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Introduction
Robert Griffin, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin-Madison) is (full) professor emeritus in the Diederich College of Communication, Marquette University, Milwaukee WI USA.
Throughout his career, he has focused much of his teaching and research on communication about energy, environment, health, science, statistical reasoning, and risk. Because of this career-long program of research in risk communication, he was elected in 2007 as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society. In 2016, he was elected a Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis.
He remains active doing risk communication research, especially using the Model of Risk Information Seeking and Processing, RISP (Griffin, Dunwoody & Neuwirth, 1999).
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August 1978 - present
Publications
Publications (91)
Controversies have surrounded the COVID-19 pandemic. People encountering COVID-19-related opinions that oppose their own are likely to find their deeply held beliefs questioned and their personal integrity threatened, which can compel them into defensiveness. Consequently, to serve the goal of defending their beliefs, they might seek and process CO...
The Risk Information-Seeking and Processing (RISP) model postulates that individuals who process risk information systematically are likely to hold stronger attitudes toward preventive behavior than those who process information heuristically. Therefore, individuals’ attitudes toward risk preventive behavior developed or changed through systematic...
The COVID-19 pandemic has created uncertainty and controversy around risk-related issues such as vaccine mandates. People expressing their opinions on these issues to important others, such as employers, may face significant consequences, such as rewards or rejection. Therefore, people may try to find, avoid, or use information in a way that helps...
Many researchers have studied risk factors related to sexual violence, and few studies have explored what differences account for the various ways women seek information about sexual violence. This study accomplishes this by applying part of the Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model to sexual aggression among young females (18-25 yea...
This study examines the conceptual linkages between individuals’ uncertainty judgments and affective reactions (worry and anger) within the context of an environmental health risk. It uses data from a longitudinal study of people’s reactions to the risks of eating contaminated fish from the Great Lakes that employed the risk information seeking and...
This paper examines why fans visit a professional baseball team’s Facebook page. The broader objective is to understand motivations for using communication channels in social media. Given the massive popularity of Facebook, insights into the use of this communication channel should provide an important understanding of how digital and social media...
This online experiment explored how contextual information embedded in new media channels such as YouTube may serve as normative social cues to users. Specifically, we examined whether the number of views listed under a YouTube video about climate change would elicit inferences regarding how " others " feel about the climate issue and, consequently...
The relationship between uncertainty and emotional reactions to risk has been explored in only a cursory fashion to date. This study seeks to remedy that by examining linkages between uncertainty judgment and such affective reactions as worry and anger within the context of an environmental health risk. It uses data from a longitudinal study of peo...
“Environmental communication” refers to communication about the natural environment and ecosystem, commonly focusing on the relationships that human beings and their institutions maintain with the nonhuman natural environment. Much of this communication, historically, has been generated by concern about various environmental problems and issues (gl...
Statistical reasoning is not the same as doing calculations. Instead, it involves cognitive skills such as the ability to think critically and systematically with data, skills important for everyday news work and essential for the era of data journalism. Twin surveys of the chairs of undergraduate journalism programs in the United States, conducted...
Social media has become a regular direct marketing component for sports teams. This study explores the link between team identification and use of a professional sports team’s social-media channels. Questions to answer include, Does social media impact identification fans have with a team or vice versa? What does the amount of social-media use do t...
“Dealing with global warming” remained low on the public’s agenda in early 2013. Just 28% of Americans viewed it as a top policy priority according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Specifically, a partisan difference was found among Americans over the importance of global warming policy. Approximately 38% of Democrats said dealing with globa...
Surveys of journalism department heads in 1997 and 2008 showed general support for the need for journalism students to reason with statistical information. Stronger support was associated, in particular, with the perception that this cognitive skill would give students an advantage in the journalism job market. However, many chairs also perceived c...
We are writing to urge AAAS to reconsider its policy against mandated labeling of so-called genetically modified (GM) foods ([ 1 ][1]). We do not, as a group, have any position on GM foods, for or against, but we are concerned that AAAS's position represents a poorly informed approach to
In an effort to better understand the ways in which risk messages can indirectly affect risk-related behaviors, this review explores the links between such messages and information seeking and processing. The narrative first offers a brief look at the literature that shores up salient concepts, and then moves to a model of risk information seeking...
