency and no official endorsement should be i
the United States
, it may not
inferred.
-------
Community Structure
and Press Coverage of Health Risks
from Environmental Contamination
by Robert J. Griffin and Sharon Oimwoody
Abstract
Background. Members of the public rely on
mass media as important sources of information about
health risks from environmental contamination and
other hazards. Our study employs multiple methods to
explore the impact of community structure on the
behaviors of journalists and their media organizations
as they construct messages about health risks from
environmental contaminants for their audiences.
Applying the conflict/consensus model of
Tichenor, Donohue, and Olien, we proposed that mass
media messages signalling that local agents are
contaminating the local environment and posing health
risks is conflict-generating information and, therefore,
is controlled in the. interest of community stability.
Such control would be expected to vary by community
structure, specifically structural diversity ("pluralism,"
usually associated with size) and economic reliance of
the community on manufacturing.
Method. We conducted a three-part study,
including a content analysis of nine months of
coverage that 19 newspapers gave to environmental
contamination, historical case studies of media
coverage of three Superfund sites in Wisconsin, and a
content analysis of how hundreds of daily newspapers
in the Midwest covered an environmental group's 1991
ncws.release concerning toxic releases from industries
in the region, based on information from the Toxics
Release Inventory (TRI).
Results. Our results indeed indicated that
community structure affects local risk communication.
While results were at times mixed, in general our study
shows that media in less pluralistic ('smaller)
communities will tend not to carry much information
about health risks stemming from manufacturers and
other sources of local contamination, and will tend to
stress solutions to local contamination rather than
related problems. Papers in communities highly reliant
on manufacturing may be similarly reluctant to publish
information about health risks from manufacturers.
Our research also revealed some other
community structural, nevys organizational, and news
occupational forces that appear to affect risk ,.
communication in important ways, and that point to
the need for some further research. These findings
include the apparent effects of press releases on local
news staff mobilization to gather information about
toxic releases from industry, the apparent willingness
of editors in less pluralistic communities to publish
broader stories about environmental health risks not
overtly linked to local sources of pollution, and the
ways in which political and scientific sources drive
news coverage of health risks in Superfund site
communities.
Implications. These results prompt some
suggestions for risk communication practitioners. In
general, just as individuals vary greatly in their need
for specific types of risk information, so may
communities — and the media organizations in them ~
require different communication strategies. Since most
of the mass media in the United States are small city
dailies or broadcast stations, or community weekly
newspapers, public information specialists need to deal
carefully and knowledgeably with community
constraints on mass communication about local health
risks from environmental contaminants.
-------
Community Structure
ana Press Coverage of Health Risks
from Environmental Contamination
by Robert J. Griffin and Sharon Dunwobdy
Executive Summary
Members of the public rely on mass media as
important sources of information about health risks.
We still have a lot to learn, however, about the content
of mass media risk messages, about what audiences do
with that information, and about the forces that affect
,the ways media construct the messages.
In this study, we explore the impact of
community structure on the behaviors of journalists
and their media organizations as they fashion stories
about risks posed by environmental contamination. We
focus on community structure for two reasons: (1)
Researchers have found it to be a powerful predictor of
media coverage of environmental issues, and (2)
despite its apparent influence, many risk
communication campaigns fail to take community
structure into account. .
Talking about community structure, or
pluralism, is a way of talking about the distribution of
power in a community. At one end of the structure
continuum are homogeneous communities, settings
where individuals are a lot like one another and power
is shared by a small number of people or interest
groups. At the other end of the continuum are
pluralistic communities, whose residents are diverse
and where many power bases and interest groups
compete for influence. Not surprisingly, community
size is a good predictor of level of pluralism. For many
of us, the best illustrations of homogeneous
communities are America's small towns and hamlets,
while large, contentious cities anchor the other end.
What makes community pluralism interesting
to scholars of the mass media is that communities with
differing distributions of power seem to influence their
mass media to play different roles as information
channels. This linkage was first articulated by a
research team at the University of Minnesota: Phillip
Tichenor, Clarice Oliten and George Donohue.
