Environmental Communication Event '24
When? Tuesday June 18 and Wednesday 19 (just before the start of ICA and the European Communication Science Event (ECSE 2024))
Where? ASCoR/UvA, Roeterseilandcampus, Amsterdam
What? Presentations, Posters, Workshops, and Roundtables
Sponsored by ECoLab (ASCoR) and NeFCA
Deadline for submissions and registration: April 8 Please register and/or submit here
dr. James Painter
Keynote: The right-wing legacy media in the UK and their campaign in 2023 against the Net Zero policy: a case study of the systematic deployment of inaccurate and misleading information to stop climate action.
Bio: James Painter is a research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University, and a senior teaching associate at the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography, also at Oxford. He has published widely on climate change in the media in several countries.
dr. Nadine Strauss
Roundtable: On Net Zero Communication: Challenges and Opportunities for Strategic Communication
Bio: Nadine Strauss is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication and Media Management at the University of Zurich,. She focuses on researching the role of communication and media for sustainable finance and sustainable business models. Previously, Nadine held a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship at the University of Oxford and worked as a postdoc at the University of Vienna. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam in 2018.
dr. Joshua Ettinger
Hollywood storytelling workshop: This workshop will explore insights Hollywood film and television screenwriting techniques might offer for environmental communication. It will also facilitate a discussion about some of the risks and challenges of using storytelling in a science communication context.
Bio: Joshua Ettinger is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) at George Mason University. He has previously worked at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Stockholm Environment Institute, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. His interdisciplinary research focuses on climate change communication, storytelling, and public engagement, particularly in the context of extreme weather events. He recently completed his PhD (DPhil) at the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, where he also obtained an MSc in Environmental Change and Management.
dr. Marijn Meijers dr. Zeph van Berlo
Virtual Reality (VR) workshop: VR is acclaimed for its capacity to make abstract concepts and distant experiences more tangible and immediate. Whether it’s understanding the global impact of our food and plastic consumption or contemplating future scenarios, VR is seen as a tool with the potential to bridge the ‘psychological distance’ that often separates individuals from the consequences of their actions. In this workshop, we will delve into the possibilities and limitations of using VR for sustainability communication.
Bio: Marijn Meijers is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Communication at ASCoR, co-director of the ECoLab, and vice-chair of ICA’s and NeFCA’s Environmental Communication Division. Her research and teaching focus on understanding and promoting pro-environmental behavior, leveraging innovative features of digital communication, such as Virtual Reality. Her work has received support from various grants, including an NWO Veni grant from the Dutch Science Foundation.
Bio: Zeph M. C. van Berlo is an Assistant Professor of Persuasive Communication at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam. He studies the use of immersive technologies (e.g., AR/VR/XR) in both commercial (e.g., advertising, consumer-brand-interactions) and non-commercial (e.g., promotion of sustainable/healthy behavior) contexts.
Environmental Communication
Event ’23
When? March 29
Where? ASCoR/UvA, Roeterseilandcampus, Amsterdam
On March 29, we will organise the Environmental Communication Event together with NeFCA at the Roeterseilandcampus.
The consequences and challenges related to climate change and other environmental threats, such as biodiversity loss, plastic pollution, and ocean acidification, become ever more pressing. As communication plays a key role for public awareness and understanding, as well as the development and implementation of solutions on all levels, we also see a rise in interest in environmental communication in the communication science community.
With this event, we would like to bring together scholars based in Flanders and the Netherlands who are interested in studying various aspects of environmental communication. This allows us to get to know each other, familiarize ourselves with ongoing research, and discuss potential future research collaborations.
We aim for a diverse group of researchers, that come from different universities, are in different stages of their career, study environmental communication in different contexts, adopt different methods, and so on.
Researchers who are interested in participating in the event can register. Please contact Sophie Boerman, Marijn Meijers, or Anke Wonneberger for more details. Please note: registration closes at March 12.
All participants will be asked to provide a short 3-minute pitch of their research at the event. The aim of this pitch is to inform all attendees about the research that is being done in this field at the moment.
Preliminary program
09.30 – 10.00: Walk in
10:00 – 11:00: Keynote Cameron Brick: “Developments in pro-environmental behavior research & effective risk communication”
11:00 – 11.15: Small break
11.15 – 12.30: Pitches – Part I
12.30 – 13.30: Lunch
13.30 – 14.30: Keynote Joya Kemper: “In this together? Exploring synergies between environmental communications and sustainable marketing
14:30 – 14:45: Small break
14:45 – 15:30: Pitches – Part II
15:30 – 15:45: Small break
15:45 – 17:00: Roundtables / world café with all participants
17:00: Drinks
Keynotes Environmental Communication Event
Cameron Brick
Developments in pro-environmental behavior research & effective risk communication
My research group focuses on the motivations and social processes that predict environmental behaviors such as political engagement, reducing meat consumption, or flying. First I will talk about public opinion on climate change and recent advances in measuring and conceptualizing pro-environmental behavior. Most previous studies assumed that pro-environmental behavior is a coherent psychological variable, but recent work suggests behaviors are external, diverse, and have different causes. I will also describe new laboratory tasks with repeated, consequential environmental dilemmas and share a resource of free, open datasets.
The second part of this talk is about effective risk communication. When someone needs to make a decision, how should the information about harms and benefits be presented? Does it matter if it’s an individual medical decision or public policy affecting millions? I will contrast communication goals such as persuasion vs. providing balanced information, and share the best practices for communication methods (e.g., numbers, text, tables, and graphics). Then, I will argue there are four critical differences for communicating about policy vs. individual decisions.
Bio
Cameron Brick is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology with tenure and he supervises a research group in Environmental Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. His group studies how individuals react to collective problems such as climate change and uses surveys and experiments to predict behavior from thoughts, identities, personalities, and social context. They also study consumer and household decisions from plastics to fast fashion, and communication effectiveness focused on the comprehension of policy options.
Joya Kemper
In this together? Exploring synergies between environmental communications and sustainable marketing
Both environmental communications and sustainable marketing aim to change consumer behaviour by advancing messaging and understanding stakeholder discourses. Yet, very rarely do researchers consider the overlap between environmental communications and sustainable marketing. Considering the great progress made in both areas, it is now time to explore how the two disciplines can work better together and what they can learn from each other. The session hopes to inspire discussion and collaboration between the two disciplines and researchers.
Bio
Dr Joya Kemper is a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), aiming to advance research, theory, and practice in ‘marketing for good’ and behaviour change, particularly interested in sustainable and healthy food systems and transitioning towards a circular economy. She has published over 41 journal articles such as in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management and European Journal of Marketing, and has been a part of over NZD$13 million worth of research funding. Joya is also an Associate Editor for the Australasian Marketing Journal and is an advocate for embedding sustainability within universities, interdisciplinary research and early career scholars.