Science has published four letters in response to our framing article along with a fifth letter as our reply.
As it turns out, I know two of the correspondents fairly well.
Earle Holland, the author of the first letter, is assistant VP for Research Communications at The Ohio State University, where I served on the faculty for three years before moving to American University and Washington, DC. During my time at Ohio State, Earle attended a Dean's Lecture on framing that I gave to the College of Biological Sciences. We also discussed the nature of science communication several times. He always seemed very supportive, even excited, about my work. Before the Science article appeared, I sent him an email giving him a heads up. So when he wrote to Science objecting to our article and spinning our suggestions as "misleading," it was surprising to say the least!
Andrew Pleasant, the author of the second letter, was a year behind me in the doctoral program at Cornell University. We took many of the same courses and we also shared doctoral committee members. Pleasant is now on the faculty at Rutgers University where he teaches a course titled "Health literacy: Empowerment for better health," and is the co-author of an introductory textbook on the topic. Given his work promoting health literacy approaches, I was not surprised that in his letter he argued the traditionalist view that science literacy will set the public free.
As I write in our reply, we obviously agree with Pleasant that working to improve science literacy is important. We also agree that under certain conditions deliberative forums and science cafes can be useful. But as we explain, when it comes to wider public engagement, this relatively narrow emphasis has many limitations.
Below the fold, I have posted the text of the reply that I wrote to all four letters. Hopefully I will be able to get an author referral link in the near future so that readers can have access to the full text of the other letters.
In an upcoming issue of The Scientist magazine, I team up with Dietram Scheufele in contributing a feature article that elaborates on framing and its relevance to new directions in science communication. For the past couple of weeks, at its Web site, the magazine has been sponsoring a discussion on the topic and a Web poll of readers.
UPDATE: Over at Nanopublic, Scheufele has this blog post up about the letters. At the Intersection, Mooney has more.
Response
In spinning our suggestions as "dishonest," Holland assumes that framing is absent from traditional science communication. Yet, whether writing up a grant proposal, authoring a journal article, or providing expert testimony, scientists often emphasize certain technical details over others, with the goal of maximizing persuasion and understanding across contexts (1). Moreover, press officers and science reporters routinely negotiate story angles that favor particular themes and narratives (2) or, at the expense of context, define news narrowly around a single scientific study (3).
When attention to science shifts from the science pages to other media beats, new audiences are reached, new interpretations emerge, and new voices gain standing in coverage. These rival voices strategically frame issues around dimensions that feed on the biases of journalists, commentators, and their respective audiences (4). If scientists do not adapt to the rules of an increasingly fragmented media system, shifting from frames that only work at the science beat to those that fit at other media outlets, then they risk ceding their important role as communicators.
In response to Pleasant, we agree that a well-informed public is an empowered public. The problem, however, is that the availability of scientific information in the media does not mean people will use it. Only by framing issues in a manner that make them personally meaningful and accessible to nontraditional audiences can scientists and their organizations boost public attention and thereby sponsor informal learning (5).
We also agree with Pleasant that the type of dialogue featured at deliberative forums and community meetings remains important. Unfortunately, at these forums, the citizens who are most likely to attend and speak up are those who are already informed and active on an issue (6). In contrast, carefully framed media presentations can effectively promote dialogue and trust with a larger and more diverse audience.
Consider, for example, E. O. Wilson's Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth (7). By recasting environmental stewardship as not only a scientific matter, but also one of personal and moral duty, Wilson has generated discussion among a religious readership that might not otherwise pay attention to popular science books.
A second example is Karen Coshof's documentary The Great Warming (8). Narrated by Keanu Reeves and Alanis Morissette, the theatrical release combines interviews of climate change experts with testimonials from religious leaders. Endorsed by national religious organizations, forums featuring the film have also been hosted by churches and synagogues. In addition, both of these examples function as news pegs for journalists at religious media outlets to write stories about climate change, thereby facilitating exposure among nontraditional audiences.
Contrary to Quatrano's warnings, in neither the Wilson nor the Coshof examples does science appear to support a particular religious philosophy or argument. Instead, framing is used to create a narrative bond between scientists and religious citizens, communicating a shared interest in what science can tell us about the nature of environmental problems.
In response to Gerst, scientists and their institutions are motivated to discover what is true about the world and to inform the public about the implications of their research. In translating this knowledge for popular consumption, should scientists rely solely on their instincts and their personal experience, or should they rely on a systematic understanding of communication? Applying research about the public and the media will only help the scientific community tell the truth more effectively and to a wider audience.
