The August issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment features open-access articles that review research, define challenges, and propose new initiatives in the area of science communication with a focus on environmental controversies. Over the past several years, there has been increasing attention to communication and public engagement at flagship science journals. The special issue of Frontiers represents the most comprehensive discussion and examination to date.

The special issue opens with an editorial by Dot Earth’s Andrew Revkin (see his post) followed by 6 review articles that address over-arching issues in science communication and public engagement; the role of universities; the role of Federal agencies; the role of individual scientists; the role of advocates; and the role of interface organizations such as cooperative extension offices.

The special issue is the outcome of a 2009 conference hosted by the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and organized by Cary scientist Peter Groffman. (In a podcast interview, Groffman reflects on the conference and contributions from attendees.)

I was one of several co-authors who had the opportunity to team with Groffman on the “over-arching issues” paper. Titled “Restarting the Conversation: Challenges at the interface between ecology and society,” the paper reviews research on how the public and decision-makers learn, form opinions, and reach judgments about complex environmental problems such as climate change. In a table that I put together, the differences between how scientists and communication researchers tend to view these processes are summarized, with assumptions grouped by the “Deficit model” versus the “Public Engagement model.”

There has been increasing attention (and some confusion) about the differences between these outlooks and my hope is that the table provides a useful heuristic for further discussion. The paper concludes with specific types of initiatives that research suggests are likely to be effective at increasing public understanding and participation.

In a separate commentary that I co-authored with Mark Hixon (Oregon State), Kathleen Dean Moore (Oregon State), and Michael Nelson (Michigan State), we raise attention to the need for multidisciplinary partnerships in the area of climate change communication. The essay is based on the insights, revelations, and conclusions from the 16 member Columbia River Quorum, which was composed of scientists, scholars, and professionals – four representatives from each of what we describe as the four academic “cultures” – who met in Oregon in 2009 for the first of what we hope will be many similar summits across the world.

The goal of that meeting was to identify and build synergies by which members of traditionally separate disciplinary cultures — specifically the environmental sciences, philosophy and religion, the social sciences, and the creative arts and professions — can accomplish collaboratively what none are capable of doing alone (see Figure above). In the essay, we propose specific strategies for catalyzing these inter-disciplinary partnerships with the goal of creating a new communication infrastructure around the issue of climate change.

These strategies include a bold proposal to pool “public impact” money from individual research grants at the university level to be re-invested by a “four culture” expert committee in local and regional public engagement initiatives. It also includes a call for a digital news community–a Chronicle of Higher Ed focused on climate change education and communication–that would serve as a catalyst for identifying and diffusing best practices and partnerships.

I am going to have much more to say about the special issue of Frontiers and the need for Four Culture partnerships later this month as a new major blog initiative focused on public engagement launches. Posts and content at the blog will also feature the thoughts, reflections, and ideas of various co-authors and contributors to the special issue of Frontiers along with spotlights on specific examples of public engagement in action. Check back here on August 16.

See also:

Nisbet, M.C. & Scheufele, D.A. (2009). What’s Next for Science Communication? Promising Directions and Lingering Distractions. American Journal of Botany, 96 (10), 1767-1778.

Communicating the Second Premise: Whether Obama or Bush, Values Drive Science Policy Decisions

Reconsidering Climate Change Literacy & Communication

Pew Survey of Scientists & the Public: Implications for Public Engagement and Communication

Recommended Books on Science Communication

–WPost leads its Sunday edition with a feature alleging a spike in visits to Colonial Williamsburg from Tea Party sympathizers. One enthusiast asks the role-playing George Washington: “General, when is it appropriate to resort to arms to fight for our liberty?”

–The Post’s Dan Milbank, relying heavily on releases from Media Matters for America, draws a correlation between several recent arrests for violence and the rhetoric of Glenn Beck.

–At the NY Times Sunday magazine, Peggy Orenstein offers a revealing essay on how Twitter is shaping in the words of Erving Goffmann the presentation of ourselves. Orenstein turns to MIT’s Sherry Turkle for insight.

See also:

Are Radical Right Wing Media Feeding Political Violence and Hate?

Throughout the month of August, Big Think will introduce a different “dangerous idea” each day. Brace yourself: these ideas may at first seem shocking or counter-intuitive–but they are worth our attention, even if we end up rejecting them. Every idea in the series will be supported by contributions from leading experts, from the world’s top theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, to prolific legal scholar Judge Richard Posner, to Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker, to linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky.

