Connecting on Climate

Connecting on Climate: A Guide to Effective Climate Change Communication is a guide which includes research from a range of social science fields including psychology, anthropology, communications, and behavioral economics. It is designed to be useful for experienced and novice communicators alike. I was a co-author on the project, which was a collaboration between ecoAmerica and the Center for Research on Environmental Decision Making at Columbia University.

Markowitz, E., Hodge, C., & Harp, G. (2014). Connecting on climate: a guide to effective climate change communication. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-pjjm-vb57

Included in the guide are strategies to boost engagement, common mistakes to avoid, and best practices that organizations have used to meaningfully engage individuals and groups on climate change.

FEATURING 10 PRINCIPLES OF CLIMATE CHANGE COMMUNICATION:

1. Put Yourself in Your Audience’s Shoes
2. Channel the Power of Groups
3. Emphasize Solutions and Benefits
4. Bring Climate Impacts Close to Home
5. Connect Climate Change to Issues That Matter to Your Audience
6. Use Images and Stories to Make Climate Change Real
7. Make Climate Science Meaningful
8. Acknowledge Uncertainty, But Show What You Know
9. Approach Skepticism Carefully
10. Make Behavior Change Easy

Press and Adoption:

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2014/12/11/new-guide-aims-at-how-we-talk-about-climate-change/

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/climatechange/toolkit-frames.htm

https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ID/ID-519-W.pdf