nisbetmc | February 16, 2007
In the week following the Friday, Feb. 2 release of the Fourth IPCC report on global climate change, few if any Americans reported that global warming was the issue they were following most closely. Instead, the public turned its gaze back to the war in Iraq, while others, especially women ages 18 to 29, were distracted by the media frenzy over the death of Anna Nicole Smith. The trends are reported in the first release of Pew's media interest index, an innovative new project matching audience data to weekly content analyses of the top news stories.
Things were only marginally different…
nisbetmc | February 14, 2007At the beginning of the spring semester, I noted that the Political Communication Seminar at the University of Virginia and the English 12 course at UNC-Chapel Hill were making use of blogs in their course work, and were using Framing Science as a shining example!
Here at American University, the School of Communication has created a page highlighting just a few of the many examples of how blogging technology is being incorporated into the curriculum for students majoring in journalism, strategic communication, and film. Check it out.
nisbetmc | February 14, 2007
Irony can be an effective persuasion tool. As pictured on the Drudge Report this morning with the headline: HEARING ON 'WARMING OF PLANET' CANCELED BECAUSE OF ICE STORM. The headline links to a Drudge posted press release, likely sent his way by staffers in the James Inhofe "Big Oil" wing of the GOP.
HOUSE HEARING ON 'WARMING OF THE PLANET' CANCELED AFTER ICE STORM
HEARING NOTICE
Tue Feb 13 2007 19:31:25 ET
The Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building has been postponed due to…
nisbetmc | February 13, 2007
Where once it was the province of against-the-establishment rebels and citizen media types, major institutions are now taking wide advantage of blogging technology to promote their message or to expand their audience. And it's not just major media outlets like the Washington Post or the NY Times, even Congressional lawmakers are getting in on the act.
Here at scienceblogs.com, individual scientists and others weigh in, but recently over at Year of Science 2009, a consortium of science organizations have started doing it at the institutional level.
Yet how long will it be until other…
nisbetmc | February 13, 2007
Just how tough is it to sustain news and thereby public attention to the problem of global warming? Exhibit A: The week after the release of the IPCC report, the issue failed to even crack the top five news stories of the week, as tracked by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. The death of Anna Nicole Smith and the murder plot involving a love triangle of astronauts bumped climate change from top five news agenda status.
Even this week, as shareholders organize to demand companies address the problem; British PM Tony Blair announces that he is focusing the remaining months of his…
nisbetmc | February 11, 2007
Though they may appear very simple, intensive time and effort goes into plotting the jacket covers for intended blockbuster novels like Michael Crichton's Next. Today's backpage essay at the NY Times Book Review describes how over the past 30 years a whole design style has sprung up called "the big book look." The goal, according to the article, is to make the book "pop" with the cover "punched out and vibrant."
It's not just the editor, the editor in chief, the publisher, and the author who sign off on the final design, but often the lead fiction buyers at Barnes & Noble and Borders…
nisbetmc | February 10, 2007
A series of concerts "bigger than Live Aid" are being planned for July, in a bid to put the subject of climate change before a global audience of two billion, reports the Financial Times. The event, scheduled for July 7, will feature co-ordinated film, music and television events in seven cities including London, Washington DC, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town and Kyoto, with major broadcasters and media owners aiming to magnify public concern over global warming. Al Gore is reported to be a chief organizer.
Given the major challenges that even major moments like the release of the IPCC…
nisbetmc | February 9, 2007Declaring that framing should be a central strategy, Ellen Goodman in today's syndicated Boston Globe column issues a call to arms on climate change: "Can we change from debating global warming to preparing? Can we define the issue in ways that turn denial into action? In America what matters now isn't environmental science, but political science." Her piece is one of the best summaries I've seen on just how central public communication is to this issue.
In mentioning some of my work in the area, Goodman hits on many of the themes I've featured here at Framing Science or that I have…
nisbetmc | February 7, 2007How much impact has Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth had on the global warming debate? More generally, how can we understand the range of influences that a documentary film might have on the public or on policy? I address these questions and others in the introduction to a recent report published by the Center for Social Media at American University.
As I review, in a fragmented media system with many competing choices, even blockbuster documentaries such as Inconvenient Truth reach relatively small audiences of already concerned or engaged citizens. Selectivity bias, however, can be…
nisbetmc | February 6, 2007
Last week, global warming cracked the top 5 news stories at Pew's media attention index, but only accounted for roughly 5% of the total news hole across outlets, dwarfed by the roughly 40% of news attention captured by the combined issues of Iraq, Iran, and the 2008 Presidential horserace.
nisbetmc | February 6, 2007
What accounts for the striking partisan differences in public perceptions of global warming? As I've detailed (here and here), it's a combined result of strong opinion-cues from party leaders and the ideological safe zones created by Fox News, political talk radio, the WSJ, conservative columnists, and other right-wing venues.
