Framing Science

National Academies Wants Your Input on Science Outreach

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 08:39:15 -0500

The National Academies is doing some preliminary pilot research on a new communication initiative. As part of that process, they want to find out what science blogs readers think are the most important and pressing issues in science. Below is a description and a link to an online survey that they would like readers to take a few minutes to complete.

What topics in science, engineering, and medicine matter most to you? The National Academies are interested in developing useful and engaging print and web-based educational materials on the topics that you'd like to learn more about. They invite you to participate in a brief survey. You can find that survey here.

In the 2-minute survey you'll be presented with a list of topics and asked to select the five that matter most to you. At the end, you can see how your answers compare with the results so far. And you can enter a drawing to receive a National Academies tote bag!

Let the National Academies know what topics you think they should focus on so they can be sure to provide you with materials that are useful and constructive. Your participation is greatly appreciated.

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Thurs. @ NYAS: Public Communication Re-Considered

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:12:12 -0500

The NY Academy of Sciences offers a stunning venue for public talks, forums, and receptions, with a view from the 40th floor of 7 World Trade Center.

Thursday morning I will be heading up to New York to give a 7pm talk at the New York Academy of Sciences. A crowd of more than 100 is expected for what I am hoping to be an interesting discussion and entertaining reception to follow. (Register for free here.)

Here's a brief preview of what I will be talking about followed by more specific details:

Over the past few years there have been signs of a major shift in how the scientific community in the United States views public engagement. Left behind is the assumption that simply informing an audience of the facts of science will meaningfully alter perceptions or decisions. Instead, one can detect a growing recognition that effective communication involves addressing an intended audience's values, interests, and worldviews.

Yet despite these new directions and initiatives, many communication efforts continue to be based on ad-hoc, intuition-driven approaches, paying little attention to interdisciplinary research on what makes for effective public engagement. Most notably, these initiatives start with the false premise that deficits in public knowledge are the central culprit driving societal conflict over science, when in fact, science literacy has only a limited role in shaping public perceptions and decisions.

In the talk, I review what we know from recent communication research about how the public arrives at judgments about controversial areas of science, highlighting successful communication initiatives and notable mistakes from a range of science debates including climate change and evolution.

In the last third of the presentation I close with a bold vision of the future, specifically a discussion of what can and should be done to move forward with more effective public engagement.

In fact these recommendations derive in part from a manuscript I am working on with my friend Dietram Scheufele, intended for a special upcoming journal symposium on the future of science communication.

In a way its an updated, bigger picture on the arguments we made in the cover article we wrote last year for The Scientist. It also draws upon insights and lessons learned from talks at a diversity of venues over the last year, our work with organizations such as the National Academies, and the studies we have published in the area.

Below the fold are details on our conclusions from the first draft of the manuscript:

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The HHMI Bulletin on Science Blogging and Sciblings

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:53:56 -0500

The HHMI Bulletin, the monthly magazine of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, runs a lengthy feature on science blogging in its November issue. I am quoted in the article with fellow Sciblings Tara Smith and Alex Palazzo.

Readers of Scienceblogs are likely to find the article of strong interest along with the other features at the online version of the Bulletin. You can subscribe for free to the print edition here.

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Is Name Calling an Effective Communication Strategy?

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:02:49 -0500

A few bloggers have registered their reaction to last week's PRI radio segment that questions the wisdom of calling climate change and evolution opponents "deniers." Most notably Orac, Mike the Mad Biologist, and Mark Hofnagle argue that their preferred brand of name calling remains the best communication strategy.

But Orac, Mad Mike, and Mark overlook that the key audience in these rhetorical fisticuffs is not the small group of so-called "denialists" but rather the wider spectator public who may otherwise be ambivalent about a complex, seemingly remote issue such as climate change.

As I explain in a recent interview with Big Think, snarling, finger-in-the-eye responses to opponents in these debates risks alienating middle-ground publics, or at a minimum keeps the debate locked in a conflict frame, missing the opportunity to more persuasively connect the issue to commonly shared values.

