“Risks” and “communication”: conceptual discussion from the perspective of complex transdisciplinarity

This article explores the concept of risk communication, highlighting the lack of a unified definition and proposing a transdisciplinary, complex-thinking approach to better understand it. The concept of risk communication has been used in several fields of scientific knowledge, yet there is no consensus regarding its definition. The aim of this article is to discuss this concept based on the notion of transdisciplinarity and the theory of complex thought.

Methodologically, the study was developed through a theoretical deepening of the notions of "communication" and "risks". In the former case, the propositions of the Latin American School of Communication were chosen for discussion, encompassing the term's elasticity across different approaches. Meanwhile, the discussion on the definition of "risk" was framed within the approach of the vulnerability progression to disasters, which incorporates dynamic pressures such as unequal access to communication devices and disinformation. The article's innovation lies in considering risks not only as external agents to be communicated but also as embedded within the communication process.