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theses

Our current geological period, known as the Anthropocene (from the industrial revolution to present), is characterized by scholars as the time in which humans have had a disproportionate, often negative, impact on the earth’s bio-physical systems. Global climate change is arguably the major issue to emerge from this human impact and has been cited as a driver, or aggravator, of many ecological problems (e.g., phenology shifts and mismatches, invasive species establishment, biodiversity loss). Beyond the bio-physical threats climate change poses, addressing climate change issues through policy and individual action has been particularly problematic because it has been subject to politicization through active media campaigns to highlight uncertainties in climate science to sow doubt of climate change’s existence. This rampant politicization of science, particularly climate science, makes it an especially difficult issue to address. Scholars have suggested that direct engagement with local communities and persuasive science communication as two opportunities to combat these misinformation campaigns and influence public decision-making. This area of how communication influences public behavior and outcomes has been little explored in the ecological literature, and even less so the intentional employment of frame theory from the communication sciences. In this dissertation, I aim to investigate how framing ecological science communication can affect the outcomes (e.g., science literacy, trust of science, behavior change, valuation of the issue, support for science), in the context of public participatory research (e.g., citizen science) and direct scientists-to-public interfacing, in the overarching context of climate change. In my first chapter, I investigate what minimum scale of re-framing climate issues showed significant response from participants. Particularly, this work seeks to answer, can we elicit positive responses towards environmental issues from identity groups who would otherwise not be supportive of climate change intervention. In my second chapter, I test how framing of scientist-driven public engagement (i.e., citizen science) impacts outcomes for participants (science literacy, trust and views of science) using the principles highlighted in chapter 1. In my third chapter, I developed a framework for employing framing in communicating ecological issues by practitioners. The results of my dissertation research can influence and improve how practitioners of science and science communication create and disseminate messages about their science to elicit particular responses and behaviors from the public.

ETD_7917

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Amanda Sorensen

doi:10.7282/T3BC42GM

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.