Risk Amplification and Attenuation as Communication Strategies in Climate Adaptation in Urban Areas

Climate risks are motivating adaptation with local municipal actors becoming key participants in a complex web of climate risk communication. Some cities have created civil service positions focused on climate resilience. We conducted interviews with six such individuals in four U.S. Atlantic coast cities to investigate how they think about and negotiate communication challenges associated with implementation of climate resilience strategies. We grounded our study in the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF), which despite its longevity and wide usage has rarely been used to understand the role of government actors. We found substantial complexity in how these government representatives develop both amplifying and attenuating communication strategies as they often simultaneously reach multiple audiences holding different perspectives. They are familiar with and employ risk communication practices. However, they report needing to modify their efforts as climate adaptation issues and goals evolve over time, and experiment in situations, such as discussions of retreat, where established communication practices provide insufficient guidance. In order to develop a deeper understanding of the governmental risk communication actors, we suggest four potential avenues for taking advantage of the strengths of SARF as a framework for connecting and integrating with other models and theories. We also propose several directions for research based on the challenges these practitioners are finding in their work to facilitate adaptation to climate risks. The activity of government actors is rich in its applied risk communication practice and its challenges offer new questions to expand our thinking about the SARF and risk communication more broadly.