Risk in daily newspaper coverage of red tide blooms in Southwest Florida

Zongchao Li; Bruce Garrison; Steven G Ullmann; Barbara Kirkpatrick; Lora E Fleming; Porter Hoagland

doi:10.1080/1533015X.2015.1067579

Risk in daily newspaper coverage of red tide blooms in Southwest Florida

Appl Environ Educ Commun. 2015;14(3):167-177. doi: 10.1080/1533015X.2015.1067579. Epub 2015 Aug 12.

Authors

Zongchao Li¹, Bruce Garrison², Steven G Ullmann³, Barbara Kirkpatrick⁴, Lora E Fleming⁵, Porter Hoagland⁶

Affiliations

¹ College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208.
² School of Communication, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124-2105. [email protected] .
³ Center for Health Sector Management and Policy, School of Business Administration, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, 33124-9965. [email protected] .
⁴ Environmental Health Program, Mote Marine Laboratory, Sarasota, FL 34236. [email protected] .
⁵ European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter, Medical School Knowledge Spa Royal Cornwall Hospital Truro, Cornwall, TR1 3HD, UK. [email protected] .
⁶ Marine Policy Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543. [email protected] .

Abstract

This study investigated newspaper coverage of Florida red tide blooms in four metropolitan areas of Southwest Florida during a 25-year period, 1987-2012. We focused on how journalists framed red tide stories with respect to environmental risk, health risk, and economic risk. We determined risk to be a key factor in this news coverage, being an aspect of coverage of red tide itself in terms of environmental risk, tourism risk, and public health risk. The study found that red tide news coverage is most often framed as an environmental story.

Keywords: Karenia brevis; Social amplification of risk; content analysis; environment communication; framing; news media; newspapers; red tide; risk communication.

Grants and funding

R21 ES017413/ES/NIEHS NIH HHS/United States