Reporting Panics

Module code: MS3024

This module explores the various ways that the news media communicate information on risk and concern over various issues (from crime to health and scientific advances) to the public. It considers the possible impacts that media reporting may have on media consumers, examining these in terms of the public’s understanding of, and their ability to engage with, mediated risk.

Topics covered: 

• Introducing ideas of risk, anxiety and the news media
• Risk advocates
• Journalists, experts and risky news
• Reporting risky bodies
• Children at risk? 
• Media tales of drugs and crime
• A news view of immigration 
• The news media, food scares and anxiety
• The reporting of the new science of genetics and biotechnology 
• Media audiences and the reception of risk