William Leiss

Social Communication in Advertising : Consumption in the Mediated Marketplace

Preface to the Third Edition Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: From Traditional to Industrial Society Chapter 3: Advertising in the Transition from Industrial to Consumer Society Chapter 4: Advertising and the Development of Communications Media Chapter 5: Advertising and the Development of Agencies Chapter 6: The Structure of Advertisements Chapter 7: Goods as Communicators and Satisfiers Chapter 8: Consumer Cultures and Mediated Markets Chapter 9: Late Modern Consumer Society Chapter 10: Media in the Mediated Marketplace Chapter 11: Full Service Agencies: Globalization and unbundling Chapter 12: Structure and Agency: Tensions at play in advertising design Chapter 13: The Mobilization of the Yuppies and Generation X Chapter 14: Negotiated Messaging for Generation X Chapter 15: Mobilizing the Culturati Chapter 16: The Fifth Frame Chapter 17: Issues in Social Policy Notes Index

Assessing and Managing Risks Arising from Exposure to Endocrine-Active Chemicals

Managing risks to human health and the environment produced by endocrine-active chemicals (EAC) is dependent on sound principles of risk assessment and risk management, which need to be adapted to address the uncertainties in the state of the science of EAC. Quantifying EAC hazard identification, mechanisms of action, and dose-response curves is complicated by a range of chemical structure/toxicology classes, receptors and receptor subtypes, and nonlinear dose-response curves with low-dose effects. Advances in risk science including toxicogenomics and quantitative structure–activity relationships (QSAR) along with a return to the biological process of hormesis are proposed to complement existing risk assessment strategies, including that of the Endocrine Disruptor Screening and Testing Advisory Committee (EDSTAC 1998). EAC represents a policy issue that has captured the publics fears and concerns about environmental health. This overview describes the process of EAC risk assessment and risk management in the context of traditional risk management frameworks, with emphasis on the National Research Council Framework (1983), taking into consideration the strategies for EAC management in Canada, the United States, and the European Union.

A Tale of Two Food Risks: BSE and Farmed Salmon in Canada

Today the public has access to enhanced resources for interpreting the technical basis of risk communication messages, emanating from government and industry, dealing with food risk issues. These resources include extensive media reporting on key scientific studies as well as Internet sites, hosted by many different players, where the scientific and statistical basis for risk assessments are presented, debated, and criticized. In this information‐rich context risk managers are challenged to present a clear, forthright, and honest account of the scientific and statistical underpinnings – including uncertainties – for their risk estimations. We discuss these issues in the context of two recent Canadian food risk cases, BSE in cattle and farmed salmon. In the BSE case the governments risk communications failed to accurately express the nature and scope of the risk as it had been evaluated by government officials in technical documentation; specifically, the complex statistical manipulations served as a smokescreen behind which was hidden the true – catastrophic – risk, namely, that the discovery of even a single case of BSE in the Canadian herd would have “extreme” consequences for the entire group of small, independent beef producers. In the case of farmed salmon, our study shows that the contaminant numbers are open to differences in interpretation among government agencies, and that understanding the level of risk is no simple business. The industry should have acted years ago to ensure that the public was provided with reliable resources for understanding the nature of chemical contaminants in fish and the risk assessment methodologies used for determining safe levels of consumption.

Risk communication of endocrine-disrupting chemicals: improving knowledge translation and transfer.

Public perception of the negative effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals appears to be higher compared to other chemical pollutants, due to (1) chronic, low-probability effects, and (2) uncertainties about which biological effects may be relevant for human health. Individuals, both expert and lay public, require credible, trustworthy, and understandable information about the scientific evidence of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in order to make informed risk decisions. The creation of a dedicated web site, http://www.emcom.ca, as a tool for knowledge translation and transfer provides the general public with access to scientific experts and bridges the gap between experts and nonexperts through a two-way, interactive communications approach. By obtaining accurate and credible information, individuals can make better-informed decisions concerning endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

Managing the risks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy: a Canadian perspective

This paper reviews the history of the risk management challenges faced by many countries and regions of the world which have had cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) from 1986 to the present. The paper first summarises the nature of prion diseases from a scientific perspective, and then presents an overview of the findings of an extensive set of country case studies, devoting special attention to the Canadian case. It derives from these studies the need to reconstruct the frameworks which have been guiding risk management decision making, using forma schemata based on a step-by-step approach. The paper presents and illustrates a revised format for an integrated risk management framework, including a set of specific and explicit objectives that should guide the use of this framework in practice, and concludes by raising policy issues that are currently outstanding with respect to the management of prion disease risks.

A Note on Yacov Y. Haimes, "On the Complex Definition of Risk"

The article by Yacov Y. Haimes(1) advances the simple proposition that “risk to a system” ought to be understood within the context of a “systemsbased approach.” He then interprets the standard core terminology of risk assessment—likelihood and consequences—within the context of the set of system descriptors (inputs, outputs, and a stable of variables: state, control, exogenous, uncertain, and random). The complex interplay among these system factors produces the decisive characteristics of vulnerability and resilience. Finally, he credits the “holistic nature of systems engineering/analysis” as the reason why it can successfully model systems and thus understand the risks to which systems are vulnerable. The purpose of this Commentary is to propose that the systems-engineering perspective promoted by Haimes should be joined with a closely-related, novel approach to risks in large systems that has been developing over the last few years. I refer to the discussion of “systemic risk” that was once narrowly confined to the specialized literature in banking and finance but is now, thanks to the global financial crisis, being introduced to a much wider audience. Interesting new conceptual developments are being stimulated by the need of governments to better grasp the nature of systemic risk in order to control and mitigate it. The landmark event in this new approach was a conference organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in May 2006, which brought together about 100 experts spanning the fields of banking and

Nuclear Waste Management at the Interface of Science and Policy: The Canadian Experience:

This paper reviews briefly the history of Canadas civilian nuclear energy program and the consideration of the problem of long-term disposal of nuclear waste. It shows that, after a period of twenty years of initial official deliberations on this problem, the decision making process foundered in the face of a specific dilemma: how to include, within an integrated assessment framework, both “technical” (expert judgment) and “social” (public acceptability) considerations. It argues that an expanded risk management framework, illustrated below, now provides such a framework: The remainder of the paper reviews and comments on a decision making exercise, carried out in Canada in the year 2004, and using a method known as multi-attribute utility analysis (MAU), that provided a new approach to the issue of the management of nuclear waste. It argues that the MAU method has some distinctive advantages, over earlier approaches, where intrinsically controversial risk management situations are concerned.

Challenges in managing the risks of chronic wasting disease

This article summarises efforts at disease surveillance and risk management of chronic wasting disease (CWD). CWD is a fatal neurodegenerative disease of cervids and is considered to be one of the most contagious of the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). Evidence has demonstrated a strong species barrier to CWD for both human and farm animals other than cervids. CWD is now endemic in many US states and two Canadian provinces. Past management strategies of selective culling, herd reduction, and hunter surveillance have shown limited effectiveness. The initial strategy of disease eradication has been abandoned in favour of disease control. CWD continues to spread geographically in North American and risk management is complicated by the presence of the disease in both wild (free-ranging) and captive (farmed) cervid populations. The article concludes that further evaluation by risk managers is required for optimal, cost-effective strategies for aggressive disease control.