Filter by keyword: Environmental communication

Publications including this keyword are listed below.

106 publications found

May 07, 2025 Practice Insight

Framing Food Waste: development and evaluation of a science communication format at the workplace

by Stefanie Nigg, Rebecca Kandut, Julia Serong, Monica Déchène, Kateřina Veselá and Carmen Klinger

The mitigation of the climate crisis demands effective communication strategies. Transforming food systems plays a key role in climate protection, not only by changing eating habits, but also by preventing food waste. While workplaces are commonly used for health promotion activities, they are a rare setting for science communication. This practice insight targets individual food waste reduction through a workshop at the workplace, including a lunch from rescued food, documentary screening, discussion, and expert presentation. It aimed to enhance participants’ self-efficacy and intention to reduce food waste. The effectiveness of the screening was tested experimentally by evaluating the effects of positive and negative framing. Exposure to negative framing was associated with higher intensity in negative affect, whereas positive framing appeared to be associated with higher self-efficacy. Furthermore, this practice insight provides strategies to foster science communication in workplaces.

Volume 24 • Issue 3 • 2025

Apr 28, 2025 Article

National Parks as Vehicles for Science Communication: the Science of Signs

by Lloyd Davis, Lei Zhu and Wiebke Finkler

Signs used for science interpretation within national parks have been little studied. We analyzed the textual content of 129 signs in 11 US national parks. Science content was high, but readability was low overall and inversely related to the amount of science content. The amount of science varied by subject area and national park, as did the depth of information and its relevance to humans. Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park, however, had signs containing high amounts of science with the highest readability scores, emphasizing the potential benefits for science communication that can come from understanding the science of signs.

Volume 24 • Issue 3 • 2025

Jan 20, 2025 Practice Insight

Co-creation in citizen science: sharing learnings and good practice from an indoor, airborne microplastics project

by Ana Margarida Sardo, Laura De Vito, Kirsty J. Pringle, Mark Hansen, Kathryn Lamb-Riddell, Sophie Laggan, Timothy Cox and Ben Williams

HOMEs was a citizen science exploratory project, aimed at investigating the presence of airborne microplastics in people's homes. Participants placed passive samplers in their homes, using low-cost microscopes to see and take pictures of their samples. The methods developed are promising, however there are a number of pitfalls to avoid and key considerations. This practice insight explores successful approaches and identifies barriers and limitations when embedding co-creation and participatory citizen science approaches to a research project. This piece focuses on the methods and engagement with participants, rather than on microplastics findings.

Volume 24 • Issue 01 • 2025

Jan 13, 2025 Practice Insight

Climate change is (NOT) funny: insights from a climate change comedy event

by James Riley and Alexander Hall

In recent years there has been an increasing call for new modes of climate change communication. These calls have gone beyond classic consensus-building and fact-sharing to addressing affective dimensions and meaning-making in relation to the climate crisis. In this article we reflect on a proof-of-concept climate change comedy project — “Climate Change is NOT Funny!”. Building on audience and performer insights, we reflect on the effectiveness and affective dimensions of comedy as a climate change communication method, as well as institutional and funding constraints on delivery. Finally, we introduce how we designed our project to go on making an impact beyond the grant's lifespan. By empowering professional comedians to embed new research-informed climate change material into their regular sets, we argue that our approach can amplify the reach of climate communication activities, and in turn provide new forums for individuals to engage with the most pressing aspects of the climate crisis.

Volume 24 • Issue 01 • 2025

Dec 16, 2024 Article

(Un)certainty in science and climate change: a longitudinal analysis (2014–2022) of narratives about climate science on social media in Brazil (Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter)

by Roberta Lima, Andre L. Belem, Diógenes Lycarião, Thaiane Oliveira, Simone Evangelista, Luisa Massarani and Marcelo Alves

This article examines climate change discourse on Brazilian social media from 2014 to 2022 and use a longitudinal approach, analyzing discourse, scientific authority, and eco-emotions on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Methods include TF-IDF for feature extraction, sentiment analysis with VADER, and Named Entity Recognition (NER). A Ridge Classifier was trained on 557 manually classified samples. Findings show no significant increase in challenges to scientific authority or skepticism, but reveal a subtle shift towards using uncertainty as a rhetorical tool to undermine trust in scientific discourse.

