Identifying like-minded audiences for global warming public engagement campaigns: an audience segmentation analysis and tool development

Background

Achieving national reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will require public support for climate and energy policies and changes in population behaviors. Audience segmentation – a process of identifying coherent groups within a population – can be used to improve the effectiveness of public engagement campaigns.

Methodology/Principal Findings

In Fall 2008, we conducted a nationally representative survey of American adults (n = 2,164) to identify audience segments for global warming public engagement campaigns. By subjecting multiple measures of global warming beliefs, behaviors, policy preferences, and issue engagement to latent class analysis, we identified six distinct segments ranging in size from 7 to 33% of the population. These six segments formed a continuum, from a segment of people who were highly worried, involved and supportive of policy responses (18%), to a segment of people who were completely unconcerned and strongly opposed to policy responses (7%). Three of the segments (totaling 70%) were to varying degrees concerned about global warming and supportive of policy responses, two (totaling 18%) were unsupportive, and one was largely disengaged (12%), having paid little attention to the issue. Certain behaviors and policy preferences varied greatly across these audiences, while others did not. Using discriminant analysis, we subsequently developed 36-item and 15-item instruments that can be used to categorize respondents with 91% and 84% accuracy, respectively.

Conclusions/Significance

In late 2008, Americans supported a broad range of policies and personal actions to reduce global warming, although there was wide variation among the six identified audiences. To enhance the impact of campaigns, government agencies, non-profit organizations, and businesses seeking to engage the public can selectively target one or more of these audiences rather than address an undifferentiated general population. Our screening instruments are available to assist in that process.     

Why nation-states and journalists can't teach people to be healthy: power and pragmatic miscalculation in public discourses on health

This article analyzes how Venezuelan public health officials collaborated with journalists in producing information about cholera in January-December 1991. It uses Michael Warner's (2002) observation that such public discourse involves a contradiction: it must project the image of reaching an actually existing public at the same time that it creates multiple publics as it circulates. The analysis explores the language ideologies that hide complex sets of practices, networks, and material conditions that shape how public discourses circulate. At the same time that epidemiologists targeted poor barrio residents, street vendors of food and drink, and indigenous people as being "at high risk," health education messages pictured women in well-equipped kitchens demonstrating cholera prevention measures. The gap between these ideal audiences and the discrepant publics created by their circulation limited the effectiveness of prevention efforts and created a substantial chasm between public health institutions and the publics they sought to reach.     

Opening Darwin's black box: teaching evolution through developmental genetics

When biologists are asked to discuss the evidence for evolution at public forums, they usually use well-established microevolutionary examples. Although these examples show the efficacy of evolution within species, they often leave audiences susceptable to the arguments of creationists who deny that evolution can create new structures and species. Recent studies from evolutionary developmental biology are beginning to provide case studies that specifically address these concerns. This perspective presents some of this new evidence and provides a framework in which to explain homology and phylogeny to such audiences.     

Kinship appeals and conservation social marketing

Increasing environmental problems and the need to obtain public support to help address them make effective appeals in conservation fundraising campaigns indispensable. However, social marketing messages based on data, characteristics of focal species, self-interest, and moral responsibility tend to work best on targeted, and so limited, audiences. As conservation organizations reach out to broader audiences, they will require strategies that appeal to more potential donors. This paper argues that use of kinship symbolism to describe non-human species should make conservation marketing campaigns more effective. Evolutionary theories of altruism predict the power of kinship-recognition cues in encouraging and reinforcing sacrifice in non-kin, unreciprocated contexts, and these cues can be manipulated in marketing campaigns to protect threatened species and resources. People often behave altruistically toward “fictive” kin, and the labeling of non-humans as kin in many traditional, small-scale societies appears to be associated with environmental resource management. Characterizing non-human species, and even non-living resources, as kin to humans in marketing campaigns may promote a willingness to contribute to conservation-related causes.     

Hollywood and the Travelogue

Although documentary films, in formats such as the travelogue-expedition film, are rarely considered as a basis for insight into the Hollywood cinema, the early 1930s provide one historical period during which travelogues produced by independent filmmakers achieved such public popularity that the Hollywood studios were forced to respond. Studios produced some feature-length documentaries themselves, began distributing others, and generated "hybrid" films, such as M-G-M's Trader Horn [1931], that demonstrate a surprising willingness to give up the priority of narrative for the advantage of providing audiences with digressive documentary interludes devoted to the spectacle of exotic cultures, landscapes and wildlife.     

