Matthew C. Nisbet, Ph.D, is Associate Professor in the School of Communication at American University where his research focuses on the intersections among science, media, and society. E-MAIL: nisbetmc@gmail.com
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In the wake of last week's defeat of cap and trade, the predictable narrative offered by bloggers and commentators has been to blame the failure on industry, skeptics, and Republicans. It's also the explanation likely echoing in the minds of many scientists and environmental advocates.
But it's important to take a step back from the easy emotional reaction and take a look at the complexity of factors that shape societal gridlock on this issue. As I remarked to Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth earlier this month:
If we were able to statistically model societal inaction on climate change, what proportion of the variance would be accounted for by the disinformation efforts of skeptics and false balance by journalists? Perhaps 10%. Maybe 15%? [Commentators] unfortunately tend to exaggerate the influence of climate skeptics while overlooking the many other factors that contribute to societal gridlock...
At the Breakthrough blog, as Devon Swezey, Yael Borofsky, and Jesse Jenkins detail, Republicans opposed the bill but so did many Democrats giving Harry Reid only 30-40 votes in favor. And while the Chamber of Commerce opposed the bill, major industry members including Shell, BP, and Alcoa helped craft the legislation and actively lobbied for passage.
The public opinion and media environment also contributed to the legislative defeat, but this factor is far more complex than narrowly blaming the work of skeptics, conservative media, or claims about "false balance" in coverage. As I described in a panel presentation earlier this year at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, legislation on climate change--which necessitates a non-incremental, systemic change in policy--should be compared to other similar policy debates such as welfare or immigration reform where wider public opinion and the level of news attention has played a decisive role.
As the recent Six Americas of Global Warming report shows, the U.S. public has yet to come to the type of widespread consensus and opinion-intensity on the issue that creates the incentive for the White House, Democratic members of Congress, and moderates among Republicans to take the political risks to pass legislation.
To get to that point, we need to rethink the focus and nature of policy action and how we communicate about the issue. Following Copenhagen and now with the failure of cap and trade, a window has opened for discussion of alternative policy directions. New voices, seats at the table, and fresh ideas are needed on the most effective approaches to curbing greenhouse gas emissions, policy proposals that are also capable of gaining bi-partisan support in Congress.
In an interview with Ezra Klein at the Washington Post, Michael Shellenberger offers this perspective:
I think that some time needs to pass for Democrats and liberals and greens to assess what happened and start coming to terms with the political, economic and technological realities that are the driving force behind the serial political failures of cap-and-trade. Our view is you need a price on carbon, but that it's going to start very low. No one will impose or sustain a high price on carbon as long as the gap between fossil fuels and clean energy remains so wide. So we need to be moving to a framework where at the center is technological innovation to close the gap between fossil fuels and clean energy. That might need to be funded with a small tax on carbon. But the center is the technological innovation.
In conjunction with our policy approach to the problem, we also need to rethink how we communicate about the relevance of climate change and importantly the benefits that would accrue from proposed action. Environmental groups spent record amounts of resources on advertising and lobbying in support of cap and trade. From this effort, what lessons were learned? What appears to have been successful? What strategies can be ruled out as dead ends?
As the NY Times' Tom Friedman concluded in his column yesterday:
The Senate's failure to act is a result of many factors, but one is that the climate-energy policy debate got disconnected from average people. We need less talk about "climate" and more about how conservation saves money, renewable energy creates jobs, restoring the gulf's marshes sustains fishermen and preserving the rainforest helps poor people. Said Glenn Prickett, vice president at the Nature Conservancy: "We have to take climate change out of the atmosphere, bring it down to earth and show how it matters in people's everyday lives."
UPDATE: Eric Pooley has an excellent analysis arguing similar points in an article today at Yale Environment 360.
In reaction to our BMC Public Health study published this month that examined the potential to re-frame climate change in terms of health, reader Stephanie Parent had this astute observation, one worth testing in follow up research.
I was jazzed to read your article "Maibach et al., Reframing climate change as a public health issue: an exploratory study of public reactions BMC Public Health 2010, 10:299" and learn of the Center for Climate Change Communication.
The discussion regarding Figures 4 and 5 struck an idea regarding how people did not respond well to the sentence about increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables and reducing meat consumption. In comparing this sentence with the others, I noticed that the other sentences are societal or governmental actions to change land use or offer services, while the food consumption sentence is based on changing personal behavior, which people tend to be reluctant to change and feel their personal way of life and liberty is being attacked. While not quite the same, what if you reframe the sentence in a way that sounds more like a societal change rather than a personal behavior change to "Increasing the availability of fruits and vegetables and healthy food options to help people maintain a healthy weight, will help prevent heart disease and cancer, and will play an important role in limiting global warming."
