A piece on OpenDemocracy called "Communicating climate change" dovetails nicely with the "Americans and Climate Change" report I've been republishing (and you've been reading, right?).
It's practically a truism at this point that the lack of public outcry and action on global warming has something to do with the way the issue is "framed." (I wrote about framing here.) But how to frame it better? Everybody has a theory.
An outfit called the FrameWorks Institute (good piece on the institute here) did some research on it and came up with some semi-concrete conclusions.
Here's what it found is wrong with the way journalists and green groups are presenting the problem:
It found that the more people are bombarded with words or images of devastating, quasi-Biblical effects of global warming, the more likely they are to tune out and switch instead into "adaptationist" mode, focusing on protecting themselves and their families, such as by buying large vehicles to secure their safety.
FrameWorks found that depicting global warming as being about "scary weather" evokes the weather "frame" which sets up a highly pernicious set of reactions, as weather is something we react to and is outside human control. We do not prevent or change it, we prepare for it, adjust to it or move away from it. Also, focusing on the long timelines and scale of global warming further encourages people to adapt, encouraging people to think "it won't happen in my lifetime" and "there's nothing an individual can do".
As importantly, the FrameWorks Institute found that stressing the large scale of global warming and then telling people they can solve it through small actions like changing a light-bulb evokes a disconnect that undermines credibility and encourages people to think that action is meaningless. The common practice of throwing solutions in at the end of a discussion fails to signal to people that this is a problem that could be solved at all.
Yes, that all sounds depressingly correct to me. What would work as better framing? Here's what the institute offers:
... the FrameWorks Institute drew several conclusions:FrameWorks also recommended using a simplifying model, analogy or metaphor to help the public understand how global warming works -- a "conceptual hook" to make sense of information about the issue. Instead of the "greenhouse-gas effect", which was found did not perform for most people, FrameWorks recommended talking about the "CO2 blanket" or "heat-trap" to set up appropriate reasoning. This would help, it argued, to refocus communications towards establishing the man-made causes of the problem and the solutions that already exist to address it, suggesting that humans can and should act to prevent the problem now.
- it recommended placing the issue in the context of higher-level values, such as responsibility, stewardship, competence, vision and ingenuity
- it proposed that action to prevent climate change should be characterised as being about new thinking, new technologies, planning ahead, smartness, forward-thinking, balanced alternatives, efficiency, prudence and caring
- conversely, it proposed that opponents of action be charged with the reverse of these values -- irresponsibility, old thinking and inefficiency.
The need to evoke the existence and effectiveness of solutions upfront, the FrameWorks research stressed, was paramount. And if the consequences of climate change are cited, the analysis concluded they should not appear extreme in size or scale, should put humans at the centre, made to fit with personal experience and involve shorter timelines -- twenty years not 200.
So: simplify explanations, focus on solutions, speak in terms of values, claim the future. All the usual stuff.
At this point it seems to me that good framing ideas on global warming abound. Now the question is: Why is nobody using them?
Comments
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janinsanfran Posted 2:39 pm
20 May 2006
This needs leadership from someone who already has media heft and preferably some political power to change the frame. Someone who is willing to take the heat from those who profit from existing technologies, at that.
Can It Happen Here?
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farnishk Posted 12:10 am
21 May 2006
To quote a piece I wrote in March : "The public are prepared to take part in popular protest if (a) they feel they are directly affected, or (b) it doesn't require significant effort. From this we can quite confidently conclude that if the direct impacts of an issue on an individual do not outweigh the amount of effort required by that individual (e.g. changing lifestyle, drawn out campaigning, making financial sacrifices) to support it, then most individuals will not make the changes required for that issue to be resolved. " (http://earth-blog.bravejournal.com/archive/03/11/2006)
The tools to bypass this problem all exist - it's just a case of getting governments to use them.
Keith.
http://www.theearthblog.org
Giving the Earth a future.
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Kit Stolz Posted 5:17 am
21 May 2006
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/48223
The headline tells the story: I'm Doing My Inconsequential Part for the Environment
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caniscandida Posted 7:40 am
21 May 2006
The FrameWorks Institute's recommendations, in those three bullets, strike me as kind of vague. They sound OK, but I would need to see them on paper.
