Breaking Negative Stereotypes of Climate Activists: A Conjoint Experiment

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Stenhouse ◽  
Richard Heinrich
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Experimental Design ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
Factorial Experiment ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Complex Stimuli ◽  
Conjoint Experiment

We tested 44 variations in profiles of climate change activists to see what affected willingness to associate with them. The largest effects were from activists’ perspectives on climate change, how often they pressure others, gun control views, and party affiliation. If implemented as a traditional factorial experiment, this experiment would require 648,000 conditions and an infeasibly large sample. We obtained our results much more efficiently via an experimental design rare in communication research. Conjoint experiments will be useful to science communication researchers who wish to simultaneously test many factors of complex stimuli, such as individuals, organizations, technologies, or policies.

Science as Experience: A Deweyan Model of Science Communication

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-50
Author(s):  
Megan K. Halpern ◽  
Kevin C. Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
Pragmatist Philosophy

Abstract The field of science communication is plagued by challenges. Communicators face the difficulty of responding to unjustified public skepticism over issues like climate change and COVID-19 while also acknowledging the fallibility and limitations of scientific knowledge. Our goal in this paper is to suggest a new model for science communication that can help foster more productive, respectful relationships among all those involved in science communication. Inspired by the pragmatist philosophy of John Dewey, we develop an experience model, according to which science communication consists in people’s experiences with science and the meanings they develop from those experiences. Three principles are central to the model: experience is cumulative, context matters, and audiences have agency. We argue that this model has significant implications both for communication research and practice, which we illustrate by applying it to the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy. We show how science communicators can help to identify and alleviate structural factors that contribute to skepticism as well as fostering opportunities for meaning making around shared experiences.

scholarly journals Accommodating Climate Change Science: James Hansen and the Rhetorical/Political Emergence of Global Warming

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Besel
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
The United States ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Public Policy Issue ◽  
History Of

ArgumentDr. James Hansen's 1988 testimony before the U.S. Senate was an important turning point in the history of global climate change. However, no studies have explained why Hansen's scientific communication in this deliberative setting was more successful than his testimonies of 1986 and 1987. This article turns to Hansen as an important case study in the rhetoric of accommodated science, illustrating how Hansen successfully accommodated his rhetoric to his non-scientist audience given his historical conditions and rhetorical constraints. This article (1) provides a richer explanation for the rhetorical/political emergence of global warming as an important public policy issue in the United States during the late 1980s and (2) contributes to scholarly understanding of the rhetoric of accommodated science in deliberative settings, an often overlooked area of science communication research.

scholarly journals Confidence in Local, National, and International Scientists on Climate Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 272
Author(s):  
Aaron C. Sparks ◽  
Heather Hodges ◽  
Sarah Oliver ◽  
Eric R. A. N. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
News Media ◽  
Internet Survey ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Scientific Report ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Change Beliefs

In many public policy areas, such as climate change, news media reports about scientific research play an important role. In presenting their research, scientists are providing guidance to the public regarding public policy choices. How do people decide which scientists and scientific claims to believe? This is a question we address by drawing on the psychology of persuasion. We propose the hypothesis that people are more likely to believe local scientists than national or international scientists. We test this hypothesis with an experiment embedded in a national Internet survey. Our experiment yielded null findings, showing that people do not discount or ignore research findings on climate change if they come from Europe instead of Washington-based scientists or a leading university in a respondent’s home state. This reinforces evidence that climate change beliefs are relatively stable, based on party affiliation, and not malleable based on the source of the scientific report.

Science communication and mediatised environmental conflict: A cautionary tale

2021 ◽  
pp. 096366252098513
Author(s):  
Claire Konkes ◽  
Kerrie Foxwell-Norton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Environmental Conflict ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
James Cook ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Tenured Position

When Australian physicist, Peter Ridd, lost his tenured position with James Cook University, he was called a ‘whistleblower’, ‘contrarian academic’ and ‘hero of climate science denial’. In this article, we examine the events surrounding his dismissal to better understand the role of science communication in organised climate change scepticism. We discuss the sophistry of his complaint to locate where and through what processes science communication becomes political communication. We argue that the prominence of scientists and scientific knowledge in debates about climate change locates science, as a social sphere or fifth pillar in Hutchins and Lester’s theory of mediatised environmental conflict. In doing so, we provide a model to better understand how science communication can be deployed during politicised debates.