It is food for thought.
The open access study is the second most read article at BMC Public Health over the past 30 days and has sparked some interesting debate and valuable feedback.
What do readers think? Should we hold off on emphasizing personal changes to diet until more engagement is done on the public health implications of climate change? Or are you (and the public) likely open to suggestions about societal changes in food availability and costs that lead to healthier diets and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions from food production?
The announcement of this award is an important step towards greater recognition of the need for public engagement on the part of scientists and their institutions. AAAS should be commended for their commitment to leadership in this area. Details below and here.
It will be interesting to see the criteria by which nominations are judged. As I noted last month, how public engagement is ultimately defined, its goals and outcomes, remains an open question. (See also this comment.)
There is more major news on this front coming in August including the launch of a new blog, and a special issue of a leading journal with articles that review different dimensions of public engagement activities along with the types of structural and cultural transformations needed within the science community and at universities. Be sure to check back here for the details.
AAAS Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science
Nomination Deadline: 15 October
The Award
The AAAS Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science, established in 2010, recognizes early-career scientists and engineers who demonstrate excellence in their contribution to public engagement with science activities. A monetary prize of $5,000, a commemorative plaque, complimentary registration to the AAAS Annual Meeting, and reimbursement for reasonable hotel and travel expenses to attend the AAAS Annual Meeting to receive the prize are given to the recipient.
For the purposes of this award, public engagement activities are defined as the individual's active participation in efforts to engage with the public on science- and technology-related issues and promote meaningful dialogue between science and society.
The award will be given at the AAAS Annual Meeting.
Eligibility
Nominee must be an early-career scientist or engineer in academia, government or industry actively conducting research in any scientific discipline (including social sciences and medicine). Groups or institutions will not be considered for this award. AAAS employees are ineligible. One scientist or engineer will be chosen to receive the award on an annual basis.
* "Early career" is defined as an individual who has been in his/her current field for less than seven years and pre-tenure or job equivalent. Post-doctoral students are eligible for this award.
Nominee will have demonstrated excellence in his/her contribution to public engagement with science activities, with a focus on interactive dialogue between the individual and a non-scientific, public audience(s).
Changing the conversation about climate change: Graduate students from American and George Mason Universities prepare interview tent on the National Mall.
WASHINGTON, DC -- How do Americans respond when they are asked to reflect on the public health risks of climate change and the benefits to health from mitigation-related actions? In other words, if we were to re-frame climate change in terms of localized impacts that people personally experience and can understand--such as vulnerability to extreme heat or poor air quality--could we shift public thinking on the issue? Those are the questions that I examine with Ed Maibach and colleagues in a study published this month at the open access journal BMC Public Health.
We find that even Americans who tend to discount climate change or are ambivalent about its relevance react favorably when the issue is re-framed in the context of public health. Our results suggest that when it comes to public engagement, health experts have an important perspective to share about climate change. This still dramatically under-communicated perspective offers Americans a compelling way to think about an issue that has proven deeply difficult for many people to fully comprehend. The new frame of reference also focuses on a range of possible policy actions that offer local as well as global benefits.
Below I provide brief background on the method, the findings, and our conclusions. We encourage readers to review the full open-access study. We wrote the article in a style that was intended to be informative, understandable, and engaging to a broader audience. Later this year, we will be conducting a follow up experimental study that tests the public health frame against a traditional environmental message in the context of a nationally-representative online survey.
Held in over 30 countries, the World Wide Views on Global Warming initiative represents the state-of-the-art in new approaches to public engagement, the subject of several recent reports and meetings. This video features a short documentary on the Australian event.
Over the weekend, my friend Chris Mooney contributed an excellent op-ed to the Washington Post pegged to an American Academy of Arts and Sciences event yesterday. The op-ed previewed a longer essay by Chris released at the event in which he described some of the major themes expressed in the transcripts of three meetings convened by the Academy over the past year. The Academy meetings prompted attending scientists, policy experts, ethicists, journalists, social scientists, and lawyers to discuss key issues in science communication and public engagement.
Summarized in an Academy news release, the meetings emphasized the following conclusions:
Scientists and the public both share a responsibility for the divide. Scientists and technical experts sometimes take for granted that their work will be viewed as ultimately serving the public good. Members of the public can react viscerally and along ideological lines, but they can also raise important issues that deserve consideration.
Scientific issues require an "anticipatory approach." A diverse group of stakeholders -- research scientists, social scientists, public engagement experts, and skilled communicators -- should collaborate early to identify potential scientific controversies and the best method to address resulting public concerns.
