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Less than 400 Left: How Media Coverage Shapes the Fate of North Atlantic Right Whales · How To Protect The Ocean

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This is one of my favorite episodes to record 'cause we're gonna be talking
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about science, communication of whale.
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So I love science communication, I love whales, but I really love
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science communication and we don't get to talk to a lot about it.
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But we have on the episode today, Dr. Marcus Reamer, who just became
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a PhD graduate in the last year.
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We talked to him on the episode on the podcast last year before he was just
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finishing up and he hadn't defended yet, but he is now a full fledged PhD graduate
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in science communication, especially surrounding whales, north Atlantic, right
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whales, the critically endangered whale.
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He's here to talk about one of the papers that just got published at
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the end of July, looking at the way newspapers and digital online media,
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like the six major ones like LA Times, New York Times, Washington Post,
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and so forth, actually communicated North Atlantic right whale material.
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During a time of crisis and how that went up, up and up.
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There was more articles and then as the population was going down or they
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didn't really wanna talk about it that much more, you know, the articles
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just kind of went by the wayside.
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And we're gonna be talking about why that happens and what that's
1:03
called in media, and we're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the
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How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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Let's start the show.
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Hey everybody.
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Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find
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out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean,
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and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action.
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On today's episode, we're gonna be talking about one of my favorite
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subjects, science communication.
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In fact, we're gonna be talking about writing a science
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communication, so like actual.
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Typed out writing.
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You know, obviously for me, I'm a podcast fanatic.
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I love producing podcasts.
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I love being on podcasts.
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I love being a guest.
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I love listening to podcasts.
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I love all things around podcasting, even video podcasting.
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But today we're gonna be focusing on a paper that Dr. Marcus Reamer, you know,
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put out with a colleague, published it.
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It was published at the end of July.
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It was part of his PhD, but it was like an add-on to what he had
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in his PhD looking at the years 2023 and 2024 to see what happens.
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When an article or these newspapers actually start to discuss and write
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articles about the North Atlantic right whale, when there's a time of crisis, when
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there's an actual issue around this type of a whale and looking at how that peaks
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and then how that declines after a while.
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And then, you know, how do we keep this relevant?
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That's the question is how do you keep the North Atlantic right?
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Whales and other whales and other species relevant within the news so that we get
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more policy action and also hopefully being interesting to the readers.
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So it's always interesting to talk about science communication and we do
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that with Marcus here today and I'm so excited to be able to present this
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interview 'cause it's a lot of fun.
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You know, Marcus and I get along really well.
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We talk a lot, we message a lot on LinkedIn quite a bit, and so it's a lot
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of fun to be able to talk to him virtually face to face, which is a lot of fun.
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So here is the interview with Dr. Marcus Reamer talking about.
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Issue Attention cycle of North Atlantic, right Whale Science,
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conservation, and Policy in six US newspapers from 2023 and 2024.
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We're gonna be talking about that today.
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Enjoy the interview and I will talk to you after.
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Hey Marcus, welcome back to the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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Are you ready to talk about whale and communication?
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I am always ready to talk about whales and communication.
3:15
All right.
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This is gonna be a lot of fun.
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This is something that we've been wanting to talk for a while about.
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You sent me like, Hey, Andrew, the paper that we talked about a little
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bit last time when you were on the show, uh, we, it, it got published.
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It got published on at the end of July, and we were like, yes, let's do it.
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Let's talk about it.
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Let's talk about communication.
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Let's talk about how articles are written and how we all talk
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about marine conservation issues, especially when it comes to whales.
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We're really focus on whales, uh, and, and how the sort of like, there's
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this cycle that happens with, uh, with communication and it goes up
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and down in terms of popularity.
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And we're gonna talk all about that, especially, uh, not only in the
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written digital world, but also just in the digital world that we live
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in, in social media and YouTube and podcasting and all that kind of stuff.
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So it's gonna be a lot of fun if you are into communication
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and into marine science.
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This is gonna be the episode for you.
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But first, before we get into all of that, Marcus, let's hear it.
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I wanna hear it.
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How are you doing?
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Let's get a life update.
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Uh, last time we talked you were just about finishing your
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PhD and what's the update now?
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Yeah, so we connected about a year ago.
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It's, it's great to be back, but in that time I, I defended my dissertation at
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the University of Miami and earned that PhD in Environmental Science and policy.
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Uh, congratulations.
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That's awesome.
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Thank you.
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A five year sprint that started six months before COVID upended everything, including
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my, my proposed research project.
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But we made it through.
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Um, and my dissertation research was about the role of human communication
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and media in right whale conservation.
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So lots of cool sort of projects came out of that, including the paper, um, that
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you had mentioned that just came out at the end of July, which is a follow up
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to a study that was in my dissertation.
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Um, and I've got some other work kind of in progress now that should be
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coming out later this year, early next.
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So just 'cause I got the degree doesn't mean the work
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stopped, you know, kept going.
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It's just beginning.
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It's just beginning now.
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Right.
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The, the PhD is permission to do more work.
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Yes.
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But, but good stuff and busy and lots of cool stuff to talk about today.
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So that is the update.
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That's awesome.
5:27
Well, congratulations again.
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I mean, thank you.
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Feet of PhD is something that is not easily attained, especially
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during a global pandemic, so congratulations on that.
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And we, we also collaborated while you taught last year at University of
5:41
Miami, you taught communications course.
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Uh, that was a lot of fun.
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Do you wanna tell us a little bit about that and what you, what you taught
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and what the course was all about I thought was a really cool concept.
5:50
Yeah.
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And I was happy to have you.
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Um, so in the spring I taught at the University of Miami at their
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Rosen Seal School for master's students primarily, uh, course
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called Marine Conservation Outreach.
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And we really focused on the role of communication and outreach, of course,
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in marine conservation, but broadened it out a little bit to environmental science
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and policy because, you know, especially today where things are so fast moving.
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Not only in communication, but in policy in science.
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It's really important to understand how communication and outreach and
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those external facing sort of jobs fit within the organizations that
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students want to go work for, so that they can do the work better.
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Whether it's working across organizations and thinking about the flow of
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information, or educating a non-expert audience of, let's say, school-aged
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children visiting a zoo or an aquarium, or speaking to policymakers about
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an important topic that you want.
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To see policy action taken.
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So it was really cool to talk about sort of the role of human communication.
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And it wasn't the first time I've taught a course like that.
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And it's always really interesting because students come in and, and when
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I tell people who are not students, what I do, the, the assumption
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is like, oh, I'm a good writer.
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Or Yeah, I can make really cool content on social media.
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Or, I'm a really good illustrator, so I'd be really good at communication.
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And it's, it's always interesting to, to break those worldviews a little
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bit and say, yes, that's part of it.
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Mm-hmm.
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But also, it's much bigger than that.
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You have to understand the science and the, the society portion of things and,
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and really think of it like a chess board where you have to understand
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sort of what each piece does and, and how to move it and how to, to.
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See things a couple moves away and, and anticipate.
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Mm-hmm.
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And really think strategically about not only what your goals are, but
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the ways that you're gonna get there.
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So picking the right tools outta your toolbox.
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So that was a really cool class.
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I was really happy to have you on one of our professional development
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panels and, you know, we got students across multiple tracks in our Master of
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professional science program, which, you know, I think really demonstrates the
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fact that communication is everything.
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It's not just the flow of information, but it's our social reality.
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It's our institutions because what is law, if not a form of communication?
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What is education, if not communication for a specific life stage?
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So it was really cool to support students studying things like climate and society,
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marine conservation, fisheries management and conservation in pursuit of jobs
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from, you know, wanting to get a PhD and become an academic to, you know,
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wanting to be a communication, outreach, education professional with a nonprofit.
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So, really cool class, um, was happy to do it and, and I think it's really important
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in today's conservation workforce.
