Public Life (public + life)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


A Theology of Public Life,by Charles Mathewes

DIALOG, Issue 4 2009
Lisa L. Stenmark
First page of article [source]


Environmental Skepticism: Ecology, Power, and Public Life , By Peter J. Jacques

GOVERNANCE, Issue 3 2010
YVES LABERGE
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Democracy in Latin America, 1760-1900: Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru

JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN & CARIBBEAN ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2005
Mark Szuchman
[source]


Journey of Song: Public Life and Morality in Cameroon , By Clare A. Ignatowski

JOURNAL OF LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2008
JENNIFER E. JACOBS
[source]


Political Parties, Political Integrity and Public Policy: a ,Transactions Costs' Approach

POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2001
Philip Jones
Increasing concern about political ,sleaze' prompted the establishment, in 1995, of the Standing Committee of Standards in Public Life and the announcement, in 1999, of proposals to reform political party finance in the UK. A ,public choice' analysis predicts ,opportunism' by representatives at the expense of ,rationally ignorant' voters. It commends constitutional constraints to restrict the range of policy options open to representatives. By contrast, a ,transactions costs' approach suggests that electoral competition can offer protection when voters rely on ,party signal' as a low cost information source. If voters reduce transactions costs by relying on party signal, politicians have an incentive to maintain party reputation. Representatives are more willing than might otherwise be anticipated to accept the need for regulation if this serves to protect reputation. [source]


FAITH, PUBLIC POLICY, AND THE LIMITS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE,

CRIMINOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 2 2003
PAUL KNEPPER
Recent interest on the part of criminologists in the "faith factor" has made possible a contemporary argument for faith-based interventions in crime prevention: if faith "works," then government should support faith-based initiatives because in doing so, government is not endorsing religion, but science. Drawing on the ideas of Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi, and others, this essay reviews this argument within the framework of the philosophy of social science. The discussion reviews such concepts of falsification, structural causality, objectivity, and evidence-based policy making to affirm the place of both faith and science in public life. [source]


Ethnography, Comparison, and Changing Times

ETHOS, Issue 4 2005
ROBERT I. LEVY
This article, based on Levy's Distinguished Lecture at the 2001 meeting of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, summarizes his views on how the psychologies of actors and the community forms and structures in which they are embedded, dancers and their dances, are mutually constituted. In particular, he contrasts two distinct communities where he did field research: Piri, a small village in French Polynesia; and Bhaktapur, a religious city in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, suggesting that the particular cultures of these two places give rise to different forms of public life and childrearing, resulting in differing kinds of learning during childhood and ultimately in distinctive experiences of the self. [source]


A poet in politics: Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst and first earl of Dorset (1536,1608)*

HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 204 2006
Rivkah Zim
Three elements in the experience of Thomas Sackville , eloquence, money and the law , integrate the achievements of the young poet and the mentality of the mature councillor, and enhance our understanding of him. His poetry had topical, political significance and taught him how to argue persuasively. His wealth gave him the confidence to be outspoken. His legal training, and the emphasis on equity and conscience, which began to affect Tudor jurisprudence (through such works as St. German's), account for many of the assumptions he articulated in public life. Two appended letters provide extended illustrations of these arguments. [source]


The Conservation of Industrial Remains as a Source of Individuation and Socialization

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2007
YUCEL CAN SEVERCAN
Abstract The disappearance of public spaces from the urban realm is a sign of the de-individuation and asocialization of the modern individual. However, cities still provide important tools for reclaiming our lost public life. The aim of this essay is to approach industrial heritage, usually considered a conservation issue, from a different perspective, as a tool for individuation and socialization. In order to do this, we start by describing the effects of capitalism and globalization on public open spaces, and then link this to governments' privatization policies for industrial heritage. We show how industrial landscapes could function as public spaces. Finally, we explain how, in the absence of other public open spaces, industrial landscapes could be used for public purposes to meet the social needs of humans, and could thus be instrumental in the proliferation of our rituals. Résumé La disparition des espaces publics de la sphère urbaine reflète la désindividuation et l'associalisation de l'individu moderne. Pourtant, les villes procurent encore d'importants outils de revendication de notre vie publique perdue. Ce travail envisage le patrimoine industriel, non pas dans la perspective conservatrice habituelle, mais comme un outil en faveur de l'individuation et de la socialisation. Pour ce faire, nous décrivons d'abord les effets du capitalisme et de la mondialisation sur les espaces ouverts publics, puis les associons aux politiques de privatisation des gouvernements en faveur du patrimoine industriel. Nous montrons comment les paysages industriels pourraient opérer en tant qu'espaces publics. Enfin, nous expliquons comment, en l'absence d'autres espaces ouverts publics, les paysages industriels pourraient servir à des fins publiques pour répondre aux besoins sociaux des hommes et contribuer ainsi à la propagation de nos rituels. [source]


