Enhancing climate change communication by fostering collaborations between scientists and journalists

Background/Question/Methods

While scientists agree that the climate is changing and humans play a major role in it, the general public remains less convinced. An April 2013 poll by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication found that only 51% of Americans are worried about global warming and 33% believe that scientists disagree on the topic. While Superstorm Sandy and the drought of 2012 opened eyes to the realities of climate change, for many, climate change still feels remote, like it will happen well into the future or only to poor people far away. To help better inform Americans on how climate change affects their communities, we brought together scientists and journalists to brainstorm ways to reach lay audiences and explore new communication methods and styles. To do this, we held three workshops: one at the Cleveland Science Center in 2012 and two at the Kellogg Biological Station Long-term Ecological Research program in Michigan in 2012 and 2013. During the workshops, each scientist was paired with one journalist to explore regional impacts, how they have been communicated, and what worked and did not work. They examined regional climate change impacts, vulnerability, adaptation and mitigation in the context of communication strategies.

Results/Conclusions

We recruited diverse, interested scientists and journalists for each workshop. We purposefully tried different methods at each workshop in order to test formats that enhanced collaboration and shared learning. The different cultures of academia and journalism presented themselves at the workshops, both leading to enhanced discussions and highlighting why communication between these groups can be difficult. We found that getting scientists to talk in the present tense about climate change was difficult – reflecting the national discourse – which frustrated the journalists. We explored the notion of humanizing the scientists in stories instead of allowing them to be demonized by the climate denier machine. Participants discussed forcing scientists to give their opinions about climate change when the facts fall short telling the story. Post-workshop products included newspaper articles about climate change and a plenary session at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference. Building on our 2012 experiences, we designed the June 2013 workshop to address the notion that climate change will have local impacts, many of which we still do not understand. Our experiences highlight that bringing scientists and journalists together for an intense, targeted workshop can enhance communication and collaborations, leading to better climate change communication to the general public.