The Role Media In The Risk Communication Of Irish Meat Products Dioxin Crisis In2008

2008Irish dioxin crisis was a food safety incident which led to an international recall of Irish pig meat and meat products produced in Ireland between September and December of2008. Because of the inappropriate media reports and the failure food crisis communication and management of Irish government, the Irish pork industry suffered a huge economic and reputation damage far beyond what could’ve been brought from this food safety incident. It is significant important to conduct a research into tracking different uses of traditional and social media in the2008Irish dioxin crisis to get a better understanding about how media translate and spread food safety and crisis message and to derive better insights for the better harness of media tools and media tools based on media analysis results and theories.141newspaper articles and175blogs、forums and twitter were selected through hierarchical sampling from raw data files which were retrieved from online database.The9th version coding protocol was developed based on inductive analysis and coding tests.According to the research results, in the2008Irish dioxin crisis event, social media responded faster and faded away faster than traditional media. Social media reports’ primary story topics focused on government handling、global reaction、public reaction and perception and health facts while traditional media focused on government handling、health fact、cause and victim description.Information published on printed and internet based media, mainly news reports, were used as the most vital resources by social media while traditional media quoted from different information sources.Food crisis message should be released fast、objectively、honestly and calmly to control public reactions, to restore the consumer confidence and to rebuild the reputation of government and enterprises.