According to Ericson and Haggerty (1997), "Risks exist only in institutional knowledge about them" (p. 100). To know what a risk is, is to know the institutional discourse around the risk - how it is classified, what it means, and how it should be responded to. Once classifications are taken for granted, the risk has been institutionalized. Risk communication systems (RCS) provides plans of action for what to do and identity for who to be. It provides guidelines for how to report these risks as per the institutional standards (i.e., police reports). This institutionalism moves the authorship of risk away from the individual and to the routinized, institutional expectations. These standardizations allow the information to be compared to similar institutionalized information. Conflict arises at which institution has the "correct" classifications of risk. Since risks are just possibilities, they are open to various social constructions such as which view is marginalized or should be changed.
References:
Ericson, R. V., & Haggerty, K.D. (1997). The Risk Society. In R.V. Ericson & K.D. Haggerty (Eds.) Policing the risk society (pp. 81-130). U of Toronto: Toronto.