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Absolutely.
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I mean, I, communication to me is one of the most important aspects of conservation
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because like, especially these days when everybody's consuming information
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at such a rapid pace, maybe even being, you can probably argue that there we're
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being overloaded with information.
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If we really want to be, uh, you know, doom scrolling and trying to find, and
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getting notifications and so forth.
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There's such a huge competition of information, you know, getting, one
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of the things that I always started Mark, is when I, when I was, uh, when
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I first started doing communication, I started a blog and stuff.
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One of the things I used to say, like, people were like, why'd
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you, why are you doing this?
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Like, why are you starting this?
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I'm like, because.
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There are more people who know, who know about what's happening with the
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Kardashians than they do about the ocean.
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And I didn't want that to happen.
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I wanted to have the, not to say that there's anything wrong with
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looking at reality TV and watching it.
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You know, we need to decompress and, and, and check out sometimes, however,
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there's something to be said about knowing some of the fun, like key aspects of
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what's happening into this life system that we need to survive on this planet.
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And it was important for me to provide that resource that if somebody wanted to
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learn about it, they can learn about it.
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Uh, and as of course, it morphed into a lot of different communication
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styles from writing to video, to audio now, back to audio and video.
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Um, and so it's, it's been a, a really interesting journey.
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Um, and it, it's, it's always great to be able to talk to communication
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with someone like yourself who's been through like a PhD and, and been
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professionally educated in communication.
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'cause like you said, it's not just about.
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Strategy of marketing on social media.
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It's about looking at trends and, and what, how these trends affect the way
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we consume and the way we care and the way we act once we consume like a, a,
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a, an article, whether it's a written article or a podcast or, or a video.
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Now this paper here that you, that you talk about focused on, on
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articles, like written articles in like six US newspapers, 2023 and 2024.
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Can you just tell us a little about, a bit about this paper?
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Uh, and, and maybe just for, for people who are not familiar with what's happening
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with the North Atlantic right whale, maybe just give a a little brief summary
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on what's happening with them and then what was happening in, in this paper.
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Sure thing.
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So the, the paper that's out now is in environmental research
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communications by IOP publishing.
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And it's a continuation of a study actually, that we talked
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about this time last year.
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Um, so it, it's basically the sequel to research I had already done, right?
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And right.
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Whales have been endangered for more than a century.
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You know, they were hunted to near extinction during the industrial
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whaling era and just never really made a recovery despite having, you know,
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almost a century of multiple layers of legal protections and conservation
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efforts, um, decades of, you know, dedicated research and rescue efforts.
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You know, so no shortage of interest in helping the species recover.
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They were once plentiful throughout the Atlantic Basin, you know,
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along the coast of North America, Europe, and even West Africa.
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And now it's a population of about 375 whales that's exclusive almost entirely to
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the Atlantic coast of the US and Canada.
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And so.
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I started my PhD six months before COVID blew everything up.
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I had a project in mind that I wanted to do and there were, you know, just
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changes in the world that I couldn't go out and talk to people at that point.
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So I had to pivot.
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And, you know, that summer there was a documentary film that came out
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that was the first that I knew about, um, and turned out being one of the
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first, uh, exclusively focused on this species and its conservation.
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And that was entangled.
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It was, uh, by Boston Globe reporter David Abel.
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And it really focused on right whale conservation in the New England area and
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the conservation conflicts between lobster fishers and whale experts and advocates.
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Um, and so that really set off my journey in studying.
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Communication media surrounding right whale conservation.
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And so, uh, the Canadian counterpart to that documentary came out in 2021
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called Last of the Right Whales that focused a little bit more broadly.
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It looked at the Canadian side of things, the Florida, Georgia side of things in
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the southern part of the species range.
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It really looked at the sort of conservation efforts to, to reduce things
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like entanglement and vessel strikes, just human impacts on this species.
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So those documentaries got me reintroduced to a topic that I had
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previously worked on in, in other work, uh, non-academically, but.
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There was a turning point at the end of 2022 where I saw a bunch of news
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articles coming out about this government spending bill at the federal level that
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was gonna prevent a government shutdown.
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But Right.
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Whales kept getting mentioned and I, I just couldn't figure
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out what was going on there.
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And it's because there was language introduced to that bill that
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changed the outcome for right whale conservation, you know, by investing
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in some activities, but also preventing federal agencies from making new
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rules about phishing until 2028.
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Right.
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So that is the nature of science.
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I was getting Google alerts about right whales and it kept coming
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up, this government spending bill.
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And I just asked the question, how did we get here?
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Hmm.
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So my first study, we looked at six US newspapers, like you said, and we
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looked at six of the largest because, uh, in this case, news tends to trickle
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down from the large publications to the smaller, more local ones.
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And so we looked at the LA Times USA today, New York Times, the Boston
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Globe, um, wall Street Journal, um, you know, and the Washington Post.
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And that gave us a pretty good geographic spread of the news and just did a search
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in a database and put right whale or right whales, and looked at what was going on.
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And the first study was 2010 to early 2023.
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That was just the period of time that I had, you know, for the research
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and the one that was just published.
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We did the continuation to do the full year analysis for 2023 and 2024 to see
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what's happened since, because, you know, everything's always changing.
15:16
Mm-hmm.
15:16
And really what that paper does is say the thing that we thought
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would happen pretty much did happen.
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And I'm hinting at the result without talking everybody through the background,
15:27
but that's the purpose of this paper.
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It was to continue on the work and just not leave everybody hanging.
15:35
You know?
15:35
Because science and and media are never finished, right?
15:38
So with that, the theoretical framework that we looked at at this
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topic through, it wasn't a science topic, it wasn't an ecological model,
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it wasn't a population projection.
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It wasn't trying to figure out what effect would some policy have on the
15:53
population, but it was really looking at the predictable rise and fall of
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public attention and how that relates to policy change and organizational action.
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It's called the issue attention cycle.
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It was introduced by Anthony Downs in 1972, and he actually used the rise
16:10
of the Modern American environmental movement to make his argument about
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news media more broadly at the time.
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And so what the issue attention cycle looks at are these five stages.
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That media coverage follows.
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It starts in a pre-pro stage where it's, it's really a niche issue where the
16:29
experts and the people most affected by the issue are talking about it, but
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it doesn't have widespread attention.
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And then there's some external event that moves us into stage two, which is
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alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm.
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And that's usually when we realize that there's a problem.
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And you start to hear policy makers and industry actors and and interest
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groups say, we're gonna get this done.
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We're gonna fix this swiftly and decisively.
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And we see this with COVID.
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We saw it.
16:58
We see it with school shootings, natural disasters, hurricanes,
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earthquakes, tsunamis, things like that.
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Some external event happens, policymakers and, and people say, you know what?
17:09
We're gonna fix this swiftly and decisively.
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And there's a a flurry of attention, and that's where there's a real spike.
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And then you move into stage three, which is when you realize
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what it's actually gonna take to achieve significant progress.
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That's where you introduce some new actors and say, okay, this change is
17:26
proposed, but here's how it would affect some group of people or some ecosystem.
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Or, here's the other sort of outcomes that we might expect.
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And that can go on for a while.
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And at some point we move into stage four, which is the gradual decline.
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In intense public interest.
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And then we move into the fifth stage, which Downs calls this.
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Uh, it's the post problem stage, but Downs refers to it as this like spasmodic
17:52
limbo where you might get some more coverage than you did in stage one.
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It's not like you disappear forever.
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People are more knowledgeable, but there's more editorial resistance
18:03
and it's just sort of pops and then everybody forgets about you again.
18:07
And that can go on and on until either in perpetuity or until a
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new issue, attention cycle starts.
18:15
So basically what it does is it allows us to follow the rise
18:19
and follow a public interest in social and environmental issues.
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What do we know happens in issue attention cycles, and how
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does that relate to news media?