This same theme has been picked up by several commenters at this blog. For example, Jeremy writes:

This may sound cliched but that detract from its truth in my opinion. Using words that puts each side of a debate into neat little categories might be fun, like in a zoo. "Ooh. Look at that little denialist in his little box." But it doesn't help bridge gaps. When I manage to get through to people who believe in pseudoscience or the paranormal, it's not by emphasizing how we differ but what we have in common. I'll agree it's hard with the most far out extremists and maybe nothing can bring those people back, but when you're talking to your old-fashioned dad who think that climate change isn't happening, it's not constructive to call him a denialist. Trust me on that one.

Besley also articulates this point:

I wonder if those of you (which seems to be many you) who insist on terms like "denier" are clear on who you are talking to when you use the term. The person you are calling names certainly doesn't care; indeed, you're just as likely to give them material with which to paint science as absolutist and uncaring.
The real audience we need to think about is those people who are observing the debate from the sideline who may use a range of heuristics or schema (and not necessarily full arguments) to decide whom they support. If your side gets pegged as ideologues, I would expect your odds of support dimninsh substantially.

The point is to use the opportunities created by public forums to speak PAST the ideologues towards the people with whom you truly want to communicate; the people who have not yet staked a position.

Ignore the bait. Think about your audience. Craft a message that appeals to the broad middle. Or, of course, you could just yell at each other.

So instead of engaging in the same self-defeating name calling, what is an alternative strategy?

Two video segments from the Big Think interview explain the basics of the research and the arguments I have published in recent articles and book chapters. The first segment is on communication and framing generally. The second segment on climate change specifically.

These topics and more will be the focus of my talk next Thursday at the New York Academy of Sciences. The event is free to the public. Already more than a 100 attendees have signed up. It should prove an interesting discussion with reception to follow.

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Listen to this Radio Segment and Never Use "Denier" Again

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:31:33 -0500

PRI The World ran a 10 minute feature today on the wisdom of using the term "denier" in the debate over climate change and other science policy controversies.

Correspondent Jason Margolis does a terrific job in synthesizing research and comments from various experts on why the use of the label by science advocates is likely to be a major blunder. My comments come at about 7 minutes and 15 seconds into the archived audio.

What do readers think? Convinced yet that "denier" should be dropped from our lexicon?

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Should We Resort to Terms like "Denier" and "Anti-Science"?

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:10:48 -0500

My heads up on a forthcoming segment at Public Radio International's The World has generated a discussion about the communication misfires that science advocates create when they use terms such as "denier" and "anti-science."

The segment is scheduled to appear tomorrow (Friday). It will follow a report on climate change that appears about 32 minutes into the program. PRI The World is heard on 218 stations across the country, check here for local stations and times. Archived audio of the segment will appear here as of 5pm EST tomorrow.

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Appearance on PRI/BBC The World Discussing Denialism

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:48:07 -0500

I taped an interview yesterday with PRI/BBC The World discussing the unfortunate use by science advocates of the term "denier" in debates over climate change, evolution, and other issues involving scientific expertise. I'm told the segment may appear as early as today or tomorrow. Archived audio will be found here.

The frame device "denier" should be laid to rest in the same rhetorical grave as other terms such as "anti-science." They serve little purpose other than to feed polarization while also frequently backfiring, turning the debate into a discussion of the alleged underhanded or sensational tactics of science defenders rather than a focus on the substance of the issues themselves.

Worse, these terms are also often inaccurate. Few if any people in modern society are actually "anti-scientific," just like on few issues are the facts or evidence as clear as the Holocaust, the comparison called to mind in any use of "denier" in political discourse.

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Tonight @ AAAS: Science Communication Reconsidered

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:40:18 -0500

For members of the science policy community, I will be giving a talk tonight at 6pm at AAAS headquarters, titled "Science Communication Reconsidered: Key Issues for 2009 and Beyond." (1200 New York Ave., NW.)

In the talk, I will be focusing in detail on recent innovations in public engagement efforts as well as the prospects for a new generation of science policy experts. It should prove to be an interesting forum and debate over what's ahead and the possible directions to take as scientists and their institutions hope to better engage Americans on issues such as climate change, nanotechnology, evolution, and biomedical research. The presentation is the first among several I will be giving at different venues here in DC and New York over the next few months.

