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August 22, 2007
How the media overreport risks
Anders Sandberg writes an article at Overcoming Bias of the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute.
In Media Risk Bias Feedback Sandberg writes about media feedback. When there is a public concern about a possible risk, researchers get funding to study it. They report their findings, which are in turn reported to the public through the media. If it looks like a risk, the public will demand more research and funding for fixing the risk.
Unfortunately media tends to overreport newsworthy risks, and people tend to notice risks more than non-risks. misinformation cascades about technical risks (because they are risks, and hence salient and prone to availability biases, and because their technical nature leads to several layers of possibly biased filtering) are not improbable, and that should make us much more sceptical and careful in going to primary sources when we hear the latest scare.
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Andra bloggar om: forskning, vetenskap, samhälle, forskningsmetodik, media, journalistik, risker
Posted by Waldemar at August 22, 2007 09:15 AM