Communications solutions differ significantly depending on whether a scientific issue has been around for a long time (e.g., how to dispose of nuclear waste) or is relatively new (e.g., the spread of personal genetic information). In the case of longstanding controversies, social scientists may have had the opportunity to conduct research on public views that can inform communication strategies. For emerging technologies, there will be less reliable analysis available of public attitudes.
As I reviewed in an article last year with Dietram Scheufele, these conclusions reflect the dominant focus of research in the fields of science communication and science studies over the past 15 years and can be used to plan, guide, and evaluate a range of communication and public engagement initiatives. It is therefore deeply encouraging that these same conclusions emerged from the meetings convened by the American Academy and are given attention in the essay. It's a sign that research in the field has contributed to a cultural shift in how leaders in U.S. science view public engagement.
You have to like the U.S. chances in advancing to the semi-finals of the World Cup. That's right, the semi-finals. If the U.S. beats Ghana on Saturday--and they should be a favorite--they play the winner of Uruguay and S. Korea in the quarterfinals.
Meanwhile, readers will find interesting this video from Reuters featuring CalTech scientists testing the controversial "Jabuluani" ball used at the World Cup.
What do you think? Like the U.S. chances to make the semis? Has the ball had an impact on the games?
Over the weekend, Politico ran a lengthy feature by Josh Gerstein in which he asks various experts to assess how environmental groups have reacted to the Obama administration's handling of the BP oil disaster.
In my own comments quoted in the article, I note that environmental groups appear to have adopted a smart strategy, letting the heavy news attention and general emphasis on public accountability do the communication work for them. If environmental groups were to become more open in their criticism of the Administration or too visible in news coverage, they risk alienating the White House and may be criticized by the media and the public for being politically opportunistic. Below are additional thoughts on the article and recent trends:
* As I emphasized to Gerstein, the sound bite of the crisis so far has been James Carville's "who's your daddy" comment, a frame device delivered with deep emotion that instantly conveys the emphasis on public accountability that has come to dominate news narratives. With this interpretation so salient, having enviro groups add their voice to the outrage would add little while generating the political risks mentioned above. As I told Politico: "In some ways, the media coverage is doing a lot of the work for the environmental groups. They have a perfect narrative going right now. ...The lower profile is working for them."
* The BP oil disaster has led to important shifts in public opinion. Here's how I described the shifts in these opinion trends in a presentation to NOAA staff last week:
Over the last three months, Gallup polling finds that the Gulf oil spill has led to an expected shift in Americans' views on the balance between pursuing energy supplies and environmental protection. As Gallup reports, in March, by 50% to 43%, Americans said it was more important to develop U.S. energy supplies than to protect the environment, continuing a trend in the direction of energy production seen since 2007. By mid-May, following heavy news and public attention to the oil spill, the majority had shifted to favor environmental protection, by 55% to 39% -- the second-largest percentage (behind the 58% in 2007) favoring the environment in the 10-year history of the question.
Shifts in the perceptions and preferences among the segment of the public who is relatively non-attentive to environmental issues explains the non-linear nature of trends in aggregate American public opinion and argue against the extreme urgency voiced by some environmental advocates when they pointed to downward turns in these trends earlier this year. In fact, across the past decade, while up and down fluctuations might occur among the non-attentive public, among a sizable proportion of Americans there has been an enduring strong base of environmental activism and concern in the U.S. (For an apt metaphor describing the up and down cycles in American environmental concern, see Andrew Revkin's "waves in a shallow pan" analogy.)
Working with the Gallup organization, sociologist Riley Dunlap has tracked the strength of this base since 2000, estimating over time that between 60% to 70% of Americans self-identify as either active (approx. 15-20%) in the environmental movement or sympathetic (approx. 50%). Similarly, there continues to be a stable, yet dramatically smaller segment of hostility to the environmental movement and to action on climate change. Gallup tracks this segment around 10% while Yale/GMU surveys indicate that outright "climate dismissives" are in the 10-15% range.
Trends related to the economy, weather, national elections, wars, energy crises, scandals, and natural disasters will contribute to up and down cycles in environmental concern. However, the focus of environmental organizations, government agencies, and scientists should remain on using their communication capital effectively and wisely and not over-reacting to these trends in a way that might damage this enduring base line of public trust and concern over the environment.
What do readers think? Have environmental groups been visible enough in the wake of the BP oil disaster? Should they be critical of the Administration? Are enviros taking the right steps to turn the oil disaster into a wake up call for policy action?
Update: At the Huffington Post, Jane Hamsher, founder of Firedoglake.com, interprets my comments to the Politico as criticism of environmental groups, when to the contrary, as I explain above, their approach to date has been an effective and wise strategy. Hamsher quotes me out of context and does not provide a link to the Politico article as the source for the quote.
