The Debunking Handbook 2020 summarises the current state of the science of misinformation and its debunking. It was written by a team of 22 prominent scholars of misinformation and its debunking, and it represents the current consensus on the science of debunking for engaged citizens, policymakers, journalists, and other practitioners. The handbook is a consensus document that was created by...
Conspiracy theories attempt to explain events as the secretive plots of powerful people. While conspiracy theories are not typically supported by evidence, this doesn’t stop them from blossoming. Conspiracy theories damage society in a number of ways. To help minimise these harmful effects, The Conspiracy Theory Handbook explains why conspiracy theories are so popular, how to identify the traits of conspiratorial...
Weathercocks and Signposts… advocated communicating and campaigning on the basis of a deep and imperative love for the natural world as one of many roots to inspiring environmental concern. But it also highlighted definite limits to the kind of arguments that we should make. It made the case that we should seek to widen public support for our aims by...
Last year, Climate Tracker produced toolkits to help journalists, writers, and other communicators write about climate change and publish it in media. But, we couldn’t help ask ourselves: what makes climate change communication effective? How do we deal with climate skeptics? And how can we communicate climate science clearly? We decided to come up with a new toolkit to try...
Climate change is a notoriously ‘distant’ risk for most people – it feels ‘not here’ and it feels ‘not now’. Anyone who has had any experience trying to engage the public on climate change will likely recognise the challenge of overcoming the so-called ‘psychological distance’ of the issue, and bringing climate change ‘closer to home’. There is a lot of...
This Special Report from the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) is a synthesis of key findings from a cluster of PICS funded Social Mobilization research projects, conducted in British Columbia (BC) during 2010 – 2014. This report explains “what works” and “what doesn’t work” in engaging the public and motivating people to act on climate change solutions. Included in...
The guide, which includes research from a range of social science fields including psychology, anthropology, communications, and behavioral economics, is designed to be useful for experienced and novice communicators alike. Included in the guide are strategies to boost engagement, common mistakes to avoid, and best practices that organizations have used to meaningfully engage individuals and groups on climate change.
This guide offers recommendations for the conservation sector and others on how to ensure their work strengthens the values that motivate people to protect and enjoy nature. Part of a longer report produced in collaboration with 13 UK conservation organisations, it is based on original analysis of these groups’ communications, workshop discussions, survey responses and in-depth interviews…. Psychologists, advertisers and...
The Debunking Handbook, a guide to debunking misinformation, is now freely available to download. Although there is a great deal of psychological research on misinformation, there’s no summary of the literature that offers practical guidelines on the most effective ways of reducing the influence of myths. The Debunking Handbook boils the research down into a short, simple summary, intended as...
Since 2009, we have been suggesting that there is a potential danger in those aspects of the Value Modes approach which argue that campaigners should attempt to motivate pro-environmental behaviour by connecting such behaviours to aims like money, image, and status. We have carefully grounded the case that we have advanced in the peer-reviewed scientific literature on values. Because some...
