Panic: Dimensions of Its Use and Meaning in Print Journalism Alexander Laskin ABD, Jennifer A' Robin

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Panic Dimensions of Its Use and Meaning in Print
Journalism Alexander Laskin ABD, Jennifer A.
Robinson PhD, with A. Alt, M. Chamoff, A.
Tilley, L. Edwards, G. Flowers, L. Johnson, K.
Weikman
College of Journalism and Communications
Results
Introduction

• Research studies show that individuals and
  groups rarely panic in emergency situations
  (e.g. Quarantelli, 1999). However, the media
  continue to use the word to describe many
  situations, including the calm, organized
  reaction to situations that are chaotic or
  dangerous (Fischhoff, 2005), and photographs and
  descriptions often linger on the first panic
  response, neglecting the orderly evacuation that
  follows (e.g. Chess, SRA, 2006).
• The distinction between social and individual
  psychological response, where the psychological
  view includes an acute emotional response or
  unreasoning terror often associated with mass
  flight compare with the sociological definition
  as the opposite of regimental behavior (e.g.
  LaPierre as cited in Quarantelli, 1999).
• Risk communicators continue to search for ways
  to understand and communicate organizational
  behavior, including panic. For these reasons, our
  research group investigated journalisms current
  use and interpretation of the word panic.

• 4. Predominantly negative in valence (X2
  174.49 plt.000)
• Negative valence dominated (n226 67) over
  neutral (n70 21) and positive (n42 12).
• Sports and time-constraint usage was more
  positive than the mean
• Neutral and positive uses were predominantly
  about anticipated threats (X2 20.32 plt.01)
• Negative articles appeared 8 pages earlier than
  neutral articles (plt.05)
• 5. News features most common place for use
• News stories (n111) and feature stories (n110)
  were the dominant location for references to
  panic. Sports was next (n38) with a few uses in
  briefs (n12) and letters to the editor (n9).

• 1. Psychological rather than sociological
  (collective) use
• Anxiety was the most frequently used category
• Psychological dimension personal health and life
  problems. Even sports often referred to
  individual panic behavior.
• Social uses of panic intentional emergency
  response, natural disasters contexts and actions
  in the financial industry

Real vs. Anticipated Threats referred to by
category
Method

• A content analysis methodology was used to
  explore the use of panic in print media stories
  over a 1-year time period. Uses where panic was
  in a band name or referred to an object were
  excluded.
• Seven coders trained supervised by graduate
  student and professor intercoder reliability
  over all categories 0.92.
• Sample Influential local/regional US newspapers
  and national newspapers from three western
  countries USA, UK and Australia. Searched the
  weeks following the last Sunday of every month
  (12 sample weeks), which resulted in 299 articles
  and 340 separate instances.

Conclusions

• In text, panic is used to describe feelings and
  the psychological experience, especially of
  anxiety, and not to represent collective
  behavior, yet visual images tend to display
  instances of collective chaos.
• Communicators should guide journalists to better
  terms to describe collective response and action,
  especially in response to intentional and natural
  emergencies.
• Response to real events is more negatively
  covered than anticipated responses, so utilize
  advance discussion of collective individual
  responses to a threat to have best outcome of
  positive coverage.
• REFERENCES
• Fischoff, B (2005) A hero in every aisle seat.
  New York Times.
• Quarantelli, E.L. (1999). The Sociology of Panic.
  Disaster Research Center. Retrieved from
  http//www.udel.edu/DRC/preliminary/pp283.pdf

• 2. Collective rather than individual use
• Panic most often described the response of groups
  of people (n218 64) with only 31 (n104)
  referring to individuals.
• Interestingly, there were instances where the
  panic referred to the response of a geographic
  area (n52 15), organizations (n30 9) and
  industries (n11 3).
• 3. Male, individual authors
• Articles were primarily single-author (n282
  83) and tended to be male (n200 59) rather
  than female (n73 22).

The papers National New York Times (n34),
Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today
(n7), LA Times (n31), Wall Street Journal
(n50) Florida Region Florida Times Union, Miami
Herald, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, St.
Petersburg Times (n5), Orlando Sentinel,
Gainesville Sun (n34), Tallahassee
Democrat Other US Regions Telegraph Herald
(Iowa n5), The Oregonian (Oregon) UK The
Guardian, The Times, Financial Times, Irish
Times, The Independent (n42) Australia Sydney
Morning Herald, Melbourne Age, Australian
Financial Review, The Australian