The Barsebäck 'Panic': A Radio Programme as a Negative Summary Event

According to reports in the mass media, a fictitious radio broadcast about a future disaster at a nuclear power station at Barsebäck in southern Sweden caused widespread panic flight reactions among the population in the area. A telephone survey of a representative sample (n = 1,089) in combination with unstructured interviews with police and other authorities indicates that no panic flight at all did occur. The results are used to question a popular stereotype about panic behaviour in real or imagined disaster situations, manifesting itself, for instance, in Cantril's classic study The Invasion from Mars (1940), and in later interpretations of that study. In the concluding section the Barsebäck incident is regarded in the light of general sociological theory (van Gennep, Merton, Boorstin). The function common to rites of passage and pseudoevents - to turn a slow process or a structure into a socially manageable event - is analyzed and epitomized in the concept of summary event. The fictitious radio programme under study may be re garded as an unsuccessful negative summary event. The increasing need for institutionalized, socially accepted negative summary events is finally under lined.