FRAME: Economic Competitiveness
nisbetmc | April 22, 2008In his appearance last week on NPR Science Friday (audio), Columbia University's Jeffrey Sachs framed the climate challenge not in terms of regulating pollution but rather as an energy and technology problem. Sachs brings an important moderating voice to the climate debate, offering a message that goes beyond the polarized rhetoric of conservatives and many environmentalists.
Sachs appeared on the show to talk about his new book "Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet." Early in the interview, he was asked by host Ira Flatow about the common argument against taking action on climate…
nisbetmc | March 4, 2008In a segment set to air on BBC/PRI's The World tomorrow, I offer my observations about the communication strategy of The Heartland Institute. The Chicago based think tank seeks to frame climate change in a way that is consistent with their free market ideology and mission.
Here's my analysis:
In seeking to bend science to fit with their preferred policy goals, the Heartland Institute (HI) chooses as a rhetorical bedfellow the Discovery Institute (DI), the think tank that brought us the public relations campaign against the teaching of evolution in schools. Not a bad choice strategically.…
nisbetmc | August 10, 2007
As Science reports, the big news this week is that Congress passed a bill that adopts almost all of the recommendations of the 2005 National Academies report Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America. The bill was signed this morning by President Bush.
The unprecedented success at translating expert recommendations into a policy victory is in no small part due to the strategic framing of the initiative. The complexities of this bill were put in terms that policymakers and the public could understand, value, and support. As one backer described: "We quit talking…
nisbetmc | August 4, 2007
Back in November, when Missouri passed a constitutional amendment protecting the ability of scientists to conduct embryonic stem cell research in the state, it was heralded as one more political victory for science, and a sign that even in the Midwest, proponents had turned the corner on conservative opposition.
Yet the LA Times reports that the Amendment campaign has only served to catalyze opposition within the state legislature and among activists, threatening the state's ability to move forward with research:
The amendment passed by fewer than 51,000 votes, or about two percentage…
nisbetmc | June 29, 2007
To date, nanotechnology has followed a public trajectory similar to that of plant biotechnology in the United States. Relatively low levels of attention have been paid to the still nascent issue in the media, with coverage concentrated at the science and business beats. This coverage has been framed heavily in social progress and economic development terms with a few stories focusing on elements of the uncertainty of possible risks and/or regulatory matters involving the accountability of industry and scientists. Given low amounts of media attention and the heavy focus on the promise of…
nisbetmc | June 28, 2007In 2004, when California voters approved a $3 billion dollar funding program for embryonic stem cell research, all eyes turned to the Golden State as the new national center for research. Yet according to a new StateLine.org report, other states including Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York may have moved quietly into the lead when it comes to funding.
As we detail in the Nisbet & Mooney Speaking Science 2.0 presentation [slides & audio], though Proposition 71 is a great example of how public support was gained by narrowly framing the issue in terms of social progress and…
nisbetmc | June 26, 2007How do you engage the Republican base on global warming, connecting the issue to their core values and interests? For one part of this segment, as I have argued, you re-frame the issue as a moral and religious matter. But for another segment, it comes down to investment potential, as depicted in this story appearing Monday in the Wall Street Journal. Apparently, there's money to be made in green investing, or so WSJ readers are told.
For Holly Isdale, managing director and head of wealth advisory at Lehman Brothers, global warming isn't a scientific theory -- it's an investment…
nisbetmc | June 25, 2007Something to think about...Kyoto was strategically framed by conservatives as an unfair economic burden on the U.S. , deflating public support across polls. Yet according to Gallup trends and other poll indicators, Americans have always supported international agreements on climate in general and mandatory caps on CO2 emissions specifically. It's a classic example of how framing can alter public preferences on a particular agreement or legislative bill that turns on a principle that the public would otherwise support.
Below the fold I detail what the available poll data suggests about how…
nisbetmc | May 17, 2007Cities like Cambridge, MA, Madison, WI and Berkeley, CA aren't the only places in the world vying to brand themselves as 21st century centers of innovation. This week, the BBC series The Changing World features a two part episode on cities as science hot spots. Listen here.
What all of these cities have in common is a political culture that accepts and celebrates biomedical research. As a result, in coming decades, many states and cities in the US are likely to be left behind in the global competition for biotechnology investment.
PART 1
The BBC's Richard Hollingham begins in Japan.…
nisbetmc | May 17, 2007
In a segment from the recent Frontline special "Hot Politics," GOP pollster Frank Luntz explains his 1997/1998 memo that became the playbook for how conservatives like President Bush and Senator James Inhofe redefined climate change as really a matter of "scientific uncertainty" and "unfair economic burden." We detail the strategy and its impact on public opinion in our Framing Science thesis and in our talks as part of the Speaking Science 2.0 national tour.
