Yesterday at AAAS, a crowd of 250 attendees overflowed into the hallway, as we gathered for a fascinating panel discussion about media coverage of climate change. The amazingly successful event was organized by Cristine Russell of Harvard University and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.
Andrew Revkin shared his observations as an agenda-setter in covering the story for the NY Times and more recently in launching the Pulitzer worthy blog Dot.earth. Revkin reports that the blog now has more than 300,000 monthly readers. In my presentation, I discussed how research in the area of framing and media influence explains the remaining perceptual gridlock on climate change, focusing on some of the issues I raise in this recent Skeptical Inquirer Online column. The discussants for the panel were John Holdren of Harvard and David Dickson of SciDev.net. Discover magazine has been blogging from the conference and has posted this full summary of the remarks.
Later this afternoon at 145pm, there will be more focus on the relationship between framing, news coverage, and public opinion at the panel on Communicating Science in a Religious America. Here's a little teaser on some of the research findings from our study of news coverage. Over the past twenty years, which organization has been by far the most successful at creating news pegs around science and religion? AAAS? National Academies? ....Nope. The answer is the Templeton Foundation.
Environment
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
And yet the Templeton Foundation wouldn't even talk to me about giving any support to my movie "Flock of Dodos" after it had proven itself by getting accepted to the Tribeca Film Festival. The word was they didn't want to touch anything that dealt with intelligent design. They are very conservative in their thinking when it comes to science communication, as is the case for ALL major foundations and science organizations that deal with this topic of how to reach the public better. Yet they all continue to bemoan the ineffectiveness of science communication. You don't improve things if you're not willing to invest in innovation. Someone needs to explain this to them. It's as simple as inbreeding/outbreeding dynamics in population genetics. When you fund the same people doing the same thing for generations you lose the ability to adapt and change to a new environment.
Posted by: Randy Olson | February 17, 2008 10:39 AM
I really hope I can make it to your session today - I had an conflict with yesterday's panel (I was scoring the student posters, and you can imagine how long it takes ten scientists in different fields to come to a consensus). This is exactly the sort of discussion we need to be having at AAAS.
Posted by: bioephemera | February 17, 2008 10:51 AM