At the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Mid-Year Meeting in Chattanooga, TN, FrameWorks organized a team of leading scholars to explain how "the cognitive revolution" can advance the practice of science interpretation, generally, and the specific science of ocean acidification and climate change. FrameWorks President Susan Nall Bales stressed the importance of a social and cognitive sciences-perspective when communicating with the public about complex issues like climate change.  

As Lyanda Lynn Haupt wrote in her book, Crow Planet:

There is a way to face this crisis with our eyes open, with full knowledge, with insight, and with practical commitment. Finding such a way is more essential now than it has ever been... But such work does not have to be dour (no matter how difficult) or accomplished only out of moral imperative (however real the obligation) or fear (though the reasons to fear are well founded). Our actions can rise instead from a sense of rootedness, connectedness, creativity, and delight.

Bradd Shore, a past President of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, and the author of Culture in Mind, explained how cultural models stand between the interpreter and the public and require systematic strategies if science is to be "heard" in the way it is intended. FrameWorks Senior Researcher Alexis Bunten drew from her experience as an anthropologist working on tourism issues with Native Alaskan populations to suggest ways to overcome the commodification and objectification of cultural heritage. FrameWorks Senior Fellow Frank Gilliam, Dean of UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, explained how frames assign responsibility. Dr. Gilliam went on to present a number of ways we can frame science that treat the public as citizens rather than consumers.  

 Check out a video summary of the conference here.  

In Chattanooga, FrameWorks' Tiffany Manuel and Susan Nall Bales kicked off a "Framing Climate Change and Oceans" Study Circle for twenty-two interpreters from eleven aquariums around the country. Study Circles are six month long, intensive engagements that combine readings in the framing literature with practical homework assignments. These sessions were designed to strengthen framing practice in a particular issue area. In this first session, participants learned the cultural models that people use to think about oceans and climate change, and how FrameWorks' research identifies better ways to frame the issues for public engagement. Future sessions will be held at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Instituteand will rely on flipcams provided to the participants to record their best interpretive reframes.

To this work, FrameWorks Institute brought a portfolio of research on how Americans (and Canadians) think about Climate Change and Oceans, with recent work funded by the David Suzuki Foundation. FrameWorks' research on these topics includes:  

• collaborating with scientists

• in-depth conversations with environmental organizations

• cultural models interviews with the public

• conceptual metaphor analysis

• content analysis of news

• media effects tests

• quantitative framing experiments

• on-the-street interviews

FrameWorks' research on environmental issues continues with its newest work on Environmental Health, a partnership with the American Public Health Association (APHA), the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO). Stay tuned for new research!

We get a lot of questions about the durability and reach of our simplifying models.While many scholars assert the universality of metaphor as a brain process and of specific metaphors as part of human orientation, no better proof exists than this testimonial. FrameWorks Senior Researcher Alexis Bunten recently attended an Inuit film symposium at UC Berkeley. Several Inuit film makers from villages throughout the Northern Canadian arctic shared their experiences making films and documentaries about Inuit life in Canada. The final film showed at the event was the 2010 documentary, "Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change," shot in several villages in Nunavut, Canada. Co-Directed by Zacharias Kunuk, an Inuit filmmaker who won the Palm D'or award at Cannes for Atanarguat (the Fast Runner) in 2001, this documentary discusses the impacts of climate change from the perspective of the Inuit, whose livelihood depends on their intimate knowledge of the landscape, ecosystems, and weather patterns observed and passed down through generations. One elder in the film explained the mechanisms of global warming, describing the atmosphere as a "heat trapping blanket" that becomes thicker with increased carbon dioxide emissions resulting in warmer weather.  While community members' observations about the effects of global warming on arctic ice flows and animal populations were local, this explanation relied on a tested FrameWorks' simplifying model showing that good frames will travel far and wide, even to the most remote arctic villages.

ALEXIS CELESTE BUNTEN was recently named a Senior Researcher with the institute and is a Ford postdoctoral fellow at UC Santa Cruz, where she is currently working on a project theorizing indigenous capitalism(s).  Bunten received a B.A. in art history at  Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology at UCLA. She was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley 2006-2008, where she expanded upon research looking into processes of cultural commoditization and expression of indigenous identities through tourism, media and performing "the Other" in response to global patterns of consumption.  

In addition to her scholarly endeavors, Bunten has worked for the Sealaska Heritage Institute, the Alaska Native Heritage Center, the Nerland Agency for the Alaska Federation of Natives, BBC for the Discovery Channel, Ibis Designs for the National Black MBA Association, the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, Sitka Tribal Enterprises' Tribal Tours, Project HOOP (a Native American Performing Arts organization), the Census Bureau, and IPinCH (Intellectual Property in Cultural Heritage).   

Bunten's areas of expertise include the heritage industry, cultural production and consumption, interpretation, cross-cultural communication, community development, tourism, and the anthropology of work. She has published in American Ethnologist, American Indian Quarterly, the London Journal of Tourism, Sport and Creative Industries, and contributed chapters in the volumes Exploring World Art (Waveland Press) and Great Expectations: Imagination, Anticipation and Enchantment in Tourism (Berghann Books).  Her book, "So, how long have you been native?" A Season Working as an Alaskan Tour Guide (University of Nebraska Press), is forthcoming. 

For more than 30 years, FrameWorks President Susan Nall Bales has held an ongoing conversation with writer Rich Louv about their mutual interests in children's issues, citizen empowerment and nature. FrameWorks is pleased to call attention to Rich's latest book, THE NATURE PRINCIPLE and his assertion that an understanding of nature and how it works is a critical skill for preserving both our sanity and our democracy. Rich received the San Diego Zoological Society Conservation Medal and the George B. Rabb Conservation Medal from the Chicago Zoological Society. He is also a recipient of the Audubon Medal. Rich writes to FrameWorks:

"FrameWorks was a deep influence on my 2005 book, LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Reframing nature and child development has proven a useful tool in the now international movement to connect children to the natural world. My new book, THE NATURE PRINCIPLE takes the next leap. Adults also have nature-deficit disorder (not a medical condition but a way to talk about the human disconnection from nature). In THE NATURE PRINCIPLE, I report the expanding body of evidence suggesting that our mental, physical, cognitive and spiritual health can be greatly enhanced by restoring and expanding our relationship with the natural world. So can the social and economic welfare of our communities. And I describe how many people, companies and other institutions are beginning to make that happen.

Of interest to zoos and aquariums that address people every day who may not be card-carrying environmentalists, I also make the case for a "new nature movement" -- one that not only includes, but goes beyond today's environmentalism and sustainability movements. It suggests we move beyond survival to thrival, beyond conservation to creating nature everywhere we live, work, learn and play. In June, the Minneapolis Arboretum brought 300 stakeholders, from health care to tourism statewide, to consider the future of Minnesota through the prism of the Nature Principle. In the process, the participants envisioned a better future than the existing "Blade Runner" version in which technology will save us somehow, somewhat; or a future in which humans merely sustain the status quo. Surely we can do better than that. The waters will rise, but we'll still have to live; the more high-tech our lives become, the more nature we need. By actively cultivating this part of our human development, and ensuring that our communities reflect our goals, we stand to create a better world and a better quality of life. This is, to my mind, the new environmentalism."

To learn more, please see: www.richardlouv.com

If you are in Denver for the annual meeting of the American Pscyhological Association in August, don't miss FrameWorks' panel on how framing child mental health affects policy thinking. Based on FrameWorks' research for the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, Research Director Nat Kendall-Taylor will join Board member Ron Manderscheid and Senior Researcher Michael Erard in explaining why "Levelness" is a critical concept for communicating about this issue.