Less than 400 Left: How Media Coverage Shapes the Fate of North Atlantic Right Whales

Less than 400 left — that’s how many North Atlantic right whales remain in the world. These critically endangered whales are at the center of an urgent conservation story, but how the media communicates about them plays a powerful role in shaping public awareness and action. In this episode of How to Protect the Ocean, Andrew Lewin sits down with Dr. Marcus Reamer, a new PhD graduate in science communication, to explore how newspapers and digital outlets covered right whale crises over the past decade.

Science communication emerges as a critical conservation tool, with Dr. Reamer sharing insights from his research on major publications like the New York Times, Washington Post, and LA Times. Together, they unpack why media coverage spikes during crises but fades when attention shifts elsewhere, and what this means for endangered species storytelling.

Whale conservation depends not only on data and science but also on the narratives shared with the public. This conversation highlights how media framing can help or hinder conservation literacy, and how improved communication can increase support for saving one of the world’s rarest whales.

Link to article: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/adeeec

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This is one of my favorite episodes torecord 'cause we're gonna be talking
about science, communication of whale.
So I love science communication,I love whales, but I really love
science communication and we don'tget to talk to a lot about it.
But we have on the episode today,Dr. Marcus Reamer, who just became
a PhD graduate in the last year.
We talked to him on the episode on thepodcast last year before he was just
finishing up and he hadn't defended yet,but he is now a full fledged PhD graduate

(00:25):
in science communication, especiallysurrounding whales, north Atlantic, right
whales, the critically endangered whale.
He's here to talk about one of thepapers that just got published at
the end of July, looking at the waynewspapers and digital online media,
like the six major ones like LA Times,New York Times, Washington Post,
and so forth, actually communicatedNorth Atlantic right whale material.

(00:50):
During a time of crisis andhow that went up, up and up.
There was more articles and then asthe population was going down or they
didn't really wanna talk about itthat much more, you know, the articles
just kind of went by the wayside.
And we're gonna be talking aboutwhy that happens and what that's
called in media, and we're gonna talkabout that on today's episode of the
How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
Let's start the show.

(01:12):
Hey everybody.
Welcome back to another exciting episodeof the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, andthis is the podcast where you find
out what's happening with the ocean,how you can speak up for the ocean,
and what you can do to live fora better ocean by taking action.
On today's episode, we're gonna betalking about one of my favorite
subjects, science communication.
In fact, we're gonna betalking about writing a science
communication, so like actual.
Typed out writing.

(01:33):
You know, obviously forme, I'm a podcast fanatic.
I love producing podcasts.
I love being on podcasts.
I love being a guest.
I love listening to podcasts.
I love all things aroundpodcasting, even video podcasting.
But today we're gonna be focusing on apaper that Dr. Marcus Reamer, you know,
put out with a colleague, published it.
It was published at the end of July.
It was part of his PhD, but itwas like an add-on to what he had

(01:55):
in his PhD looking at the years2023 and 2024 to see what happens.
When an article or these newspapersactually start to discuss and write
articles about the North Atlantic rightwhale, when there's a time of crisis, when
there's an actual issue around this typeof a whale and looking at how that peaks

(02:15):
and then how that declines after a while.
And then, you know, howdo we keep this relevant?
That's the question is how do youkeep the North Atlantic right?
Whales and other whales and other speciesrelevant within the news so that we get
more policy action and also hopefullybeing interesting to the readers.
So it's always interesting to talkabout science communication and we do
that with Marcus here today and I'mso excited to be able to present this

(02:38):
interview 'cause it's a lot of fun.
You know, Marcus and Iget along really well.
We talk a lot, we message a lot onLinkedIn quite a bit, and so it's a lot
of fun to be able to talk to him virtuallyface to face, which is a lot of fun.
So here is the interview withDr. Marcus Reamer talking about.
Issue Attention cycle of NorthAtlantic, right Whale Science,
conservation, and Policy in sixUS newspapers from 2023 and 2024.

(03:00):
We're gonna be talking about that today.
Enjoy the interview andI will talk to you after.
Hey Marcus, welcome back to theHow to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
Are you ready to talk aboutwhale and communication?
I am always ready to talkabout whales and communication.
All right.
This is gonna be a lot of fun.
This is something that we've beenwanting to talk for a while about.

(03:21):
You sent me like, Hey, Andrew, thepaper that we talked about a little
bit last time when you were on theshow, uh, we, it, it got published.
It got published on at the end of July,and we were like, yes, let's do it.
Let's talk about it.
Let's talk about communication.
Let's talk about how articlesare written and how we all talk
about marine conservation issues,especially when it comes to whales.
We're really focus on whales, uh,and, and how the sort of like, there's

(03:43):
this cycle that happens with, uh,with communication and it goes up
and down in terms of popularity.
And we're gonna talk all about that,especially, uh, not only in the
written digital world, but also justin the digital world that we live
in, in social media and YouTube andpodcasting and all that kind of stuff.
So it's gonna be a lot of funif you are into communication
and into marine science.
This is gonna be the episode for you.

(04:04):
But first, before we get into allof that, Marcus, let's hear it.
I wanna hear it.
How are you doing?
Let's get a life update.
Uh, last time we talked youwere just about finishing your
PhD and what's the update now?
Yeah, so we connected about a year ago.
It's, it's great to be back, but in thattime I, I defended my dissertation at

(04:25):
the University of Miami and earned thatPhD in Environmental Science and policy.
Uh, congratulations.
That's awesome.
Thank you.
A five year sprint that started six monthsbefore COVID upended everything, including
my, my proposed research project.
But we made it through.
Um, and my dissertation research wasabout the role of human communication

(04:47):
and media in right whale conservation.
So lots of cool sort of projects came outof that, including the paper, um, that
you had mentioned that just came out atthe end of July, which is a follow up
to a study that was in my dissertation.
Um, and I've got some other work kindof in progress now that should be
coming out later this year, early next.

