The Importance of Risk Communication as an Integral Part of Risk Management in the Republic of Serbia

Abstract

Risk management is heavily dependent on information quality (e.g. reliability, pertinence) for making timely and efficient decisions. Obviously, information deficiencies will negatively affect the whole risk management organization and may have also negative impacts on the population, which rapidly may evolve into uncontrollable behaviours. Risk communication is usually considered to be one of the important phases within the risk management process. To illustrate this importance, the case of a country (the Republic of Serbia) where the risk communication system shows many deficiencies, is presented and analysed. One of the results is that message processing depends on the cognitive characteristics and cognitive limitations of the recipients, as well as message properties. It is of prime importance that policy makers keep these two considerations in mind. The most critical result observed in this case study is when citizens are not any more in trust with their authorities. The Republic of Serbia is facing great challenges to design its new risk communication system. The chapter engages a set of questions for public discussions. It initiates the government and other important actors to manage risks and to communicate about them more efficiently, keeping in mind that these actions affect local, regional, national and international relations. By the use of cognitive approaches, it is suggested to the stakeholders to design new organizations and new methodological tools, which could help them to solve problems in the domain of the risk and increase the overall security in the Serbian society.