Today’s dangerous idea is posed by bioethicist Jacob Appel who suggests that the government should supplement our drinking water with lithium, which some studies suggest might lower suicide rates. You can watch Appel pitch his dangerous idea below and read more about his proposal–along with the arguments against– at Big Think’s Dangerous Ideas blog.

What do readers think? My own feeling is that in a world of Glenn Beck conspiracy theories and widespread government distrust, that at least in the short term, the political dangers of the idea outweigh the possible public health benefits.

UPDATE: Big Think sent along this news release detailing upcoming Dangerous Ideas.

BigThink.com Declares August “The Month of Thinking Dangerously”

New York, NY, August 2, 2010 – Had Copernicus been too terrified to
publish his theory of heliocentrism, how long would it have taken
people to realize that Earth, in fact, revolves around the Sun? Had
U.S. Secretary of State William Seward folded to public scrutiny and
not purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 for two cents an acre,
America would face a worse oil crisis today — and may have faced a
nuclear threat on North American soil during the Cold War. In the
spirit of those who are brave enough to advance seemingly radical
ideas, Big Think presents “The Month of Thinking Dangerously.”

Throughout the month of August, Big Think will introduce a different
“dangerous idea” each day. Brace yourself: these ideas may at first
seem shocking or counter-intuitive — but they are worth our
attention, even if we end up rejecting them. Every idea in the series
will be supported by contributions from leading experts, from the
world’s top theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, to prolific legal
scholar Judge Richard Posner, to Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary
Becker, to linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky. Kicking off the
first week of the series, Big Think announces its first five dangerous
ideas:

1. Drug Our Drinking Water (August 2)

When the government added fluoride to our drinking water in the 1940s,
it was hailed as a great public health success. Why shouldn’t the
government add a trace amount of lithium–which has been shown to
limit suicide — to our water as well? It may save 12,000 lives a
year.

2. Sell Your Kidneys (August 3)

As an adult you’re capable of making your own economic decisions about
your livelihood — why shouldn’t you have the right to sell one of you
kidneys?

3. Erase Traumatic Memories and Achieve Your Own “Eternal Sunshine” (August 4)

Scientists have already been able to eliminate certain memories in
mice and are expected to be able to the same in humans. Shouldn’t each
of us have the right to wipe traumatic events from our mind to ensure
a happier life?

4. Blot Out the Sun — Or Face Extinction (August 5)

Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen argues that adding “about 3
million tons per year of sulfur” to the atmosphere would lower average
temperature at the Earth’s surface by about 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

5. Abandon Earth — Or Face Extinction (August 6)

“It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the
next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human
race shouldn’t have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet,”
says Stephen Hawking. It’s time to abandon Earth.

These are just five of the 30 dangerous ideas in Big Think’s latest series.

Big Think is a global knowledge network that showcases the
cutting-edge ideas of leading experts in a variety of fields. Big
Think has interviewed more than 1,500 thought leaders, including
economists Paul Krugman and Muhammad Yunas, futurist Ray Kurzweil,
biologists Rickard Dawkins, E. O. Wilson, Paul Nurse and Anthony
Fauci, filmmaker Ken Burns, novelists John Irving and Paul Auster,
business leaders Meg Whitman and Richard Branson, investors Peter
Thiel and George Soros, journalists Arianna Huffington and David
Remnick, US Poet Laureates Billy Collins and Rita Dove, US senators
John McCain and the late Teddy Kennedy, particle physicists Freeman
Dyson and Michio Kaku, and artists Chuck Close and Jules Feiffer. For
more information about Big Think or its “Month of Thinking
Dangerously” please feel free to contact Andrew Dermont at (212)
242-0617 or andrewdermont@bigthink.com.

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.

See also:

Audio and Highlights of the Harvard Kennedy School Panel w/ Andrew Revkin on Climate Change, Skeptics, and the Media

Study: Re-Framing Climate Change as a Public Health Issue

Slate: More Science Won’t Solve Climate Change Gridlock

At Slate, A Need for Diplomacy in the Climate Wars

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?

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).

* Types of public engagement activities might include: informal science education, public outreach, public policy, and/or science communication activities, such as mass media, public dialogue, radio, TV and film, science café, science exhibit, science fair, and social and online media.

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.

Shifting the Train of Thought Towards Public Health

Research over the past several decades has shown that how people “frame” an issue — i.e., how they mentally organize and discuss with others the issue’s central ideas — greatly influences how they understand the nature of the problem, who or what they see as being responsible for the problem, and what they feel should be done to address the problem. Polling data collected by Ed Maibach and colleagues suggest that the dominant mental frame used by most members of the public to organize their conceptions about climate change is that of “climate change as an environmental problem.”