18:30
Well, what Downs tells us is that because news media organizations.
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They're not only a public service, but they're for-profit organizations.
18:38
Yep.
18:39
They rely on readership, advertisements, now subscriptions.
18:43
Um, what they're gonna do to attract and maintain public
18:47
attention is appeal to our brains.
18:50
Mm-hmm.
18:50
Right.
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And they're gonna use social psychology and the norms of their industry to
18:56
simplify problematize and dramatize problems to attract and maintain
19:01
interest as long as possible.
19:04
So that's what I started to look at through my research on news
19:08
media was very much what happened.
19:12
You know, did we move through this cycle quickly?
19:15
Did it happen over years?
19:17
Right.
19:17
What's going on here?
19:19
And so in the first paper, we found that there are lots of threats to right whales.
19:24
We have known, and scientists have been saying for a very long time
19:27
that they need swift policy action, and they're critically endangered.
19:32
There just wasn't that sort of catalyzing event.
19:35
And it was in 2017 that at least a dozen whales were found in Canada's Gulf of St.
19:41
Lawrence where they weren't expected and where they weren't explicitly protected.
19:46
That was the catalyzing event that launched this issue, attention
19:49
cycle into public view and got people talking about right whales.
19:53
So summer of 2017 through 2019, that's when everybody's behind like, let's save
19:58
the right whale, let's get this done.
20:01
Fishing closures, vessel speed reductions, you know, shipping lanes closed off.
20:06
And in 2019 we started to really focus in on that conservation conflict between
20:12
fishing industry and uh, whale experts and advocates and grappling with what would
20:18
it mean to change fishing regulations?
20:20
What are the economic, social and psychological costs
20:24
to fishing regulations?
20:26
And that's where we started to see some of the both sadism of, you know.
20:31
Sure we could protect the whales, but are we a source of the problem?
20:35
There's so much uncertainty here, right?
20:37
Would the change regulations have any benefit?
20:40
And so that started to change the issue attention cycle quite a bit.
20:44
And then through until 2022, that's when we really saw the most intense period.
20:51
Yeah.
20:51
You saw seafood sustainability labels changed the designation of
20:56
American Lobster or Main Lobster.
20:58
So Monterey Bay's Seafood Watch and Marine Stewardship Council
21:01
said, you know, the fishing to get lobster is a threat to right whales.
21:06
It's not a sustainable choice for consumers that caught media
21:09
attention because retailers like Walmart, cheesecake Factory, um,
21:14
whole Foods stopped selling lobster.
21:16
Right, right.
21:17
Yeah, I remember that.
21:18
And then that led into that government spending bill that we mentioned that
21:23
was essential to keep the US government open $1.7 trillion at the time.
21:29
That's when the main congressional delegation put language in that
21:32
prevented the National Marine Fishery Service from issuing new
21:35
fishing rules until December, 2028.
21:38
So effectively for the remainder of the decade.
21:41
And so what that did was it deescalated the conservation conflict.
21:45
It didn't solve the problem.
21:47
Right?
21:47
Right.
21:48
It's a distinction, but it deescalated the conservation conflict.
21:51
And that's what gets us to this new paper.
21:54
We ended at a cliffhanger.
21:56
Right.
21:56
Everybody was reacting to that.
21:58
Bill being signed into law Environmental Group said, this is a
22:01
nail in the coffin for the species.
22:03
Lobster Fisher said, this gives us time to figure out.
22:06
Sort of what the problem is and what we can do about it.
22:09
So I picked up where we left off my co-author, Elisa and I, and we found that
22:14
that was the actual inflection point in the issue attention cycle, and without an
22:19
active and ongoing conservation conflict.
22:22
Reporters who had previously published, you know, dozens of articles on the topic
22:27
suddenly published, maybe one, right?
22:29
Yeah.
22:30
The, the reporting returned back to episodic sort of coverage where it was
22:36
like, right whale born here, right.
22:38
Whale spotted injured here.
22:40
Right.
22:41
But there are still plenty of threats facing right whales, right.
22:45
We just kind of fell off because this seems to be the dimension
22:50
that was the easiest to simplify.
22:52
And problematize and dramatize.
22:54
It was two sides playing tug of war.
22:56
The whales are caught sort of in between and everybody loves whales, but everybody
23:00
also loves, you know, fishers and Yeah.
23:04
And seafood and, and wants to see these, these community jobs and these, you know,
23:09
economic engines for communities thrive.
23:12
And so it's this really challenging topic, but without that, there's
23:18
not as much public interest.
23:19
And so that's what the, the conclusion of the paper is.
23:23
You know, whales got mentioned a little bit in some debates about offshore wind,
23:27
mostly misinformation and disinformation campaigns, but they went from the star
23:31
of the show to now this sort of like supporting point or supporting actor.
23:36
And that tells us that the problem is moving into the post problem
23:40
stage or the cycle is moving.
23:42
And that has implications for policy and organizational change because
23:47
those actions are the most likely at the peak of public attention.
23:51
So the point of this paper is that media systems really do play an
23:55
important role in conservation.
23:57
They don't just tell us what's happening, they influence what's happening.
24:00
Correct.
24:01
But it also tells organizations that yes, you should be investing in your
24:05
communication, in your public relations, but getting headlines and being mentioned,
24:11
we've heard the phrase All press is good press or no such thing as bad press.
24:16
Yeah.
24:16
You know, the amount of coverage doesn't fix conservation problems.
24:21
And so through this paper, whether people work on whales or not, we talk
24:25
about how conservation organizations and advocates can understand and use
24:30
these systems to their advantage to.
24:33
Not only react when things are really bad, but to also use these tools to shape
24:39
social realities, to make topics feel important and personally relevant to
24:43
people where they may feel psychologically or even physically far away.
24:48
Right?
24:48
Because we all, like you said, are overloaded with
24:51
information all the time, right.
24:54
Through the issue attention cycle.
24:55
We now know why it seems like, it feels like all bad news all the time.
25:00
That's what we pay more attention to.
25:02
And so this work was really a continuation that picked up on the
25:06
Netflix cliffhanger, if you will.
25:08
Um, and told us sort of, yeah, the things that we said in that first
25:12
paper played out kind of the way we thought they would, unfortunately.
25:16
But it's also fortunate because it tells us that, that the theory holds up.
25:20
Um, and that gives sort of actionable knowledge to people, um,
25:26
not just right whale conservation experts, but others working on
25:29
other topics in other geographies.
25:31
So that's what's really cool about this paper.
25:33
Yeah, that's a little bit of how, how we got the research question.
25:37
You know, I saw news coverage on something and said, how'd we get here?
25:42
Design the study.
25:43
Did a search, you know, read over 400 news articles.
25:47
So no one, no one else has to, um, and, and really applied this framework
25:53
over the body of coverage because it's not about what you read in one article
25:57
is gonna change your whole worldview.
25:59
It's all of the media that we're consuming all the time.
26:02
And so the, the big point here is that marine mammals are beloved worldwide.
26:07
They are the beneficiary of decades of conservation marketing.
26:12
Um, they're some of the most popular animals worldwide.
26:16
People love them.
26:17
They support their conservation even if they don't fully understand
26:20
the animals or how complicated their conservation is, of course.
26:23
And so if it was this challenging for a species of whale to get public attention
26:29
and also get policy support, right?
26:33
What does that mean for sea stars, sea cucumbers, plankton.
26:39
The things that are, that are holding up ecosystems and food webs
26:43
and how are we talking about those?
26:45
We're probably not talking about 'em at all.
26:47
No.
26:47
And if we are, it's sporadic here and there.
26:50
Yeah.
26:50
So that's where the broader implications come in.
26:53
And that's why I felt that this kind of work and, and looking at whale
26:56
conservation through human communication and media felt really important.
27:02
It's, it's really interesting.
