Talking the (Climate) talk

You may have already come across this climate dictionary by the UNDP. It’s been making the rounds on social media for a while now.

I’ve found it to be an incredible resource that can be used in so many ways!

It’s a patient guide that helps you navigate the nuanced world of climate change terminology. The dictionary identifies and explains quite a few of the confusing terms and concepts one might come across while reading about climate change.

For instance, what is the difference between carbon removal and global carbon capture, and is it the answer to all our troubles? See page 14.

You could extract a specific page and send it to a friend looking for a simple explanation of a puzzling term they’ve just heard – I did it.

If find that it’s more than a dictionary – it’s a quick onboarding to the world of climate change communication.

Where and how did people consume their news in 2023?

The Digital News Report for 2023 by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism is out.

As someone who sells their wares in pretty much the same marketplace as journalists, I find their insights on news consumption very valuable.

In the report, I found three key takeaways that I think are worth sharing. The first really came as a surprise to me.

I recommend reading the entire report. But if you don’t have the time, the summary alone is packed with valuable nuggets of information. Or you could jump straight to the country-specific insights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review: The Art of Explanation by Ros Atkins

I love books – hard copies, not e-books. So when I read something riveting, I make it a point not to dog-ear a book or make notes in the book itself. But when I’m tempted, the entire book-reading experience unfortunately turns into either a drawn-out, internal battle with myself to drop the pencil or a note-making chore.

From the moment I started reading The Art of Explanation by Ros Atkins, I had to stop myself from reaching out for a pencil. But when I made it to the end of the first chapter without giving in, to my surprise, I saw he’d included a summary of the very points I wanted to underline! Not only did it save me from the inevitable internal turmoil, but it also saved me precious note-making time.

It’s an excellent example of chapter two – Know your audience.

Atkins is a presenter on BBC News whose ‘explainer’ videos (according to me) are a masterclass in packaging complex issues in an accessible, informative, and deceptively effortless manner. He weaves in just how painstaking the process of making them is into the book.

But the book isn’t just for journalists. In my opinion, Atkins has managed to accomplish something that most communication people struggle with – targeting a very wide audience.

He’s managed to tailor-make the book, with summaries, quick references, examples, and anecdotes, so that it’s relevant for anyone who needs to explain anything to a tough crowd – a primary schoolteacher in front of disinterested kids or an employee trying to pitch a brilliant new idea to a busy boss.

Apart from appreciating the fact that you can see that every sentence is meticulously mulled over, I also appreciated the author’s general tone. Atkins’ tone is warm and open. He is unstinting with his praise for his colleagues and makes sure he credits people as he goes along.

At the same time, he doesn’t hide the disappointments he’s had to deal with in his career. He explains how, over the years, he turned what he learned through those experiences into input for the painstaking preparation of whatever he produces. He writes that when someone asks to see how he edits, he sees it in their eyes that they wonder ‘why he’s obsessing over details this small’. “I do this because the details add up to something that is more than the sum of its parts,” he writes.

The book isn’t necessarily an easy read – it depends on what you want to get out of it. It can be, if you’d like to skim the surface of what the book has to offer, there are short explanations for every aspect of the book. For example, there’s a short chapter on writing emails.

It’s not an easy read if, like me, you want to use it as a guide to step up your explanations at work and study to a whole other level. If so, you might just have to whip out your notebook and start making notes, which I now, unfortunately, realise I cannot escape.

Climate change communication has a new four-letter word

We like bad news. Or so this recent study published by nature human behavior would have us know. The authors of this paper examined over 100,000 viral news stories and found that most people clicked on headlines with negative words that instilled fear more often than they did on those with positive words. The reason for this, they explain, is somewhat coded in our genes.

“The tendency for individuals to attend to negative news reflects something foundational about human cognition—that humans preferentially attend to negative stimuli across many domains” they explain. They go on to elaborate that humans, from infancy, focus their attention on the negative stimuli in their environment. “Negative information may be more ‘sticky’ in our brains,” they say.

By Adrien Coquet from the Noun Project

What’s this got to do with climate change communication you ask? Quite a lot, I’d say.

There is no doubt that the climate crisis is the biggest challenge that humanity has ever faced. As we collectively blunder through it, one of the toughest aspects of it is figuring out how to communicate about this crisis. Clearly, we are gluttons for punishment because we evidently love bad news and need fear to get us to move. Just like in the old days, when Neanderthals lurking around our caves, forced us to develop tools that may have driven the Neanderthals to extinction, and allowed us, homo sapiens, to reign strong.

