Paper Title
Social Impact of Internet Media on Technological Risk Perception

Abstract
Technologies that have brought unprecedented convenience and benefit to our daily lives have also brought unexpected risk and social cost to the postindustrial society. Along with the introduction of unfamiliar risks, technologies have also changed both the means and the processes of communicating risk information. Information communication technologies, the Internet in particular, transformed the conceptual framework in which people interpret, perceive, and respond to risks. Easy access to and efficient sharing of risk information through the Internet have improved public awareness of hazards and facilitated citizens’ participation in the social effort to manage risk. In the uninterrupted and open network environment, however, a minor opinion or a local voice could mislead public understanding of risk by disseminating unreliable information and false assertions to the whole society. To compensate limitations of the classic economic approach to risk evaluation and the psychometric analysis of risk perception, this study applies a facilitated modeling technique to a group of college students in Korea. In the group activities, researchers did not provide a pre-selected list of risk items. Instead, 24 participants had group discussions to generate 36 risk items, to rate their risk level and to evaluate their characteristic in terms of the level of knowledge and dreadfulness. This study also analyzes the influence of mass media, online news papers in particular, on risk perception. The results show that there are significant differences between the rank order of risk items generated by students and that of statistical or objective risk. Psychometric analyses find that the levels of knowledge and dreadfulness have meaningful correlations with risk level. A well known or a dreadful risk shows a high level of risk. Correlation analyses of media coverage and the risk level also re-confirms strong positive relations. It means that college students generated risk items on the basis of what they were exposed to mass media; in particular, online newspapers. The role of mass media in risk perception and the importance of risk communication in risk evaluation are underlined. Keywords - Risk Perception, Mass Media, Risk Communication, Facilitated Modeling, Psychometric Analysis