Matthew C. Nisbet, Ph.D, is Associate Professor in the School of Communication at American University where his research focuses on the intersections among science, media, and society. E-MAIL: nisbetmc@gmail.com
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Over the past four years at Scienceblogs, I have had the wonderful opportunity to be part of a blogging network that includes dozens of talented writers and thinkers. Current and former Sciblings such as Deb Blum, Ed Brayton, Benjamin Cohen, Bora, Sheril Kirshenbaum, Jonah Lehrer, Chris Mooney, David Ng, Randy Olson, Chad Orzel, Jessica Palmer, Christina Pikas, Janet Stemwedel, and Carl Zimmer have inspired my writing and introduced me to new ideas and perspectives.
Scienceblogs has also afforded me the opportunity to reach scientists, scholars, students, and professionals working in areas related to science communication, education, and policy. Many of these blog interactions have translated into face-to-face connections, collaborations, and friendships.
In recent months, however, I have started to rethink the focus of my blogging, wanting to continue to track issues and research in the area of science communication and public engagement but also desiring to move broader, tackling questions more generally at the intersections among communication, culture, and public affairs.
So today I am launching a new blog called the "Age of Engagement" at Big Think. In my inaugural post, you can read about the topics, questions, and themes I will be exploring, as well as weigh in with your own suggestions for topic ideas. In the video clip embedded below , I discuss the central premise behind Age of Engagement. Paul Hoffman, editor at Big Think, also has this spotlight on the blog and a round-up of some of the recent video interviews posted in conjunction with the launch.
Framing Science readers will continue to find a strong emphasis on research and initiatives related to the public understanding of science, technology, and the environment along with the archives from my last four years of posts. There will also be a re-invigorated conversation about questions of faith and non-belief and the relationship between science and religion. On this topic, see this post and video interview I did with Big Think, where I discuss the role that blogs and new media have played in the rise of the New Atheist movement.
One paper in the special issue proposes strategies for catalyzing greater collaboration on climate change communication among the "four cultures."
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.
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.
A few stories from over the weekend that raise decades-old questions about the connection between media and violence as well as the role that media play in the construction of social identity.
--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.
Big Think, the YouTube for intellectuals, is devoting the next 30 days to highlighting the most dangerous among ideas. Here's how the editors describe the theme:
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.
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.
In reaction to our BMC Public Health study published this month that examined the potential to re-frame climate change in terms of health, reader Stephanie Parent had this astute observation, one worth testing in follow up research.
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?
The announcement of this award is an important step towards greater recognition of the need for public engagement on the part of scientists and their institutions. AAAS should be commended for their commitment to leadership in this area. Details below and here.
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.
Changing the conversation about climate change: Graduate students from American and George Mason Universities prepare interview tent on the National Mall.
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.
Held in over 30 countries, the World Wide Views on Global Warming initiative represents the state-of-the-art in new approaches to public engagement, the subject of several recent reports and meetings. This video features a short documentary on the Australian event.
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.