Framing is not all powerful, nor should it be considered a magical key to unlocking public acceptance. Research on framing suggests that establishing a connection with audiences derives from the fit between the frames embedded in a media message and the interpretative schema that a particular audience possesses. One common source of science-related schema are long-term socialized world views such as political ideology, partisanship, ethnicity, or religious belief. Other sources are the stereotypes, narratives, and images learned through popular culture and the entertainment media. As short-cuts for reducing complexity, these schema allow any individual--whether a lay citizen, journalist, or policymaker--to categorize new information quickly and efficiently, based on how that information is framed in the media (5). In sum, a one-size message about science will not fit all audiences.
We suggest that science organizations work with communication researchers, conducting focus groups, surveys, and experiments that explore how different audiences interpret topics such as climate change or evolution. On the basis of this research, messages can be tailored to fit with specific types of media outlets and to resonate with the background of their particular audience.
It is encouraging that the Letter writers agree on a few central principles. First, framing as a concept has strong roots in the social sciences. Second, framing is already central--intentional or not--to traditional science communication efforts. Third, when applied responsibly and ethically, framing can be a valuable tool for scientists in engaging nontraditional audiences.
Matthew C. Nisbet 1 and Chris Mooney 2
1School of Communication, American University, Washington, DC 20016, USA. E-mail: nisbet@american.edu. 2Washington correspondent, Seed Magazine.
References
1.S. Hilgartner, Social Stud. Sci. 20, 3 (1990).
2.D. Nelkin, Selling Science (Freeman, New York 1995).
3.A. Revkin, in Field Guide for Science Writers, Eds. D. Blum, M. Knudson, R. Marantz Henig (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2005), pp.222-229
4.M. C. Nisbet, M. Huge, Harvard Int. J. Press/Politics 11, 2 (2006).
5.D. Scheufele, in Engaging Science, J. Turney, Ed. (The Wellcome Trust, London: 2006), pp. 20-25.
6.R. Goidel, M. C. Nisbet, Political Behav. 28, 2 (2006).
7.E.O. Wilson, Creation (W.W. Norton, New York, 2006).
8.Film promotion: www.thegreatwarming.com.
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Hope you can get this interesting exchange out into the public domain for us non-subscribers.
I was reminded of a good example of framing success by the survey questions and discussion at The Scientist.
I left active science to become a conservation advocate in the early 1990s. My first attempt was trying to conserve salmon in a "timber town" in rural southern Oregon (Roseburg). I had to learn framing fairly quickly.
It didn't work very well to approach people with facts. It seemed like my life or health were in danger if I started with: "care to see some facts on how logging harms salmon?"
I learned quickly, and began to start with "do you care about salmon?" After some conversation about fish, we could often get around to discussing facts about how logging can harm salmon.
Since then, I've had similar powerful lessons in the value of framing science. When I try to talk to fishermen about the harm caused by fishing, I don't get very far unless I work first to establish some lines of communication by talking about shared values, like how much we both want to conserve fish. Later, we can get to the science I want to talk about.
Framing helps when science gets out into the broader world of people who aren't scientsts.
When other people do it it's "spin" but when you do it it's "framing"?
Matt, luckily a Google alert led me to this page. You are playing fast and free with the facts here. I did not write "science literacy will set the public free" nor do my works defend or promote what you call the "traditionalist view".
Andrew,
Obviously, my use of "science literacy will set the public free" is not a direct quote from your letter but rather a paraphrase of the relatively simplistic view that knowledge empowers people. I have removed the quote marks in the blog post text in order to eliminate any confusion.
From your letter it was difficult for me to figure out the exact nature of your central argument. It appeared you were talking about a lot of different factors. If you were focusing on something, I thought it was knowledge as empowerment. Please correct me if I am wrong.
RPM --
When you play fast and loose with facts, exaggerate some things and suppress, ignore or distort others, in order to lead your audience to believe a certain way -- that's spin.
When you use accurate facts, not ignoring or suppressing any of them, but nevertheless approach them in such a way that you establish a common ground with the audience and present them in a way which does not provoke a defensive reaction against a perceived threat -- that's framing.
As someone who is interested in science, I would have hoped that you would be capable of understanding that subtle differences can be profoundly important.
RPM,
I've discussed the difference between framing and spin many times, and in the upcoming article at The Scientist we address this issue at length.
Framing does not mean engaging in false spin, as many opponents of science have done in the past. To the contrary, scientists and their organizations have a duty to figure out what is approximately true about the world and to communicate to citizens and policymakers the implications of this research. Applying decades of social science research to this challenge will only help scientists communicate the implications of science more effectively and clearly.