However, as I reviewed in a paper published last year and as we discuss in the study:

…when climate change is framed as an environmental problem, this interpretation likely distances many people from the issue and contributes to a lack of serious and sustained public engagement necessary to develop solutions. This focus is also susceptible to a dominant counter frame that the best solution is to continue to grow the economy – paying for adaptive measures in the future when, theoretically, society will be wealthier and better able to afford them – rather than focus on the root causes of the environmental problem. This economic frame likely leaves the public ambivalent about policy action and works to the advantage of industries that are reluctant to reduce their carbon intensity. Indeed, it is precisely the lack of a countervailing populist movement on climate change that has made policy solutions so difficult to enact.

Suggesting a novel frame for climate change — i.e., a frame such as public health that people had not previously considered — is potentially useful when it helps people understand the issue more clearly by providing additional personal and societal relevance. Re-defining climate change in public health terms should help people make connections to already familiar problems such as asthma, allergies, and infectious diseases experienced in their communities, while shifting the visualization of the issue away from remote Arctic regions, and distant peoples and animals.

In the process, giving climate change a public health focus suggests that there is a need to both mitigate (i.e. reduce greenhouse gas emissions) and adapt to the problem (i.e. protect communities and people from current and future health related impacts). The frame also presents the opportunity to involve additional trusted communication partners on the issue, notably public health experts and local community leaders.

Evaluating How Americans Respond to Climate Change as a Health Problem

Last summer, joined by outstanding graduate students from AU and GMU, we conducted approximately hour-long open-ended interviews with 70 subjects recruited on the National Mall, at a rural Maryland outlet mall, and over the phone. We were looking for respondents who lived at least 1 hour outside of the Washington, DC area. (In all, our final respondent pool represented 29 states.)

Using a short screening survey, we categorized subjects in terms of 6 previously identified audience segments on climate change. These six segments of Americans – the Alarmed (18% of the adult population), the Concerned (33%), the Cautious (19%), the Disengaged (12%), the Doubtful (11%), and the Dismissive (7%) – fall along a continuum from those who are engaged on the issue and looking for ways to take appropriate actions (the Alarmed) to those who actively deny its reality and are looking for ways to oppose societal action (See below and the Six Americas of Global Warming report.)

During the open-ended interview, we asked respondents to articulate in their own words their beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and behavior relative to climate change. At the end of the session, we then re-set the frame of reference on the issue by asking respondents to read a short essay.

My co-author Ed Maibach conducts an interview in the shade of the Hirshhorn sculpture garden on the National Mall.

The one-page essay was organized into four sections: an opening paragraph that introduced the public health frame on climate change (5 total sentences); a paragraph that emphasized how human health will be harmed if action is not taken to stop, limit, and/or protect against global warming (i.e., a description of the threat; 7 sentences); a paragraph that discussed several mitigation-focused policy actions and their human health-related benefits if adopted (4 sentences); and a brief concluding paragraph intended to reinforce the public health frame (2 sentences). (Read the full essay.)

When respondents finished the reading, they were asked to describe in an open-ended format their “general reaction to this essay.” For each portion of the essay they marked in green, they were subsequently asked: “What about each of these sentences was especially clear or helpful to you?” For each portion of the essay they marked in pink, they were also asked: “What about each of these sentences was especially confusing or unhelpful to you?”

Two graduate student coders were then trained to reliably code each general reaction statement into one of several thematic categories. The coders were also instructed to assess the overall valence of each respondent’s statements – the first of our dependent measures – rating them as: -1 (entirely negative comments); 0 (mixed, including both positive and negative comments); or 1 (entirely positive comments).

To code the respondent’s sentence-specific reactions made with the highlighting pens, sentences marked with only green on at least one word were scored +1 (i.e. indicating “especially clear or useful”), sentences marked with only pink on at least one word were scored -1 (i.e. indicating “especially confusing or unhelpful), and sentences with either no highlighting, or both green and pink, were scored 0. Composite scores were created for each of the four sections of the essay – the opening, the threat section, the benefit section, and the conclusion – by summing the sentence-specific scores in the section and dividing by the number of sentences.

Americans Respond Favorably When Climate Change is Framed in Terms of Public Health

Full details on the findings, conclusions, and limitations to the study can found at the open-access BMC Public Health article. Below I highlight several major findings that readers should consider.

