Matthew C. Nisbet, Ph.D, is a professor in the School of Communication at American University where his research focuses on the intersections between science, media, and politics. E-MAIL: nisbetmc@gmail.com
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For their upcoming annual meetings in San Francisco, the American Geophysical Union is sponsoring a pre-conference workshop introducing scientists, public information officers, journalists, and other attendees to several areas of social science research that examine dimensions of climate change communication and public engagement.
Below the fold are the details and the conference page is here. You can sign up for the workshop by visiting this page. It promises to be a great event and I am looking forward to the ideas, connections, and discussion that it generates.
Over at Dot Earth, the NY Times Andrew Revkin has a good round up and preview on Gore's new book Our Choice. His post also includes an embedded 30 minute interview between Katie Couric and Gore on his new book. Of interest, Couric asks Gore if he thinks the climate debate has been too technical and if there is a need to simplify and appeal to emotions. She also asks Gore about the recent Pew climate survey, which Gore describes as an outlier, asserting that public will and support for action are actually on the rise rather than in decline, as the Pew poll indicates.
I will be picking up my copy of Gore's book tomorrow night at his talk at Lisner Auditorium on the George Washington University campus.
The faculty here at American University's School of Communication include several of the country's leading environmental filmmakers with their work coordinated through the Center for Environmental Filmmaking. One of our faculty Larry Engel worked on the recent PBS NOW film "Waterworld" which documents how climate change is impacting Bangladesh. The film describes the human health effects that climate change is already causing in this developing country of more than 200 rivers and frequent storm surges. You can read a transcript and/or watch the film at the embed above.
You will also want to read about Engel's recent course "Practicing Environmentalism: Galapagos Islands," team taught with members of the faculty from the AU programs in environmental science and international relations.
Repower America's lastest advertising campaign to promote their new online feature "The Wall" is brilliant. The ads and the social media initiative vividly portray the diversity of support for serious climate action while also framing the relevance of the issue in ways that transcend the traditional ideological divide. As I wrote in a paper this spring at the journal Environment, the Repower campaign is a stark contrast to the dominant message of Inconvenient Truth which may have unintentionally reinforced the partisan divide on climate change.
Gore, however, also faces a major communication dilemma, one that I refer to as his Back Stage - Front Stage problem. From behind the curtain, directing the Repower America campaign, Gore's strategic message and initiative holds the promise of transcending the ideological divide. But each time he steps front stage--such as this week on the cover of Newsweek--given his status as a former presidential candidate, Gore makes it easy for Americans to reinterpret climate change via a partisan lens while providing more rhetorical fodder for conservative media.
Over at the Knight Science Tracker, Charlie Petit has a round-up on news coverage of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine's first significant research grants for stem cell research. Though much of the focus in California and nationally has obviously been on the promise of embryonic stem cell research, only four of the 14 funded projects involve these type of stem cells. The emphasis is on projects that could lead to the most immediate clinical results, a strong if not "tacit acknowledgment that the promise of human embryonic stem cells is still far in the future" writes Andrew Pollack at the NY Times.
On Monday, in a keynote presentation at the meetings of the Canadian Stem Cell Network in Montreal, I will be reviewing how far we have come over the past decade in the framing of the stem cell debate and in terms of public perceptions. I will post a synopsis here next week and I will have several studies to report on this winter and spring.
In the meantime, readers will want to check out the Network's newly launched online Stem Cell Charter. The site opens to a powerful video. It's a testimonial by scientists explaining their belief in the promise of stem cell research. Yet it doesn't engage in some of the trademark hype that brands much of the past political debate. At the Web site, you can sign the stem cell charter, offering your support for research and endorsing a specific reason. I chose "the responsible advancement of stem cell research."
Last week's Pew survey on American views of climate change generated a sizable amount of speculation and debate from bloggers and other commentators. See for example this round up at the NY Times.
In comparison to some of this blog debate, readers will find very useful the discussion offered earlier this week at NPR's Talk of the Nation involving Pew director Andrew Kohut and Yale researcher Anthony Lieserowitz. [Transcript.]
For more background on how lingering public disengagement relates to the frames of reference provided by the media, climate skeptics, and climate advocates alike, see this recent paper at the journal Environment. For a look at 20 years of public opinion trends on climate change, see this past study at Public Opinion Quarterly.
Creation is scheduled for a Dec./Jan. release in U.S. Theaters.
David Kirby is a geneticist turned science communication scholar who studies the depiction of science in popular film and the role of scientists as technical advisers to entertainment producers. He offers a review of the forthcoming Darwin biopic Creation at the blog Science & Entertainment Exchange.
The Trust for America's Health and the Pew Environment Group released a report yesterday focusing attention on the public health impacts of climate change. The report is the latest in a series of expert statements on the subject. The most significant finding is that only 5 U.S. states have engaged in planning related to the public health consequences of climate change. Research I am currently working on with Edward Maibach and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation examines how to effectively engage Americans on the health consequences of climate change. We expect that studies from our first stage of research will begin appearing in Spring 2010.
In today's Washington Post, former editor Leonard Downie and communication scholar Michael Schudson preview the release of a major new study on the future of news. Below are some of the key recommendations of the report which reflect similar themes I have described in recent articles and at thisblog specific to new models for science journalism. In particular, Downie and Schudson echo the need for government funding of new journalism ventures in areas such as science and health and the vital role at the local level that public media organizations and universities can and should play. [Related: See also this recent report authored with colleagues here at AU identifying best practices in digital journalism.]
From the Downie and Schudson op-ed today at the Washington Post:
Rather than depending primarily on shrinking newspapers, communities should have a range of diverse sources of news reporting. They should include commercial and nonprofit news organizations that can both compete and collaborate with one another, adapting traditional journalistic forms to the multimedia, interactive capabilities of digital communication. In a comprehensive report commissioned by the Columbia University Journalism School, "The Reconstruction of American Journalism," to be published this week, we suggest a number of public sources of support for this news reporting:
-- The Internal Revenue Service or Congress should clarify tax regulations to explicitly allow new or existing local news organizations to operate as nonprofit or low-profit entities, allowing them to receive tax-deductible donations, along with advertising revenue and other income.
-- Philanthropists and foundations should substantially increase support for local news reporting -- at both commercial and nonprofit organizations -- to levels they provide for arts, cultural and educational institutions.
-- Public radio and television should be substantially reoriented, through action by and reform of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to provide significant local news reporting in every community served by public stations -- reporting that too few of them do now.
-- Universities and colleges should become institutional sources of local, state and accountability news reporting, following the lead of pioneering journalism schools whose faculty and student journalists staff community news and investigative reporting Web sites.
-- A national Fund for Local News should be created with fees the Federal Communications Commission collects from or could impose on telecom users, broadcast licensees or Internet service providers. Grants should be made competitively by independent state Local News Fund Councils to local news organizations for innovations in local news reporting and ways to support it.
-- Governments, nonprofit organizations and journalists should increase the accessibility and usefulness of public information collected by federal, state and local governments, taking advantage of digital tools to analyze and use it for news reporting.
These are reasonable and achievable measures. They require only leadership in journalism, philanthropy, higher education, government and the rest of society to seize this moment of challenging changes and new beginnings in the media to ensure the future of news reporting.