But when it comes to climate change reporting, too much of it causes climate anxiety and fear for their future – especially among the youth. Some experts believe this can be a good thing and stimulate action among young people. At the same time, paradoxically, all this bad news is also causing a rise in news avoidance. So then is fear the new four-letter word in climate change reporting?

If not fear, then what?

Should we have more hopeful communications? Dr Matthew Hornsey and Dr Kelly Fielding caution against messages of hope. According to them, “Distress is strongly correlated with mitigation motivation; hope is not”. In their research, they found that messages informing people of any form of happy progress somehow made people even more complacent. This doesn’t really shock anyone, I imagine. Then is hope the new four-letter word in climate change communication?

Not necessarily. It depends on what kind of hope you’re selling. Human-rights strategist and communications expert and founder of hope-based communication, Thomas Coombes advocates the use of solutions in hope-based communications. While the Drs Hornsey and Fielding found that positive messages of progress that inspired hope led to complacency, they also found that positive messaging around solutions also led to inaction. People just didn’t want to engage in solutions if there was no real urgent need for them to.

So, for some, fear might be the new four-letter word in climate change communication, and for others, it might be hope. I personally believe we need a healthy dose of both with a smattering of solutions. Simply because no one is going to try to put out the fire if we all believe we’re going to surely burn – even if the water hoses are right in front of us.

We need the purveyors and messages of hope and vision to assure us that even if there is a high likelihood of all of us burning, there is a small chance that if we all pick up the hoses in front of us, big or small, we just might be able to put out the fire.

Analysing global news consumption

This latest Digital News Report 2022 by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism analysing global news consumption is a treasure trove of information and insights.

The insights found in it aren’t just relevant for journalists, but are useful for anyone trying to engage with a large international audience.

Below are 5 findings that resonated with me.

I’ve highlighted them because these are trends I’ve observed working on communication for international development too. And who doesn’t like their observations backed up by quantifiable data from a reliable source?

If you don’t have the time to read the entire report, the summary alone is very informative.

Communications to turn the tides

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is in grave danger, according to the Sustainable development Goals Report published this month. The report also highlights areas that need exploring to salvage the situation.

No one expected a glowing report in the aftermath of a pandemic. Especially with the war in Ukraine directly impacting access to food around the world. But seeing the cold, hard numbers in colorful infographics is sobering.

For instance, progress on SDG 1, No Poverty, has been derailed by COVID-19. After a steady decline in extreme poverty rates, we’re seeing the first rise in extreme poverty since 1998. Rising food prices and the war in Ukraine are poised to push this even further.

The window for Climate Action, SDG 13, is rapidly closing. At the same time, in 2021, emissions increased by 6% and reached the highest levels ever. And according to the report, “current national commitments are not sufficient to meet the 1.5 °C targets. Under these commitments, greenhouse gas emissions are projected to increase by almost 14 percent over the next decade”

These are just two of the 17 goals. Each goal is examined in this report. To read about the status of each goal I recommend reading the report or going through the summaries here. Urgent and comprehensive action is vital to rescue these goals from becoming mere tokens.

According to Undersecretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Liu Zhenmin, “The severity and magnitude of the challenges before us demand sweeping changes on a scale not yet seen in human history.”

Of course, this situation has been building up over the years. And this is evident in previous reports.

On a constructive note, what is different in this year’s report was the inclusion of a section highlighting the effectiveness of communication strategies. They break down the diverse communication channels used by National Statistics Offices and how effective these channels were in countries with different levels of income (graph from the report below). They write, “The opportunity is ripe to take advantage of modern communication channels and produce tailored support and data products to reach different user groups.”

As someone who has been working in communication for years, I’ve found that the area of communications is consistently underestimated and underutilized – frequently an afterthought. But, as the report states, the time is ripe to utilize all the communications tools at our disposal to make the sweeping changes needed to turn the tide.

Book Review: The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall

This is by no means a new book. But it crossed my path recently and I found it to be quite a good read. Especially if you are in the business of content creation or storytelling. Whatever format that may be in, videos, text, images etc.

