Exploring Representations of Occupational Health and Safety Through Media

Dear Colleagues,

Media are central in how people recognize and understand social issues. We also know that media can help mobilize support for social change and, conversely, deter individual or collective action. Occupational health and safety (OHS), like other social issues (e.g., public order, health, environment), is framed, recognized, and addressed in ways that can inform and educate, but that can also affect the authenticity and perceived magnitude of the issue.  Media shapes public understanding of risk and injury prevalence; causation and blame; and the distinction between ‘dangerous’ and ‘safe’ work. Furthermore, media representations impact how we perceive acute, chronic, and latent illnesses, as well as the structural and relational factors—such as precarious work and global capital mobility—that drive the unjust distribution of work-related injury, illness, and recovery.

Media expressions can be textual and visual. They span historical, contemporary, private, public, local, and global contexts. Content varies according to the agencies and constraints of creators and consumers, including news industry production pressures and algorithmic platform differences. Websites and social media; print, broadcast, and digital news; streamed shows, films, and documentaries; and drawings, photographs, and posters offer unique impacts, shortcomings, and potentialities for the ways in which the multiple dimensions of OHS are represented and recognized by the consuming public.

This Special Issue invites submissions that theoretically and empirically advance our understanding of how OHS is represented through media. We welcome theoretical perspectives such as media framing, risk communication, the social amplification of risk framework (SARF), computational social media analysis, audience reception, social constructionist, and other critical lenses. Quantitative (e.g., survey research/data analysis) and qualitative methodological approaches (e.g., interviews, content analysis, discourse/framing analysis, and multimodal visual methods) are encouraged.

Dr. Tim Gawley
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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