Spinning Climate Change

The Corbett and Durfee article from this week, “Testing Public (Un)Certainty of Science: Media Representations of global Warming” the authors discuss the fact that the general public’s understanding of science and technology are critical for societies that are increasingly effected by scientific developments and policies influenced by scientific expertise. They emphasize the fact that for most of the general public this knowledge comes from the mass media and it’s various outlets. This proves especially true for issues like climate change, which the average everyday person doesn’t have a lot of experiential knowledge or experience with that would help shape their opinions. This article specifically focused on media portrayals and public opinion and understanding of climate change with the goal of researching the actual audience response to journalistic discourse of global warming. Their research found that context was very important in audience understanding of climate change.

What this article is emphasizing is that the media really does effect our opinion, and that the average citizen watching the nightly news or reading the paper in the morning, or on their homepage, most likely wont do background research to check up on what they are reading, hearing and seeing.

There is a definite Uncertainty among the general public, and it was obvious even throughout the discussions in class this week. I think that the two video’s shown, the one attacking AL Gore and his campaign and the other highlighting the ignorance toward climate change, really emphasized and highlighted to myself at least, the UNCERTAINTY I feel, and many of my peers feel because of the vast amount of mixed, and completely opposing messages we are getting on a daily basis. Obviously being young adults, without much exposure to the issue, thus having a lot of uncertainty about it, we would be more swayed by what we are seeing, but the difference in videos, and how convincing each seemed stressed the importance of CONTEXT as well. 

Overall left me feeling overwhelmed and disappointed.

The second article “Spinning Climate Change” examines the critical role P.R plays in the debate about climate change, it documents the fluid role of professionalized communication and communication tactics in terms of the impact on corporate and NGO actors and their activities. Through this article, like the first, we can see the effect P.R has on public perspectives regarding climate change.

What I found really interesting and that struck me in this article was when it discussed the David Scuzki foundation using the same P.R firm that works with and advised key players in the Alberta Oil Sands. This is puzzling, because it seems contradictory that a foundation as productive and committed to promoting a healthy environment and positive environmental action, would be associated with a P.R firm with connections to something so harmful for the environment. This is where concerns about P.R come in with their bottom line, as long as they spin successfully that’s all that matters. Is it a negative thing that the foundation is linked to them, or positive because they are making movies to more modern techniques of getting their information out?

 

The David Letterman interview with McKibben that were assigned to watch this week highlights the prominence of environmental issues within the popular culture circuit at this point in time, which highlights the importance of the articles and their arguments this week. Environmentalism is no longer an issue only popular among a certain segment of the culture it is becoming a very popular issue and so it is important to analyze and be critical about the weays in which it is being communicated to us.

That said, the 2 video’s shown this week illustrate this point even further. The first worked to highlight the ways in which media is hyping up and sensationalizing environmental issues, specifically climate change, showing a variety of news clips in a context which makes the argument seem legitimate.

Then Jennifer showed up the next video, which was contextualized to prove the complete opposite.

These videos really resignated with me because after seeing the first, I stepped back and wondered to myself, is it really as bad as it seems?? As I have been thinking it is? And by showing the second video Jennifer REALLY emphasized and showed that the media can spin anything to make people question what they know, and what they’ve thought in the past. Yes it is bad, but its easy for it to be spun in the complete opposite way – especially for people who aren’t being educated to be critical of newscasts like this.

This is a REALLY important issue and its really made me rethink and become EXTREMELY critical of what I’m viewing – from BOTH sides.

The following video illustrates different views on climate change – but contextualizes it by speaking over and narrating different parts of the videos with both text and voice overs. It places two advocates for different sides of the debate against each other, and works to make one seem less knolwedgable than another. Just one example of hundreds you can find with a simple youtube search...