27:02
You mentioned, there's a couple of things that I, I'm looking at
27:04
the graph in the paper by the way.
27:06
Thank you for allowing it to be open, open, uh, access.
27:10
We appreciate that.
27:11
In, in the graph, like figure three.
27:13
Uh, and, and, and people can take a look at the paper.
27:16
I'll put the link in the, in the show notes.
27:18
Um, but it shows like, you know, the, the, it's a comparison of, of like
27:23
the, the estimate of the population of, of North Atlantic Red Whale.
27:26
And then the, the next graph below that is what you're comparing
27:30
it to is like the number of news articles about the, about the whale.
27:35
Now, it, it takes a, it looks like it's a little bit of an Aspen to, at
27:38
the beginning it's kind of steady, the population is pretty steady,
27:42
and then the news articles are maybe around 15 per year or so, or so forth.
27:46
And then as the population decreases, so the population was about 500.
27:50
This is around like 20 10, 20 12, 20 13.
27:54
All of a sudden around 2016, it takes a dip, uh, a, a pretty large, a pretty
27:58
significant dip going from about 500 in, uh, 2015 down to, as we mentioned
28:04
in 2017 it was, it was quite low.
28:06
And then all the way down to like 2020, uh, down to about.
28:10
340 and it's starting to like it.
28:12
It's slowly starting to kind of come back up.
28:15
And according to this, the population seems to, by 2024, seems to have
28:19
for one year anyway, have kind of bought or, or states the same.
28:23
But what was interesting is from 2017 or 2016 to even 2024, it's,
28:28
it's, there was a pretty significant jump in the number of articles as
28:31
you mentioned, like the, the issue.
28:33
But it took a little bit of a dip in 2020.
28:35
Do you think it just took a dip?
28:36
Because there's so many articles about COVID at that time that maybe
28:41
like the, the, the, the environment just took a little bit of a, of, of
28:45
a backseat because then it goes up after that like in 20 21, 20 22 and
28:49
it peaks in 2023 and then goes down.
28:51
Do you think it was a COVID thing that kind of, you know, broadened that out?
28:56
'cause it wasn't as if there was a huge, well, mind you, there was a bit
28:59
of an a dip that was probably the lowest part of when the, the whales got, but
29:03
then they started to increase slowly.
29:05
Anyway, just wondering like what your interpretation of that is.
29:08
Yeah, it's a good question.
29:09
It's, it's a point in our first paper, which is available open access as
29:13
well in Frontiers in Communication.
29:15
So, you know, we can send the links to both of those, but it, it appears
29:20
to be a COVID thing because mm-hmm.
29:21
What the issue, attention cycle framework tells us, it's not the amount
29:25
of coverage that tells you which stage you're in, it's how reporters and their
29:31
sources are talking about the issue.
29:33
Okay.
29:33
That tells us what's happening.
29:35
So what you're looking at is the sort of quantitative or mathematical aspect of
29:40
the paper, and that graph tells us, you know, it shows us that, that we have a
29:47
statistically significant relationship.
29:50
Mm-hmm.
29:50
Right?
29:51
Mm-hmm.
29:51
To work through.
29:52
And so you're noticing that as the whale population goes down, the media
29:56
coverage goes up, and if we overlay those graphs on top of each other, they
30:00
would crisscross right about at 2017.
30:02
And we found a statistically significant relationship there,
30:06
which means it wasn't by chance.
30:08
And it was indirect.
30:09
So, you know, it's not that reporters were just talking about how many
30:13
whales there were or were not, um, in their coverage, they were talking
30:17
about the policy responses mm-hmm.
30:21
To that, that change in population.
30:24
And so the count, it just tells us sort of that there was a relationship.
30:29
And what we found in 2020 is that a, a lot of the aerial surveys and
30:35
the research that was going on was interrupted by COVID shutdowns.
30:39
And so there was just less to report on, but also some of the policy efforts were
30:45
paused or, you know, just slowed down.
30:48
Because a lot of your public meetings were, were virtual or Right.
30:52
You know, the, the focus was on COVID and the economy and people like you were
30:57
saying, and a little bit less about.
31:01
Sort of any of this.
31:02
So it, it appears to be multiple factors related to COVID.
31:06
Took a dip, but then reached an all time high, you know, in the couple years after.
31:11
And so just going back to your first point about sort of what you're seeing in
31:16
that top chart, I intentionally set the time period for this study at 2010 where
31:24
the population was at its modern peak.
31:27
So the most right whales that we have had in the post whaling
31:30
era is about 500 in 2010, right?
31:34
Mm-hmm.
31:34
And so we've looked, we've now got 15 years worth of data on news
31:39
coverage from these six newspapers.
31:41
We, we didn't just.
31:45
Decide out of nowhere.
31:47
Right.
31:47
Like the, the research design pulls from that biological ecological
31:51
conservation science mm-hmm.
31:54
And merges it with communication because I wanted to take a more 360 view to
31:59
figure out how these things are related to and interacting with each other.
32:02
Yeah.
32:03
I could have just gone in and just searched and not really thought about, you
32:07
know, the, the measuring that relationship between the coverage and the population.
32:13
So I'm, I'm glad to hear that that is the figure that, that sort of caught your eye
32:18
here because it does lay the groundwork.
32:21
It tells us that there's something there and that's what helped us continue
32:27
doing the research and, and made reading all of those articles worthwhile.
32:30
Because if there wasn't a relationship, if there wasn't
32:33
really anything going on, right.
32:36
Would there have really been an issue attention cycle?
32:39
Because not all topics that are covered go through them.
32:41
Right, right.
32:42
And so doing those counts and doing that math allowed us to
32:46
say, okay, there's something here.
32:47
Let's keep pulling at the thread.
32:50
Yeah.
32:50
Now, the interesting thing about this, you know, you talk about this type of cycle.
32:55
The issue attention cycle you mentioned is it is not always issue attention
33:00
cycles, but is it the majority are issue because like, you know, we, we talk,
33:04
we see the way news works these days, or we talk about it a lot in the, in
33:09
sort of regular news, is everything's clickbait ish, or, uh, you know,
33:14
they want, they want it for click.
33:15
So whether it's for a video for, uh, an article that's written or a podcast,
33:20
you gotta have a, an enticing headline.
33:22
Something that will make something that's, you know, quote unquote sexy,
33:25
that'll make this type of, of thing click.
33:27
So this issue, attention cycle, I can see really working.
33:31
Is this the predominant, uh, type of communication that's done, not necessarily
33:36
just for environment, but just in general?
33:40
No.
33:41
And Downs provides three characteristics of topics that are likely okay to
33:47
go through issue attention cycles.
33:49
Um, and what I'll say is that the nature of news supports issue attention cycles,
33:55
but it doesn't define news media.
33:58
Okay.
33:58
So if it bleeds, it leads, you may have heard that phrase.
34:01
And yeah.
34:02
And going back to the chart we just talked about, we found math
34:04
behind that that says Yep, for sure.
34:07
Right.
34:07
As we're tanking, we're talking about it.
34:09
Yeah.
34:09
But, um, the, the characteristics of topics that are most likely to
34:14
go through an issue, attention cycle versus just being published about.
34:19
Right.
34:21
It's who the problem affects the most.
34:24
And what Downs tells us is that that's some minority in society, whether that's
34:29
by identity or whether that's by numbers.
34:31
Right?
34:32
Right.
34:32
So some minority in, in society is affected most by the problem.
34:37
Right.
34:37
We also look at the source of the problem, and it's usually created
34:41
by some social agreement that benefits some social majority.
34:46
Right.
34:47
And so that tells us that there's an inequality.
34:51
Mm-hmm.
34:51
Um, that, that we can identify somewhere where somebody's harmed and
34:57
somebody benefits from this problem.
35:00
And whatever the source of the problem is, that majority sort
35:03
of benefits from the status quo.