A Decade of Europe?

JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 2 2003
Some Reflections on an Aspiration
This article suggests that Europe faces four primary challenges today. The first relates to democracy, as all the anxieties about the ,democratic deficit' in Community are writ even larger in the Union. A second issue is that of liberal legalism. Lawyers have long presumed that the ,new' Europe has been integrated ,through' law. This article suggests that the role of law is of far less importance to the future of the Union. A third problem, perhaps the most pressing, relates to enlargement. Is the ,new' Europe fully prepared for the inevitable shock that will follow the much-vaunted ,big bang'? Finally, there is the overarching problem of a continuing lack of ethos, or public philosophy, underpinning public life in the ,new' Europe. [source]


Problems with the ,language-as-resource' discourse in the promotion of heritage languages in the U.S.A.

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 3 2005
Thomas Ricento
In the United States, language ,rights' have been tethered to ethnic or racial entitlements as a means to redress historical patterns of discrimination and exclusion. The perception that language ,rights' are about the redress of past wrongs has had negative effects on efforts to gain broad public support for the teaching and maintenance of languages other than English. The language-as-resource orientation (Ruiz 1984) is considered as an alternative to a language rights approach. However, analysis of texts produced by advocates of the heritage language movement reveals the shortcomings of the language-as-resource metaphor in advancing broad-based support for the teaching, maintenance, and use of minority languages in the U.S. While efforts to promote heritage language education as a national strategic priority may result in short-term governmental support, wider and more sustained popular support for such programs will require significant modifications in the underlying values and ideologies about the status and role of languages other than English in education and public life. [source]


The Indian Movement and Political Democracy in Ecuador

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2007
Leon Zamosc
ABSTRACT This article examines the implications of the Ecuadorian Indian movement for democratic politics. During the 1990s, the movement successfully fostered indigenous and popular participation in public life, influenced government policies, and became a contender in power struggles. But in the institutional domain, the participatory breakthrough had mixed effects. While the movement fulfilled functions of interest representation and control of state power, its involvement in a coup attempt demonstrated that its political socialization had not nurtured a sense of commitment to democracy. The evidence is discussed by reference to the proposition that civil society actors may or may not contribute to democracy. The article argues that the study of the democratic spinoffs of civil activism requires a context-specific approach that considers the particularistic orientations of civil associations and pays attention to their definition of means and ends, the institutional responses evoked by their initiatives, and the unintended consequences of their actions. [source]


Law and the Image of a Nation: Religious Conflict and Religious Freedom in a Brazilian Criminal Case

LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 1 2001
Eric W. Kramer
This article examines a criminal trial in Brazil that touched on the imagined role of religion in public life. The case involved a Protestant minister accused of religious discrimination and of vilipending an image of Nossa Senhora Aparecida, the patron saint of Brazil. The prosecution argued and the court concurred that the minister's iconoclastic verbal and physical gestures endangered the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. Yet the defense claimed that his actions, stemming from his religious convictions, expressed this same principle of freedom. Different visions of religious free-dom are at stake in the case as well as how such freedom relates to the rights and private lives of citizens. Placed in the history of church-state relations in Brazil, the case raises the problem of interpreting concepts of religious pluralism, religious freedom, and freedom of expression in Brazilian law. [source]