I must admit I had to plough through the first three chapters. But after that it really drew me in. At the heart of the book lies the fact that stories are a way for us, human beings, to understand and break down the world around us. Our brains are constantly working hard to piece together bits of information into coherent stories that give our lives, and what is happening around us, meaning.

In the chapter ‘The mind is a storyteller’ he writes:

The human mind is tuned to detect patterns and, it is biased toward false positives rather than false negatives. According to psychologists, this is part of a ‘mind design’ that helps us perceive meaningful patterns in our environments. Our hunger for meaningful patterns translates into a hunger for story.’

And not just any story. We seem to thirst for stories with happy endings and a good strong moral on which we can base our lives.

But that’s not all. He also explores conspiracy theories. Afterall, they are stories too. They help their readers make sense of the world around them. Of them, he writes ‘conspiracy theories – no matter how many devils they invoke – are always consoling in their simplicity’.

Usually there is a bad guy or guys that need to be defeated for the problem to simply go away. While Gottschall does not delve into the heart of conspiracy theories, I find that his ideas do offer some insight into the rise of conspiracy theories. Particularly now, with social media laying bare all the sufferings from around the world we need a bad guy to vanquish to make everything better. Quickly.

This book offers a deep insight in the mind of a storyteller i.e., every human being. Every minute of our lives are embroiled in stories of our own making or those we’ve learned from books, the internet, tik-tok or youtube. So, it is a good read for those of us who are creating stories to draw in people so that they can take positive action – whether that is towards mitigating climate change or supporting human and animal rights.

What I primarily took away from this book was just how intrinsic storytelling is to our living experience, right down from the caveman with their paintings  to us with our books and blogs. The medium may change by the need for stories will not. Without stories we simply cannot exist.

Breathing life into buzzwords

The development sector is buzzing with buzzwords (sorry, I couldn’t resist). I, along with numerous others resort to using them so that our content can belong in the world we are trying to reach, and belong to the people we are trying to reach. So, when the readers read a familiar buzzword they know (or have to assume they know) what we are talking about. These words, we hope, convey gravitas, that we know what we’re talking about and that we have our finger on the pulse.

There are a lot of studies written on the use of buzzwords not just in the development sector but for all sorts of marketing. I am not trying to rival any of these studies or go into the academics of semantics. I would however like to question whether at this time, when so many of our conversations are online, when so many hearts and minds are reached online and not in a pub or a café, we should be reevaluating our use of buzzwords?

Leaving gaps for misinformation to thrive

I’m not about to wage a war on buzzwords. They help the reader find what they are looking for. What I’m questioning is perhaps the context surrounding them. Take for instance the buzzword ‘innovative’. It is omnipresent within and without the development sector.  I use it too. But I often see it floating adrift without a context that might set that particular ‘innovative’ apart and anchor it to that particular text. To one person innovative might mean one thing and to another something completely different.

At the same time buzzwords are also useful because they spare the reader from trawling through reams of complex information. But they need very distinct and tailor-made content surrounding them. Without it, these terms and other kinds of jargon leave a lot to the imagination of the reader and for the large part they are very ambiguous. Perhaps we as the writers presume too much of our readers? And while this can be seen as a testament to the bond between the writer and reader, because our reach (thanks to social media) has exploded, sometimes our bond with the reader wears thin. And more often than not, this results in large gaps between what is written and what is then understood by the reader.

I believe it is in these gaps that misinformation thrives. Something, we can all acknowledge is a growing problem.

Of course, I’m not insinuating that the ambiguity of buzzwords is to blame for the spread of misinformation. I think, however, that they do contribute to it. Not just that; they alienate people who may not be privy to these seemingly coded messages, creating a bit of an ‘insider’ feeling.

Illuminate not eliminate

How can we fill these gaps? We’ve established that we can’t eliminate buzzwords, particularly in an age powered by search engines that rely on keywords. We could, instead, illuminate them. Buzzwords can gain or lose their power based on the words that precede and succeed them. For instance, as author of the paper ‘Buzzwords and fuzzwords: deconstructing development discourse’, Andrea Cornwall writes “Embedding words in chains of equivalence that secure meanings that would otherwise be pared away… can give tired buzzwords a new lease of life.”[1]

She also, poetically describes words as constellations when she writes “Thinking of words in terms of constellations rather than in the singular opens up further strategies for reclaiming ‘lost’ words, as well as salvaging some of the meanings that were never completely submerged.”