Volume 23 • Issue 09 • 2024 • Special Issue: Public (dis)trust in science in digital media environments

Nov 06, 2024 Practice Insight

Talking genetic technologies and conservation: purposeful games as a tool to level the epistemic playing field

by Vicki Macknight, Marie McEntee and Fabien Medvecky

In New Zealand, the use of genetic technologies for environmental and conservation purposes is a highly contested issue yet genetic technologies, including RNAi and gene drives may offer technological advances for protecting New Zealand's vulnerable biodiversity. This context makes discussions on the use of gene technology for environmental purposes both challenging and necessary. Such discussions can be difficult, not simply because they are often contested, but also because people find the topic complicated, the language alien and overly scientific. This research, which sits at the intersection of science and publics, is part of a large national dialogue which aimed to better understand the public's thoughts and feelings around the use of genetic technologies for environmental or conservation purposes. To assist people to feel comfortable at the beginning of the dialogue sessions, we designed purposeful games before engaging in a facilitated conversation. These games are based on heritage games that most people are familiar with but altered to address several issues relevant to genetic technologies in an environmental context. This article provides an insight into how to design and use purposeful games to foster epistemic confidence in non-scientists. It acts as a helpful guide for others working in contested spaces where there is a need to effectively facilitate engagement of non-scientists in important science-society discussions.

Volume 23 • Issue 08 • 2024

Oct 21, 2024 Practice Insight

Public perceptions of ocean science as insight into discovery science

by Shu-Min Janet Tsai, T.Y. Branch and Shawn Rowe

This article examines the complex relationship between humans and the ocean, focusing on public perceptions and the role of discovery in ocean science. For this, we use the term ‘discovery’ in two ways: publics ‘discovering’ ocean science and ‘discovery’ as the epistemic foundation of ocean science. Through textual analysis, we show how scientific discovery is intertwined with exploration in national-level ocean literacy policy documents. We then denote a practical and methodological distinction between discovery and basic science in ocean science. To link this back to ocean literacy, we employ Free-Choice Learning examples situated in the U.S. and Taiwan that adopt Personal Meaning Mapping to highlight how adolescents ‘discover’ the ocean and recognize the prevalence of discovery in ocean science. We conclude that although discovery is essential to ocean science, it is inseparable from a legacy of harm (i.e., exploitation, colonialism, and environmental degradation) which makes it — and other discovery sciences — an ongoing challenge to communicate.

Volume 23 • Issue 07 • 2024 • Special Issue: Communicating Discovery Science

Jun 10, 2024 Practice Insight

Measuring the impacts of participatory citizen science: lessons from the WeCount sustainable mobility project

by Ana Margarida Sardo, Sophie Laggan, Laura Fogg-Rogers, Elke Franchois, Giovanni Maccani, Kris Vanherle and Enda Hayes

WeCount was designed to empower citizens in five case studies across Europe to take a leading role in the production of data, evidence, knowledge and solutions for local sustainable mobility. This practice insight aims to explore the suitability and value of citizen science to address sustainable mobility and sustainable transport issues. The evaluation showed that WeCount was able to reach and sustain engagement with broad demographics in society and highlighted the importance of co-design in making citizen science enjoyable and empowering. Statistical significance was found: the more a citizen enjoyed their time, the more likely they were to state they would continue working with the data beyond the project. Moreover, WeCount citizens reported that participation led to action and/or changes in behaviours. While the numbers are modest (24 individual actions by around 10% of participants), this is an important, measurable outcome.

Volume 23 • Issue 05 • 2024

May 20, 2024 Practice Insight

Hands-on climate engagement: principles for effective hands-on activities and demonstrations

by Angus Croak and Graham J. Walker

Communicating climate change to foster engagement and action is a challenge for science communication requiring novel, creative and diverse methods. In this practice reflection, we explore the potential of climate change related hands-on activities and demonstrations. Following a rapidly implemented COVID-19 project creating climate activities and workshops in the Pacific, we reflect on the underlying qualities of such activities to generate principles to guide design and facilitation of hands-on climate engagement. Through a fusing of theory, literature and practice, five principles are generated: personal and collective relevance, balancing risks/impacts with solutions, deliberative discussion and collaborative/participatory critical thinking, intrinsic motivation and positive emotional engagement, and opportunities for agency and action — with inclusive approaches providing foundation. We then describe applying the principles to refine content and create new activities.

Volume 23 • Issue 03 • 2024

Apr 08, 2024 Article

Effects of message frames and visual cues on cell-cultured meat communication: sensation seeking as a moderator

by Namyeon Lee and Sungkyoung Lee

Cell-cultured meat presents environmental and ethical advantages; however, negative public acceptance remains a significant hurdle. To generate more effective public engagement on this topic, we conducted two online experiments exploring the impact of message framing and food cues (Experiment 1) and the moderating role of an individual's personality trait, sensation seeking, (Experiment 2) on the perception of cultured meat news shared via social media. Our findings revealed that messages employing individual benefit-framing, as opposed to societal benefit-framing, resulted in more positive perceptions of cultured meat. Incorporating direct food cues in the communication led to reduced risk perception, a more favorable attitude, and increased intention to purchase cultured meat. Furthermore, sensation seeking was shown to be a significant moderator for the effects of the message features. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.

Volume 23 • Issue 03 • 2024