The model of risk information seeking and processing (RISP) proposes characteristics of individuals that might predispose them to seek risk information. The intent of this study is to test the model's robustness across two independent samples in different nations. Based on data from the United States and the Netherlands, the causal structure involv...
“Environmental communication” refers to communication about the natural environment and ecosystem, commonly focusing on the relationships that human beings and their institutions have with the nonhuman natural environment. Much of this communication, historically, has been generated by concern about various environmental problems and issues (global...
In an effort to understand what motivates people to attend to information about flood risks, this study applies the Risk Information Seeking and Processing model to explore how local residents responded to damaging river flooding in the Milwaukee area. The results indicate that anger at managing agencies was associated with the desire for informati...
How do laypeople perceive uncertainties about environmental health risks? How do risk-related cognitions and emotions influence these uncertainties, and what roles do sociodemographic and contextual factors, risk judgments, and informa-tion exposures play? This study explores these questions using secondary analy-ses of survey data. Results suggest...
Attempts to model risk response tend to focus on risks that pose a direct personal threat. This study examined the applicability of one risk response model to impersonal risks—risks that threaten something other than the self, in this case, the environment. This study utilized a section of the Griffin et al. risk-information seeking and processing...
Core variables and propositions from a model originally designed to describe information seeking and processing about risks are applied to energy issues. Results indicate that perceived social pressures to learn about energy information, information sufficiency motivation, individuals’ perceived processing abilities, and their beliefs about availab...
The urbanization of urban watersheds can influence flooding risks. Traditional Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood risk maps identify 100 year floodplains. These maps are updated infrequently. However, as a community urbanizes, flood risks can change, especially for downstream residents. Thus, one would expect that the willingness to p...
In 1993, the parasite cryptosporidium infested the Milwaukee-area drinking supply and sickened some 400,000 people. This study uses survey data gathered from 610 residents in the wake of that outbreak to look at predictors of the complexity of people’s understanding of two causal components of the outbreak: (1) how the parasite got into the water a...
Two survey data sets test a model of Risk Information Seeking and Processing, informed by
Eagly and Chaiken’s (1993) Heuristic-Systematic model, that describes characteristics of
individuals that predispose them to seek and process information about health and environmental
risks in different ways. Results indicate that information insufficiency re...
In an effort to better understand individuals' use of information in risky situations, in this article we propose a new variable, information sufficiency, as an important component of people's information-seeking behaviors. We surveyed residents of 2 Great Lakes cities to test the ability of a group of factors often employed in risk communication s...
Using a model of risk information seeking and processing developed by Griffin, Dunwoody, and Neuwirth (1999), this study looks at predictors of the processing strategies that people apply to health risk information. Specifically, this article focuses on one relationship within the model--the relationship between perceived amount of information need...
This study draws a nexus between heuristic-systematic information processing and the theory of planned behavior through a model of risk information seeking and processing. The model proposes that the form of information processing individuals apply to risk information from the media and other sources affects beliefs, evaluations, and attitudes cons...
In the spring of 1993, nearly 40 percent of Milwaukee-area residents experienced a nationally publicized outbreak of cryptosporidium, a parasite that infested the metropolitan drinking water supply. Using open-ended survey data gathered from 610 adult residents in the wake of that outbreak, this study looks at factors related to the ways in which p...
The purpose of this study was to explore the utility of protection motivation theory (PMT) in the context of mass media reports about a hazard. Content elements of a hazard's severity, likelihood of occurring, and the effectiveness of preventive actions were systematically varied in a news story about a fabricated risk: exposure to fluorescent ligh...
Urban watershed managers frequently must address alternative policy goals; flood control and ecological risk reduction. This study combines hydrologic models of flood control and biotic models of ecologic risk with economic models of willingness-to-pay and psychological models of risk processing and planned behavior to evaluate these two alternativ...