The three scholars argue that the mass media
in a community are important tools for managing
conflict within that cpmmunity but that the distribution
of power in the community determines how the tools
get used. A quick look at the two types of
communities anchoring the ends of the pluralism
continuum is illustrative: ;
i . •
i
• fa structurally homogeneous communities,
people in power know each other and tend to
work out conflicts interpersonaily, in those
stereotypical "smoke-filled rooms" down at the
Moose Lodge. The role of the mass media in
these commipities is one of building
consensus for those decisions, of legitimizing
the power structure; The local newspaper,
then, functions as a community booster.
Robert J. Griffin is [associate professor of Journalism
and director of the Center for Mass Media Research at
Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. Sharon
Dunwoody is Evjue'fBascom Professor and director of
the Center for Environmental Communications and
Education Studies at jthe University of Wisconsin-
Madison, The authors greatly appreciate the assistance
of research assistants Christine Gehrmann and Se-
Wen Sun and the helpful guidance of Environmental
Protection Agency project managers Lynn Marie
Desautels and Ann Fisher.
-------
• On the other hand structurally pluralistic
communities contain so many competing
power bases that conflict cannot be worked
out interpersonally. Instead, it spills into the
mass media. Newspapers in these
heterogeneous'communities become important
communication links, both for the general
public and for the powerful, who use the mass
media to monitor the perspectives of
competing interest groups. Media in these
communities are sometimes identified as
playing a "watchdog" role because reflecting
opposing positions is such an important part
oftheirjob.
The bottom line here is that community
pluralism ultimately affects the configuration of
information available to citizens. In this study, we
sought to see how those differing configurations would
influence the availability and nature of risk
information, particularly information about
contamination by local companies that looms as a
health risk. We would anticipate differences in
handling of these kinds of risk stories for a number of
reasons. One is that the presence of a health risk sets
the stage for conflict, and Tichenor, Donohue and
Olien have found ample evidence that community
structure influences reporting of conflictive
information. Another reason is that local companies
are often part of the power structure of communities.
In such cases, stories accusing them of putting
neighbors at risk would be sensitive indeed.
Specifically, we expected to find that
newspapers in less pluralistic communities would
downplay the risks posed by local companies, as such
information would be potentially threatening to the
social structure of the community. Conversely, we
expected to find that newspapers,in more pluralistic
communities would focus more directly on the risks as
problems to residents of the area.
To explore differences in newspaper treatment
of environmental risks, we looked for variation in two
content dimensions: media "frames" and a related
concept that we termed a "risk linkage."
Frames are ways of interpreting information
that journalists learn to apply, subconsciously and
reflexively, to news accounts. At their simplest,
frames are "what the story is about." They are crucial
to journalistic work because reporters must quickly
"see" news in the information around them. But
frames provide an interpretive scaffolding not only for
story writers but also for story readers. We all use the
first few paragraphs of a newspaper story to determine
that story's main point and to decide if we wish to keep
reading.
In the studies discussed here, we paid .special
attention to how community pluralism affected
newspapers' decisions to frame environmental risks as
problems or as issues being solved. We suspected that
newspapers in more pluralistic communities would
frame these risks predominantly as problems while
newspapers in more homogeneous settings would
emphasize, instead, the ways in which the local power
structures were handling the problems.
A "risk linkage" is information that makes an
explicit connection between an environmental
contaminant and a human health problem, no matter
how big or small that problem may be. Such linkages
may be sensitive ones in less pluralistic communities
where companies are often major power brokers but,
conversely, may be common media fare in a more
pluralistic community where local companies are only
one among many competing interest groups. Thus, we
expected to find that newspapers in more pluralistic
settings would provide more risk linkages than
newspapers in less pluralistic ones.
Guided by research on community structure
and our educated guesses about how such structures
would influence media coverage of environmental risks,
we conducted three studies of press coverage of health
risks from environmental contaminants. They are:
• A general content analysis of 19 newspapers,
primarily in Wisconsin, examining reporters'
• use of framing and other presentation strategies
in stories about environmental contamination
from industries and other local sources of
pollution;
• A qualitative, case study exploration of
newspaper coverage of three Superfund sites in.
1 Wisconsin, using interviews and content
analysis; and
-------
A content analysis of press coverage of a report
issued by a New York-based environmental
group about toxic pollution in the Midwest,
based on the Toxics Release Inventory.
