Tuesday, August 7, 2018: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
243, New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
Organizer:
Bethann Merkle
Co-organizer:
Jennifer Purrenhage
Moderator:
Annaliese Hettinger
Public understanding and engagement are critical for making real progress on environmental issues. Many ESA members are actively working to improve this dialogue, but ecologists work on systems and questions that can be challenging to communicate to public stakeholders and non-scientist audiences. Yet, for public support of policy initiatives to grow, the public’s awareness and understanding of the underlying science must improve. This session is designed to explore specific strategies that have been implemented to improve public engagement and openness to discussion when “talking about the hard stuff.” Speakers will draw on their own experiences to talk about what has (and has not) worked, including public engagement around issues with a history of conflict and politicization, communication and engagement in higher education, and communication within professional societies. We will focus on sharing actionable advice, discussing lessons from the science of sci comm literature, and identifying common threads between seemingly disparate issues that might provide transferrable guidance for the communication and engagement of the “hard issues.”
