Framing research

Across Europe, most people will nowadays accept that human activity is causing climate change and that we need to do something about it. However, this is clearly not the case in the US, and the way in which the perception of climate change evolved there reveals a serious problem in science communication. As communications researcher Matthew Nisbet from the American University at Washington, DC explained at the recent conference 'Framing Research' of the Danish Association of Science Journalists (Copenhagen, 11th June 2009), it is all a question of how a scientific issue is 'framed', i.e. presented in a specific context, and turned into a story that resonates with what the audience already knows. To European audiences familiar with the notions of limited resources and pollution problems since the 1970s, climate change easily fits in with the expectation that industrial activity has unwanted side effects. People already concerned about the environment simply had to replace yesterday's pollutants, such as sulphur dioxide, with the new cause for concern, carbon dioxide. In the US, however, climate sceptics managed to put the issue into a completely different context. With the involuntary help from Al Gore and his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, they portrayed climate change as a scare story made up by 'Hollywood liberals'. Thus it ended up becoming a partisan issue. While the majority of Democrat supporters continued to trust the scientific view on climate change, support among Republican supporters dropped away steeply. In such a situation, where large parts of the population believe they are being lied to by political opponents, Nisbet explained, no amount of scientific information or outreach activities can restore confidence in what scientists believe to be the truth. Any further scientific evidence presented by Gore and his friends will only cause people on the right to rally behind their flag of opposition to what they now perceive as a 'liberal' cause. " People use partisanship as an information shortcut, " Nisbet said. As a remedy, Nisbet suggests to reframe climate change debates into contexts that are directly relevant to people and that they can discuss with someone they trust. For instance, medical professionals could inform them about the specific health risks that could arise locally due to climate change, such as the return of malaria and other infectious diseases. Other frames that may help to break what he describes as a " partisan gridlock " on climate change …