Contradictions, Law, and State Socialism

LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 4 2000
Joachim J. Savelsberg
The relationship of law to antagonisms and contradictions within state socialism is explored from a Weberian and a Marxian perspective. Examining legislation, court decision making, legal control of economic behavior, and law enforcement reveals contradictions between (I) a radical participatory ideology versus muted or extinct civil society; (2) the ideology of comprehensive planning versus the impotence of law; (3) strategies aiming at total control of public life versus the emergence of a niche society outside the reach of the state; (4) regulatory norms versus the functional necessity of norm-breaking behavior; (5) reliance on a revolutionary sense of justice versus the cultivation of "doublethought"; (6) a program of total control of economic behavior versus the emergence of deviant, even criminal, forms of organization to fulfill functionally necessary but ideologically unapproved economic tasks; and finally, (7) two distinct practices of law, responsive or postliberal versus repressive. Yet, contradictions typically did not lead through conflict to subsequent reform during the state socialist era, as conflicts were repressed. When reforms were attempted, they furthered conflict and system breakdown. [source]


A Partial View of Contemporary Anthropology

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2004
DON BRENNEIS
This address considers ethnographically a range of sites and practices central to sustaining the intellectual, pedagogical, professional, and public life of anthropology and related disciplines: research funding, human subjects review, scholarly publishing, program and personnel assessment, and intellectual property among them. The talk points to current practices of knowledge production and circulation in the United States and to the increasingly complex intersections among scholarly knowledge, managerialist language and practice, and private capital, intellectual and otherwise. It is meant to encourage serious ethnographic examination of the contexts within which anthropologists work, consideration of the potential consequences of these contemporary changes, and creative thought about the kinds of collegial and collective action that might be pursued to help sustain what we find to be of real value in the discipline and in our professional practice. [source]


Devotion: Declaring our intentions in public life

NATIONAL CIVIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2003
Richard C. Harwood
[source]


Anthropological Knowledge and Native American Cultural Practice in the Liberal Polity

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2002
Professor James P. Boggs
U.S. Indian policy is caught between two incommensurable theories or paradigms. First, liberal theory extended the worldviewof early physical science to understand human nature. Providing the conceptual foundation for liberal polities, it largely underwrote U.S. Indian policy into the mid-20th century. Liberal theory recently has been superceded, as theory, by anthropological culture theory, which better accounts for variations between peoples and the realities of human life. The advent of culture theory marks a major paradigm shift within science and public consciousness. Liberal theory, however, remains the foundation for the powerful ideology of liberalism and the institutional practices of Western capitalism and democracy. Thus arise uncomfortable disjunctions,first, between incommensurable theories that both remain vital forces in public life, and, secondarily, between knowledge and practice. This article explores these contending theoretical formations, disjunctions between them, and illustrates how these disjunctions translate into contemporary argument in U.S. Indian policy. [source]


The trouble with issues: The case for intentional framing

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, Issue 124 2009
Susan Nall Bales
Although framing as a process is value neutral, since it can be put to any political, commercial, or ideological purpose, this article shows how it can be used to engage Americans in discussions of public life and how it might be improved. By offering readers a deeper understanding of the pictures in people's heads that often prevent engagement in issues, the author roots framing in a long history of social and cognitive science scholarship that has addressed the impact of mass media on democratic participation. This article argues that intentional framing can serve as an essential corrective to patterns of thinking in American culture that often preclude considerations of context, systems, and policies and instead advantage explanations of individual effort and worth. [source]


(Anti?) Colonial Women Writing War

NEW ZEALAND GEOGRAPHER, Issue 1 2000
KAREN M. MORIN
ABSTRACT This paper examines the wartime literature of Sarah Selwyn, Mary Ann Martin, and Caroline Abraham, all wives of prominent church and government men in colonial Aotearoa/New Zealand. Along with their husbands these women became leading participants in the "pamphlet war" surrounding the justice and legality of the colonial government's survey and confiscation of M,ori land at Taranaki, c. 1850,1860. I analyze the socio-spatial frameworks of these colonial women, linking them with their protest narratives of the Taranaki confiscations and ensuing war. The anti-colonial position articulated by these women must be viewed within the context of ideological constraints on women's participation in public life, but also within the context of expanded social and spatial boundaries of such high-placed colonials, the gendered space of the episcopal residences during wartime, the women's networks of communication, and their material and discursive links to public arguments taking place in England over colonial conflicts. [source]