Because our research has implications for risk
communic.ation public information programs,
we cap off our analysis with this case study.
After presenting the results of our analyses, we
will explore their implications for risk communication
practitioners'.
General Content Analysis
We examined nine months of coverage by 19
newspapers in 16 communities, mostly in Wisconsin,
(We included Chicago so that we could get as much
variation in community pluralism as possible.) We
found that community pluralism indeed affects the ways
that local newspapers depict environmental
contamination—especially that from industries and other
sources of local contamination--in their cities and
towns:
• Newspapers in larger, heterogeneous (i.e., more
pluralistic) communities were more likely to
link local coritaminators to possible health
.threats than were papers in smaller,
homogeneous (i.e., less pluralistic) places;
• Papers in these larger communities were more
likely than their counterparts in smaller
communities to frame (i.e., strongly depict)
contamination from local sources as a problem;
• Papers in smaller communities were more
likely than papers in larger communities to
frame contamination from local sources in the
context of the solution to the problem.
There are also variations in the ways that news
media in these different types of communities made use
of what we termed "generic" stories about .
contamination. Generic stories did not specifically state
whether or not the kind of contamination referred to in
the story (for example, from power plants, industries,
and so forth) was to be found in the local community.
Instead, generic stories provided a broad-based, usually
regional or national lf
-------
studies and methodologies. The purpose of these case
studies was to test for the effect of community structure
through a more qualitative process. Specifically, we
explored factors influencing newspaper coverage of
three Superfund sites in Wisconsin.
We used three criteria to select the sites: (1) A
site must be situated near communities of different sizes
to create variance in community structure, our primary
independent variable: (2) A site must have attracted
news coverage throughout its lifespan; and (3) A site
must still be in the process of clean up. Once we had
selected a site, we collected and qualitatively analyzed
newspaper coverage from at least two newspapers
sen-ing at least two communities near the site. We also
interviewed editors, reporters, and state and federal
agency sources involved with the site.
Community structure indeed seemed to be
reflected in the newspaper coverage of each Superfund
site:
Newspapers in smaller, more homogeneous
communities downplayed coverage of the sites,
attending to them only when public hearings
and other "news" events demanded attention.
Additionally, newspapers in these less
pluralistic settings were far more likely to
reflect on the Superfund sites as problems
being solved by local officials.
Newspapers in smaller, more homogeneous
communities also were loathe to portray the
local contaminator as a villain; indeed, the most
frequent strategy was to ignore the role of the
local company altogether. Editors of
newspapers in these more homogeneous
settings frequently referred to their role as one
of "featuring" the community, not critiquing it.
Newspapers in larger, more heterogeneous
settings, on the other hand, were much more
likely to cover these sites extensively and
critically. They were more likely to frame the
contamination as a problem, both in terms of
threatening the health of community residents
and in terms of devising adequate clean-up
procedures, and were more likely to identify the
contaminator as a community villain.
Just as interesting, however, was another
community-based finding. Community structure
seemed to influence not only individual story frames but
also the larger theme within which a Superfund site was
interpreted. Over the course of years of stories, each
Superfund site in this case study was given meaning via
a very specific, community-based framework that
played a major role in what that story was "about" for
community members. These community'based
frameworks had nothing to do with the notion of risk to
health but, instead, were forged by interactions and
processes unique to the power structure in that
community. ' . •
For example, a Superfund site in an
unincorporated town adjacent to two larger
communities quickly became defined as a territorial
problem. Historically, the two larger communities
competed to annex land from,the unincorporated town,
and that territorial dimension quickly took over as the
dominant meaning of coverage. The long-term theme
of the Superfund coverage of this site focused not on
the risks to health of individuals living near the site but,
instead, on the struggle of the unincorporated town to
maintain a sense of identity.
Similarly, PCB-laden sediments in a river and
harbor near Sheboygan were1 transformed from a story
about the risks of eating contaminated fish to a story
about the economic problems posed by the
contamination. Sheboygan, on the shore of Lake
Michigan, relies heavily on sport and commercial
fishing for its economic base: The Superfund site there
was immediately given meaning as an economic—not a
health risk-story.