But I like "carbon dioxide blanket" and "heat-trap" a lot.
As for the Onion, John Muir, and that way of thinking, we have already touched on this matter in a number of threads. My feeling is, it is very practical, and makes a great deal of sense, to be results-oriented. But we should not so emphasize a successful result that we assign no value whatsoever to personal virtue -- e.g. using fluorescent lightbulbs.
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mashford Posted 3:18 pm
21 May 2006
Michael Ashford
Michael S Ashford
The Climate Trust, USA
Tel: 503-238-1915
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Kif Scheuer Posted 12:12 am
22 May 2006
Framing depends on people actually hearing your message.
There was an excellent article on the Dems getting gung-ho on framing in the NYT awhile ago (archived here)
Several of the Dems and Republicans pointed to message discipline as key, rather than the particular framing. Message discipline is getting everybody to say the same thing as much as possible. Where this differs from framing is emphasizing message presence rather than message content.
A whole lot of research on "agenda setting" in the media shows that people talk about what's in the news most often. Framing is also effective, but you've got to have volume before framing is going to matter. As JaninSanFran points out we need leadership which is one way to increase the volume. Unfortunately, you also need money in this society to get your message out loud.
Climate change may be hard to frame, but it's even harder to get message discipline on. Maybe the new climate change group Gore is involved with will have the pockets and consistency to provide message discipline.
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Kit Stolz Posted 2:46 am
22 May 2006
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gerald spezio Posted 5:15 am
22 May 2006
In the first box above;
"It found that the more people are bombarded..."
"Frameworks found that depicting..."
"Frameworks found that stressing..."
How did these communications geniuses "find" all these powerful determinants of human behavior and the failure to communicate? It's simple; "Linguistic analysis of elite discourse..." whatever that is. No details of this informative research is given. We doan need no stinking epistemology or operationalism. We just know it, and we want you to get it.
Framewonkers also "found" that the "greenhouse gas effect" "did not work for most people." No, no, no, global warming urgency and scary weather frames. It's all about values, and man oh man can we manage those values. It's all about management, too.
Just read the metaphysical and blatently mentalistic statement above. "Frameworks found that depicting global warming as being about scary weather evokes the weather frame which sets up a highly pernicious set (set theory?) of reactions ..." What a convoluted causal chain! Maybe they should call themselves the Framewonkers Institute for literary psychiatry.
Their esoteric and secret research is so determinative, moreover, that powerful conclusions and recommendations are stated. We know the human mind (whatever that is?) and we know what to do. New thinking? Smartness? Prudence? Caring? What abject literary blather!
Why would anybody respect such obvious and outright nonsense? These guys are most probilistically whores on the take, and their delivery is as muddled as their foul message. If you think that these bastards are trying to help, I suggest that they are yuppie double agents giving great powerpoint propaganda for the Man.
The professed wizardy of Framewonkers is designed to keep you bewildered and mystified about the clearly documented causal chains of GLOBAL WARMING - the most important event in human history.
Yes Dave, it definitely dovetails perfectly with the adaptationism of the Yalie's Climate Change masquerade. Your credibility is on the line, Sir.
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atreyger Posted 5:31 am
22 May 2006
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kmp Posted 6:46 am
22 May 2006
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John Fish Kurmann Posted 12:41 pm
22 May 2006
One thing S&B didn't explore was why the MSM adopted the "I have a nightmare" approach and why they so tenaciously cling to it despite its failure to achieve the desired results (that is, a wholesale change in behavior resulting in sustainable societies). My nutshell theory: They assume people are destroying "the environment" (to use their term) because it's human nature to do so: People are shortsighted and selfish and greedy and destructive by nature, so of course they're ripping the living world to shreds. As long as you proceed from that italicized assumption, your only hope--and a damn slim one at that--is to scare enough people in leadership positions about the consequences of our actions to get legislation passed and regulations adopted to control all those inherently destructive people. Under this assumption, you certainly aren't going to imagine that people will rise to the challenge of building a sustainable world if only you give them a positive vision to reach for. And, if that assumption was correct, the best strategy would be fearmongering, legislation, and regulation. I'm convinced that assumption is not correct, however. The roots of our ecocrisis lie in human culture, not human nature, and cultures can change.