Another View of G. H. von Wright

PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS, Issue 3 2006
Frederick Stoutland
This Note is a response to Thomas Wallgren's "Georg Henrik von Wright: a Memorial Notice" (Philosophical Investigations, January, 2005). I contend that Wallgren gave an account of von Wright's work that is sometimes erroneous and generally off-key. I offer a more accurate account and defend it against those who view his work with suspicion: analytical philosophers, Wittgensteinians and intellectuals who hoped for a more engaged participation in public life. Wallgren also wrote that von Wright probably had no close friends, which I show to be absurd. [source]


Sexual Citizenship: Articulating Citizenship, Identity, and the Pursuit of the Good Life in Urban Brazil

POLAR: POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW, Issue 1 2008
Tomi Castle
In this article, I examine a citizenship course held by a lesbian rights organization in Campinas, Brazil, and argue that claims for citizenship may go well beyond claims for civil rights and legal recognition and, instead, revolve around full, participatory inclusion in public life. I further argue that social actors who demand full citizenship may at the same time place demands on themselves to become what constitutes, in their view, "ideal citizens," thereby neutralizing, at least in theory, the possibility of exclusion. In probing the understandings of the ideal lesbian citizen that surfaced during the course, including those that connect full citizenship with notions of the "good life," I suggest both that these women are simultaneously capitulating to hegemonic cultural conceptions of propriety, and rewriting those conceptions by refusing the role of marginalized "other" in Brazilian society.[citizenship, identity, sexuality, activism, Brazil] [source]


Locating Impropriety: Street Drinking, Moral Order, and the Ideological Dilemma of Public Space

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2006
John Dixon
Drawing on research in urban sociology, cultural geography, and social psychology, this paper explores some of the moral rules that govern social relations in public places. In particular, we consider how certain practices become classified as everyday incivilities,infractions of the moral order that sustains public life. In order to develop this notion, we draw illustrations from an ongoing research project that is investigating social attitudes towards "street drinking," an activity that has led to the creation of "alcohol-free zones" in over 100 British cities during the past decade. As an emergent theme, this research has suggested that the classification of street drinking as either acceptable or unacceptable conduct is contingent upon the social construction of public space that users invoke. This theme is discussed in the context of wider struggles over citizenship and social control in the public domain,struggles manifest within "ideological dilemmas" (Billig et al., 1988) over the limits of free conduct, the tension between open and closed public spaces, and the attempt to distinguish "admissible" from "inadmissible" publics. [source]


Political Theory and Practical Public Reasoning

POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 2 2010
Albert Weale
Political theory and political philosophy (used interchangeably in this article) have always played a role in public life. The argument pursued here is that this is not accidental. We cannot understand in an explanatory sense developments in public policy without understanding the structure of ideas that influence those developments, including the normative presuppositions at the core of those structures of ideas. However, we can pass from explanation in the narrow sense to justification and the evaluation of the merits of those ideas. The techniques of normative political theory are invaluable in this context of justification and evaluation. Two examples are given to illustrate this last claim. [source]


Feral Beasts: An Introduction to Tony Blair's Reuters Speech on the Media

THE POLITICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2007
JEAN SEATON
One of Prime Minister Blair's last speeches was on his governments relationship to the media, and the at times damaging impact of the ,sensation hungry media' on every aspect of public life, many of whom were too frightened to take on the ,feral beasts'. He argued that his government had to attempt to deal with the media power, that ,spin' is an attempt to handle that power, that the media attack private life and that in the end the media must manage themselves. The piece includes his speech, the revealing questions and answers, and commentary on them by a series of distinguished journalists and academics. [source]