First , overall, subjects on average reacted positively and favorably to the public health-framed essay. Many of the respondents in all five segments made open-ended comments about the essay that demonstrated a positive engagement with the material. For example, nearly half (44%) of the comments made by the Disengaged segment indicated that the essay reflected their personal point of view, was informative or thought-provoking, or offered valuable prescriptive information on how to take action relative to the climate problem. Similarly, 39% of the comments made by respondents in the Doubtful segment reflected one of these three themes.

In a methodology that advances dial group techniques used by pollsters and marketing researchers, we statistically analyzed the sentence-by-sentence reactions to the essay across audience segments.

Second, as shown above, the ascending sentence-specific evaluations between the opening and concluding sections of the essay, for the sample overall and for all of the segments (excluding the Dismissive), suggest that the value of the public health frame may not be immediate, but rather may manifest more fully after people have had time to consider the evidence, especially when this evidence is presented with specific mitigation-related policy actions that are likely to have human health benefits.

Third, all six segments reacted positively to the following statements focusing on specific mitigation-related policy actions that lead to human health benefits:

“Taking actions to limit global warming – by making our energy sources cleaner and our cars and appliances more efficient, by making our cities and towns friendlier to trains, buses, and bikers and walkers, and by improving the quality and safety of our food – will improve the health of almost every American.”

“Cleaner energy sources and more efficient use of energy will lead to healthier air for children and adults to breathe.”

“Improving the design of our cities and towns in ways that make it easier to get around on foot, by bike and on mass transit will reduce the number of cars and help people become more physically active, lose weight.”

Fourth, respondents in all segments tended to react negatively to the statement:

“Increasing our consumption of fruits and vegetables, and reducing our intake of meat – especially beef – will help people maintain a healthy weight, will help prevent heart disease and cancer, and will play an important role in limiting global warming.”

From the close to the article emphasizing our take away conclusions:

We believe that the public health community has an important perspective to share about climate change, a perspective that potentially offers the public a more salient way to comprehend an issue that has proven deeply difficult for many people to fully comprehend. Moreover, the public health perspective offers a vision of a better, healthier future – not just a vision of environmental disaster averted, and it focuses on a range of possible policy actions that offer local as well as global benefits. Many leading experts in climate change communication, including the present authors, have suggested that a positive vision for the future and a localization of the issue is precisely what has been missing from the public dialogue on climate change thus far [13,22,32].

Not all aspects of the public health implications, however, may be engaging. Certain key recommendations, such as eating less meat, tended to elicit counter-arguments among people in many of the segments in our research. Our research provides clues about specific public health messages that might not be helpful, and suggests the need in future research to look carefully for examples or associations that trigger counter-arguments and negative reactions.

There is an urgent need for the public health community to successfully educate the public and policy makers about the serious human health implications of climate change, and to engage those publics in appropriate preventive and adaptive responses. As a point of strategy, however, our findings may suggest that continuing to communicate about the problem of climate change is not likely to generate wider public engagement. Instead public health voices may be wise to focus their communication on the solutions and the many co-benefits that matter most to people.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The study was funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Investigators program to E. Maibach and M.C. Nisbet.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Akerlof, K. et al. (2010). Public Perceptions of Climate Change as a Human Health Risk: Surveys of the United States, Canada, and Malta. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 7 (6), 2559-2606. (Open Access)

Bruno, M. (2010, March 19). Why Aren’t Climate Scientists Talking about Health Care Reform. Grist magazine.

Cordon, E. (2010, Feb 5). New York Times’ Andrew Revkin, American University’s Matthew Nisbet Urge Better Communication on Climate Change. Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. (HTML)

Frumkin, H. & McMichael AJ (2008). Climate change and public health: thinking, acting and communicating. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 35(5):403-410. (PubMed)

Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C., and Leiserowitz, A. (2008). Communication and marketing as climate change intervention assets: A public health perspective. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 35(5), 488-500. (Link).

Montenegro, M. (2009, May 21). Is There a Better Word for Doom? Six Experts Discuss the Merits of Framing Climate Change. Seed Magazine.

Nisbet, M.C. (2009). Communicating Climate Change: Why Frames Matter to Public Engagement. Environment, 51 (2), 514-518. (HTML).

Nisbet, M.C. & Mooney, C. (2007). Policy Forum: Framing Science. Science, 316, 5821, 56. (PDF)

Nisbet, M.C. & Scheufele, D.A. (2009). What’s Next for Science Communication? Promising Directions and Lingering Distractions. American Journal of Botany, 96 (10), 1767-1778. (PDF)

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.

