Coastal Services Center

It is a common belief that if coastal resource managers and other communicators could just provide the public with information, people would take appropriate actions. But social scientists conducting research for the past 50 years have found this assumption riddled with misconceptions and are shedding light on how communications and outreach can more effectively influence behavior.

A new audio podcast and publications produced by Oregon Sea Grant are geared toward helping coastal managers navigate the challenges of communicating complex scientific concepts—such as climate change and variability—to the public.

“These are intended to help provide insights from social science to those who are on the front lines communicating with the public about climate,” says Joe Cone, assistant director and communications leader of Oregon Sea Grant. “Understanding more about how social science relates to climate science will help us all do our work better and help communities prepare.”

The Communicating Climate Change podcast is a series of recorded interviews with prominent social scientists on the question of how to communicate about climate change to a broad audience.

Two publications written by Cone, “Expand Your View: Insights for Public Communicators from Behavioral Research” and “Hold That Thought! Questioning Five Common Assumptions about Communicating with the Public,” help distill communications and related social science research and concepts.

Broader Definition

While the podcasts and publications are geared toward meteorologists, science journalists, government agency personnel, university outreach specialists, and members of nongovernmental organizations, Cone says they focus on a broad definition of communicator.

“Regardless of your business title, if you communicate with a nonspecialist audience about science, you are a science communicator,” Cone says. “An agency administrator, for example, is as much a communicator as a public information officer, and the leader is likely to know less about communications.”

“There is value,” he says, “for all communicators to become more familiar with contemporary research in the social sciences.”

Making the Connection

The social sciences are probing the practices, processes, and effects that influence attitude, decision-making, and behavior change. This body of research, Cone says, is related to communicating climate change.

Cone made this connection in 2006 after receiving a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office to help coastal communities in Oregon and Maine become more resilient to climate change.

“I realized very clearly after talking to various specialists that we have the opportunity to connect climate science and climate engagement with communities much more closely,” Cone says.

Tuning In to the Experts

To help coastal managers and others assimilate this social science information, Cone began producing the podcasts in January 2008. The occasional series has included interviews—often broken up into two parts—with eight social science leaders. Each podcast typically lasts about 20 minutes, and transcripts of the broadcasts are provided.

The interviews—all accessible by computer—are oriented toward preparing for or adapting to climate change, rather than mitigating actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Interviewees include Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change and a research scientist who specializes in risk perception and decision-making, Susanne Moser, a natural scientist, social scientist, and communicator formerly with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Caron Chess, a human ecologist at Rutgers University who studies public participation in government decision-making.

Additional interviews include Baruch Fischhoff, a prominent national expert on risk analysis and communication at Carnegie Mellon University, Ed Maibach, a professor in the Department of Communication at George Mason University and also the director of the Center of Excellence in Climate Change Communication Research, and Gary Braasch, a climate communication practitioner, author, and photojournalist.

Interviews conducted in 2009 include Jesse Ribot, who leads a new initiative in the Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy at the University of Illinois’ School of Earth, Society, and Environment, and Elinor Ostrom, the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, and co-director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis.

“The podcasts have been very occasional partly because I have been very selective and focused about the individuals that are there,” Cone says. “There’s a lot of substance there.”

Other interviews will be added in the future, he says, and listeners can subscribe to receive notice when the next interview is posted.

Empirical Evidence

Coastal managers may need to incorporate more social science-based communications strategies because communications and outreach efforts are often based on commonly held assumptions that limit their effectiveness.

For instance, one of the most common of these beliefs is that others would do something different if only they had the information.

“This is something described as ‘spraying the fire hose of science’ onto unsuspecting people,” Cone says.

This “information-deficit assumption” has been critiqued in recent social science literature, calling into question common assumptions about audience—for example, researchers have found that there is no such group as the general public—and people’s information needs and decision-making processes.

“There’s no question that the right information can affect behavior,” Cone says, “but it needs to be appropriate to address the specific concerns and decisions that the audiences have to make. . . You have to empirically find out what they know and what they don’t know and how to lower their resistance to being able to use the information.”

He adds, “We tend to focus most of our attention and resources on understanding the environment and much less attention and resources on understanding and being effective with society. In modest ways, our podcast and publications are . . . trying to improve that effectiveness.”

For more information on the Communicating Climate Change podcasts or Oregon Sea Grant’s social science publications, contact Joe Cone at (541) 737-0756, or joe.cone@oregonstate.edu.

For Additional Information

Communicating Climate Change podcasts http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/communicatingclimatechange/

“Expand Your View: Insights for Public Communicators from Behavioral Research” http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/onlinepubs/h08006.pdf

“Hold That Thought! Questioning Five Common Assumptions about Communicating with the Public” http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/onlinepubs/h08005.pdf