Scientists and their organizations should remain true to the underlying science, but take advantage of research to recast messages in ways that make them more personally meaningful and accessible to Americans who otherwise probably tune out the scientific details.
Matthew, whether the spin is true or false, it's still spin.
That is, it sounds to me like you and Chris are advocating the use of rhetorical argument for influencing public opinion.
Rhetoric is anathema to scientific discourse. Your counterargument seems to be "well, rhetoric is used already". Fine, that's true. But just because scientists (being human) use rhetoric to some extent is not a good reason to advocate that scientists should go all the way, and get professional about their rhetoric in order to influence the public.
Our job is not to influence the public with rhetorical argument. Our job is to figure out what's true. I find your advocacy of "framing" pretty objectionable, if you're suggesting that supposedly impartial scientists should start spinning their work to the public.
The "American public" is pretty damned smart, and has sensitive bullshit detectors.
Sean Eddy --
The American public, same as every public in the world, is affected by advertising and media direction. That's not "smart" -- but it IS a result of the fact that media and advertising, and politicians, and most professionals at communicating ideas to the public, use both spin and framing.
"Spin" is inherently dishonest, as it invariably involves distortion. This is precisely why you keep using the term as an insult towards Nisbet's concepts. You are using that dishonesty, "spin", yourself, ironically. Nisbet is not now, and has never, advocated dishonesty, even though this is what you are accusing him of.
The actual concept of framing -- not just reporting facts, but reporting the facts in a way which allows the audience to relate them to their lives, to not be threatened, alienated, or bored...this is not, as they say, rocket science. This is not a difficult concept. And it is not dishonest. It is pragmatic. It is inherent in effective communication.
The vast majority of people, no matter how intelligent they are, filter things through their emotions -- and you are no exception here. For whatever reason, you got pissed off at the "Framing" issue, and now you can't even hear the concept being communicated. How rich is THAT irony?
Nevertheless, stop and think about the fact that, when someone wants to get another person to see the point they are making, if they start the conversation by saying "you're just ignorant, let me educate you", the person they are speaking to is far more likely to say "f*** you" and wander off than they are to stay and listen. This is something you can verify by experiment and observation -- try it.
Luna,
I think you are conflating framing with education. If the goal is to educate people, of course putting things in an interesting context matters. But then we wouldn't need this new word "framing". I think this is not the sense that Nisbet and Mooney mean "framing", because they indicate that the goal of framing is to change public opinion to a particular view. Perhaps my position would be more clear if I say it this way.
Let's consider what the desired metric of successful science communication is.
In their letter to Science, Nisbet and Mooney imply that the metric is how many people, when polled for a simple yes/no answer, agree with scientific consensus. If that's the goal, then propaganda techniques can produce the desired result, and this is what I understand Nisbet and Mooney to be advocating. You can call it "framing", but if the goal is to change a person's opinion to be like yours using rhetorical methods, it's propaganda.
Scientifically, my metric would be, how many people understand the logical basis for the scientific consensus, and can agree or disagree on rational, logical grounds.
Let's take that a step further, in the context of the IPCC and global warming. As a member of the public, do *I* agree with the scientific consensus? No. I have no educated opinion, in the sense that I wouldn't be able to defend either position on scientific grounds. My field is genetics, not climate. I trust other scientists to be as honest and logical in their work as I am in mine. Therefore I accept IPCC's conclusions, on the basis of trust, because I believe IPCC to be an impartial and logical group of scientists, whose job is to report the unvarnished truth.
But if Nisbet and Mooney succeed in convincing scientists that their job is to persuade me with rhetoric, rather than making the logical basis of their findings available for review, my bullshit detector for propaganda will turn me against the scientists pretty quickly. This is the substance of Gerst's response in Science. Science's role is not to advocate a position. Science's role is to impartially weigh evidence, deduce truth, educate the public, and advise policymakers.
Matt:
Discourse, disagreement and dissent have always been a major and healthy part of science, as best I understand it, and you should not interpret my response to the Science article as some reversal of opinion. You are correct in your statement that I attended your Dean's lecture -- as well as several others of your talks on framing -- and I was, and am, very supportive of your work in the larger arena of science communications. It is framing in general as a strategy for journalists and scientists that I object to philosophically.