The Opinion Editorial: teaching physiology outside the box

Improving the public understanding of science is an important challenge for the future professional scientists who are our current undergraduates. In this paper, we present a conceptual model that explores the role of mass media as community gatekeepers of new scientific findings. This model frames the benefits for undergraduate science students to learn about media genres so that they can learn to communicate science more effectively to nonprofessional audiences. Informed by this Media Role model, we then detail a novel writing task for undergraduate physiology students, the Opinion Editorial (Op-Ed), and an accompanying Peer Review. The Op-Ed genre was directly taught to the students by a professional journalist. As an assessment task, students presented a recent, highly technical paper as an Op-Ed. This was assessed by both faculty members and peers using a detailed assessment rubric. Most students were able to replicate the features of Op-Eds and attained high grades on their writing tasks. Survey data from final-year physiology students (n = 230) were collected before and after the implementation of the Op-Ed/Peer Review. These indicated that most students were aware of the importance of scientists to effectively communicate their knowledge to nonprofessional audiences, that the Op-Ed writing task was challenging, and that they believed that their ability to write to nonprofessional audiences was improved after explicit teaching and feedback.     

A Sea Change in Anthropology? Public Anthropology Reviews

ABSTRACT  In this article, we introduce the inaugural issue of the "Public Anthropology Reviews" section. We suggest that the new section reflects significant changes underway in the discipline, including an expansion in the kind of work valued among anthropologists, new ways in which anthropological knowledge is being produced and disseminated, and an acknowledgment that anthropologists have a responsibility to dedicate their skills to issues of broad public import. The section will, thus, expose AA readers to some of the new anthropological work appearing in a wide variety of media and nontraditional academic formats that aims both to communicate primarily with nonanthropological audiences and to have an impact on critical issues of wide social significance. We here present the reviews in this issue, identify additional contemporary issues likely to be addressed in future reviews, and welcome submissions and critical feedback for the section.     

Take a stand commentary: how can medical anthropologists contribute to contemporary conversations on "illegal" im/migration and health?

Of the estimated 214 million people who have migrated from poorer to richer countries in search of a better life, between 20 and 30 million have migrated on an unauthorized, or "illegal," basis. All have health needs, or will in the future, yet most are denied health care available to citizens and authorized residents. To many, unauthorized im/migrants' exclusion intuitively "makes sense." As scholars of health, social justice, and human rights, we find this logic deeply flawed and are committed to advancing a constructive program of engaged critique. In this commentary, we call on medical anthropologists to claim an active role in reframing scholarly and public debate about this pressing global health issue. We outline four key theoretical issues and five action steps that will help us sharpen our research agenda and translate ourselves for colleagues in partner disciplines and for broader audiences engaged in policymaking, politics, public health, and clinical practice.     

Selecting flagships for invertebrate conservation

Invertebrates have a low public profile and are seriously underrepresented in global conservation efforts. The promotion of flagship species is one way to generate interest in invertebrate conservation. Butterflies are frequently labeled invertebrate flagships, but clear definitions of the conservation actions they are meant to catalyze, and empirical assessments of their popularity amongst non-Western audiences are lacking. To improve the use of invertebrate flagships, we examine how butterflies compare with other taxa in terms of popularity. We then identify characteristics of individual species that are appealing and explore whether these may be used to derive a set of guidelines for selecting invertebrate flagships. We conducted questionnaire-based surveys amongst two target audiences: rural residents (n = 255) and tourists (n = 105) in northeast India. Invertebrates that were aesthetically appealing, or those that provided material benefits or ecological services were liked. Butterflies were the most popular group for both audiences, followed by dragonflies, honeybees and earthworms. A combination of large size and bright colours led to high popularity of individual species, whilst butterflies with unique features were liked by tourists but not rural residents. These results provide empirical evidence that butterflies appeal to diverse audiences and have the potential to be deployed as flagships in different contexts. However, prior to promoting invertebrate flagships, their intended uses need to be specified. Here we define an invertebrate flagship as an invertebrate species or group that resonates with a target audience and stimulates awareness, funding, research and policy support for the conservation of invertebrate diversity. In conclusion we outline a set of heuristic guidelines for selecting flagships to raise awareness of invertebrate diversity and conservation.     