I recommend her paper, if you’re battling buzzwords too.

To illuminate buzzwords we need to surround them with context that sheds light on what we precisely mean in that particular instance. This I find is especially vital since content and context should anyway be tailor-made to its target audience. Personally, I’m striving to find that balance between breathing new life into the buzzwords by surrounding it with ‘words in chains of equivalence that secure their meaning’ and not using contexts that have been done to death. Buzzwords are merely bait, it’s the context (or frame) surrounding them is the real catch.

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[1] Andrea Cornwall (2007) Buzzwords and fuzzwords: deconstructing development discourse, Development in Practice, 17:4-5, 471-484, DOI: 10.1080/09614520701469302

 

Gender Equality in Climate Change Communication

I recently joined a very informative webinar hosted by the Reuters Institute of Journalism and the University of Oxford on the ‘Missing Perspectives of Women in the Covid-19 News’. Speaking on the issue was Luba Kassova of AKAS. Her presentation was based on a report that AKAS had written for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Juliana Romao for Unsplash

Of the many insights I gathered from the talk, and later reading the report, here are three of my key take-aways. I am aware I am drawing parallels, but I believe we could use these findings  to ensuring gender equality while talking about climate change too. Both, in how we engage with women as readers and protagonists.

Women are more interested in the local angle

According to the study, women are more likely (than men) to be interested in the local angle. The report recommends covering local dimensions of the story to improve engagement among women. Especially topics that worry women the most like, unemployment, healthcare, crime and gender violence. Particularly in the global south.

Women are drawn to news that has a human-interest angle

Somewhat related to the point mentioned above, the report suggests including more news stories that “offer micro-angles anchored in human interest stories emphasizing the humanity in this crisis.” Rather than focusing on the macro-level. The report finds that only 9% of the many international stories they researched on Covid-19 had a human story within them. They also found that surprisingly few women were the main protagonists in these stories. Consequently, one of their many recommendations was to make sure women were quoted often in news articles as experts.

Non-profit organisations frequently use human-interest stories to engage their audience. I have written many myself. So, it’s nice to have the research to back up the efficacy of this kind of communication.

Facts are overtaking both men and women

According to Luba the detached facts took over the human aspect of the Covid-19 coverage in the news articles that they tended to be less ‘emotionally engaging’. That is not to say that the study recommends dispensing with facts. According to the report putting facts within a human-interest frame, adding an individual’s story to it, makes the fact memorable. Especially to women.

Of course, this is but a quick glimpse into the fascinating report. I’ve merely skimmed the surface of things. It is a valuable resource on improving how we communicate about climate change and how we can direct our efforts to engage more women and add more women’s voices to the narrative. You could read the whole report here.

Making An Annual Report Sing

is no mean feat. Particularly for a non-profit. Here are three small tweaks that, I find, make an annual report easier to read and leave the reader feeling ‘Oh! this organisation has had such a huge impact with our investment’ or ‘I’d like to contribute to this cause in some way’.

Using sensory words

Throwing in a word or two that evokes an image, or a feeling, sparks the readers’ imagination and gently draws them in. For e.g. the initial reaction to the programme was lukewarm. But over time our outreach efforts resonated within the community and drew a sharp rise in their engagement.

Although annual reports are a legal document and need to sound professional, they don’t have to be a dry narrative. While writing or editing an annual report – even through the many rounds of edits – I try to bear in mind that there will be a person at the end of the line. A consummate professional. But a person, nonetheless.

Captioning images

There is already a lot of debate and parody surrounding the imagery employed by the non-profit sector in their fundraising efforts. I’m sure you know. However, although visuals now happily encourage empowerment rather than entice sympathy, the images used often lack context. Particularly in print. Inserting a caption under the image of say – a smiling mother and child, adds legitimacy, context and gives the text surrounding it a whole new layer.

Telling a tale

Human-interest stories often get left out of annual reports. Perhaps, because it is such a formal document. But adding a small box with a story of how a particular project changed someone’s life for the better does not detract from the validity and legitimacy of the document. It doesn’t have to be a tall tale. And don’t the in-depth accounts, statistics and other elements do a good job of adding the necessary gravitas to the report? So, if you have a story – why not squeeze it in?

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“Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become, in the hands of one who knows how to combine them”

– The American Notebooks 1848 by Nathaniel Hawthorne