Thus, these three Superfund case studies not
only supported the argument that community structure
influences the selection and framing of information
about local environmental contamination but also '
introduced an unexpected community influence: the
ability of the community power structure to place its
own meaning framework on the issue. Superfund sites
take years to resolve and, partly because of the
Superfund process itself, remain "news" for much of
that time. Over such lengths of time, coverage of each
-------
Superfund site in this study- was transformed into a kind
of community saga, a morality- play unique to the V
community itself. ,
Toxics Release Inventory Case Study
This case study examined how community
pluralism and the extent to which communities rely on
.manufacturing for jobs affected the way that 373
Midwestern daily newspapers covered a report, issued
by a New York-based environmental group, about high
levels of industrial toxic releases in the Midwest. The
group, Inform, Inc., included in the report some data on
the amount of toxic releases for every county in the
seven-state region (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan,
Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin), based on their
examination of the Toxics Release Inventory. News
reporters could use these data to "localize" the story,
that is, apply the report's findings about toxic releases
to their own counties. ~
Inform, Inc., mounted an information campaign
to announce publication of the report, entitled Toxic
Clusters: Patterns of Pollution in the Midwest. So, we
also examined the effects of their press kit and related
information activities on press coverage of Toxic
Clusters, in the context of community pluralism and
reliance on manufacturing. Even though Inform, Inc.,
sent their press kit to only some of the newspapers in
our analysis, all of the newspapers we studied had
access to a wire service story based on Toxic Clusters.
We found that important aspects of a
journalist's decisions ~ whether to publiska story about
Toxic Clusters in the local newspaper, and if so, what
aspects of the story to stress in the headline — were
related to how much the community relied on
manufacturing and, to some extent, to community
pluralism. In particular:
• When we divided communities into low,
medium, and high levels of reliance on
manufacturing, we found that newspapers in
communities with the mid-level of ;
manufacturing reliaii?e"were the most likely to
publish a story about Toxic Clusters. This
result suggests that editors in communities
without much manufacturing .might have
considered the story to be locally irrelevant:
editors in coinmunities that are very dependent
on manufactilring might have.considered the
story to be, in some way, too sensitive to run
locally. This] pattern was most pronounced
among communities that are highest in
pluralism. ";.',.-•
Local sensitivity to the report also seemed to be
reflected in the ways that headlines were
composed by! those newspapers that did run a
Toxic Clusters story:
»The more the community relies on
manufacturing, the less likely the local paper's
headline for (he story spotlighted a health risk.
» Newspapers in communities that are higher
in pluralism but not very reliant on
manufacturing were the most likely to indicate
in their headlines the local relevance of the
storv.
Also useful ia our study was Oscar Gandy's
idea that agencies and other news sources who
"subsidize" the news media by disseminating to them
information that they can use quickly and inexpensively
increase the likelihood that the media will use the
information. In so doing, the media might offer to
audiences the agency's perspective on the news.
Among our findings were the following:
I
• Papers that Were sent the press kit were more
likely to publish an item about the report, either
from a wire service or as produced by one of
their own reporters. None of the papers we
studied used the Inform, Inc., news release
verbatim.
• A major effect of the press kit was to make it
easier for editors to assign staffers to cover the
story, probably because the press kit contained
additional information about the report that
was easy for reporters to gather and use. Press
conferences, if nearby, had similar effects.
Once local staff members were assigned to
cover the stoity, they tended to include in their
articles information about the local levels of
-------
toxic releases.
Newspapers in communities experiencing
problems with high overall levels of toxic
industrial pollution, or that have "dirtier" local
industries, felt more compelled to have one of
their own staffers cover the Toxic Clusters
story. Therefore, local conditions seem to have
prompted editors to entrust the story to one of
their own reporters.
Overall, our results suggest that information
about health risks and related problems stemming from
local contaminators is very sensitive information and is
treated carefully by local media. In particular, daily
newspaper use of information subsidies seems to be
affected by a cost-benefit tradeoff in which editors take
into account the cost of gathering the information as
well the effects on the community of publishing it.
