FRAME: Public Accountability
nisbetmc | April 5, 2010
Last week I called attention to the emerging "science audit" movement, a network of engaged citizens who combine their own professional expertise with online communication strategies to demand a greater level of transparency in scientific research and data.
Most prominent on climate change, this movement is likely to grow to include any issue where scientific evidence is claimed as the central criteria driving policy decision-making. Demands for a second-level of inclusive and participatory review of research in areas ranging from nanotechnology to biomedical research to vaccine safety…
nisbetmc | February 6, 2010Below are text of the remarks that I opened with at the Harvard panel last week on "The Public Divide over Climate Change: Science, Skeptics and the Media." To listen to audio of the panel, find links to news coverage, and read a detailed discussion of the panel, go to this post.
A little more than a year ago, when President Obama in his inaugural speech promised to "restore science to its rightful place" in America, there was great hope that the President and a Democratic Congress would soon pass major legislation on climate change and lead the world to a new climate treaty. However, today…
nisbetmc | December 6, 2009
ClimateGate: A now ubiquitous tagline that conveys a preferred storyline.
In a paper published earlier this year at the journal Environment, I explained how claims and arguments relative to the climate change debate can be classified and tracked using a typology of frames that are common to science-related issues.
With the recent controversy over the East Anglia stolen emails, one of these common frames has come to dominate discussion leading up to Copenhagen. What's different this time around is that climate skeptics and conservatives are applying the frame, rather than liberals and…
nisbetmc | June 16, 2009
Over the past decade, issues such as fast food and obesity, organics and pesticides, genetic engineering, and factory farming have each captured their share of attention from engaged citizens and advocacy groups. Focusing events, such as the 2008 factory farming ballot initiative in California or the 2000 Starlink GM corn episode have generated spikes in news coverage. Popular books such as Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and Pollan's NY Times article "Farmer in Chief" have reinforced concerns among an attentive public and generated reactions from…
nisbetmc | March 5, 2008
As I explained yesterday, it's foolish to dismiss the potential impact of the Heartland Institute conference. The organizers have a powerful framing strategy, one that resonates strongly with conservative media outlets and many Americans. It's these kinds of successful PR strategies that continue to reinforce the "Two Americas" of global warming perceptions in the United States, with Democrats growing ever more concerned and convinced of the problem while Republicans remain skeptical, resulting in massive partisan differences in poll results across questions about global warming
Consider…
nisbetmc | March 5, 2008The latest issue of Nature Reports Stem Cell Research runs a lengthy news analysis by Meredith Wadman on the political communication effort that ultimately killed the New Jersey stem cell bond initiative. As the analysis details, a number of framing strategies on the part of opponents helped cement defeat last November.
Below I connect details from the news analysis to generalizable themes and principles that shape the communication dynamics of the stem cell debate. I also link to the relevant published studies that I have conducted.
--> Faced with a tight state budget, anti-tax…
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 | October 4, 2007That's the headline at the Drudge Report today with a link to this AP story on Hillary Clinton's Sputnik anniversary speech. As a way to attract attention and rally the base, Clinton adopts the tagline from Chris Mooney's Republican War of Science, offering up a frame device that immediately triggers public accountability as a train of thought.
nisbetmc | September 16, 2007
In a cover story at this week's NY Times magazine, Gary Taubes digs deep into the world of epidemiological research on diet and health. It's an important topic to call attention to, but the article is framed in disastrous and irresponsible ways.
Instead of telling a detective story hung around just how amazingly complex it is to figure out the linkages between diet, drug therapies, and human health, Taubes and his editors go the unfortunate route of defining the article in terms of conflict, drama, and public accountability.
They readily translate their preferred interpretation by way…
nisbetmc | August 17, 2007
As I've observed before, with this election cycle's crop of GOP candidates, when general election time arrives, it's going to be difficult to employ the traditional Republican strategy of claiming that the Democratic rival is a "flip flopper."
A leading example is Mitt Romney. First the former MA Governor was for stem cell research and now he's against it. Yet despite his new found moral opposition, as the Washington Post reports today, Romney continues to invest his personal fortune, managed via a "blind trust," in a company that is a leader in embryonic stem cell research. He also…
nisbetmc | June 30, 2007Chris Mooney's Storm World is reviewed in Sunday's edition of the NY Times, a major moment for any author since the attention will surely give a major boost to the book's profile and sales. Indeed, to date, the buzz about Chris' new book has been glowing.
(Full Disclosure: Currently on a joint speaking tour with Chris, I have first hand experience with the growing buzz. I've been in rooms where climate scientists have been lining up to have Chris autograph multiple copies of his book.)
But don't take my word for it, consider the evidence: The Boston Globe called his tale of the science…
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 | 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 | 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 | March 1, 2007War metaphors have long been employed in science, ranging from the "War on Cancer" to the "War on Science" itself. These frame devices help draw attention to an issue, and dramatize for the public why a science-related topic might matter, but many scientists have long worried that they ultimately lead to distortion, canvassing over nuance and complexity. In a recent issue of New Scientist, they feature the voices of some of these critics of the "war" metaphor, and link to some useful resources on the long history of its use in science and medicine.
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 | 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 | December 4, 2006
The Associated Press reports that outgoing MA Gov. Mitt Romney has appointed Aaron D'Elia, a state budget director with no formal scientific background, to be executive director of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, an agency created by the legislature to distribute state funding for stem cell research.
TMP Cafe notes that in selecting D'Elia, Romney is signalling that he prefers idelogical compatriotism over expertise, pandering to social conservatives in the lead up to his planned 2008 presidential run.
University of Massachusetts President Jack Wilson voted against the appointment…
nisbetmc | November 12, 2006Genetech is running ads in the NY Times, The New Yorker, and on their Web site that feature patients offering testimonials framed in social progress terms. The campaign is similar to the Bristol Myers Squib TV ads I described here. In a smart strategic move, the ad campaign "re-frames" the issue of biotech drugs away from the public accountability arguments centered on access and affordability, back towards an emphasis on a "hope for cures." Here is how the San Francisco Business Times details the ad campaign:
Debbie Reynolds went public on her incontinence for Pharmacia. Bob Dole talked…