Reconceptualising public outrage in risk communication: the relevance of moral emotions

Public ‘outrage’ has been widely referenced in risk communication practice since Peter Sandman popularised the term in the 1980s, but remains underexplored in research. This study critically reviews how ‘public outrage’ has been understood in risk communication literature. It then empirically investigates its qualities and dimensions, using a pandemic case study (Australian teachers’ responses to school closure controversies), since public outrage was considered a challenge to pandemic management. We conducted reflexive thematic analysis of a representative sample of over 8000 free-text responses from a large-scale survey of public school teachers during April 2020. We found that teachers’ outrage was structured by cognitive, affective, and moral appraisals of early-phase pandemic control policies. Teachers’ feelings of anxiety, anger and abandonment arose from perceived gaps between the goals of preventing infection and the implementation of infection control measures in schools, and were amplified by one-way communication that was untimely, confusing, and/or ineffective. Teachers’ outrage centred on experiences of disempowerment and on perceived moral violations, including the devaluation of professional identity, and the instrumentalization of teachers for social or economic ends. These insights highlight the role of moral emotions in risk responses, suggest the value of investigating the construct of ‘moral outrage’ and its effects on risk perception, and indicate the importance of addressing specific moral concerns in risk communications. We propose a research agenda for integrating moral dimensions into risk communication strategies to better anticipate and address public outrage in future health crises.