Fortunately, in the face of their catastrophic failure to end civilization's death-march, some folks in the MSM are beginning to consider other options. Let's just hope it's not too late.
The world is sacred and I am sacred as part of it.
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David Roberts Posted 3:29 pm
22 May 2006
There's more too it than the tone of their message. They are pushing against powerful, historical forces. Any success would be a miracle.
Climate change is a geuninely difficult problem -- nay, the perfect problem.
www.grist.org
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bookerly Posted 3:49 pm
22 May 2006
Framing is an important part of the discussion, the labels attached to things and the words used to discuss them have an important impact on how we hear what is being said.
However, framing doesn't occur in a political vaccuum. It is done in a delibate manner not only by those seeking to stop global warming, but by those who have a stake in allowing it to continue.
Most of the folks who are offering new solutions around framing, or (Al Gore and his new group) are proposing new coalitions to try to address the issue represent the "top down" approach, as it has been described elsewhere in GristMill.
If it were only a matter of education and getting people convinced somehow to act, this might not be a problem. But we are still missing an important part of the equation.
The opponents of the movement to stop global warming (oil companies, auto companies, religious far right and others I don't even know) already have the top of their coalition in place. Now they concentrate on the bottom, in sense of reaching the masses of Americans.
Fox TV, right wing radio, and a lot of the televised MSM (most Americans get their information these days from television and radio) are pounding a "What-Me-Worry?" approach to global warming. Absent any serious attempts to reach large numbers of people with a different message, it is likely to succeed (and so far, seems to be doing so).
Unfortunately, most of our attempts at framing are coming AFTER the othe side has already framed the discussion for a considerable length of time. It does us no good to win the ivory towers if we lose the street, and we are not even engaged in the street.
Unless we can come up with something that can change the nature of the debate (and to do that we must understand that we will be opposed by people with no morals except greed, no sense of fairness, and a ruthless desire to win), we will lose.
We are already all too often allowing the other side to dominate the debate over television, radio and in the street (also in the print media, but they are of less and less importance in terms of communication of ideas.)
We can frame till the cows come home, but unless we are willing to fight (metaphorically), we will be sucking air on our way to canvas floor.
patrick
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caniscandida Posted 4:42 pm
22 May 2006
It is certainly true that many "people are shortsighted and selfish and greedy and destructive ... , so of course they're ripping the living world to shreds." I agree with you in doubting that this is a totally natural predisposition. Let us recognize, though, that it is at least in part based on the natural instinct for survival. That must be taken into account. Also, in Western industrial consumerist societies, the individual's prestige depends on what that person buys and owns: the more possessions that person has, the greater that person's prestige. "The one who dies with the most toys wins."
You write that "cultures can change." That is true. But they do not change quickly. And in this case, changing ours looks like an especially huge challenge.
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amazingdrx Posted 9:57 pm
22 May 2006
As the Institute states:
"focusing on the long timelines and scale of global warming further encourages people to adapt, encouraging people to think "it won't happen in my lifetime" and "there's nothing an individual can do".
Use the adaptation instinct. Couple the pocketbook issue of high energy prices and loss of manufacturing jobs to the solution.
And make it clear that it is reversible in most people's lifetimes. Older people generally have a stake in leaving a world intact for their grandchildren.
These storms and droughts are bringing the weather issue right into the present time scale.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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kmp Posted 12:56 am
23 May 2006
Ah, but they can. Twenty years ago there were no blogs. Twenty years ago I was a computer science major, struggling through programming in LISP on punchcards. Fifteen years ago, when I got my first "real" job, every morning I booted up my amber-monochrome 80/88 with a 5 1/4 floppy disk that contained the "hard drive."
I don't mean to suggest that advances in technology necessarily drive changes in culture. But in this case, they (it) did. Think of how many aspects of our culture have radically changed because of the Internet; how we communicate, how we work, how we shop, travel, entertain.
I'm not visionary enough to see what is coming down the road as the next big change to our culture. I firmly believe, however, that whether it be a moral change on par with Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream," or a technology change on par with the Internet, that our culture can change faster than any of us would believe possible.