The importance of the selection of the audiences and the organization of media events within public awareness strategies for tissue banks

The main purpose of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Public Awareness Strategies for Tissue Banks is to provide guidance on organizing and running awareness campaigns, in order to consolidate tissue banking activities. Within the IAEA Public Awareness Strategies for Tissue Banks, there are two important topics, which need to be singled out due to their importance for a successful public and professional awareness campaign. These are the selection of the audiences and the organization of media events within a Communication Strategy. The experience in the field of tissue banking in several countries has shown that interaction between the public, the professional health care staff, the media and the tissue bank personnel is essential if the activities of the banks are to be successful. It must be emphasized however, that any public and professional awareness strategy will not be successful, unless it is considered as part of an integrated system that is adopted by the concerned Government.     

Identifying Audiences of E-Infrastructures - Tools for Measuring Impact

Research evaluation should take into account the intended scholarly and non-scholarly audiences of the research output. This holds too for research infrastructures, which often aim at serving a large variety of audiences. With research and research infrastructures moving to the web, new possibilities are emerging for evaluation metrics. This paper proposes a feasible indicator for measuring the scope of audiences who use web-based e-infrastructures, as well as the frequency of use. In order to apply this indicator, a method is needed for classifying visitors to e-infrastructures into relevant user categories. The paper proposes such a method, based on an inductive logic program and a Bayesian classifier. The method is tested, showing that the visitors are efficiently classified with 90% accuracy into the selected categories. Consequently, the method can be used to evaluate the use of the e-infrastructure within and outside academia.     

Virtual Speakers, Virtual Audiences: Agency, Audience and Constraint in an Online Chat Community

A participant-observer approach was used to explore an online chat community. The chat room was defined in terms of its construction and maintenance of speaker identities, and the user-chat room interface was examined with the aim of exploring how notions of selfhood can be better understood. Chat room audiences were then discussed within the framework of delineating different levels of virtual audiences and outlining processes by which these different levels interact. Finally, formal and informal discursive constraints were explored, and conclusions drawn on the ways that chat room users deal with constraints on their chat activity. Implications for understanding internet communication as well as discourse in general are discussed.     

SimFection: a digital resource for vaccination education

Vaccination coverage in the United Kingdom is below the level recommended by the World Health Organisation, and when vaccination coverage is not sufficient, outbreaks of infectious diseases can occur. In 2015, coverage of the first dose of the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine declined in the United Kingdom for the first time since 2008, indicating a need to raise public awareness and understanding of the importance of vaccination to public health. Identifying 16 – 18-year olds as a target audience, being future parents who would make decisions regarding vaccination of their children, a digital educational resource (‘SimFection’) was developed to deliver key messages about the spread and control of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases (identified via school curricula). The process of development utilised an iterative approach, involving a cyclic process of prototyping, testing, analysis and refinement with a range of audiences including students, schoolchildren, and trainee teachers. The completed resource is now available online for free download.     

Opportunities for improving risk communication during the permitting process for entomophagous biological control agents: a review of current systems

Concerns about potentially irreversible non-target impacts from the importation and release of entomophagous biological control agents (BCAs) have resulted in increasingly stringent national import requirements by National Plant Protection Organizations worldwide. However, there is a divergence of opinions among regulators, researchers, environmentalists, and the general public on ways to appropriately manage associated risks. Implementation of a comprehensive and effective risk communication process might narrow the opinion gaps. Results from a comprehensive survey conducted in the United States were used to describe communication habits of stakeholders involved in biological control and identify areas that are fundamental in an efficient process. In addition, this study critically reviews risk communication practices and how phytosanitary decisions are communicated in the permitting systems for entomophagous BCAs of several countries to identify risk communication tools used in an effective risk communication framework. The following barriers to efficient risk communication were identified: absence of a formalized risk communication process, undefined risk communication goals and target audiences, lack of credibility and objectivity of information sources, inefficiency of mode of distribution of messages, insufficient public participation, and lack of transparency of decision making processes. This paper suggests the creation and/or enhancement of modes of distribution of risk messages to increase coverage, understanding, and guidance. For instance, messages should be presented in different formats such as internet, brochures, and newspapers. Surveys, public meetings, and trainings/workshops are tools that can be used to characterize stakeholders’ diversity and develop risk messages specific to the targeted audience. Implementation of a participatory decision making process will increase stakeholder involvement and trust in the risk management plan. Development of practical mechanisms, such as public hearings will increase all stakeholders’ involvement in the risk assessment process. A clear framework describing how public comments will be incorporated in the decision making process should be implemented. Finally, to ensure a streamlined risk communication process, there must be consistency in the messages disseminated by federal, state, and local agencies.     

