Air travel is safe and getting safer – whatever else you might have read
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An article from The Conversation.
By Simon Bennett
If you’ve been following the news it might seem like there’s been a lot of air crashes recently. It might seem that flying has become a risky business.
In a society with a free press and a great number of publications, the likelihood that bad things will happen can be overstated to the point where the public begins to think and act irrationally. Nick Pidgeon, Roger Kasperson and Paul Slovic describe this phenomenon in their 2003 book, The Social Amplification of Risk, where individuals, social groups or institutions such as the press act as ‘amplification stations’, heightening or dampening certain aspects of the message leading to different interpretations.
For example, the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, the loss of Air Algérie flight AH5017 and most recently Air Asia flight QZ8501: the hyperbolic reporting surrounding these events can induce feelings of dread....
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