Tomorrow morning at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, I will be addressing the annual conference of the University Research Magazine Association. I have pasted the text of my prepared remarks below with relevant links embedded. I will post a follow up on Friday highlighting questions, comments, and reactions. Readers are strongly encouraged to weigh in with their own reactions.
As professional science communicators and journalists, you are living in an era of convergence between two major trends in society.
The first trend is a dominant focus of this conference: Technology, audience preferences and behaviors have dramatically altered the nature of journalism. The balance of control over media content and information has shifted from the journalist as the gatekeeper and producer to the people formerly known as sources, experts, and audiences who have emerged as active contributors, collaborators, users, creators, disseminators, recommenders, and at times, powerful critics of content.
In this new era of digital technology, traditional media forms such as the printed science magazine, I would argue, should now be considered as secondary products to the Web, which should offer a "mega-content plus" version of the magazine, constantly updated, archived, curated, interactive, sharable, transportable, collaborative with other media, and actively connected to face-to-face dialogue, participation, and learning.
In this digital era, replacing the traditional audience for science content are two important groups. The first are "science publics," these are highly motivated individuals, usually with personal or professional ties to a field of science, an area of research, or a policy debate such as climate change or stem cell research. These "science publics" deep dive into media content, consuming news and discussion of the science topic across media and platforms. They expect high standards and quality for content, and they expect that content be interactive and responsive to their feedback, reposting, forwarding, or commenting. From the perspective of the university or research institution, these are perhaps the most strategically important users of media content, since "science publics" typically constitute the influentials and decision-makers that shape the reputation, brand, funding, and regulation of scientific research.
The other group constitutes a broader, diverse mass public. These individuals may lack the motivation and/or ability to regularly take advantage of the many rich sources of science content online. Yet in moments of personal need--such as a health problem--or at times of a focusing event -such as the Gulf oil spill--they will turn to the Web to seek out specific information about the topic. At other times they may simply "bump" into science media while searching out other topics or using entertainment or political media. On other occasions, through digital and face-to-face networks they will follow recommendations to science content from friends or colleagues who as opinion-leaders are members of the active "science public." To the extent that universities and research institutions hold a broader philosophical and social commitment to public education and engagement, these users of science content also remain centrally important.
The second trend involves a continuing shift in how the public is viewed relative to societal decisions about science. For decades, science communication has been defined as a process of transmission, where technical facts, findings, and concepts are popularized and translated for audiences with the goal of improving "science literacy," a term I would argue respectfully is too often used as a slogan or a brand device rather than as a carefully defined concept that is translated and evaluated relative to specific outcomes. In this model, science was expected to be well understood and supported by the public, but free from public input or control.
The shift over the past decade has been away from a transmission and science literacy model to a view focused on public engagement, which means empowering, enabling, motivating, informing, and educating the public around not just the technical but also the political and social dimensions of science....but remembering what the public does with the acquired knowledge, motivation, skills, and resources and how they participate on the issue, is up to them.
In addition, unlike literacy which has a uni-directional connotation that blames a "knowledge deficient" public, engagement is as much about informing the public as it is about also informing experts, decision-makers, and as I will discuss more specific to science magazines, journalists. Communication is viewed as a two-way process where experts, decision-makers, and journalists seek input and learn from the public about preferences, needs, insights, ideas, policy options or in the case of journalism, what stories should be covered and what angles, dimensions, and voices emphasized.
From personal experience and many discussions that I have had, I know that these two trends introduce massive amounts of "control" anxiety for research institutions, scientists, and journalists alike. If citizens directly shaping the research agenda for biomedical or nanotechnology research is anxiety producing for scientists and administrators, journalists in the digital era face their own sources of concern.
When non-professionals are now active contributors of content, what role is there for professional news judgment and gathering? What issues are raised relative to journalism ethics, norms, standards of quality, accuracy, independence, and conflict of interest?
Next week the Howard Hughes Medical Institute will be hosting the annual conference of the University Research Magazine Association (URMA). The association is comprised of editors and staffers at magazines that cover the research and scholarly activities of universities, nonprofit research centers, and institutes in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Europe.
The URMA conference this year takes a look at the future of these magazines, examining the transition to new online media tools and social media technologies, and strategies for engaging general audiences.
What do readers think? What should be the role and function of university research magazines in the new world of digital media? What are the stories that these magazines should tell and how can they expand their reach and value in a competitive media environment? How can the content of these magazines and their Web sites be integrated with other university-based communication, media, and community engagement efforts?
These are some of the issues I will be addressing in a presentation on the second day of the conference. In preparing that presentation, I am interested in what readers think.