Communicating useful results from restoration ecology research

Interactions between restoration ecologists and stakeholders (policy makers and decision makers, volunteers, public supporters) benefit from clear communication of research findings. Given that adaptive management (e.g. learning while restoring) already stresses frequent and effective discourse among researchers and stakeholders, it seems that a new specialty under a new term, “translational ecology,” adds more confusion than clarity. Communicating technical information to nontechnical audiences benefits from simple rules—be clear and concise, retain familiar terms that serve well, and use fewer words.     

The influence of zoo visitors on the behaviour of captive primates

Data were collected for four behavioural measures (number of interactions with the audience, number of interactions with cage-mates, levels of locomotory activity, and spatial dispersion in the cage) in 12 different species of primates under 5 audience conditions (no audience, small active groups, large active groups, small passive groups and large passive groups) in an attempt to quantify the effects that an audience of zoo visitors have on primates kept in zoos. The animals attempted to interact with audiences in all audience conditions, but significantly more behaviours were directed at active than at passive audiences, particularly if the active audience was large. The presence of the public appeared to have no significant effect overall on the frequency of interactions between primates in the same group. However, locomotory activity was significantly increased in animals confronted with both large and small active audiences, and there was also an indication that animals spent more time at the front of the cage when a large active audience was present. It was concluded that zoo primates do not habituate completely to the presence of the public, nor do they ignore them. On the contrary, the mere presence of zoo visitors influences primate behaviour to a greater extent than has previously been thought.     

What's next for science communication? Promising directions and lingering distractions

In this essay, we review research from the social sciences on how the public makes sense of and participates in societal decisions about science and technology. We specifically highlight the role of the media and public communication in this process, challenging the still dominant assumption that science literacy is both the problem and the solution to societal conflicts. After reviewing the cases of evolution, climate change, food biotechnology, and nanotechnology, we offer a set of detailed recommendations for improved public engagement efforts on the part of scientists and their organizations. We emphasize the need for science communication initiatives that are guided by careful formative research; that span a diversity of media platforms and audiences; and that facilitate conversations with the public that recognize, respect, and incorporate differences in knowledge, values, perspectives, and goals.     

Television's Interpellation: Heeding, Missing, Ignoring, and Resisting the Call for Pan-National Identity in the Brazilian Amazon

ABSTRACT   In this article, I focus on the ways in which audiences in the Amazonian community of Gurupá respond to television's interpellation for pan-national identity. I examine how viewers heed, miss, ignore, and resist the call for identity as well as how their various responses to this "call" shape their worldview and behavior and impact the process of nation building. Utilizing audience ethnography over a 25-year period, I show in this study how televisual messages are contextualized and localized, mitigating the forces of nationalistic homogenization.     

Scientists’ Prioritization of Communication Objectives for Public Engagement

Amid calls from scientific leaders for their colleagues to become more effective public communicators, this study examines the objectives that scientists’ report drive their public engagement behaviors. We explore how scientists evaluate five specific communication objectives, which include informing the public about science, exciting the public about science, strengthening the public’s trust in science, tailoring messages about science, and defending science from misinformation. We use insights from extant research, the theory of planned behavior, and procedural justice theory to identify likely predictors of scientists'' views about these communication objectives. Results show that scientists most prioritize communication designed to defend science from misinformation and educate the public about science, and least prioritize communication that seeks to build trust and establish resonance with the public. Regression analyses reveal factors associated with scientists who prioritize each of the five specific communication objectives. Our findings highlight the need for communication trainers to help scientists select specific communication objectives for particular contexts and audiences.