35:05
Right?
35:05
So they wanna keep things the same, the the minority that's affected
35:10
probably wants things to change.
35:12
Right.
35:12
And then that third factor is that the problem itself has no
35:16
intrinsic, exciting qualities.
35:19
Right, right.
35:20
Whales existing.
35:22
Not inherently all that exciting and headline grabby.
35:26
I think they're really cool, right?
35:28
For some, yeah.
35:30
But most people are not gonna see right whales.
35:32
They're not right whale scientists, they're not out there on the water.
35:35
They don't know if they're seeing a right whale or a humpback whale if
35:38
they're, they're whale watching or just out on their boat and sea whales, right?
35:42
The fact that there's so few of them, that's a little bit more exciting.
35:46
But we can really turn the temperature up when we say for whale
35:50
conservation, for the right whale population to really come out ahead.
35:54
Lobster fishers have to lose, right?
35:56
Mm-hmm.
35:56
When we pit those things against each other in a tug of war.
36:00
Yeah.
36:00
Right?
36:00
E, even if those groups are working together towards solutions,
36:03
which they have been, right?
36:05
Not speaking universally, you know, there's just a broad spectrum of
36:10
perspectives here, but you know.
36:12
Lobster fishers are stewards of the ocean.
36:14
They, they rely on the ocean, they are eyes on the water.
36:17
They, they love being out there.
36:18
Like those are the things that I saw in media.
36:21
So what we did in the first paper was evaluate based on what we
36:25
were reading, does this topic meet any or all of these criteria?
36:30
We found that it did and then we went a little bit deeper and said,
36:34
okay, it has the characteristics, has it undergone the cycle?
36:38
And we found that it did.
36:39
Mm-hmm.
36:39
So to answer your question, not all topics are gonna go through an issue attention
36:43
cycle just because they're in the news.
36:45
Right, right.
36:46
Some things they last for one small cycle for not even 24 hours, and then we forget
36:51
about it 'cause it's just a one-off thing.
36:54
Uh, maybe it's news that's like an announcement on your local news
36:59
news channel about like a local school board change or here's what
37:02
the local girl scout troop did.
37:04
That was cool.
37:05
Or you know, a cow got loose on the road today.
37:08
Like those aren't gonna go through issue attention cycles.
37:10
Those are just stories one off too.
37:14
Yeah.
37:14
But the thing that we know about issue attention cycles is that they play out
37:18
on different timescales, so there's no defined timeline for when it'll move
37:23
from stage one through stage five.
37:25
And sometimes they repeat the middle stages, so two and three for a while
37:30
because there's just so much changing.
37:32
We saw that with the study of issue attention cycles, with the
37:35
start of the Iraq war at the, the start of the millennium.
37:39
Right.
37:40
There are researchers who found that we cycled through stage two
37:43
and three for quite a while, almost a decade before we moved past.
37:48
And so, wow, they're these kind of stretchy things where they help us
37:52
interpret what we're seeing in the news, but they're not like a crystal ball or a
37:56
calculator that says, okay, put in these ingredients, we're gonna get this outcome.
38:01
Um, so summation there, summary, uh, not all issues go through the cycle and when
38:08
they do, they don't all look the same, which makes them really hard to identify
38:13
and even harder to navigate, especially if you work for a conservation organization
38:17
and you're trying to keep up with a lot of different topics, it's really hard to
38:21
know that you're in one when you're in one until it's most of the way through.
38:26
Interesting.
38:27
Okay, now, um.
38:30
When we discuss this, these articles are coming to, you know, like the New
38:35
York Times, Washington Post, LA Times.
38:37
These big, these big, uh, newspapers, us newspapers.
38:41
Who's providing the information?
38:43
Is these, I know like they have, they own, they have their own trusted sources.
38:47
They'll have scientists, maybe academia or academics.
38:50
Uh, they'll probably have nonprofit organizations like contacts,
38:52
either PR and comms teams that will provide those as they reach out.
38:58
But is the news, you know, each, each organization, nonprofit organization,
39:03
say like Oceania, ocean Conservancy, and like, especially the big ones,
39:06
as we're talking about big news items, newspapers, they write their
39:11
own articles on their site, right?
39:14
Um, and then they may reach out.
39:17
Will they, well, I guess that's the question, I guess is will they reach
39:20
out to like the New York Times and all these big ones and say, Hey,
39:23
by the way, we've written this.
39:24
Here's a pr uh, uh, press release on what we have.
39:29
We think this is really important.
39:31
There's a dire need say for the North Atlantic, right.
39:33
Whale.
39:34
Um, could you please publish this?
39:36
And then vice versa.
39:37
Could the reporters of the New York Times, as they hear some, maybe some small
39:40
articles or some, some, uh, idea of what's going on from their sources that they may
39:45
have like trusted sources over the years, write an article just because of that.
39:49
Like d does it, does it happen both, I guess it happens both ways, but is
39:52
is it largely driven by the nonprofit organizations and scientists and
39:56
academics that want to want more people to pay attention to this
39:59
type of uh, this type of idea?
40:02
Yeah.
40:02
I think what you're getting at here is the importance of having skilled
40:06
communications teams, because this is what we call the co-construction of reporting.
40:13
There, there's a lot of people involved in the news stories that you read, at least
40:17
the standard sort of long form articles.
40:21
Right.
40:21
And so in this case, we saw the Boston Globe between the first study and the
40:29
second study was the leading voice.
40:33
So that's the paper where the most articles came from.
40:35
They had authors who had published the most repeat articles on the topic.
40:40
Um, David Abel in particular was a leading voice, especially through,
40:45
uh, the most intense period.
40:48
And so that tells us that this is of regional interest
40:52
versus like national interest.
40:54
We didn't see a lot of coverage, let's say in the LA Times.
40:56
Mm-hmm.
40:57
When we saw coverage in the Wall Street Journal, it was mostly about
41:00
the lobster industry rather than being centered on the right whales
41:05
because what's the Wall Street Journal?
41:06
It's, it's more a financial publication.
41:09
Right, right.
41:10
And so.
41:12
The first point there is that the publication and the journalist who is
41:17
on that beat, the coverage is gonna take shape of sort of what their angle is.
41:24
Right?
41:25
And then for a journalist to take notice in an issue, it could go either way.
41:31
They could be pitched to by an organization, they could receive
41:35
a press release, see something on social media is really common.
41:39
They could read, um, an article on an organization's website,
41:43
which we call owned media.
41:45
Right?
41:45
Right.
41:46
Um, so they could see something there.
41:48
They could receive something, uh, a tip or, you know, someone else
41:53
could cover it and they could start to, to be interested in it.
41:56
And so for science and environmental reporters too, they sometimes look to the
42:01
academic literature or policy documents.
42:04
And in this case, it seems like the North Atlantic right Whale Consortium.
42:09
Which is a body of organizations focused on right whale conservation,
42:14
but they publish the population estimate each year they host the, the
42:19
annual right whale sort of conference.
42:22
Um, they're the sort of hub for information.
42:25
And it seems like because we saw them cited quite a bit, um, you know,
42:31
everybody knew to sort of look there and to government agencies just to
42:36
understand that the problem was happening.
42:39
Mm-hmm.
42:39
And then as the story developed, you have the journalists sort of
42:42
reach out to the affected parties.
42:46
So in this case, environmental organizations, lobster fishers,
42:49
trade industries, recreational boaters, the Coast Guard, what have
42:54
you, to offer background through interviews or to serve as sort of
43:00
external validators through quotes.
43:03
And so.
43:04
All of that sort of gets mixed into a bowl, if you will.
43:08
The journalist takes their sort of story angle, um, maybe they were
43:12
assigned by their editor, or maybe they're gonna pitch it to their editor
43:15
and then they go and talk to people about it to shape their reporting.
43:19
And that's why we call it co-construction of reporting.