Behavioral decision theory draws on experimental research in cognitive psychology to provide a descriptively accurate model of human behavior. It shows that people systematically violate the normative assumptions of economic rationality by miscalculating probabilities and making choices based on one-economic criteria. Behavioral decision theory's a...
Ecological impairment and flooding caused by urbanization can be expressed numerically by calculating the risks throughout the watershed (floodplain) and along the main stems of the streams. The risks can be evaluated in terms of the present and/or future. This article describes the methodologies for ascertaining the risks in the Geographical Infor...
Throughout recent history, urbanisation has altered the ecological structure of urban streams and rivers. They have been channelised,
constricted, and ultimately covered to gain space for urban development and to accommodate increased flood flows. The Los
Angeles River in California and the Kinnikinnic River in Milwaukee represent the ultimate tran...
A 5-year, pooled fund study with the Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin departments of transportation assessed the public's perceptions of pavement improvement strategies and developed thresholds of satisfaction using the departments' physical indices, such as pavement ride and condition on rural, two-lane highways in the states. Approximately 3,600 dr...
A three-phase study involving focus groups and sample surveys was conducted in three Midwestern states to assess the amount of satisfaction that motorists who drive on rural, two-lane state highways have with the pavement characteristics of those highways and to explain the relationship between the actual physical condition of the pavements and mot...
More and more communities are becoming concerned about health risks posed by lead and other health hazards in their drinking water. Our study, applying the model of innovation diffusion to the adoption of preventive health behaviors, found that reliance on health professionals for information about lead in tap water was associated with residents pe...
Findings are reported from Phase II of a three-phase pooled-fund project in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota to determine perceptions of drivers regarding pavement of rural two-lane highways. Among the survey topics were drivers' trust in the state department of transportation (DOT), pavement improvement trade-offs, and pavement evaluation. Results o...
![TABLE 4 . Land use distribution: the Menomonee River watershed [GIS].](profile/Vladimir-Novotny-2/publication/252446768/figure/tbl2/AS:669533836701701@1536640714435/Land-use-distribution-the-Menomonee-River-watershed-GIS_Q320.jpg)
Urban watersheds and receiving waters are adversely affected by urbanization that increases risk of flooding and, in the same time, reduces the chemical, physical (habitat) and biological integrity of the affected water bodies. Restoration of ecological integrity and flood control objectives in the past were conflicting, often to a degree that floo...
Based in part on Eagly and Chaiken’s (1993) Heuristic-Systematic model of information processing, we develop and test part of a model that focuses on characteristics of individuals that might predispose them to seek and process information about health and environmental risks in different ways. Specifically, the part of the model being tested propo...
We articulate a model that focuses on characteristics of individuals that might predispose them to seek and process information about health in different ways. Specifically, the model proposes that seven factors-(1) individual characteristics, (2) perceived hazard characteristics, (3) affective response to the risk, (4) felt social pressures to pos...
In the spring of 1993, about 39% of Milwaukee-area residents suffered through a nationally publicized illness brought about by cryptosporidium, a parasite that had infested the metropolitan drinking water supply. Our study, based on a telephone survey of 610 local adult residents, indicates that worry about becoming ill in the future with cryptospo...
Cognitive processes can inform an understanding of newswork. In this case study, the authors examine a growing literature relating cognitive theories to newsmaking and then apply some of the principles in that literature to media coverage of EPA-mandated reformulated gasoline in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In an analysis of how local Milwaukee television...
When newspapers cover stories about environmental pollution, the nature of the community they serve can indirectly influence the contents of that coverage. This article describes research showing that newspapers in pluralistic (i.e., usually larger) communities are more likely than papers in homogeneous (i.e., usually smaller) communities to interp...
Based on the conflict/consensus model of Tichenor, Donohue and Olien, we proposed that mass mediated information signalling that local agents are contaminating the local environment and posing health risks is conflict-generating information and, therefore, will be controlled in the interest of community stability. We expected such control to vary b...
This study applies attribution theory to field research into communication and public perceptions of a social group. In particular, audience viewing of various popular Vietnam War films related to attributions audiences made for readjustment problems facing some Vietnam veterans, which in turn related to public opinion about government assistance t...
