Filter by keyword: Environmental communication

Jun 01, 2022 Conference Review

Mainstreaming post-2020 biodiversity through science communication and education

by Shen Zhou , Chenxin Lv , xinchang Sun

The 5th Luosuo River Science Education Forum was held online from December 7 to 8, 2021, with the theme “Education for Ecological Civilization: Post-2020 Biodiversity Education and Communication”. The Forum assembled stakeholders to discuss four aspects of the topic: biodiversity conservation with Chinese characteristics, biodiversity education theory, biodiversity education practice, and biodiversity communication innovation, to promote “global vision and local action” in mainstreaming biodiversity conservation.

Volume 21Issue 032022

Mar 28, 2022 Practice Insight

#finaltrashtination. An art-based intervention to collaboratively generate conversations about climate change

by Franzisca Weder

In this practice insight, an art-based, participatory intervention (#finaltrashtination) is presented as higher education assignment in environmental and climate change communication. The project #finaltrashtination made dominant environmentally destructive ways of wasting visible and stimulated students to take responsibility, advocacy and authorship for transformation. Beyond the one-day eco-culture jam, the project engaged the wider public through conversations about a specific environmental problem. Thus, the project shows how conversational problematization and sensemaking around scientific facts can be initiated by using eco-culture jams promoting very unsettling moments of reflection.

Volume 21Issue 022022Special Issue Participatory science communication for transformation (PCST2020+1) (PCST2020+1)

Mar 28, 2022 Practice Insight

Participatory citizen science in solar energy research: going beyond data collection to promote the energy transition

by Luisa Barbosa , Carlos del Cañizo , Gema Revuelta

Despite the societal relevance of energy research, there is a distinct lack of citizen science initiatives in the field. This paper reports the experience of a participatory and innovative strategy to develop a citizen science initiative for solar energy research. A number of stakeholders participated in the definition and implementation of the initiative, and tools such as surveys and a hackathon were employed. The process described aims to provide a blueprint for transforming the relationship between citizens and research into societal challenges. Here we describe the collaborative process and analyse the main opportunities, limitations and future perspectives.

Volume 21Issue 022022Special Issue Participatory science communication for transformation (PCST2020+1) (PCST2020+1)

Mar 28, 2022 Practice Insight

Participatory science communication needs to consider power, place, pain and ‘poisson’: a practitioner insight

by Anne Leitch

The language of science communication has moved from deficit to dialogue and talk of a ‘new social contract’ with the public ‘invited to participate’. This paper outlines a practitioner path that begins with storytelling and moves to a more participatory mode of practice of science communication for adaptation to climate change at the community scale. I outline personal practitioner reflections, specifically the need to consider issues of power, place, pain and the need to challenge assumptions. I propose the need to consider context, many forms of local knowledge and expertise, social learning, plus the pain of historical, contemporary or projected loss.

Volume 21Issue 022022Special Issue Participatory science communication for transformation (PCST2020+1) (PCST2020+1)

Feb 21, 2022 Article

Wildlife comics, or the making of young naturalists in late Franco's Spain (1969–1970)

by Carlos Tabernero

This essay examines a highly popular comic series published in Spain between 1969 and 1970 which focused on Felix Rodríguez de la Fuente (1928–1980), a prominent and influential naturalist and media icon, as main character. These comics constitute a remarkably illustrative example of the use of popular media in processes of construction of natural history knowledge. Situated in the complex final years of Franco's regime, they allow us to probe the combined role of science, media, and celebrity in the construction of a visual environmental culture through storytelling strategies designed to engage young audiences in naturalist-like practices.

Volume 21Issue 012022

Dec 15, 2021 Article

Experts, influencers, and amplifiers — Exploring climate movements' hyperlinking practices

by Frauke Rohden

While research shows different links between activism and science, little is known about activists engaging in science communication online. Demanding that decision-makers should “listen to the scientists”, the climate movements Fridays for Future (FFF) and Extinction Rebellion (XR) emphasize the role of scientific knowledge in democratic decision-making. Exploring the two movements' hyperlinking practices reveals a difference in the extent and selection of hyperlinks on their websites, pointing to influencer-based communication and focus on popularization of science by FFF and expert-based communication leaning on academic publications by XR, with both movements acting as amplifiers of existing science communication efforts.