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caniscandida Posted 2:46 am
23 May 2006
I agree that the fast-evolving computer technology and reliance on the Internet, and positive developments in civil rights, are examples of relatively quick cultural changes. But neither is so deep or far-reaching, I think, as to be quite a good analogy with the kind of cultural, societal and personal changes, in both attitude and conduct, that we are requiring in order to halt global warming and its effects, to halt the destruction of biodiversity, to create a sustainable global economy, and to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
Computers and the internet fit well into traditional cultural patterns of developing and procuring new tools for the sake of our power and prestige. True, we conduct our daily business, by choice and by necessity, in a manner rather different than what we did just a few years ago -- and after a lot of inevitable consumption of products and energy, one of our favorite cultural activities. But I do not see in that a radical cultural change.
And the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s has accomplished many good things. But the systemic racism of our society persists; one major reaction to LBJ's civil rights legislation was the GOP's Southern Strategy, which of course is still with us. And even many of those who celebrate the recognition of the civil rights of blacks and other racial minorities are too often unwilling to extend the same considerations to the civil rights of homosexuals.
Nevertheless, I appreciate your hopefulness, and am doing my best to share it.
Amazing, is there such a thing as an "adaptation instinct"? E.g., the sort of feeling that motivates people living in desperate poverty to pick themselves up and migrate? Well, could be. The Inupiak of the north coast of Alaska are painfully aware that the coastal ice that they depend on for their livelihood has been rapidly melting away; one of their villages, on an island about to be pounded to bits by ocean waves, they have uprooted and moved onto the mainland; otherwise, are they adapting?
In Darwinian terms, adaptation is not an instinct. Pressures of one kind or another kill off a lot of individuals in a population; a few survive, for genetic reasons, not for anything necessarily that it occurs to them to do.
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da silva Posted 3:21 am
23 May 2006
At this point it seems to me that good framing ideas on global warming abound. Now the question is: Why is nobody using them?
Seems like Gore's tact to me, albeit with the obligatory 'over-representation of factual presentations about the dangers etc, etc, up front. No?
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John Fish Kurmann Posted 6:08 am
23 May 2006
Just to be clear, it was not my intent to lay the majority of the blame for the lack of effective action to address climate disruption on the MEM. Almost all of us in the industrialized world bear some of the responsibility for that, and I agree that global warming-induced climate disruption is a particularly difficult challenge to meet.
Moreover, the deeply-embedded assumption that people are shortsighted and selfish and greedy and destructive by nature is widely held. The MEM is by no means unique in being trapped by it. As the most prominent leaders on the climate disruption issue, though, they could have gone a long way toward undermining this pernicious and false assumption, but they perpetuated it instead. I don't blame them for not doing so--overcoming one's acculturation is very difficult to do--but I do think it's fair to point out why I think they've failed. We must be clear about why their campaigns have failed as we work on new ways of communicating about climate disruption if we want to be more successful. We cannot afford to perpetuate the same mistakes.
I also think this assumption goes far deeper than imparting a tone to the MEM's campaigns, David. Our capacity to act is always constrained by out worldviews, by our unquestioned assumptions, by the limits of our thinking. We cannot do anything we aren't capable of thinking first. Worldviews provides the framework for everything else.
The world is sacred and I am sacred as part of it.
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John Fish Kurmann Posted 6:20 am
23 May 2006
First of all, people are most certainly capable of being shortsighted, selfish, greedy and destructive--but they're also capable of being farsighted, communally-minded, generous, and creative. All of these behaviors are encompassed by "human nature." So what makes the difference? I'm convinced the key lies in social and economic organization. Does your system encourage the pursuit of individual or communal wealth? Does it primarily encourage competitive or cooperative behavior? Does it allow for true participatory decisionmaking by all members of the system? This is what I'm getting at when I say the source of our ecocrisis lies in culture.
Some cultural change is very slow, to be sure, but not all. How many people predicted the Soviet bloc would implode when it did? How long did it take for Germany and Japan to shed their militaristic ways after their catastrophic losses in WWII?
And what's our definition of slow? The transition from a prevailing conserver culture in the United States to the current consumer culture lasted decades, but that's actually pretty fast for such an enormous change to take place. No, the kind of cultural change I'm talking about won't happen in a week or a month or a year, but I think it can happen relatively quickly. I've previously written on this subject in my essay "Does changing minds take too long to save the world?"
The world is sacred and I am sacred as part of it.
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