Based on the conflict/consensus model of Tichenor, Donohue and Olien, we proposed that mass mediated information signalling that local agents are contaminating the local environment and posing health risks is conflict-generating information and, therefore, will be controlled in the interest of community stability. We expected such control to vary b...
An analysis of 373 daily newspapers in the Midwest found that community structure and an information subsidy from an environmental group affected press coverage of a story about pollution from industrial toxins. A press kit the group sent to some newspapers appears to have influenced the papers to run a story on industrial toxic releases, but it pr...
Results from a laboratory experiment indicate that information about risk probability affects the belief that drinking parasite-infested tap water leads to personal illness. In line with Fishbein and Ajzen’s theory of reasoned action, this behavioral belief combined with other components of cognitive structure to affect subjects’ attitudes toward t...
Recent trends in television programming, in which women characters are portrayed more frequently than in the past in what had been traditionally male occupations, present new opportunities to examine the relationship of television use to the occupational desires of male and, particularly, female adolescents. A study examined this relationship in th...
In an effort to examine the ways in which content and framing components of mediated risk messages influence individuals' cognitive and affective responses, this study asked university students to read and respond to two risk stories that varied along four dimensions: level of risk expressed, severity of health symptoms experienced as a result of t...
A four-wave panel study of West Allis, Wisconsin, homeowners, conducted from 1981 to 1986, found some evidence of a relationship between education and knowledge of energy issues, especially among the more educated readers of newspaper energy stories. There was some tendency—although not strong—for an intitial knowledge gap: the more educated seemed...
Recent trends in television programming, in which women characters are portrayed more frequently than in the past in what had been traditionally male occupations, present new opportunities to examine the relationship of television use to the occupational desires of male and, particularly, female adolescents. A study examined this relationship in th...
A four-wave panel study was conducted in a Midwest community to determine the relationship of communication to adoption of energy conservation behavior among homeowners. Special attention was paid to the communication and energy use constraints faced by the elderly. Analysis indicates that younger respondents adopted actions to save energy in the h...
Surveys of homeowners in two Wisconsin communities examined the relationship of media use to a set of cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral components of energy conservation. The perceived importance of the energy issue was associated with media use in both communities. In addition, this relationship was stronger the more energy related the commun...
To explore the relationships among three sets of variables--social status, communication, and energy conserving behavior--405 respondents from a highly educated, upper income, largely white collar community and 333 respondents from a predominantly lower-middle and working class city were interviewed over the telephone. Questions were designed to de...
Looks at recent lessons in public communication in other fields, such as science education, technology transfer, human behaviour, and international development, that might be applicable to the public relations of environmental management.-from Author
A study was conducted as part of a program to develop and test an individual-level communications model. The model proposes that audience members bring to communications situations a set of learned cognitive processing strategies that produce cognitive structural representations of information in memory to facilitate the meeting of various goals or...
Laboratory experiment that investigated motivational effects on learning about extinction of a species.
The U.S. daily press might seem to be in a strategic position to function as a claims-maker in the early construction of a social problem. But in the case of the manufacture of environmentalism as a social reality in the 1960's and 70's, the press was fairly slow to adopt a holistic environmental lexicon. Its reporting of environmental news even no...
Investigation of community structural influences on environmental news coverage based on sample survey of newspaper reporters in the United States
16. Abstract This report summarizes Wisconsin results of a five year, Pooled Fund study involving the Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota DOTs designed to 1) assess the public's perceptions of the departments' pavement improvement strategies and 2) to develop customer-based thresholds of satisfaction with pavements on rural two lane highways in each sta...
Urban streams are used for several purposes. Some uses are conflicting and some are complementary. The use of urban water bodies and the resolution of conflicts is driven by anthropogenic and biocentric/ecocentric interests that must be optimized and the conflicts resolved. This article examines and analyzes land ethics (biocentric) and socio-econo...
Thesis (M.A.)--Wisconsin. Bibliography: leaves 245-254.