Volume 20Issue 072021

Dec 13, 2021 Article

Understanding the relationship between sharing personal anecdotes, warmth, curiosity, risk perception and mitigation in communicating the threat of climate change

by Reyhaneh Maktoufi

While most Americans believes in climate change, to elicit action, communicators should use strategies to convey risks. One strategy is to cognitively engage individuals by eliciting curiosity. Previous studies have shown that individuals with higher science curiosity are more likely to perceive the risk of climate change. This study uses scientists’ act of sharing personal anecdotes to elicit curiosity and examines the effect of scientist’s traits on risk perception. Results show that anecdotes do not affect any of the variables. However, there is a positive relationship between curiosity and risk perception, and between trust in scientists and risk perception.

Volume 20Issue 072021

Dec 09, 2021 Article

Individual solutions to collective problems: the paradoxical treatment of environmental issues on Mexican and French YouTubers' videos

by Cecilia Lartigue , Guillaume Carbou , Muriel Lefebvre

The impact of human activity on our planet is undeniable. However, this matter of fact is not fully understandable without analyzing the narratives through which people make sense of it. In this study, we aim to describe the narratives present in environmental discourses of Mexican and French YouTubers' videos. This corpus is intended to show how environmental issues are framed in the ever-growing discursive arena of entertainment and “influencing” streaming video. We set out to perform a cross-country comparison, with the purpose of contributing to the discussion of whether environmental discourse is country-specific or shared by various nations and, possibly, even global. Our study contributes to the understanding of the social construction of the environment via these discourses. Our main result points to a paradoxical treatment of environmental issues: the YouTubers of our sample represent them as collectively induced problems, but seem to mainly believe that individual-based solutions would resolve them. More broadly, our study suggests a tendency to the individualization and, therefore, the depoliticization of environmental issues as well as a globalization of the environmental discourses in YouTubers' videos.

Volume 20Issue 072021

Oct 11, 2021 Article

Onto new horizons: insights from the WeObserve project to strengthen the awareness, acceptability and sustainability of Citizen Observatories in Europe

by Gerid Hager , Margaret Gold , Uta Wehn , Raquel Ajates , Linda See , Mel Woods , Chrysovalantis Tsiakos , Joan Masó , Dilek Fraisl , Inian Moorthy , Dahlia Domian , Steffen Fritz

WeObserve delivered the first European-wide Citizen Observatory (CO) knowledge platform to share best practices, to address challenges and to inform practitioners, policy makers and funders of COs. We present key insights from WeObserve activities into leveraging challenges to create interlinked solutions, connecting with international frameworks and groups, advancing the field through communities of practice and practitioner networks, and fostering an enabling environment for COs. We also discuss how the new Horizon Europe funding programme can help to further advance the CO concept, and vice versa, how COs can provide a suitable mechanism to support the ambitions of Horizon Europe.

Volume 20Issue 062021Special Issue: Third International ECSA Conference, Trieste 2020 (Ecsa Conference 2020)

Oct 11, 2021 Article

Citizen science and crowdsourcing in the field of marine scientific research — the MaDCrow project

by Paolo Diviacco , Antonio Nadali , Massimiliano Nolich , Andrea Molinaro , Massimiliano Iurcev , Rodrigo Carbajales , Alessandro Busato , Alessandro Pavan , Lorenzo Grio , Francesca Malfatti

Marine research is as important as very demanding since it requires expensive infrastructures and resources. Scientific institutions, on the contrary, have very limited funding so that the seas remain, still, mostly unexplored. Another serious concern is that society at large often resonates with fake news, while scientists sometimes tend to bias research with their backgrounds and paradigms. We think that all these issues can be addressed opening the process of knowledge building to the questions and needs of stakeholders and laypeople. The MaDCrow project proposed and tested several paths to attain these goals.

Volume 20Issue 062021Special Issue: Third International ECSA Conference, Trieste 2020 (Ecsa Conference 2020)

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