My 35 years of covering science has impressed upon me the general trend that both scientists and journalists are eager for a quick and easy path to communications. I fear that the allure of framing, which carries with it the agenda of the framer, offers a less "honest" offering of what science entails than I am comfortable with. It has been my experience that the vast majority of scientists, unfamiliar with the tools of communications and uncomfortable in a public debate, will leap at what they consider a simple path to "tell their story." Journalists, on the other hand, will always seek to generalize the specific as a way to connect with readers' experience and knowledge base. Neither of these habits are necessarily bad but do carry risks.
As an old-school journalist, I see reporters' (as well as other communicators') roles as providing news. Surely interpretive and explanatory journalism is part of the mix, but the essence of science journalism, to my mind, should be to convey both fact and discovery. Given the dwindling public interest in complexity, I worry that any effort at streamlining, regardless how laudible, risks oversimplification and misinterpretation when digested by the public. Coverage of the intelligent design debate showed continued artificial balance that skewed the facts in nearly all cases. The same has happened in coverage of climate change and issues of animal rights.
Lastly, you argue that "press officers and science reporters routinely negotiate story angles that favor particular themes and narratives," and that they "define news narrowly around a single scientific study." The science reporters and press officers that I know, and have known -- and they are legion -- don't do that. They use their news judgement to dissect the newsworthy component of research in the context of readers and present it in a decipherable offering. And the "single scientific study" aspect you address is more the result of the process of daily journalism, what Thomas Griffith's journalism description labeled as "history on the run."
The value, I believe, of your's and Mooney's framing issue is that it stimulates discussion among both scientists and communicators. and how can that be a bad thing?
Earle
Earle M. Holland,
Assistant Vice President for Research Communications
Ohio State University
After years as a journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation I'm now in the wonderful world of Communications and Public Relations for a non-profit science funding group. Depending on your point-of-view I guess I've been on the 'dark side' of the industry one way or another.
I would support any idea or notion that will find a way to get important science ideas across to the public. Keep it honest, keep it truthful and accept the fact we all have our own bias, and I'll be there for you.
As a journalist I was constantly surprised at how the public would show disinterest in science that was having a huge impact on their lives. As a 'PR flak' I'm now surprised at how tough it is to get through to my colleagues in the media.
"Creating a narrative bond" and finding ways to make issues "personally meaningful" were the best ways as a journalist I could tell a story of any kind. Now as a Communications specialist I'm finding that telling a good story is still important. Even if people don't become actively involved in an issue they at least need to be moved out of that disinterest zone.
I support the thought behind 'framing' and though I've been in my current role less than a month, like to think I'll be using the idea to get the right message out to the right people.
Sean Eddy --
I see what you're saying. But I don't think that this is exactly what Mooney and Nisbet are getting at. Let me see if I can explain....
I'm on the "science side of the culture divide", if that characterisation makes sense to you, but I wasn't always -- and honestly, most of my family still aren't. My sister, who was always a scientist and who thinks in terms of hardcore rationality, finds it impossible to communicate at all with the non-science members of the family. I have to translate between them. Literally translate; they don't understand each others' language or thought processes.
What I've found, in this process and in the process of getting a science education myself, is that there is a profound difference in the way that scientists think about things, and the way that non-scientists tend to think. (These are grotesque generalisations, but please bear with me.) To people who work sifting through data and analysing the logical soundness of conclusions, when there are plenty of data, when a directional trend is clear, well, it just seems obvious what conclusion one ought to draw. Of course we all know that there are a lot of situations where data are substandard, where there aren't enough data points to draw a reliable conclusion, where confounding factors haven't been controlled for, or where an effect is riding the edge of detection so that observer bias, more than anything else, is likely to affect the conclusion. But where the information is clear, the conclusions ought to be clear. And picking out relevant bits of information from a mass become automatic.
To the non-scientist, the information is probably not so clear, opinions from their favorite people hold equal or greater weight, personal experience FAR outweighs any statistic, and the conclusion is not obvious at all. Many have no knowledge of how or why a conclusion is reached in science, either -- the day-to-day workings which lead to acquiring data, and the methods used for reaching a conclusion from data, are both alien and suspect. So when information is presented in such a way that the scientist thinks that the conclusion is obvious, to a lay audience it ain't no such thing. And far more familiar and trustworthy to them are the things which have contributed their personal values and the opinions they already hold -- their profession, their religion, their favourite political commentators.
