Wild Ones #15
best practices for environmental communicators • Charismatic species and Rewilding • the future of university journalism programs • the Netflix documentary 'Our Planet' and more...
Hi everyone, welcome back to Wild Ones, a bi-weekly digest by me, Gavin Lamb, about news, ideas, research, and tips in environmental communication. If you’re new, welcome! You can read more about why I started Wild Ones here. Sign up here to get these digests in your inbox:
Environmental Communicator Spotlight 🔆
Jaime Lorimer is an Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Oxford.
His 2015 book, Wildlife in the Anthropocene, examines (among lots of other topics) how wildlife conservation campaigns enlist charismatic species, like pandas and elephants (or sea turtles in my research), to gain support for wider conservation initiatives.
A couple of questions he asks are: What makes a species ‘charismatic’ in the first place? and How do conservation campaigns, like the WWF, mobilize this ‘nonhuman charisma’ to help save “less charismatic” species (like bugs and plants), and more broadly, the larger ecosystems we all inhabit and depend on for our survival?
He finds different answers in different places and contexts, but the book is a fascinating look into how conservation campaigns (and ecotourism operations) use media to save nature in a time of growing ecological crisis.
Here is a short and interesting essay by Jaime on how he defines the concept of ‘Nonhuman Charisma,’ and below is a short video of him talking about an emerging conservation concept his research examines: Rewilding.
Tools 🔭
Best Practices in Environmental Communication: This is a fantastic study from an environmental psychology perspective that offers several best practices for environmental communicators, drawing on research from climate change communication campaigns in Louisiana. The authors summarize their findings: “We conclude that environmental communicators everywhere could do a better job tapping into place attachment and sense of community among coastal residents to promote action.”
Wildlife photographer and conservationist Joshua Asel. In his new blog, “One Shot,” acclaimed wildlife photographer Joshua Asel delves into the techniques behind creating compelling wildlife photography to communicate powerful stories about wildlife conservation.
In a new podcast episode of How to save a Planet, the hosts delve into the important role social media platforms, and Youtube in particular will play in rolling out effective environmental communication campaigns, and why so few environmental campaigns have yet to fully harness the power of these platforms. (they interview the former communications director of 350.org on how he collaborated with Youtuber Mr. Beast to raise $20 million to plant 20 Million Trees).
Media Watch on Climate Change: a publicly accessible news and social media aggregator on climate change and related environmental issues. Offers neat tools to analyze environmental media, such as sentiment analysis and collocations (frequency of co-occurrence of words about different topics).
News 📰
‘Broadcast TV networks’ August wildfire coverage missed key factors including climate change, coronavirus, and prison labor’: Only 4% of wildfire segments on ABC, CBS, and NBC mentioned climate change.
YouTube Videos Inspire Unsafe Mountain Gorilla Tourism, Study Finds
David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, argues in this week’s New Yorker Magazine that California Can’t Afford to Wait for Climate Action.
Higher education is in crisis, and journalism departments (which house most environmental communications programs in the United States) are often the first to go on the cutting block: The University of Hawai‘i at Manoa May Cut Theater, Journalism, Social Welfare Programs
Scientists baffled by orcas ramming sailing boats near Spain and Portugal
Coastal Job - Whale Dog. A super-sniffing canine plays a key role on a killer whale research team.
Interview🎤
A conversation between Jane Goodall and Krista Tippett: An excerpt from the interview where Jane Goodall talks about the popular environmental slogan “think local act global”: “We so often hear, “Think globally, act locally.” But if you think globally, you can’t help but be depressed. Twist it around—act locally—see the difference you make, see how you clean up the stream. See how you raise money to help a homeless person off the street. See how you’ve lobbied the government to protect a piece of woodland from another shopping mall. And then realize that other people are doing the same, making the same difference around the world. Then you dare think globally.”
Research 📚
Nature documentaries and saving nature: Reflections on the new Netflix series Our Planet. Summary of findings: “We know a lot about how nature documentaries positively shape people’s attitudes about the environment, but little understanding about how they motivate people to action: “Netflix is certainly bringing biodiversity and the threats it faces into the mainstream, but the mechanisms by which viewing these representations translates to concrete behaviour change are poorly understood.”
‘Do celebrity endorsements really help environmental campaigns? We found no evidence.’: “The lack of measurable objectives, theories of change, outcome indicators, and critical evaluation renders it impossible to determine whether the outcomes achieved by the campaigns found can be attributed to celebrity endorsement. It therefore remains unclear whether celebrity endorsement of environmental campaigns can contribute to environmental protection and conservation efforts.”
‘Constructing the Millennial “Other” in United States Press Coverage of the Green New Deal’ by Hanna E. Morris in the journal Environmental Communication.
interesting new study by @sustaintheconvo! finds how the NYT and WSJ "portray the Green New Deal as a dangerous policy proposed by a cohort of extremist Millennial 'Others.'...Through this image of threat, the market-based carbon tax is elevated as the best and only way forward."I'm proud and excited to share my latest article published by Environmental Communication entitled, "Constructing the Millennial 'Other' in United States Press Coverage of the Green New Deal." @TheIECA https://t.co/7XW1PLu5BNHanna E. Morris @sustaintheconvo
Ideas 💡
An Antidote to Despair: New Book Shares Stories of Ecological Restoration: “In The Reindeer Chronicles, Judith D. Schwartz shows how badly damaged landscapes are being restored across the world — and why more of that work is deeply needed.”
Environmental Law professor Jedidiah Purdy’s essay on the history of the ‘long environmental justice movement’: “Environmental justice criticizes mainstream environmental law and advocacy institutions on three main fronts: for paying too little attention to the distributive effects of environmental policy; for emphasizing elite and professional advocacy over participation in decision making by affected communities; and for adhering to a woods-and-waters view of which problems count as “environmental” that disregards the importance of neighborhoods, workplaces, and cities.”
“A potent new book examines the overlap between our ecological crisis and video games”: Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games, by Alenda Y. Chang, associate professor of film and media studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Here’s a review: “gorgeously penned Playing Nature charts an ecocritical approach to video games and design thinking, exploring much more than simply how the ecological has been imaged in games. Essential for designers, players, and critics, Playing Nature eloquently unveils the stakes of ecologically informed agency within video game worlds to reshape thought about both games themselves and the natural systems in which we are all enmeshed.”
Writings from my desk ✍️
Nature: The Most Complex Word in the English Language: Raymond Williams, the Welsh literary scholar, on why ‘Nature’ is the most complicated keyword in human thought.
Thanks so much as always! See you Thursday!