One of the readings for this week that we didn’t talk about in class, but which is hugely relevant to the upcoming stakeholder debate, is Grorud-Covert et. al.’s article on communicating marine reserve science. I’m sure it was pretty obvious to all of us once we started researching our respective stakeholder positions that people value the Great Barrier Reef for different reasons. Grorud-Covert et. al. are specifically concerned with the scientific community’s perspective on marine reserves like the GBR. The authors offer some sound advice on how to get people to listen to scientific arguments for protection. They speak broad truth about the art of persuasion: if you want people to listen, you have to talk to them in their language and on their turf.1) Language
- People don’t connect with scientific jargon. People connect with tangible outcomes. A resident living near the GBR doesn’t care what “turbidity” means. The resident does care that a healthy reef supports 66,000 jobs in the region. Frame science in terms of stakeholder values, and people will listen.
- This infographic, while it does a good job of representing the scale of proposed coal export in the GBR, could use a reference or two to the direct impact on families living near the reef, fishermen, or the tourism industry to be more effective as a galvanizing tool. So there’s a lot of coal, but why does it matter?
2) Turf
- It’s not enough to do the study, you have to have a plan for disseminating the knowledge. This means going out to the fishermen’s wharf, hitting the legislative floor, and sitting in on community meetings. If you want to be heard, you have to go where the people go. Grorud-Covert mention that it took over one thousand formal and informal meetings to come up with the right communications materials.
One last note on visuals: Grorund-Covert et. al. emphasize the effectiveness of graphics for conveying scientific data. Humans are visual first, verbal second. So if you want to grab someone’s attention, use pictures. If you want them to remember it, put words on top of the picture (it’s called dual-coding theory).