Doctoral Dissertation Research in Decision, Risk, & Management Sciences: Procedural Justice and Media Coverage of Public Engagement about Local Health and Environmental Risks

本论文项目旨在将程序正义的研究融入我们如何理解媒体报道对当地公共生活的影响，特别是与健康和环境风险相关的当地参与。近几十年来，程序正义作为一种有理论基础的手段出现，在一系列环境中考察“公平”的基本人类价值。程序正义研究的核心假设是，如果一个人认为一个决定背后的过程是公平的，他们更有可能接受这个决定，对决策者感到满意，并代表做出决定的群体采取未来的行动。过去的媒体研究没有试图测试不同类型和水平的媒体使用是否与公平感知相关，尽管大量研究表明，公平是个人对公民领袖态度的一个重要因素。研究的主要重点将是收集和分析来自纽约北部的调查数据，旨在获得个人对以下方面的评估：地方当局的程序和分配公平性、地方风险认知、外部效能、信任、媒体使用模式和标准公民成果变量（例如，地方政治参与水平和对政府的满意度）。该调查将通过与上州记者的访谈，当地新闻内容的定性考虑，以及涉及学生样本暴露于模拟媒体内容的几个社会心理实验，对当地环境健康风险进行补充。该项目旨在扩大正在进行的研究的适用性，利用程序正义了解传统的风险公开会议如何影响与会者和非与会者对政府专家和官员的看法。了解媒体的使用和关注是否与媒体用户对当局公平性的看法有关，应有助于形成用于公众参与的传播信息和战略。

This dissertation project seeks to integrate research on procedural justice into how we understand the impact of media coverage on local public life, particularly local engagement related to health and environmental risks. Procedural justice has emerged in recent decades as a theoretically-grounded means of examining the fundamental human value of "fairness" in a range of settings. The core hypothesis of procedural justice research is that if an individual perceives that the process underlying a decision is fair, they are more likely to accept that decision, feel satisfied with the decision-maker, and undertake future action on behalf of the group within which the decision was made.Past media research has not sought to test whether various types and levels of media use are associated with fairness perceptions, despite substantial research demonstrating that fairness is an important contributor to individual attitudes towards civic leaders. The main focus on the research will be the collection and analysis of survey data from Upstate New York aimed at obtaining individuals' assessments of: local authorities' procedural and distributive fairness, local risk perceptions, external efficacy, trust, media-use patterns, and standard civic outcomes variables (e.g. level of local political participation and satisfaction with government). The survey will be complemented by interviews with Upstate journalists, qualitative consideration of local news content, and several social-psychological experiments involving the exposure of student samples to simulated media content about local environmental health risks. The project is meant to broaden the applicability of ongoing research using procedural justice to understand how traditional public meetings about risk affect participants' and non-participants' perceptions of government experts and officials. Understanding whether media use and attention is associated with media users' perceptions of authorities fairness should support the shaping of communication messages and strategies used for public engagement.