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Lessons for Science? AU Colleague Studies Impact of Late Night Comedy on Viewers' Engagement with Politics

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:52:44 -0500

This past year, in the School of Communication here at American University, we were lucky to add to our faculty Lauren Feldman, a newly minted PhD from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lauren (whose office is across the hall from mine) studies the impact of opinionated news shows, such as the O'Reilly Factor, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and the Daily Show on perceptions of political issues and candidates.

She recently appeared on CNN's Wolf Blitzer to discuss the implications of a forthcoming study on the impacts of late night comedy on viewers' interest in the presidential campaign (video.)

Her conclusions should sound familiar to readers who have read my articles or seen my talks about the importance of using late night comedy shows and entertainment media to broaden the audience for issues related to science, technology, and the environment. (A topic I will be revisiting in a number of upcoming presentations.)

From a news release that AU has put out on the study and Feldman's research:

"We have this fragmented media audience today," says School of Communication professor Lauren Feldman, who studies, among other things, the political impact of late-night comedy. "It's not the case that candidates can necessarily reach [voters] through conventional ways. Twenty years ago if you wanted to watch television at 6:30 you could pretty much only watch the news, and you would hear news of the campaign. Now it's so easy for people to tune that out, that I think it behooves candidates to go on these entertainment programs . . . to present their nonpolitical persona, which is more likely to resonate with people who are not following the campaign as closely as others."
But do these Daily Show and Colbert Report devotees get their news exclusively from their favorite TV personalities, or do those who chuckle as David Letterman quips "John McCain looks like the guy who thinks the nurses are stealing his stuff" also pay attention to more serious political coverage?

Feldman, who arrived at AU this fall, is set to publish a paper later this year that examines the interplay between exposure to late-night comedy and attention to politics.

"There's been a lot of concern in this narrative constructed in the media that young people are abandoning traditional news and getting all of their information from late night comedy, and we know that's not true," she says. "My study looked at whether exposure to late night comedy during a campaign might actually lead people to pay more attention to the campaign in traditional network news or cable news. We found that to be the case as a result of watching either Jay Leno or David Letterman. People who watched during the 2004 primaries were more likely to tune in to and pay attention to the campaign in traditional network and cable news sources."

That's a positive development, Feldman argues.

"It's brought a lot of attention to the candidates among people who might not otherwise have been paying that much attention," she says. "The more people pay attention to politics, the more likely they are to go to other information sources and go and vote on election day--that's great."

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Obama Planning Weekly YouTube Addresses

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:31:59 -0500

What else is new in the Obama presidency? Presidents have given weekly radio addresses for decades, but Obama plans to take this vehicle for direct communication digital, offering motivated viewers (and bloggers) weekly YouTube address. See the report at the Huffington Post.

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Upcoming Talks: Science Communication at a Crossroads

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:27:15 -0500

Readers in DC, New York City, and several other locations may be interested in turning out for talks I will be giving over the coming months. Details on dates, sponsors, and locations are below (the last still pending).

Science Communication Re-Considered: Key Issues for 2009 and Beyond
Monday, Nov. 17, 6pm
AAAS Headquarters
1200 New York Ave., NW
*For DC science policy community, RSVP here.

Communicating Science in a Changing World
Thurs, Dec. 4, 7pm
New York Academy of Sciences
Free to the public

Science Communication at a Crossroads
Thurs. Feb. 5, 2009
Science, Technology, and Society Lecture Series
Virginia Commonwealth University

Reporting on Climate Change: The Media and Public Understanding
Tues. Feb. 10
American Museum of Natural History, New York City
Admission $15
With Bud Ward of Yale Climate Forum, Andrew Revkin of the NY Times, Bill Blakemore of ABC News, and Diane Hawkins-Cox of CNN.

Annual Picard Lecture
March (date pending)
Health Law Institute
University of Alberta, Canada

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Higher Ed Wins: U.S. Gets Oval Office Professors

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:13:27 -0500

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The 2008 presidential election has broken so many political barriers that historians may overlook one unusual fact: When Barack Obama takes the oath of office next January alongside his running mate, Joe Biden, it will be the first time in history that the president, vice president, and both of their spouses have worked in higher education.

Taken together, the Obamas and the Bidens have amassed decades of experience at colleges and universities. Mr. Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 until 2004, when he took office in the U.S. Senate. His wife, Michelle, has worked in the administration at the same university and is on leave from her job as vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals.

