The Development of Risk Communication

This article describes the development of risk communication in the environmental and technological domain by systematically analyzing the literature as it is available through scientific journals. In total, 349 articles published between 1988 and 2000 were analyzed, with three research questions in mind: How can we characterize the risk communication literature? Do trends exist in risk communication literature? and What do scientific indicators tell us about the nature of the published papers on risk communication? The articles were sampled from the online databases ofWeb of Science. Results indicate that risk communication currently is dominated by a few important writers from the Western world and one very influential journal, and that desk research/narrative essays are published most frequently. This article also observes a steadily climbing number of publications, scientists from various backgrounds, and identifiable nodes of high production. Several recommendations for future developments in risk communication are made.