So if the scientist wants to reach them, it is NOT just about "educating them about facts". Ensuring that accurate information about data, facts, are presented to them is only one step, and fails miserably to bring the point across if you just leave it there. This is where, if you are talking about, say, how logging affects fish, you can't just say to someone "runoff from a logged forest impacts breeding waters". People you say that too will not follow through on the thought, they'll just get pissed off at the tree-hugger. This is why you start with, "Do you fish? ...I don't fish much myself, but I do like salmon." You're establishing the grounds for communication, the relevance, and the reason why you want to bring something to their attention. They're a lot more inclined to listen and think...seriously. And THEN you can get into where the information comes from and why you've reached those conclusions, which are relevant to both the scientist and the non-scientist. But you will only establish communication through common ground.
So back to Nisbet: what I saw him and Mooney criticising was the tendency of logical scientist sorts to present the bald facts, and simply expect the audience to see the obvious conclusion. But I personally know from experience and observation, this often doesn't work even to bring home the bald facts, much less allow people to use them to form any sort of sensible conclusion. You need to establish relevance and relationship and then bring the logical or likely conclusion to people's attention; not "convincing people" or "persuading with rhetoric" -- but actually walking through WHY the scientist thinks something is important and WHY the scientist expects people to figure out a sensible course of action based on the information, as well as WHY scientists may have reached a conclusion themselves.
This took a lot of words, but do you see what I'm getting at?
And, oh yes -- the other thing which separates the scientist from the non-scientist.
Scientists expect people to be curious about the world, and to want to know.
And a lot of people just don't care. I am always a bit shocked, myself, at just how incurious most of the population are about most things.
Explicitly establishing direct relevance to people's lives is often about the only way to garner more than a disinterested shrug, even if it is obvious --to you, anyway!-- that something is of profound and fascinating importance. That can be what framing is about -- not lying or spinning, but establishing, in clear words, the relevance and why it might be important to care. From how I read Mike Spear's post, that's what he's had to deal with.
Luna,
Absolutely, I see your points, and I entirely agree. For example, when I speak to a lay public (or even to my scientific peers), I'm thinking hard about making clear why my stuff should be relevant to anyone else's thinking, and communicating at the appropriate level for the audience's background. I think that's the art of communication and education, and it's unarguably essential. If that's what everyone understood "framing" to mean, surely no one would object.
Maybe look again at what Nisbet and Mooney wrote in their Science article, though, because I'm not sure that's about just education. That's about "framing" climate change in terms of religious morality or public accountability in order to sway more voters. It's about framing evolution and stem cells in terms of social progress or economic competitiveness, with the goal not of increasing understanding, but of increasing the number of people who agree with scientific consensus, increasing the public funding for science, and increasing the importance that people attach to certain scientific issues. This is a call for better persuasion, not better education.
It's a grey line, and it matters what one emphasizes. One hopes that if people were "more educated" on certain issues, they would see the reason for the scientific consensus, and be much more likely to agree with it. So what's the difference between education and propaganda? I'd come back to what's the metric: is the metric increasing the number of voters that agree with you in a poll or an election? Or is it increasing how much the public understands about key scientific issues, and about how science tries to reach conclusions rationally, so that they would reach the same conclusions we do? When Nisbet and Mooney seem to encourage scientists to "frame" global warming in terms of "religious morality" instead of in terms of what's causing it and what we can do about it, I think this is about finding leverage to change people's minds, not about finding leverage to get people interested in learning more.
Sean Eddy --
Ok, I see what you're saying. It seems that the whole persuasion to a conclusion thing is what leaps out at you.
Climate change is an interesting case. I mean, the scientific consensus that humans are a major driving factor and that it is more likely to be bad than it is overall good does seem to exist. An urgency to tackle the causes and to ameliorate the effects DOES legitimately emerge from the science. And what's worst about it is, this isn't really a discussion that can be had at leisure -- there's a doozy of a time limit for when things can be or must be effectively addressed. So is it wrong, per se, to try to persuade people? Is it the act of persuasion to a course of action in and of itself that bothers you, on the basis that science should provide the information but not try to force policy? Or is it specifically because the act of persuasion is not resting on the science, or the science alone, but that other emotionally important "handles" are being used?
Seems to me that the only way scientists can avoid "framing" is to avoid talking to the public or the media. If the reporter asks, "What does this mean?", you would simply hand them the data tables and walk away. If you do anything more than that--you are framing!
I have never had a communications course, but the "framing" idea makes a lot of sense to me. Most people see little connection between their daily lives and science. Most scientists are not that scientifically literate once you get outside their area of expertise. As Sean said above, he does not really understand climate science, he just accepts the word of those scientists. His willingness to do so implies a number of things, belief in science, acceptance of ideological neutrality of scientists, etc. that simply do not apply to most of the public.
