The Arctic in Your Backyard: Making Arctic Messages Matter to Mainstream Audiences

There are PCBs in polar bears, Inuit are drowning because ice conditions are changing, and pristine arctic ecosystems are being increasingly threatened by offshore oil exploitation and tanker traffic. So why should I care? That is the question mainstream audiences ask of arctic advocates, and also of researchers who work in the Arctic, whose work often informs and supports the work of the advocates.

This past year, the WWF International Arctic Programme coordinated and led some ground-breaking arctic science, the purpose of which was to demonstrate not only that the Arctic was changing, but also the ways in which those changes may affect the lives of tens of millions of people around the world. This presentation will deconstruct the reasoning behind taking this research tack. It will also tackle how the decision to focus on arctic climate feedbacks played out in the creation of communications products to support the science, particularly in the creation of the multimedia presentation, the Arctic in your Back Yard.

The presentation will touch on elements of the communications theory that informed the choices made, such as source credibility, efficacy of fear appeals, and agenda-setting theory. It will examine those theories with reference to their practical application in the communications strategy and products developed to support the Arctic Climate Feedbacks - Global Implications report.