43:22
Mm-hmm.
43:23
The reporters' byline goes on it, the editor approves it and publishes
43:27
it, but a lot of other people are usually involved in a case like this.
43:32
And why that matters in context of conservation is because it creates
43:37
not just a place for you to exchange in this free marketplace of ideas,
43:43
but it also makes media political, and I don't mean partisan, right?
43:48
I don't mean democrat, republican, I mean a competition for limited
43:53
space and representation.
43:55
So when you're called by a reporter, that's your opportunity to offer your
44:00
perspective and shape the narrative.
44:02
Public opinion and policy decisions in your favor, right?
44:07
But the other people, the other sources that a journalist talk to
44:11
can also do the same thing, right?
44:15
And that's not even to mention the function of, of opinion editorial letters
44:19
and some of that crowdsourced material.
44:22
Um, that doesn't go through a journalist, right?
44:25
And so what that does is it incentivizes certain sort of norms and behaviors
44:31
and practices, and a lot of it relies on the, the relationship between
44:35
journalists and their sources.
44:38
And in media literature or research about mass media, we see that.
44:44
Journalists go to the same sources over and over, whether that's because
44:48
that's who they have access to or that's who has the most expertise, right?
44:52
There's a lot of different reasons that they might go to the same sources over
44:56
and over again, but that also makes being represented in news media and expression
45:01
of power, who is included and who is excluded from the conversation, right?
45:07
Right.
45:08
And so all of that together, which is really complicated, right?
45:13
If, if there are listeners out there who are feeling lost, like this is a career
45:17
path, media relations and journalism, like this is an art, it's a science.
45:22
There's a lot that goes into it.
45:24
But what that, what I am getting across here is that, you know, information
45:30
comes from a lot of different places.
45:32
It's the journalists and the editor's job to sort of fact check and.
45:37
Shape the, the texts, you know, in line with their, their organization's
45:43
practices and with the, the norms and practices of the field.
45:48
Right.
45:48
And it operates from a different logic than science, which goes through Yeah.
45:52
Peer review with multiple experts in a field, multiple rounds of revisions.
45:57
And it's really slow.
45:58
All of this in news is happening sometimes within hours.
46:02
Yeah, for sure.
46:02
You're lucky if you get a couple days on stories, right?
46:07
And so we're operating from different logics in pursuit of different goals
46:11
and on different timelines, um, which is where we get a sort of tension
46:15
between science and journalism, even if journalists want to support a
46:20
science or an environmental topic.
46:23
So the main point here is it's really complicated.
46:27
There's a lot of professionals who work on this, and it's really important to
46:30
have and invest in those expert teams.
46:33
Because like you were saying earlier, there's a lot of money that goes
46:36
into communication and marketing that money's for products and shows
46:42
like the Kardashians reality tv, the, the stuff that we see more often
46:47
than we do science about whales.
46:49
Yeah, yeah.
46:50
There's a reason for that.
46:51
You know, it's, it's people are getting in front for a reason is because
46:54
they're, they've got good marketing teams and comm teams and and PR teams
46:57
or whatever you'd like to, to call it.
46:59
Yeah.
46:59
And a lot of money to do that.
47:01
Yeah, for sure.
47:01
And I know I noticed that, you know about podcasts as well is like the more
47:05
you market, the more you get in front of people's faces, the more you you get.
47:09
That is that, that, um, struggle for attention not vying for attention.
47:13
It's, it's really an attention game these days.
47:16
Um, so how, like when we talk about
47:21
issues with, you know, like issue attention cycles and trying to keep.
47:27
Say Northern white whales, or like, I know, we know gray whales
47:30
are having trouble right now.
47:32
They're they're dying at, at record numbers this year.
47:35
It's been a, a really tough couple years for them, you know, and we,
47:38
and it's, it's, it's great to bring attention to it when it happens.
47:42
Um, but you know, there's always like context of like what was happening
47:46
before and what happens after.
47:49
Like you mentioned in this one, you know, you start, we're starting to see
47:51
a decrease in the number of articles.
47:53
Well, look, we know the policy has changed and how is it doing?
47:56
You know, why don't we get these types of, of articles and why aren't more
48:00
of these, um, newspapers, you know, following up on, on these types of things.
48:06
How do we continue to stay relevant with these topics after an issue
48:12
or before and after an issue?
48:14
How do we get in these big, like, six newspapers all the time?
48:18
Um, or is it, we have to be, you know, we have to have that
48:22
context in smaller newspapers or smaller sort of like digital.
48:27
Content such as podcasts or videos, YouTube videos or so forth.
48:32
It's, I'm gonna give the academic answer and say, it depends, um, but
48:38
I'll give a more satisfying answer because everyone hates that one.
48:41
Um, so really what you're looking at is the importance of a
48:45
diversified sort of toolbox, right?
48:49
Having communication strategies that don't only rely on getting a headline placed in
48:55
the New York Times, for example, right?
48:57
Because there's just not room for everybody.
48:59
There's not enough reporters to cover it.
49:01
It's just there's, there's a lot going on.
49:03
They don't cover all topics.
49:05
It's not relevant to their audience.
49:07
So there's a lot of factors involved here, but I think this is a conversation
49:11
that I am having with organizations who wanna talk about my research.
49:16
They say, well, what do we do now?
49:18
I've heard from organizations that have said, you know, it's really
49:21
interesting to read what you've written out because we've now experienced it.
49:25
You know, where I could get a reporter on the phone before really
49:29
easily to talk about updates.
49:31
The threshold is a lot higher to break through because we've
49:34
kind of already heard it all.
49:36
Yeah.
49:37
But, but to your point, like there is great work that's happening.
49:40
There's money from the Inflation Reduction Act from the Biden administration
49:45
that went toward testing, robless, fishing gear technology in partnership
49:49
with lobster fishers that didn't receive mention in the texts that
49:55
I analyzed in the second article.
49:58
Right.
50:00
It was just absent.
50:01
But that was the positive.
50:02
It wasn't Fisher saying we're not gonna be part of the solution.
50:06
Right.
50:07
And it wasn't somebody saying, well we should make this technology it.
50:11
There was money behind it.
50:12
That work, right.
50:13
You know, is still happening.
50:14
As far as I know, it's still being tested.
50:17
Yeah.
50:17
And so people are working in pursuit of solutions and so where
50:23
traditional medium will not or chooses not to cover that, right?
50:28
That's where you have other avenues like podcasts or your own social media
50:33
channel if you're an environmental organization, your website, right?
50:38
Uh, documentary film is, is One Avenue Art going out to talk to people in the
50:46
communities where this is relevant, right?
50:48
Mm-hmm.
50:49
Um, and I think that was an opportunity that we saw coming out of the first paper
50:55
that we saw a little bit in the second paper, in that the news media coverage
51:00
was so focused on New England lobster fishing, and that's only part of the
51:05
right whales range, of course, right?
51:09
But then what about where they go down South Florida and Georgia, where they
51:12
rear their young and they reproduce.
51:15
The right whale is the state of Georgia's state marine mammal.
51:18
It is symbolically and culturally important, and we just weren't seeing
51:22
that, that geographic spread, um, in the first part of the research.
51:27
But we saw USA today, which is the largest network of newspapers
51:31
in the us, um, taking greater interest in the second round.
51:37
So in this, these more recent two years.
51:41
So telling stories throughout the right whales range, not just when they're
51:46
in crisis, not just when we see them.
51:49
Yeah.
51:49
Right.
51:49
In distress or when we find them dead.
51:52
But, you know, I, in these last two papers and, and in my dissertation
51:58
research and in the conversations that I have, I also encourage
52:01
what's called solutions journalism.
52:04
It's not, uh, a tried and true, like perfect approach,
52:09
but it's an emerging, uh.
52:11
Style of journalism that doesn't shy away from the problem that exists.