scholarly journals Brazilian science communication research: national and international contributions

2018 ◽  
Vol 90 (2 suppl 1) ◽  
pp. 2523-2542 ◽  
Author(s):  
GERMANA BARATA ◽  
GRAÇA CALDAS ◽  
TOSS GASCOIGNE
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Brazilian Science

scholarly journals Public Conceptions of Scientific Consensus

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew H. Slater ◽  
Joanna K. Huxster ◽  
Emily Scholfield
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Qualitative Interview ◽  
General Idea ◽  
Public Acceptance ◽  
Environment And Public Health ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Consensus ◽  
Qualitative Interview Study ◽  
The Relationship

Despite decades of concerted efforts to communicate to the public on important scientific issues pertaining to the environment and public health, gaps between public acceptance and the scientific consensus on these issues remain stubborn. One strategy for dealing with this shortcoming has been to focus on the existence of the scientific consensus. Recent science communication research has added support to this general idea, though the interpretation of these studies and their generalizability remains a matter of contention. In this paper, we describe results of a large qualitative interview study on different models of scientific consensus and the relationship between such models and trust of science, finding that familiarity with scientific consensus is rarer than might be expected. These results suggest that consensus messaging strategies may not be effective.

scholarly journals A Systematic Map of Inclusion, Equity and Diversity in Science Communication Research: Do We Practice what We Preach?

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karina Judd ◽  
Merryn McKinnon
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Systematic Map ◽  
Communication Practice ◽  
Societal Issues ◽  
Diversity And Inclusion

Effective engagement with diverse stakeholders, combating misinformation and encouraging wider participation in science is core to science communication practice, and comprises much of the current focus of research in the discipline. Global events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have clearly shown that social inequalities also manifest within communication structures, including those of science communication. Practices which are inclusive of diverse audiences are key if we wish to engage diverse audiences in finding solutions to societal issues. Yet there is little available evidence to show which diverse, marginalised and/or excluded groups are being engaged within science communication, and via what means. This paper develops a systematic map of academic literature spanning 40 years to provide a preliminary evidence base of how diversity and inclusion within science communication research and practice is conceived and implemented. Although the discipline has shown an increased focus within the last 5 years, science communication must evolve further in order to develop a robust evidence base for understanding what constitutes inclusive science communication in both theory and practice.

scholarly journals Presseförderung als Mittel gegen Medienkonzentration und für die publizistische Vielfalt? Quasi-experimentelle Untersuchung der Schweiz im Vergleich zu Belgien, Österreich, Irland sowie Deutschland

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steffen Kolb ◽  
Mathias Oertel
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Design ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Daily Newspapers ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Media Diversity ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Democratic Systems ◽  
Media Concentration ◽  
Experimentelle Untersuchung

Mass media play a certain role for society in democratic systems. Communication research faces this role by analyzing media performance. Well performing media provide the society with a diversity of topics, opinions, and sources. Mostly economically driven processes of media concentration endanger media diversity by decreasing the amount of independent media companies most probably causing less diverse media content. To counteract processes of media concentration in the field of daily newspapers many countries have established various kinds of press subsidies. This study examines empirically what kind of impact press subsidies have on media concentration. It uses a quasi-experimental design

scholarly journals A Relational Identity-Based Solution to Group Polarization: Can Priming Parental Identity Reduce the Partisan Gap in Attitudes Toward the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 687-718
Author(s):  
Chen Zeng
Keyword(s):  
Risk Perceptions ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Strategic Communication ◽  
Policy Support ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Relational Identity ◽  
Partisan Polarization ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Parental Identity ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes

This study explores the influence of both group identity (e.g., partisan identity) and relational identity (e.g., parental identity) on beliefs and attitudes toward the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Results from a between-subject randomized survey experiment suggest that partisans are motivated to process factual information about COVID-19 through a partisan lens. However, priming parental identity can reduce partisan polarization over risk perceptions, policy support, and precautious behaviors. These findings demonstrate the need to incorporate relational identity into identity-based science communication research and offer a relational identity-based strategic communication solution to partisan gaps in responses to COVID-19.

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