The Bidens also have spent considerable time in academe. For the past 17 years, Mr. Biden has taught as an adjunct professor at the Widener University School of Law. His wife, Jill, is an English instructor at Delaware Technical and Community College's Stanton-Wilmington campus.

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At Big Think, Thoughts on Obama as Master Communicator

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:59:10 -0500

With polls looking good for an Obama victory, here's a clip from an interview I did with Big Think back in July, discussing why Obama has been such a successful communicator.

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We Can Solve It? Forthcoming Paper on Opinion-Leaders and Climate Change

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 08:52:18 -0500

Opinion-leaders are a commonly overlooked resource by science organizations and advocates. Public communication initiatives too often ignore the special individuals across communities and social groups that can serve as vital go-betweens and information brokers, passing on messages about an issue such as climate change that can speak directly to their otherwise inattentive peers, co-workers, and friends.

In a forthcoming article at the journal Science Communication, we synthesize past research from politics, marketing, and public health, presenting a toolbox of concepts, measures, and strategies for how opinion-leaders can be incorporated into science campaigns. My co-author on the paper is John Kotcher, a former graduate student here at AU now working as a communication officer at the National Academies.

The article appears in a special issue of the journal focused on climate change, guest edited by Edward Maibach, a professor at George Mason University, and director of the Center for Climate Change Communication. The issue is scheduled for early 2009. Please contact me if you would like a draft version of the paper.

Readers are probably familiar with Al Gore's use of opinion-leaders in both his Climate Project and more recent We campaign. In the paper we review these campaigns, cautioning that opinion-leader initiatives need to be careful to balance the use of social networking tools and digital organizing with a traditional focus on face-to-face interactions and real world connections. As we discuss in the paper, hand-held device strategies such as the Obama campaign's iPhone application are perhaps uniquely suited to bridging digital and face-to-face interactions. These technological innovations should be adapted to science communication efforts.

From the conclusion to our paper:

With Gore's initiative as a model, future climate communication campaigns are likely to make online organizing a central feature of their efforts. Indeed, digital opinion-leader campaigns may be especially appealing because of the relative ease in which organizers can develop metrics to measure success. Yet ease in tracking data does not equate to effectiveness, and we urge caution in over-relying on digital networks, especially in place of face-to-face influence. Surveys show that Americans prefer their recommendations via verbal interaction and there still does not exist strong research on whether or not the self-selection biases of the Web can be overcome within these digital networks. Moreover, to date, by all accounts the success of the digital organizing efforts of the We campaign have been relatively modest. With strong selectivity bias online, digital interaction might simply result in ideological reinforcement and intensification of beliefs about climate change which may eventually limit the willingness of recruited opinion leaders to compromise on pragmatic policy solutions, (a typical social movement problem perhaps amplified by the Web.) Moreover, if the "weak ties" of digital interactions lack the strength of traditional opinion leader influence, then time and effort spent online by digital opinion-leaders may be far less effective than traditional face-to-face influence. The danger of relying too heavily on digital organizing is that it might create a false sense of efficacy among participants, with activists believing they are making a difference on climate change, when impact may be limited at best.
Given these many dimensions of online influence, the goal for both researchers and practitioners is to figure out under what conditions or with which demographic segments digital opinion-leaders can be effectively used on climate change, and in which ways can online interactions build on real-world ties. Combining digital organizing with face-to-face interaction by using hand held devices such as the iPhone, as was done in the Obama campaign, is a strategy that future climate change efforts should explore.

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Obama leads by 10pts in Polls including Cell Phones versus 5pts in Landline Only

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:47:51 -0500

Polls including cell-phones are highlighted in orange.

Wondering about the variation across survey organizations in estimating Obama's national lead? As I have been discussing in my research methods course here at AU, much of the variation is likely accounted for by differences in likely voter models but also in sampling differences that include either cell phones or landline phones only.

As Wired reports, over at the blog 538.com, Nate Silver shows that surveys that include cell phones average a 10pt lead for Obama, reflecting stronger support among younger voters and minorities. Among surveys that include only landline phones, Obama's lead averages only 5pts.

To read more about the impact of the profusion of polls on coverage of the election, see this short chapter on the topic that I recently published at the Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods.

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