Risk news in the world of Internet newsgroups

The coming of the Internet has provided those who are able to benefit from it new ways of giving and seeking information. These new contexts of communication include newsgroups , very much a text-based form of interaction with little visual enhancement. In the new era of 'risk society' (Beck 1992) people make use of newsgroups to talk about the risks which now confront the world, in their pursuit of trustworthy information and informants. Using the affair of Mad Cow Disease (BSE), with particular reference to the crisis in 1996, this article explores the dynamics of news exchange via the newsgroups as a process which is Interactive, International, Interested and Intertextual. These characteristics result in a form of discourse through which participants engage in the interpersonal social construction of risk. The credibility of the proposition that BSE poses a health risk to humans is the focus of their discussions: they are concerned with the nature of the evidence for that proposition and with the reliability of the sources responsible for endorsing it.