Now comes more data on global warming's "Two Americas," from a recent National Journal survey of Congressional members. There aren't many details given on the nature of the sampling or its representativeness, but the gulf in perceptions is gigantic enough to be…
nisbetmc | February 6, 2007
With political leaders like Senator James Inhofe and ideological safe zones like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, is it any wonder that only 23% of college-educated Republicans accept that human activities have contributed to global warming, or that among Republicans the issue polls dead last in importance behind the estate tax, gay marriage, and flag burning?
Take for example Inhofe's press release declaring that the IPCC report "is a political document, not a scientific report, and it is a shining example of the corruption of science for political gain." The Big Oil…
nisbetmc | February 5, 2007
Friday's IPCC report represents history's most definitive statement of scientific consensus on climate change, yet despite the best efforts of scientists, advocates, and several media organizations to magnify wider attention to the moment, the report still only scored a modest hit on the overall news agenda.
Generating major attention to the report's release stood as an almost impossible task. First, it's a technical backgrounder, a massive literature review of the state of climate science. As exciting as that might sound to the small number of Americans who closely track the issue, it's…
nisbetmc | February 1, 2007
GRAPH: MAJOR NEWSPAPER ATENTION TO "BLOOD" OR "CONFLICT" DIAMONDS
All eyes in the science advocacy community will be on Paris tomorrow, as the policymakers' summary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is released. Though the most important scientific document on global warming, it remains unclear just how much media and public focus the report will generate.
Earlier this week, celebrities launched Global Cool, a sleek new multimedia campaign to generate attention to global warming among the sizable majority of Americans who tune out almost all coverage of public…
nisbetmc | January 31, 2007
Tuesday was "open mike" day at Senator Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works committee, reports the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin. Senate Dems including Barak Obama took stage to hammer home the overwhelming consensus that climate change is real, and that major policy action, notably emission caps, is needed.
In her speech to open the session, Boxer compared the moment to the early 1970s, when a burning Cuyahoga River and the nation's smog filled cities galvanized Congress to take action on clean air and clean water. "It's once again our turn again to stand up and lead this…
nisbetmc | January 30, 2007Over the weekend I spotlighted a Washington Post article on the Association of American Publishers' hiring of the "PR Pit Bull" to frame their attacks on free access to federally-financed research articles. The Post article noted the perception problems caused by consulting with Eric Dezenhall, who's former clients include Exxon Mobile and Jeffrey Skilling of Enron fame. As things go from bad to worse for the industry trade group, the journal Nature has more to add to these details. Here's a sample:
From e-mails passed to Nature, it seems Dezenhall spoke to employees from Elsevier, Wiley…
nisbetmc | January 30, 2007
Scientists and environmental advocates will watch with excited anticipation on Friday as the policymakers' summary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is released in Paris, France. The IPCC reports are designed to be the most important events in climate science and policy, gathering world experts to craft an authoritative summary of the state of human understanding. Yet here in the United States, if past trends are predictive, the IPCC report is unlikely to make a major dent in the news or public agenda, much less shift public opinion.
As the Pew analysis (pictured above) of…
nisbetmc | January 29, 2007Throughout January, PBS has been test piloting three science programs on channels across the country and via streaming video online at their Web site. According to PBS mag Current, one pilot is a spin-off of Wired magazine, another a "Science Investigators" version of PBS' popular "History Investigators" series, and the third a futurist "22nd Century" program.
In combination with these pilots, PBS rolled out focus group and national survey project to monitor responses among the "innovative and inclined" segment of their audience. Doing this type of "real time" research as part of the…
nisbetmc | January 28, 2007
Brace yourself for the 2008 You-Tube election. When it comes to presidential campaigns, many Americans make up their minds about candidates not based on the issues, but rather based on "low information" signals about the candidate's personal narrative and character. For example, in 2004, the Bush campaign stuck to a very successful internal theme in plotting external message strategy: Who would you rather have a beer with, Bush or Kerry?
Not only is the candidate's perceived likeability important, so is their appearance of competence in handling the many dynamics and unexpected turns of…
nisbetmc | January 27, 2007Things just went from bad to terrible for the image of the Association of American Publishers. Rick Weiss in today's WPost spotlights the Association's hiring of "PR Pit Bull" Eric Dezenhall to help in their fight against patient advocates and members of Congress who are trying to require free access at academic journals to the results of federally financed research. Two bills and appropriations language mandating public access to government-funded research are slated to be introduced in the new Congress.
Dezenhall, who's clients include Exxon Mobil, apparently advised the Association to…