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Mobile phone masts, social rationalities and risk: negotiating lay perspectives on technological hazards

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  • Jeremy W. Collins

Abstract

This paper examines the responses of 37 participants in six focus groups to media representations of the health risks associated with mobile phone masts ('base stations') in the light of theoretical debates concerning non-expert understandings of risks (variously characterised as 'lay rationality', lay epidemiology', popular epidemiology', 'public knowledges', 'social rationality' and 'intuitive risk judgements'). In particular, the study discusses the extent to which two particular manifestations of such understandings -- non-mediated contextual and personal knowledges ('multiple information sources'), and risk comparisons made between mobile phone masts and a variety of other perceived health risks -- are prominent in respondents' discursive constructions of risk. The paper suggests that analyses of risk responses such as these should differentiate clearly between classes of risks, and avoid suggestions that any particular type of risk response can be unproblematically mapped onto other risk scenarios.

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  • Jeremy W. Collins, 2010. "Mobile phone masts, social rationalities and risk: negotiating lay perspectives on technological hazards," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(5), pages 621-637, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:13:y:2010:i:5:p:621-637
    DOI: 10.1080/13669870903305911
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    Cited by:

    1. John T. Brady, 2012. "Health risk perceptions across time in the USA," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(6), pages 547-563, June.
    2. Jamie K. Wardman & Ragnar Löfstedt, 2018. "Anticipating or Accommodating to Public Concern? Risk Amplification and the Politics of Precaution Reexamined," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(9), pages 1802-1819, September.

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