The focus on two-way dialogue and learning between experts, stakeholders, and the public is also one of the major recommendations of the recent National Academies’ report on Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change. As the report describes relative to risk communication (page 116):

What most risk researchers consider the ideal approach for communicating uncertainty and risk focuses on establishing an iterative dialogue between stakeholders and experts, where the experts can explain uncertainty and the ways it is likely to be misinterpreted; the stakeholders in turn can explain their decision-making criteria as well as their own local knowledge in the area of concern; and the various parties can work together to design a risk management strategy, answering each others’ questions and concerns in an iterative fashion

.

My only major critique of Chris’ valuable essay is how he frames the introduction and defines the importance of science communication. As I commented at Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth blog, the lede to the essay employs some of the very same exaggerated metaphors that often distract scientists and their organizations from successful public engagement efforts. Until we stop defining science-society relations in terms of “war,” “anti-science,” “street fights,” “assaults,” “cultural collisions,” “exploding protests,” ” widening divides,” and “dangerous gulfs,” public engagement efforts will always be hindered. These metaphors and comparisons tend to reinforce polarized views, accent differences between groups, falsely dichotomize complex issues, and appeal to only the most ideologically committed individuals.

Here are a few more thoughts on the important American Academy report along with notes on other recent resources related to the topic of public engagement:

** Perhaps the most innovative and large scale public engagement initiative to date happened last year in the build up to the Copenhagen meetings. Coordinated by the Danish Technology Board, the World Wide Views on Global Warming project involved social scientists and co-sponsoring organizations in more than 30 countries and regions. At each site, the initiative recruited 100 nationally or regionally representative citizens to spend a weekend discussing, deliberating, and voting on key policy issues related to climate change. The results of the meetings were aggregated by country and released via the project’s Web site and at the Copenhagen meetings. The report on the initiative is here. Above, you can also watch a short video documentary featuring the meeting held in Australia.

Notice in the video how participants describe the personal importance of being heard and the value they placed on having the opportunity to listen to multiple points of view. Another notable feature of the initiative is that there was no expert in the room. Participants were provided informational materials and videos before the meetings, had reference materials at their discussion tables, but the meeting was not organized around a “sage on the stage,” i.e. an expert telling participants what they should know about climate change. Instead, careful planning was done in using a meeting facilitator and then trained discussion moderators at each table. The content of the meeting was the social interaction and discussion rather than a presentation or lecture.

As this example suggests, perhaps the best role for science organizations is to conceive of themselves not as communicators to the public but as conveners, facilitators, and sponsors who guide, enable, and support the public in discussion, deliberation, and decisions. Learning occurs among all participants, including experts.

** The strongest recent resource I can recommend on public engagement is The Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology, published in 2008. Of particular relevance to the American Academy report is the chapter by Alan Irwin, dean of research at Copenhagen Business School and a leading theorist in the area of science and society. Irwin argues that the deficit model approach to communication represents “first order” thinking about science-society relations, while the emphasis of the American Academy report can be characterized as “second order” thinking, proposing bottom up participation, two-way dialogue, the building of trust, and the ultimate goal of reaching consensus.

Yet what’s still missing, argues Irwin, is “third order” thinking about science and society, an evolution in views and practice which involves deeper consideration about the governance of science-related issues and policy decisions. As I commented at Dot Earth, it’s not clear to me that the science community realizes the full implications of public engagement and there’s a useful analogy to U.S. public diplomacy. In Irwin’s classification, we have yet to really approach third order thinking. Current innovative approaches designed to broker dialogue, for example, are often in practice just another version of the deficit model.

Empowering the public to participate in collective decisions over nanotechnology or biomedicine requires science organizations to accept that sometimes a well-informed and consulted public may prefer policies that cut against the direct interests of science. If these preferences are not given formal weight in decision-making, then any exercise in public engagement is merely a sophisticated effort at winning public consent to the preferred policies of scientists rather than inviting actual public participation in decision-making. (The only downside to the book is the cost. So look to request at your library.)

** This spring, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology convened a meeting in Madrid to examine similar questions related to public engagement and the media. In conjunction with the meeting, Vladimir de Semir, director of the Science Communication Observatory at Pompeu Fabra University, authored a “meta-review” focused on science communication and media. The report in PDF form is a valuable resource and includes a detailed discussion of recent research and arguments in the field.

** Also of relevance, later this year, a special issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Environment will feature synthesis articles authored by participants in a meeting convened by the Cary Institute of Ecological Studies. The articles focus on overarching themes in science communication and informal learning and the specific roles of universities, non-profit organizations, and advocates. There is also an article proposing “four culture” synergies in climate change communication that bring together environmental scientists, social scientists, moral and religious philosophers, and creative artists, writers, and professionals. I will blog more about these articles when they are published.

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?