52:16
Mm-hmm.
52:16
But it, it focuses more on people working together to find solutions
52:20
or identify solutions working towards whatever it's Right.
52:26
And that's a different kind of storytelling and,
52:31
you know, it doesn't necessarily fit the, the model of all newspapers, but you have
52:37
sort of alternative publications that are not mainstream large newspapers, let's
52:43
say a National Geographic or a Manga Bay.
52:45
Right, right.
52:47
Or, you know, an Anthropocene magazine who are more interested in
52:50
the nuance because that's, that's the, the important part here, right?
52:56
Whales, they move through lots of legal jurisdictions, they
52:59
move through really busy waters.
53:01
The science is really complicated.
53:05
And so the nuance is where you can lose people.
53:07
The timeline is where you can lose people.
53:12
Um, and so solutions journalism is an approach that we can try outside of,
53:19
or in partnership with journalists and editors who wanna try it, you
53:24
know, and include calls to action.
53:26
Tell people what they can do about this.
53:28
Where can they donate money?
53:30
Or where the, where can they volunteer their time, or how can
53:33
they keep track, right, right.
53:35
Or stay updated on the topic.
53:38
Where can they learn more?
53:39
And so instead of just saying, here's the problem, here are these two sides that
53:45
don't agree, make your own conclusions.
53:48
You know, people are trying other approaches to journalism for
53:52
social and environmental problems that get us closer to solutions.
53:57
Yeah, I think it's so important, uh, to have that, that call to action at the end.
54:02
And I, I, I agree it allows us to stay with the topic if we want to, or for
54:06
people who choose to dive deeper into the, the article, whether it be a nonprofit
54:12
organization, whether it be a research lab at a a, at an academic institution.
54:17
I think that's, that's really important to, to add.
54:20
Now this article covered newspapers, uh, so written content, uh, you know,
54:26
where there's a lot, as you mentioned.
54:27
There's, there are other, there are other nuanced, um, publications
54:32
like Monga Bay and so forth, uh, that also cover very niche down,
54:37
um, you know, environmental news.
54:39
And they're great, by the way, Monga Bay, huge fan of them.
54:41
We cover a lot of their, uh, their, their, their, uh, articles on the podcast.
54:46
And so it's very nice to, to see that.
54:49
Um.
54:51
Now with the, with the digital age kind of morphing into podcasts and,
54:57
and video, does the strategy change because the, the, the type of media
55:04
changes or are like issue attention?
55:07
Because like a lot of the stuff that I'll cover, I, I, you know, I
55:10
think about how I categorize myself.
55:12
A lot of it is, you know, issue attention cycle.
55:15
So I'll cover something because I cover such a wide breadth.
55:18
I, I cover something on the podcast that has to do with northern right whales,
55:22
where you mentioned earlier the sea star wasting disease back in, you know,
55:25
20 15, 20 16, 20 17 when we started to really under, really see massive
55:31
effects of, of this wasting disease.
55:33
Um, I covered it quite a bit and anytime there was an article about it, I covered
55:37
it and then I, it just kind of went away.
55:39
And then recently there was an article that showed that, hey, we actually know
55:42
what happened to it, you know, and, and, and this podcast all happened,
55:45
probably the podcast out before this one.
55:47
So I covered that one because there's like, there's, there was a finding,
55:51
there was not necessarily a solution, but a path towards the solution.
55:55
So I guess the, the amount and there are more articles about that.
55:59
Uh, so that's gonna increase the amount of articles.
56:01
But the span is quite long, you know, in terms of timescale, how do you like, say
56:07
something like sea star wasting disease, sea stars are, are wonderful species,
56:10
people are interested in it, but it's not that iconic species like a whale.
56:14
How do you keep that relevant?
56:16
Or is it sometimes you just have to like, cover it when it, when we find
56:20
like a new solution or new information that comes out either in a published
56:26
article or a non-published article where you talk to somebody that you,
56:29
you, you kind of figure out a little bit another piece to the puzzle.
56:33
How do you approach those where the timescales are like,
56:36
could be a, a decade or more?
56:39
Let's get real philosophical here.
56:42
I, I won't give you the academic answer, it depends.
56:45
But I will give you the academic sort of philosophical musing here, which is that
56:51
I think the institution of science, the way that we share knowledge with each
56:57
other, but also with broader non-expert publics, incentivizes the big findings.
57:05
It incentivizes discovery, the aha, the eureka, right?
57:10
Versus the more incremental or even publications of research that didn't work
57:16
out right, that didn't tell us anything new and maybe just didn't work at all.
57:21
And so there is a sort of bias in the academic publishing and, and
57:27
there are efforts to change that, but in academic publishing, the thing
57:32
that makes it out into the world.
57:35
Are the interesting findings, the statistically significant,
57:39
the the new discovery, the new material, and that's what makes
57:42
its way into science journalism.
57:44
Mm-hmm.
57:44
Right.
57:45
That's why you seem to only hear, you know, a, a c star
57:50
wasting disease, for example.
57:51
It's really bad.
57:53
You forget about it for 10 years unless you're like really close to
57:57
the issue and it's something local and then a decade's gone by and then you
58:01
hear, oh, we found what it is finally.
58:02
Right.
58:03
Right.
58:03
We don't hear about the process of that science, at least
58:07
in news media in that way.
58:09
It's not like you have a reporter following this same topic and
58:12
and reporting on it weekly or monthly for the full decade.
58:17
The science just kind of happens, but that's when you have supplemental
58:20
tools in your communication toolbox.
58:23
Universities can share updates and, and show the bus behind the scenes
58:28
through YouTube or social media or you know, scientists can go out.
58:33
To conferences or, you know, educational events or work with
58:36
aquariums, things like that.
58:38
Um, to have conversations with people and remind them that this is a thing.
58:43
So news media is an important part of the communication sort of ecosystem, but it's
58:50
not the only thing because there's no way that we could expect that a leading
58:54
reporter at the science desk at the New York Times is gonna follow, let's say what
59:00
I'm doing where I'm sort of critiquing news media as they're happening.
59:04
Mm-hmm.
59:06
But it was really related to the policy outcomes.
59:08
They're not gonna follow the mundane basic science that goes on that's more
59:13
common than the eureka aha moments.
59:17
Right.
59:18
And so I think that speaks to the importance of having communications teams.
59:21
Who, to your earlier point.
59:25
The strategy doesn't necessarily change.
59:28
They understand what their goals are and how they want to reach them, but as
59:32
new tools become available and as the speed of communication changes, they're
59:36
able to adapt within that because Right.
59:40
You know, vr, augmented reality, it, it's been a conversation for a while,
59:44
but what if you could go in and now show people the inside of a C star and
59:50
what this bacteria that we found Yeah.
59:52
You know, has done Right.
59:54
That's now a new tool that we have.
59:56
That's something a little bit different than a long form YouTube video in
1:00:01
the lab where they're injecting things into a C star, for example,
1:00:05
or, you know, AI is all the rage now.
1:00:07
That's a new tool that communication and external affairs teams have to,
1:00:13
to navigate for a lot of reasons.
1:00:15
One being just like.
1:00:17
Making sure that factual information like these ar ai crawlers can find it
1:00:22
so that misinformation is not going out.
1:00:25
But also like the discovery of websites is going down because
1:00:30
search engine optimization is now less important change because what,
1:00:34
what's, what's Google giving you now?
1:00:36
It's not saying, oh, go to the Oceania website to learn more.
1:00:41
It's answering the question for you.
1:00:43
Using the aggregate information in that statistical model to predict the answer.
1:00:48
And so communications teams have to understand the media ecosystem, and
1:00:53
that's why like social media managers are always like, uh, every time a new
1:00:57
platform comes out, or Yeah, meta, meta changes the, the algorithm.
1:01:02
The algorithm, yeah.