A Past: A Revolution in Public Ethics

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 4 2001
Mac Campbell
This piece is about those elements of British nineteenth-century deep culture which have to do with the production of subordination, compliance, and acquiescence. It is about perceptions of deviance. The purpose of this work is to provide some support for a suggestion about attribution of the replacement of the dominant British public ethic concerning treatment of deviance during the nineteenth century (1780-1914). Until then deviant persons had been, by and large, subject to policies and customs of exclusion and excision. These practices were replaced by new mechanisms of relegation and subordination, arrangements which lent themselves readily to institutionalisation and subsequent centralised control under a rubric of inclusion in humanity. The social, legal, and administrative mechanisms of exclusion increasingly came under attack for their inhumanity, and a climate of favour grew in Britain for a public ethic of inclusion. This principle, once it got hold, asserted into public life the beliefs which ended such practices of exclusion as slavery, public execution, transportation to the colonies, the inhuman treatment of lunatics and the dispatch of "savages". In order to support the suggestion, it will be necessary to establish that evangelicals placed themselves in the public domain as moral experts, that evangelicals expertly labelled deviant persons and groups, that evangelical publicities and structures energised in the main the revolution in the treatment of deviance without threat to power relations, and that the beginnings of national institutions of labelling are to be found in this revolution of ideas. [source]


Losing the voters' trust: evaluations of the political system and voting at the 1997 British general election

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2001
Charles Pattie
Questions of standards in public life came to the fore of British politics during the 1992,1997 parliament. Concerns were expressed over the probity of individual politicians and of political parties and worries extended to the health of the British system of government as a whole. Underlying these news stories, however, were wider issues concerning attitudes towards government. Furthermore, these concerns about standards were also extensively reported during the 1997 election campaign, and were widely held, in popular accounts, to have played a part in the Conservative government's dramatic defeat. But, surprisingly, few academic analyses have tried to gauge either the extent of public concerns in 1997, or whether they really had an impact on party support. More generally, recent political science interest has focused on fears of declining public trust in the democratic system, throughout the western world. This article explores British voters' trust in their polity. [source]


Comparisons of U.S. Government Communication Practices: Expanding the Government Communication Decision Wheel

COMMUNICATION THEORY, Issue 3 2010
J. Suzanne Horsley
Government communication is pervasive and has an impact on every aspect of American public life. However, there is minimal theory-driven research in this critical area of communication. This research explores comparisons of communication practices and the status of professional development among the four levels of U.S. government organizations through a survey of 781 government communicators. The study identifies six significant differences and two similarities in how the public sector environment affects communication practices at the city, county, state, and federal levels. The findings were applied to a modification of the government communication decision wheel, a model that offers a theoretical foundation for the study of government communication within its unique environmental context free from the bias of corporate-centric research assumptions. The findings contribute to communication theory development for the underresearched public sector. Comparaisons des pratiques de communication du gouvernement américain : pour développer la roue des décisions communicationnelles du gouvernement J. Suzanne Horsley, Brooke Fisher Liu, & Abbey Blake Levenshus La communication gouvernementale est omniprésente et affecte tous les aspects de la vie publique américaine. Néanmoins, il existe très peu de recherches guidées par la théorie dans ce domaine critique de la communication. Cette recherche explore des comparaisons dans les pratiques communicationnelles et le développement professionnel auprès de quatre niveaux gouvernementaux américains, par une enquête menée auprès de 781 agents de communication du gouvernement. L'étude identifie cinq différences importantes et trois similarités dans les façons par lesquelles le milieu du secteur public influence les pratiques de communication aux niveaux de la municipalité, du comté, de l'État et du pays. Les résultats ont été appliqués de façon à modifier la roue des décisions communicationnelles du gouvernement, un fondement théorique pour l'étude de la communication gouvernementale dans son milieu unique, sans les biais des hypothèses de recherche axées sur le secteur privé. Les résultats contribuent au développement des théories en communication à propos du secteur public, toujours sous-étudié. Vergleiche von Kommunikationspraktiken der US-Regierung: Eine Erweiterung des Kommunikationsentscheidungsrads der Regierung J. Suzanne Horsley, Brooke Fisher Liu, & Abbey Blake Levenshus Die Kommunikation der Regierung ist allgegenwärtig und berührt jeden Aspekt des Lebens der amerikanischen Öffentlichkeit. Dennoch gibt es wenig theoriebasierte Forschung in diesem zentralen Feld der Kommunikation. Diese Studie betrachtet Vergleiche der Kommunikationspraktiken und professionellen Entwicklung auf vier Ebenen der US-Regierung mittels einer Umfrage unter 781 Regierungskommunikatoren. Die Studie identifiziert fünf signifikante Unterschiede und drei ähnliche Aspekte, wie der öffentliche Sektor die Kommunikationspraktiken auf Stadt-, Landkreis-, Länder- und Bundesebene beeinflusst. Die Ergebnisse wurden zur Modifikation des Kommunikationsentscheidungsrads der Regierung herangezogen - eine theoretische Basis für die Untersuchung von Regierungskommunikation innerhalb ihres einzigartigen Kontextes und frei von Befangenheiten unternehmenszentristischer Forschungsannahmen. Die Ergebnisse tragen zur Entwicklung von Kommunikationstheorie im bislang unterbeleuchteten öffentlichen Sektor bei. Las Comparaciones de las Prácticas de Comunicación del Gobierno de los EE.UU.: Expandiendo la Comunicación de la Rueda de Decisión del Gobierno J. Suzanne Horsley, Brooke Fisher Liu, & Abbey Blake Levenshus Advertising and Public Relations, University of Alabama, 255 S Central Campus Dr., Room 2400, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA Resumen La comunicación del gobierno es dominante y toca cada aspecto de la vida pública Americana. No obstante, hay un mínimo de investigación dirigida por la teoría sobre esta área de comunicación crítica. Esta investigación explora las comparaciones de las prácticas de comunicación y el desarrollo profesional entre 4 niveles del gobierno de los EE.UU. mediante una encuesta de 781 comunicadores del gobierno. Este estudio identifica 5 diferencias significativas y 3 similitudes en cómo el sector público del medio ambiente afecta las prácticas de comunicación al nivel de la ciudad, el condado, el estado y el estado federal. Estos hallazgos fueron aplicados a modificación de la comunicación de la rueda de decisión del gobierno, una fundación teórica para el estudio de la comunicación del gobierno dentro de este contexto único del medio ambiente libre de las preconcepciones de las asunciones de la investigación centradas en las corporaciones. Los hallazgos contribuyen al desarrollo de la teoría de la comunicación para el sector público poco investigado. [source]