We have to find some way to connect with these people--those who do not automatically see the value of science as we do. We all have our own interests, and lack thereof. My "lack" pertains to sports. I could not care less. Anyone who wants to wax poetic about the "beauty of baseball", or the "zen of golf", has their work cut out with me. I constantly try to keep in mind that for most people my interest in sports approximates theirs in science. That puts the burden on me to explain to them why they should care.
Anybody who thinks that scientists don't frame has not watched an appropriations hearing.
Luna;
Indeed that is exactly the issue. Whether it is global warming, how medical research can affect your life or gawd forbid, the ethical implications of science, you often get a big shrug. And maybe they really do care at some level but if the science isn't given a frame of reference they can deal with, then it doesn't get their attention. You have no idea how many news releases I've seen that start off with a wad of jargon or a motherhood statement that leaves you cold. Who is going to take the time to set that free and hope it flies?
Going back to Matthew's original post it will ultimately be a collaboration between people who study science and people who study communications to find the right language and the right stories to tell.
It is much like the old "I don't know art but I know what I like line". I don't know much about science but I know what my audience and my stakeholders like so if I can just find the balance ........
His willingness to do so implies a number of things, belief in science, acceptance of ideological neutrality of scientists, etc. that simply do not apply to most of the public.
***************************************************************
Doesn't that come from somewhere though? If scientists actively engage in framing in the manner Mooney and Nisbet are advocating, what are the chances that is undermined? It becomes winning the battle but loosing the war. Remember this is what Nisbet is calling for:
""That's the power and influence of framing when it resonates with an individual's social identity. It plays on human nature by allowing a citizen to make up their minds in the absence of knowledge, and importantly, to articulate an opinion. It's definitely not the scientific or democratic ideal, but it's how things work in society."
By tapping into framing in this manner is near as I can tell effective and relatively easy. The question though becomes what is the effect of framing in such a manner in which you get people to make decisions based not on fact but cultural hooks. That is what is wrong in our society. Why feed it?
Earle,
I appreciate your feedback and I don't take your intellectual disagreement as personal at all. I noted our connections in my blog post because I think readers often find it interesting and of value to understand how social networks tie together what otherwise might appear to be abstract intellectual debates.
Your critiques are very useful to me. The forthcoming feature article at The Scientist in part tries to answer some of your concerns or fills in gaps that we did not have space for at Science. I'm also working on a book chapter that fits framing into a normative context relative to the communication role of scientists and their organizations.
I look forward to continuing the intellectual debate when the Scientist article comes out, I imagine they will have a forum for discussion at their site and I am sure the conversation will also be taking place at my blog.
--Matt
A little ways back in this discussion Earle exemplified the heart of the problem when he said, "Discourse, disagreement and dissent have always been a major and healthy part of science." The key word is "always." It's that sort of thinking that is at the core of the problem -- the idea of, "well, shucks, things have always been like this."
No they haven't.
The science community, even though they are supposed to be well versed in the science of change (evolution), seem to have a hard time with the notion of change when it comes to society. They don't seem to grasp the superficiality of communication today, and the shift from substance to style that has transpired since the information explosion of the eighties.
Most people not only are not listening these days, they are also not believing. The shift towards anti-authoritarianism has percolated down from being the hip cutting edge of the sixties to today just being part of the general gestalt.
Have you been out to talk to people on the street these days about global warming? It's not working. People are increasingly confused and mistrusting of science.
Actually, let me put it in simpler terms. I shared a cab with a surgeon a few weeks ago in Denver. He told me of the changes in his profession and how nowadays he's so sick of arguing with patients. They now come in armed with pages and pages of printouts from websites where they have supposedly researched their own condition and feel they know their diagnosis better than the doctor. And he ends up having full blown arguments with them in which he feels like he's being tested on his own knowledge. Which maybe sounds fine in theory, but is not so much fun when you're arguing with a hyper-emoting irrational person who has been reading inaccurate websites.
I don't think most doctors would tell you their profession is today as it has always been.
Similarly, I think Nisbet and Mooney are offering up a mixture of "this is the same old problem that P.B. Medawar agonized over in the sixties," combined with, "but today things are different and worse because of the changes in our society."
The bottom line is that things aren't as they have always been.
Randy:
What I said precisely was "Discourse, disagreement and dissent have always been a major and healthy part of science, as best I understand it . . . "
Feel free to take issue with my points but please quote me correctly. The "as best I understand it" phrase was there for a reason -- to emphasize that this was my opinion -- not some absolute which all should follow.
My opinion is based on my decades of very successful science communications and my experiences with hundreds of scientists whose communications with the news media have been successful in those circumstances.
