John Fellenor

The social amplification of risk on Twitter: the case of ash dieback disease in the United Kingdom

It has long been recognised that the traditional media play a key role in representing risk and are a significant source of information which can shape how people perceive and respond to hazard events. Early work utilising the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) sought to understand the discrepancy between expert and lay perceptions of risk and patterns of risk intensification and attenuation with reference to the media. However, the advent of Web 2.0 challenges traditional models of communication. To date there has been limited consideration of social media within the SARF and its role in mediating processes of risk perception and communication. Against this backdrop, we focus on the social media platform Twitter to consider the social amplification of risk in relation to ash dieback disease (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus); a tree health issue that attracted intense media attention when it was first identified in the UK in 2012. We present an empirical analysis of 25,600 tweets in order to explore what people were saying about ash dieback on Twitter, who was talking about it and how they talked about it. Our discussion outlines the themes around which talk about ash dieback was orientated, the significance of users’ environmental ‘affiliations’ and the role of including links (URLs) to traditional media coverage. We utilise the notion of ‘piggybacking’ to demonstrate how information is customised in line with group/individual identities and interests and introduce the concept of the ‘frame fragment’ to illustrate how information is selected and moved around Twitter emphasising certain features of the messages. The paper affords a detailed consideration of the way in which people and organisations simultaneously appropriate, construct and pass on risk-relevant information. A conclusion is that social media has the potential to transform the media landscape within which the SARF was originally conceived, presenting renewed challenges for risk communication.

Expert risk perceptions and the social amplification of risk: A case study in invasive tree pests and diseases

Highlights • Expert risk perceptions are socially-mediated, relational and incremental.• Challenges experts’ ‘real’ risk around which public perceptions are amplified.• Tree health risks characterised by uncertainty and conflicts about what is at risk.• Experts attribute concern to publics as they assemble risk judgments.• Risk managers deal with the ‘risk event’ alongside ‘the social construction of risk’.

Will the real Oedipus please stand up? Metatheoretical perspectives on Oedipus as a unifying function and psychoanalytic theory development

Abstract Is psychoanalysis scientific? Which Oedipus is the “correct” Oedipus? Questions like these have divided psychoanalysis and fueled debates about it since its inception. In this paper, I explore these issues by outlining and adopting an “intertextual” perspective, not to answer such questions but to establish a metatheoretical position that might enable us to step outside of them to consider the broader relationship between theory, myth, literature, and the clinical session. I discuss how concepts such as narcissism and the Oedipal arrangement signify a deeper need for affiliation beyond the content of the myth itself but from within the psychoanalytic field; that they provide a flexible resource but also accrete a historical residue presenting as inertia against a unified psychoanalytic approach. In doing so, the term theory drift is developed to argue that psychoanalytic theory might in part develop through idiosyncratic “etymological” processes that reflect an obligation to retain concepts such as Oedipus and a reluctance to break with existing forms and practices. Finally, I discuss emergence and how it signifies the imponderability of the literary and clinical material with which psychoanalysis works, and look to actor network theory to conceptualize the fluid, intertextual networks within which we exist.

The unpredictability of metaphor: Ignacio Matte-Blanco's bi-logic and the nature of metaphoric processes

Abstract This paper represents an initial foray into opening up the way that we can use current ideas about metaphor, its centrality in mental development, and the bi-logic of Ignacio Matte-Blanco to develop a systematic way of thinking about the unconscious process and how we can work with it in terms of psychoanalytic practice. The paper initially describes how our use of metaphor develops, and is tied in with, neural development that occurs from before birth and continues from there on. The notion of the breast is then explored as a means to exemplify how the psychoanalytic primacy of the breast can be approached in line with sensorimotor experience and metaphor development. This is followed by a discussion of Ignacio Matte-Blancos bi-logic and the nature of complex systems. Finally, I outline how, at the heart of metaphoric thinking, bi-logic and our ongoing phenomenological experience is the element of the unpredictable, and that it is this very notion that deserves our attention if we are to develop a more systematic and efficacious psychoanalytic framework.

The Social Amplification of Tree Health Risks: The Case of Ash Dieback Disease in the UK

The risks posed by tree pests and diseases have been widely recognised in expert circles, but the degree to which this awareness is shared by publics and stakeholders is still unclear. There is a potential conflict between government attempts to manage the risks, media coverage and the ways in which publics and stakeholders make sense of the threats. The Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) was adopted in this study as a means of exploring the interrelationships of media representation, expert assessments and public perceptions of the ash dieback outbreak in the UK. By exploring the dynamic interactions between these different actors and the social, psychological and cultural processes through which they determine risk, the study provides a more nuanced understanding of tree health risks that can inform risk communication strategies and outbreak management.

User-Generated Content: What Can the Forest Health Sector Learn?

Forests, as complex socio-ecological systems, present many management challenges. The human dimensions of these systems are rapidly evolving, reflecting growing concern with environmental degradation and facilitated by the Internet and user-generated content (UGC). Such technologies transform human interaction and reshape our self-experience. For forest health, this is an ontological issue: if our presuppositions about the world change, knowledge of that world, and how to manage it, should reflect such changes. This chapter foregrounds these issues and, drawing on a rapid evidence review, provides and overview of the uses and potentials of UGC in relation to forest health. From an ontological perspective, we situate UGC in broader debates about how digital technologies shape the relationship with the environment and ourselves.

Real without being concrete: the ontology of public concern and its significance for the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF)

Abstract Public concern is a pivotal notion in the risk perception, communication and management literature. It is, for example, a central concept with regard to the social amplification of risk, and as a justification for policy attention. Despite its ubiquity, the notion of public concern remains a ‘black box’ presenting a poorly understood state of affairs as a reified matter-of-fact. Paying attention to the deployment and metrics of public concern, and the work it is required to do, will enhance the power of approaches to understanding risk, and policymaking. Thus, the broad purpose of this paper is to unpack the notion of public concern by adopting an ontological yet critical perspective, drawing on a range of literature that considers ontology. We reflect on how publics and public concern have been conceptualised with regard to the dichotomies of individual/social and private/public, given that they imply different levels and dimensions of concern. We draw on empirical work that illuminates the assessment and measurement of public concern and how the public have responded to risk events. Considering public concern through an ontological lens affords a means of drawing renewed critical attention to objects that might otherwise appear finished or ready-made.