Words by the Numbers: a Quantitative Analysis and Comparison of the Oratorical Careers of William Ewart Gladstone and Winston Spencer Churchill

HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 182 2000
Joseph S. Meisel
This article examines and compares the oratorical productivity of Gladstone and Churchill, two long-lived British statesmen and iconic prime ministers noted for their powers as public speakers. Based upon data sources providing the date, subject and location of their speeches (over 2,000 each), quantitative analyses provide new ways of viewing the patterns and emphases of Gladstone's and Churchill's political careers, and establish a new basis for assessing the role of oratory in their public lives and reputations. Comparisons between Gladstone's and Churchill's public speaking careers shed new light on the changing structures, practices and technologies of British politics from the eighteen-thirties to the nineteen-fifties. [source]


The importance of news media in pharmaceutical risk communication: proceedings of a workshop,,§

PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGY AND DRUG SAFETY, Issue 5 2005
Felicia E. Mebane PhD
Abstract In response to mass media's role in the national and global system of pharmaceutical risk communication, the Centers for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTs) convened a ,think tank' session on the ,Importance of Media in Pharmaceutical Risk Communication'. Prominent journalists and experts from the pharmaceutical industry, academia, medical practice and government were invited to consider the benefits and challenges of improving the way we communicate the benefits and risks of therapeutics via mass media, especially news media. Workshop discussions revealed a paucity of systematic research directed towards understanding how and why news media report on therapeutic risk, the impact of this coverage and how coverage can be improved. Consequently, participants produced a research agenda capturing the key aspects of the flow of information around this topic, including the meaning of risk, how news audiences process and use therapeutic risk information in the news, how and why news organizations report on therapeutic risk, and the role and impact of the pharmaceutical industry, government officials and academic researchers as sources of therapeutic risk information. The workshop ended with a discussion on action items addressing what news professionals, representatives of regulatory agencies and the medical products industry, and academic researchers can and should do to enable news media to effectively report therapeutic risk information. In sum, this proceedings report provides an outline for developing mass media risk communication research, influencing the practices of journalists and expert sources and ultimately, improving the quality of the public's life. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]