I certainly agree that things are in a state of constant change and that we need to adapt. At the same time, there are some constants which we need to protect from change since they are at the core of our values. The idea that scientists base their statements on fact and data is one of those core beliefs and even though a growing portion of the population questions that, it doesn't mean that the values are wrong.
When USAToday first appeared, it changed the way readers expected newspapers to be, and it catered to the diminished attention span of the public. Its influence has changed an enormous portion of American journalism in that it shifted how the stories are being told. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your point of view. But major national news media (a few, at least) continue to report in their own way, relying on more on fact and data.
I, for one, want my scientists to continue to focus on their data and not on trends in receptivity. I want my scientists to act more like scientists than politicians or salesmen. That's just my personal preference.
Earle
Ponderingfool,
I am not prepared to defend every word that they have written. If "Framing" is really about deceiving--well then I am against it! I am simply here because I think that there are some powerful ideas being discussed.
I especially like the idea of a "cognitive miser" that I heard Matthew discuss. Most people today are faced with information overload--like drinking from the proverbial firehose. If you cannot quickly connect your message to something that receiver is interested in and values, you are lost in the clutter.
I see it in myself. I get calls everyday from passionate folks who are convinced that they have latched onto something important. I give them a brief listen, or read, but if I don't see a quick connection to something is important to me, I don't give them much thought. There is simply too much stuff that I need to sift through that DOES make that connection for me to waste time on stuff that does not. (It is why I am at work on Labor Day.)
When something does break through the clutter, I am then willing to give it the time and work needed to understand it. And that is why the Framing idea is intriguing to me--to help me try to cut through the clutter in the lives of MY intended audiences and convince them to invest some time in what I am trying to communicate. Of course, then the science will then have to stand up to the greater scrutiny that "Framing" has won it.
In response to Earle I would love it if scientists acted like politicians. Maybe a key component of the framing debate is that sometimes it's a good thing to be persuaded and it is a good thing to persuade. Let's say it was a lawyer who could either give me solid advice about how to act or talked for the expensive half hour about previous cases with jargon I didn't understand. Which would be more valuable? In most cases scientists are employed by the public and in many ways the public relies on science for advice. They want to act like a good christian or like a good environmentalist but are missing the information on how to do so. And framing is about giving them the specific information that they can use to make their own decisions.
In response to Sean you started out by criticizing framing as rhetoric. I urge you to look into a rhetorician, Wayne Booth. Who says that good rhetoric can either be about removing understanding. Modern rhetorical theory states that every aspect of any symbol use is influential and is in fact rhetoric. So I specifically ask for if you could give a situation of "science" which is in fact non-rhetorical? There are mountains of information, facts and 'truths' but the choice of which facts are chosen is always biased. There is the infamous quote that there are three types of lies, damm lies and statistics. My argument is that science is always framed, under every circumstance and where I agree with Nisbet is that scientists should be the ones who control what that frame is.
Theodore would like his scientists to act like politicians. Public attitudes about politicians place them fairly low on the public's scale of trustworthiness. Most politicians' statements can be traced back to their own agendas and are arguably self-serving. Science historically has been seen as a more altruistic endeavor, at least when compared to politics.
What Theodore, and perhaps others, are assuming is that scientists can only either talk with a framed message or be obtuse, verbose and indecipherable. That's obviously false. Nearly all of the scientists I have interviewed over three decades -- and the numbers approach four figures -- were able to effectively communicate their science. When the odd bit of jargon arose in conversations, I flagged it, asked for a definition/metaphor/analogy, and then went on with the discussion. When the data became unnecessarily detailed, I said so and bypassed it. That's what science writers do. The collaboration between writer and scientist then yielded a clear and concise explanation of the discovery and the reason it was important. It's a fairly simple process that can easily be scaled up if need be.
I thought we were talking about communication here, the exchange of information, requiring both an ability to describe, depict and explain, and a willingness to absorb it. Communication requires an investment by two parties, a giver and a reciever and their roles swap throughout the process. If folks are instead referring to a one-way transmission of material, that's more marketing, advertising and pontificating than it is communication -- it's persuasion, and while there certainly is persuasive communications, I've personally never considered science communication/science journalism as being in the business of persuasion.
If the intent is to pose information with a specific agenda in mind -- other than to simply inform -- then framing is an excellent tool. That's simply not the world I live in.
Earle
Theodore,
"Every aspect of any symbol... is rhetoric" is not very convincing. Everyone lies, but surely you would not accept this as an excuse to encourage widespread and routine dishonesty. Some unavoidable things in life should be resisted and minimized, not embraced and encouraged. This is what moral principles are all about.