1:01:03
This back and forth with TikTok because like your strategy as an
1:01:07
organization may stay the same, but your tools and your metrics and your
1:01:11
impact sort of change within that.
1:01:15
Yeah.
1:01:15
So.
1:01:18
I hear this one a lot too, where people are like, well, it's
1:01:21
digital first, so why are you even paying attention to journalism?
1:01:25
And journalism still has that agenda setting power for sure, especially in
1:01:30
the science and environmental space.
1:01:32
A lot of the content, at least that I see, and maybe this is the algorithm that
1:01:36
I've built brick by brick, but you know, it's a lot of content creators speaking in
1:01:42
front of a green screen that's a headline that, that they're speaking incredibly
1:01:47
to something that came out in the news.
1:01:50
So the way that we report is different.
1:01:52
The way we consume news media reporting is different.
1:01:57
Trusts in news media organizations is a topic of discussion right
1:02:02
now, but it still matters, right?
1:02:06
Because a lot of your digital and social and short form content is drawing from
1:02:10
these, these legacy institutions, right?
1:02:14
And.
1:02:16
You know, all of that matters when you're working for an organization
1:02:20
that's trying to achieve conservation goals because it's not just you're
1:02:25
trying to share information and get people to think differently.
1:02:28
'cause that's not how it works, right?
1:02:31
We need to hear things over and over again.
1:02:33
We need to feel that stories are accessible.
1:02:35
We need to feel that they're relevant to us, right?
1:02:39
We need to hear it from other people in our real communities.
1:02:42
It needs to be a topic of discussion.
1:02:44
And so communication is more than transmitting knowledge, but it's
1:02:49
really about shaping social realities.
1:02:51
I talked earlier about whales being so popular, it's because.
1:02:55
You know, as whaling decreased, we saw organized whale watching started.
1:03:00
We got recordings of humpback whale songs from Roger Payne SeaWorld and other, uh,
1:03:06
you know, uh, organizations, people could go see and interact with these animals.
1:03:11
Yeah.
1:03:11
Right.
1:03:12
Uh, the Flipper TV show brought dolphins into everybody's living room at six
1:03:17
o'clock at night on NBC every night.
1:03:19
Right.
1:03:20
The Greenpeace saved the whales campaign, like decades of these efforts
1:03:23
piling up made us fall in love with these animals and wanna protect them.
1:03:29
Absolutely.
1:03:29
That's really how communication works.
1:03:32
And when you're in a position, let's say you work for a small nonprofit
1:03:35
where you're just responding to fires and you have all of your team members
1:03:39
saying, oh, just post it to social media.
1:03:42
Right.
1:03:43
That's not contributing to a broader discourse.
1:03:46
And so that's the importance of having that kind of internal expertise.
1:03:51
And then that expertise across organizations and coalitions,
1:03:55
especially if you're trying to get to policy change or industry action.
1:04:00
And that's where a lot of the frustration happens with not just
1:04:03
conservation topics, but things like climate change communication.
1:04:07
Right?
1:04:07
Yeah.
1:04:08
So really long answer there to tell you that yes, the tools matter, but, but the
1:04:13
strategies and the overarching sort of approach to communication stays the same.
1:04:20
Yeah, it almost feels like one of the ways to really perpetuate a, a news article,
1:04:27
and I think this has been used for a lot of time and I've, it is happened with
1:04:30
me where organizations will contact me and be like, Hey, we wanna talk about
1:04:33
this new project that we're doing.
1:04:34
Well, can we come on the podcast and, and talk about it?
1:04:36
And then it's almost like for me, if I want that news to get out there, I
1:04:39
should talk to individual creators to be like, Hey, can you talk about this?
1:04:43
Because this is a really important, here's what I said about it, and
1:04:45
here's like the, the facts and stuff.
1:04:47
Can you talk about it in your own sort of, you know, social
1:04:50
following so that we continue to.
1:04:53
Grow those networks and see how those things go across, not just from me
1:04:58
specifically, it's a really interesting concept that I should, I should dive
1:05:01
into a little bit more as I, you know, want more and more people to listen
1:05:05
to, to oceans, not necessarily from me, but from people who might be able
1:05:09
to connect to their own community.
1:05:10
Um, you know, whether it be in the us, in Canada, around the world, doesn't matter.
1:05:15
Everybody needs to be, uh, looking at that.
1:05:17
This is, uh, this has been a fascinating conversation, something
1:05:20
that makes me really excited, uh, to talk about communication,
1:05:23
talk about whales and so forth.
1:05:25
It's always fun.
1:05:26
Uh, Marcus again, congratulations on, uh, on your PhD and again, receiving your PhD.
1:05:30
So I should call you Dr. Reamer from now on and, uh, uh, you know, good luck
1:05:35
with, with, uh, you know, your new.
1:05:38
Your new path of whatever that might be.
1:05:40
Can't wait to talk about it the next time you come on.
1:05:42
And we talk more about, uh, science communication.
1:05:44
I think this is a really, um, I think, I feel like this is something
1:05:47
that we could really talk about, really dive into a number of times.
1:05:50
So, uh, thank you again for, for coming on the podcast and, and sharing this
1:05:53
story and, and sharing this article.
1:05:55
Yeah, always a pleasure to be here.
1:05:56
And like you mentioned earlier, the, the new research is open access.
1:06:00
Anybody can, can look it up without a paywall.
1:06:03
That's really important to me.
1:06:05
That's huge.
1:06:05
Um, so anybody who's interested should go check it out and can feel free to
1:06:09
reach out with questions or commentary.
1:06:12
I'm always happy to have those discussions.
1:06:14
And we've got some other work coming out, uh, like I said,
1:06:17
later this year or early next.
1:06:19
So hopefully I'll be back soon.
1:06:20
Perfect.
1:06:21
Can't wait.
1:06:22
Looking forward to it.
1:06:22
Thank you so much.
1:06:24
All right, my friend.
1:06:24
I'll see you next time.
1:06:25
Thank you, Marcus, for joining us on today's episode of the How
1:06:28
to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
1:06:29
It was great to be able to talk science communication with you, especially of
1:06:32
whales, something that's very important to a lot of people, like iconic species.
1:06:36
We also got to talk about a lot of other things.
1:06:37
You know, looking at digital media.
1:06:39
How things have changed over this time.
1:06:41
How we can use digital media to spread the word, how we can try
1:06:45
and continue to keep ocean relevant and ocean species and habitats
1:06:49
relevant in the general public's eye.
1:06:51
We see a lot of distractions that there's a lot of competition for information and
1:06:55
so it's a real challenge to be able to keep the ocean on people's top of mind
1:06:59
so that they can, you know, make better decisions and live for a better ocean.
1:07:02
So I think it's really important that we talk about this type of research
1:07:05
and I'm really happy that Marcus is here to talk about it and the fact
1:07:08
that he does this type of research.
1:07:10
So it's really, really interesting.
1:07:11
We'll have Marcus back on and some of his colleagues to be able to talk about
1:07:14
more science communication in the future.
1:07:16
I think it's really great to see work like this done.
1:07:19
So thank you Marcus, for joining us.
1:07:21
And of course I would love to hear what you think of this episode in
1:07:24
science communication in general.
1:07:25
Let me know in the comments below what you thought, if you have any
1:07:28
questions, comments, or concerns.
1:07:30
And of course if you want to get ahold of me, you can do so in two ways.
1:07:33
You can go to speak up for blue.com.
1:07:36
Slash contact, fill out the information on the page.
1:07:39
It goes right to my personal email.
1:07:40
Or you can DM me on Instagram at how to protect the ocean That's
1:07:44
at How to protect the ocean.
1:07:46
I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
1:07:49
How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
1:07:50
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the True Nordstrom and free.
1:07:53
Have a great day.
1:07:54
We'll talk to you next time in Happy Conservation.