Below you can watch a clip of Senator Inhofe's appearance on Fox & Friends the week of the release of this year's first IPCC…
nisbetmc | May 9, 2007How do you activate an otherwise disinterested Republican base on the issue of global warming? As we argued in our Policy Forum article at Science, two possible frames are to recast the issue as really a matter of moral duty or alternatively as an issue that might promote increased profits from new technologies.
In recent weeks a new frame strategy has emerged and it involves re-focusing attention to the issue around dimensions of national security. Again, advocates need to be careful here. The national security frame borders on a lot of the interpretations that have previously been…
nisbetmc | May 7, 2007With the semester finally winding down, over the weekend, I updated the tabs "What is Framing?" and "Popular Science vs. Framing." These new sections of my blog explain in detail research on framing and media influence and also present a generalizable typology of frames that re-appear across science debates. Both tabs include bibliographies of recommended literature.
nisbetmc | April 12, 2007How do you play on the fragmented media system and the miserly nature of the public to persuade Americans to oppose major policy action on climate change? Conservative columnist George Will knows the "secret," and he uses his understanding once again in today's nationally syndicated column. It's an old trick that conservatives have been using for more than two decades, as we cite in our recent Policy Forum article at Science.
The strategy is to consistently and exclusively argue that not only is the issue still scientifically uncertain, BUT even if the science were sound (another frame…
nisbetmc | April 3, 2007In his response to the Supreme Court ruling, President Bush framed any policy action in familiar terms, emphasizing the "unfair economic burden" placed on the U.S. by any "cap and trade" emissions cuts.
The decision (of) the Supreme Court we take very seriously. It's the new law of the land," Bush told reporters. He insisted that "I've taken this issue very seriously. I have said that it is a serious problem. I recognize that man is contributing greenhouse gases."
But Bush argued that "anything that happens cannot hurt economic growth. I care about the working people of the country but also…
nisbetmc | April 2, 2007
Florida and Ohio State face off tonight in the Men's NCAA basketball championship, a re-match of January's national title game in football. Both schools feature the best athletics programs that money can buy, as they each spend an astounding $100 million dollars annually on their sports programs. Yet, as I wrote back in January, though these schools might be "turning pro" in athletics, they are quickly being left behind by the elite universities in terms of investment in science and research. Ohio State will invest more than $1 billion over the next ten years in athletics. In comparison,…
nisbetmc | March 6, 2007
NPR's On the Media runs this week an excellent feature questioning why stock market downturns end up being the top story everywhere in the media. Media preoccupation with Wall Street, not only likely distracts us from other more important economic news, but mistakenly assumes that a rising stock market is good news for everybody.
nisbetmc | March 4, 2007Back in January, when a coalition of Big Industry CEOs and environmental groups got together to urge Congress and the President to pass "cap and trade" legislation on global warming pollutants, a sudden crack appeared in the long standing conservative opposition to major policy action on the problem.
Indeed, with CEOs like Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric and Peter A. Darbee of PG&E offering up a plan that would lead to a 20 to 40 percent reduction in current levels of global warming pollutants by 2050, it was time for long time opponents of action to regroup and reassess their…
nisbetmc | March 2, 2007In a column last year, I detailed the historical trajectory in the U.S. of frames on nuclear energy, with images moving from very positive interpretations centered on social progress and economic development during the 1950s and 1960s to a very negative focus on public accountability and a Pandora's Box of unknown disaster in the 1970s. These frames were locked in by the Three Mile Island accident in 1977, and reinforced in the 1980s by the Chernobyl disaster. Since TMI, no new nuclear reactors have been built in the U.S., and public support for nuclear energy has never moved above 50%.
Yet…
nisbetmc | February 20, 2007 Where have you heard this one before? Back in September, Canada's Environment Minister John Baird echoed the predictions of a university economist when he claimed that if Canada were to meet its's 2008-12 Kyoto targets, it would require "a rate of emissions decline unmatched by any modern nation in the history of the world except those who have suffered economic collapse, such as Russia. Canadians do not want empty promises on a plan that we cannot achieve and they do not want our country to face economic collapse."
This kind of "economic ruin" and "unfair burden" frame has long been used…
nisbetmc | January 19, 2007While many schools pour hundreds of millions of dollars into athletics, more signs today that among the elite universities, stem cell research is at the center of competition. As I wrote last week, it's going to be difficult for Red State schools across the country to keep up in the national rankings as they are left behind in funding and support for research in regenerative biology by private institutions like Harvard, and public universities such as the UC schools, and after this fall, the SUNY system. From today's Boston Globe:
The Harvard University corporation will devote $50 million…