Recommendations
Designers of risk communication programs
should, in effect, consider the information needs of two
"audiences": (1) selected target groups (segmented
publics) and (2) the media organizations serving those
publics. In neither case does one message fit all. Our
research indicates that:
" Public information programs about risk should
take into account community structure,
especially community pluralism. As a practical
matter, the size of a community's population is
a pretty good indicator of pluralism.
» Community structure can have an impact on
the interpretive strategy that a newspaper uses
to explain a risk and on the types of
information about the risk that the paper
includes in news accounts:
»In small communities, newspapers will be
interested in maintaining an image of the
community as a good place where problems
are readily resolved and where people get
along with one another. Thus, they will
usually welcome information couched in
terms of how local environmental problems
are being solved. They will probably be less
welcoming of information that spotlights the
notion that members of the community are at
risk from local sources of contamination. It
will be relatively hard to place "this is a local
problem" information in such outlets.
»In larger communities,,newspapers will
be more open to interpreting an
environmental hazard as a local problem and
to presenting information about risks from
local sources of contamination.
» Even in larger communities, however,
local media might find some contamination
issues to be sensitive. For example,
newspapers seem to be particularly careful
about how they present information about
problems of toxicity from industry if the
community is highly reliant on local
manufacturing. ,
The bottom line is that you might need to "tell
the story" differently depending on the kind
of community, and perhaps work with local
news media in different ways. Although they
are indicated by the results of our study, more
research is needed to demonstrate the
effectiveness of the following strategies:
» You may need to embed the same
information (e.g., explanation of a risk, of the
cleanup process) in different contexts when
working with the news media in different
communities, placing the information in the
context of a problem if the news medium is in
a larger community or stressing what is being
done to solve the problem if the news medium
is in a smaller community.
», News media in smaller communities
appear to be willing to publish broader,
feature-type "generic" stories about health
risks from environmental contaminants as
long as they are not directly linked to local
sources of pollution. For news media in
smaller communities, a contact phone number
or address for the public might be included.
-------
» News media in larger communities seem
to be interested in generic stories about
solutions to contamination problems that are
being tried elsewhere.
» When contamination issues are locally
sensitive, news media will probably prefer
that their own staff members cover and craft
as much of the story as possible. Papers in
larger communities tend to have larger staffs
to devote to such customized reporting.
Under these circumstances, your best strategy
might be to supply fact sheets and otherwise
make it as easy as possible for local reporters
to write their own stories.
Other Factors for Consideration. Our
research also generates some other suggestions for
planners of risk communication programs:
• In long-playing stories about contamination,
risk information seems to be regarded by
journalists as more appropriate in the earlier
stages of publicity
• Reporters seem to be much more likely to
include risk information if it is given to them by
a source than! to take the initiative to seek risk
information from a source to fill out a story or
to update it for audiences.
I
i
I :
• From a research standpoint, there is
considerable jvalue in approaching a risk
communicatipn problem by using a variety of
research methods, and by taking into account
(that is, controlling for) the ecosystem of forces
that can affect risk communication processes. .
" ". r
Conclusion
• ] i
Our research! has demonstrated the effects of
community pluralism on mass mediated risk coverage,
and the need for public information programs
concerning environmental risk to tailor their messages
to the roles of media in communities that vary in
pluralism. Since mosli of the mass media in the United
States are small city dailies or broadcast stations, or
community weekly newspapers, public information
specialists will need t|o deal commonly with the kinds of
community constraints on mass communication about
local health risks that we explored in these studies.
Revised 2-94
Copies of the full report can be obtained
by contacting:
Lynn Marie Desautels, Director
Risk Communication Project
Office of Policy, Planning, and Evaluation
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Mail Code 2131
401 M Street SW
Washington DC 20460
Phone: (202) 260-6995
Tame or Contents tor Full Report
Abstract
' ' 9
Executive Summary
Chapter 1: General Background
Chapter 2: General Content Analysis
Chapter 3: Superfiind Case Studies
Chapter 4: Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)
Case Study!
ChapterS: General Conclusions and
Recommendations
Appendix A: General Content Analysis
CodingGui.de
Appendix B: Sources Used for Superfund
Case Studios
Appendix C: TRI Case Study Content
Analysis Coding Guide
References ! 208 pps.
-------
------- |