And as Earle says, you've also set up a false dichotomy: either we "frame" to persuade, or our message is unintelligible "jargon". Another position is that a scientist's role is to explain things clearly and honestly to people who want to understand why we have reached a certain conclusion -- note, "clearly". And (importantly) for people who don't have time or inclination to understand the data behind some conclusion, they should be able to trust that the conclusion has been reached by unbiased and trustworthy representatives of society -- that if they did take the time to look at the same evidence, with the same care and professionalism the scientists used, they would have reached the same conclusion. This is part of what we scientists call "reproducibility": no matter who you are, you'd get the same results, and be forced to the same conclusions. The more rhetoric a scientist uses to persuade, the less society should trust her position to be unbiased and solely based on a logical, reproducible analysis of the facts.
Many people on the thread have defined effective unbiased communication of science as another kind of "frame", and they have a reasonable point, but this muddies the water. Nisbet and Mooney appear to be motivated by a definition of "framing" that was popularized by George Lakoff as a method of influencing voters with deliberately biased rhetoric. This is the context that I'm reacting to. This form of framing is dishonest -- the goal is to influence, not communicate, and the rhetoric has taken priority over the facts.
From my standpoint as a scientist, I find this repellent. I don't want to spend time wondering how somebody's lying to me, and feeling obligated to redo everyone's analysis for myself. I want to be able to trust people to do their job.
Unfortunately, I haven't really got time to stick around for long, but could I just draw people's attention to this?
http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/128/52
This is specifically a letter about political interference with Canada's InSite programme (hat tip to Omni Brain. The part that leapt out at me:
This is perhaps involving the aspect of Mooney/Nisbet framing which I see people objecting to -- using knowledge to persuade, not just to inform.
But...they're right, you know. Sean Eddy, I asked you a question about climate change, above, which I don't think you answered. Given that the people who work on the issue DO see a problem, one which has time-critical elements, and given that addressing the problem requires large-scale cooperation from the general public...is trying to persuade people to believe what scientists think the data mean wrong? Why? Is trying to persuade people to a course of action in order to mitigate damage or protect lives wrong? Why? What SHOULD they do, and why? Is there a requirement that scientists somehow separate their sense of urgency for action from their knowledge? How on earth can one even do that?
I understand that people find it morally problematic, honestly I do, because there is an uncomfortable undercurrent to persuading other people to do what *you* want...but...I think it could be morally problematic not to do this, in the case(s) where real physical harm may result from inaction, and action depends on public cooperation. We don't live in an ideal world and we never will, so is it morally wrong to deal with the world that we do live in pragmatically? And if one has knowledge about an impending threat or an existing problem which damages lives, isn't it a moral imperative to do what you can to help?
Just a heads-up, I have a comment held up here in your approval queue (probably because it has three links in it).
Sean Eddy, reading your last comment, something confuses me. I admit that I have not read everything everywhere about the whole framing issue -- I haven't got that much time, for a start -- but is anyone, HAS anyone ever, actually suggested that "rhetoric" ought to be more important than accuracy? Has anyone suggested that honesty or adherence to fact should be sacrificed in order to persuade?
Because that's what "spin" is, certainly. As I know I've said before, as I understand it, one of the crucial parts of "framing" is that it MUST adhere to known fact, and not ignore inconvenient fact...it merely puts the accurate, known facts in a framework that allows people to "connect" to it. Like, oh....ah, an example. When speaking about the need for conservation of biodiversity to an evangelical audience, pointing out that, although according to the Bible God made the world "for man", the Bible also talks a lot about stewardship...and how do they think God would feel about them pissing His gifts away for the short term gratification of consumerism?
To me, that would be a near perfect example of "framing" -- don't you think? But the thing is, the person speaking to the evangelical audience has said nothing factually inaccurate, and is not ignoring contradictory evidence -- it is all based around the issue of disappearing biodiversity, which is a real issue requiring some form of public address. But rather than trying to relate the disappearing biodiversity to issues of how that can damage biomedical research, or how it can impair our ability to find out more about evolutionary pathways -- neither of which is likely to find this evangelical audience receptive -- the speaker is trying to put it to them in a context in which they care, because of their pre-existing values.
So, would you agree with this as being an example of framing (just wanting to clarify, here)? If so...sorry, but I don't understand, and these are genuine questions. Why do you think that this is the same as "spin", and why, if it adheres to fact and is not done with the intent to decieve, is it morally wrong?