Maxwell Boykoff, author of “Who Speaks for the Climate?” and expert on the media’s role in public perceptions of climate change, spoke about the struggles of reporting on climate change in the U.S. on Tuesday at the College of Law Courtroom.
Max Boykoff, author of the book “Who Speaks for the Climate?” speaks at the, Menard Law Building Courtroom on Tuesday.
Boykoff, an assistant professor at the Center for Science and Technology Policy at University of Colorado Boulder, said his studies of climate adaptation, cultural politics and environmental governance led him to be interested in mass media’s part of the equation.
“As climate change has become a larger segment of our coverage on the environment, it is a fascinating case study due to its high-profile and highly politicized nature,” Boykoff said.
He said the idea of climate change becoming closely related to partisan politics has had an effect on its news coverage and that climate-related stories fight for public attention in the marketplace of ideas.
“As the Pew Center for Research has actually found, environmental issues over time across different mediums make up roughly 2 percent of the news holds,” Boykoff said. “And though climate change is an increasing part of that, it still makes up even less of that coverage.”
Boykoff said there’s a paradox in the relationship between the quantity of news coverage by journalists and the public’s understanding of the subject. He said climate change falls victim to inconsistency.
“We can make the case that more media attention leads to — at least the perception of — greater public understanding of an issue,” Boykoff said. “But we must be careful to separate, if you will, the signal from the noise.”
A panel of UI educators including Juliet Carlisle from the political science department, Russell Meeuf from the School of Journalism and Mass Media, Barbara Cosens from the College of Law and John Abatzoglou from the geography department questioned Boykoff after his presentation — focusing on their respective areas of study.
Carlisle said while there was substantive conversation that took place, she was almost more excited to have met academics such as Boykoff and the other panelists, because it opens doors for more research on politics and the environment.
“There’s really interesting work to connect what Max Boykoff is doing with stuff that I do and the other panelists at the event,” Carlisle said. “As a new faculty member at the University of Idaho, it was nice to meet people who work and do scholarship in areas relevant to mine. So collaboration down the road is something that can develop out of that event.”
Boykoff said future challenges for media practitioners in reporting on climate change is battling the idea that communicating in simple terms with the public is the way to convey and create open discourse about scientific research.
“There are folks who have talked about to make this issue resonate with the public, they have to dumb down their own research,” Boykoff said. “We need to turn that on its head and folks need to really work to smarten up their work, to be taking time to communicate about what they do (in) ways that are resonate with the general public.”
Amber Emery can be reached at [email protected]