(05:08):
So just 'cause I got thedegree doesn't mean the work
stopped, you know, kept going.
It's just beginning.
It's just beginning now.
Right.
The, the PhD is permissionto do more work.
Yes.
But, but good stuff and busy and lotsof cool stuff to talk about today.
So that is the update.
That's awesome.
Well, congratulations again.

(05:28):
I mean, thank you.
Feet of PhD is something that isnot easily attained, especially
during a global pandemic,so congratulations on that.
And we, we also collaborated whileyou taught last year at University of
Miami, you taught communications course.
Uh, that was a lot of fun.
Do you wanna tell us a little bit aboutthat and what you, what you taught
and what the course was all about Ithought was a really cool concept.

(05:50):
Yeah.
And I was happy to have you.
Um, so in the spring I taught atthe University of Miami at their
Rosen Seal School for master'sstudents primarily, uh, course
called Marine Conservation Outreach.
And we really focused on the role ofcommunication and outreach, of course,
in marine conservation, but broadened itout a little bit to environmental science

(06:11):
and policy because, you know, especiallytoday where things are so fast moving.
Not only in communication,but in policy in science.
It's really important to understandhow communication and outreach and
those external facing sort of jobsfit within the organizations that
students want to go work for, sothat they can do the work better.

(06:34):
Whether it's working across organizationsand thinking about the flow of
information, or educating a non-expertaudience of, let's say, school-aged
children visiting a zoo or an aquarium,or speaking to policymakers about
an important topic that you want.
To see policy action taken.
So it was really cool to talk aboutsort of the role of human communication.

(06:57):
And it wasn't the first timeI've taught a course like that.
And it's always really interestingbecause students come in and, and when
I tell people who are not students,what I do, the, the assumption
is like, oh, I'm a good writer.
Or Yeah, I can make reallycool content on social media.
Or, I'm a really good illustrator, soI'd be really good at communication.
And it's, it's always interesting to,to break those worldviews a little

(07:21):
bit and say, yes, that's part of it.
Mm-hmm.
But also, it's much bigger than that.
You have to understand the science andthe, the society portion of things and,
and really think of it like a chessboard where you have to understand
sort of what each piece does and,and how to move it and how to, to.
See things a couple movesaway and, and anticipate.

(07:42):
Mm-hmm.
And really think strategically aboutnot only what your goals are, but
the ways that you're gonna get there.
So picking the righttools outta your toolbox.
So that was a really cool class.
I was really happy to have you onone of our professional development
panels and, you know, we got studentsacross multiple tracks in our Master of
professional science program, which, youknow, I think really demonstrates the

(08:06):
fact that communication is everything.
It's not just the flow of information,but it's our social reality.
It's our institutions because what islaw, if not a form of communication?
What is education, if not communicationfor a specific life stage?
So it was really cool to support studentsstudying things like climate and society,
marine conservation, fisheries managementand conservation in pursuit of jobs

(08:31):
from, you know, wanting to get a PhDand become an academic to, you know,
wanting to be a communication, outreach,education professional with a nonprofit.
So, really cool class, um, was happy to doit and, and I think it's really important
in today's conservation workforce.
Absolutely.
I mean, I, communication to me is one ofthe most important aspects of conservation

(08:54):
because like, especially these dayswhen everybody's consuming information
at such a rapid pace, maybe even being,you can probably argue that there we're
being overloaded with information.
If we really want to be, uh, you know,doom scrolling and trying to find, and
getting notifications and so forth.
There's such a huge competition ofinformation, you know, getting, one

(09:15):
of the things that I always startedMark, is when I, when I was, uh, when
I first started doing communication,I started a blog and stuff.
One of the things I used to say,like, people were like, why'd
you, why are you doing this?
Like, why are you starting this?
I'm like, because.
There are more people who know, whoknow about what's happening with the
Kardashians than they do about the ocean.
And I didn't want that to happen.

(09:35):
I wanted to have the, not to saythat there's anything wrong with
looking at reality TV and watching it.
You know, we need to decompress and,and, and check out sometimes, however,
there's something to be said about knowingsome of the fun, like key aspects of
what's happening into this life systemthat we need to survive on this planet.
And it was important for me to providethat resource that if somebody wanted to

(09:56):
learn about it, they can learn about it.
Uh, and as of course, it morphedinto a lot of different communication
styles from writing to video, toaudio now, back to audio and video.
Um, and so it's, it's been a,a really interesting journey.
Um, and it, it's, it's always greatto be able to talk to communication
with someone like yourself who'sbeen through like a PhD and, and been
professionally educated in communication.

(10:19):
'cause like you said, it's not just about.
Strategy of marketing on social media.
It's about looking at trends and, andwhat, how these trends affect the way
we consume and the way we care and theway we act once we consume like a, a,
a, an article, whether it's a writtenarticle or a podcast or, or a video.
Now this paper here that you,that you talk about focused on, on

(10:42):
articles, like written articles inlike six US newspapers, 2023 and 2024.
Can you just tell us a littleabout, a bit about this paper?
Uh, and, and maybe just for, for peoplewho are not familiar with what's happening
with the North Atlantic right whale,maybe just give a a little brief summary
on what's happening with them and thenwhat was happening in, in this paper.

(11:03):
Sure thing.
So the, the paper that's outnow is in environmental research
communications by IOP publishing.
And it's a continuation of astudy actually, that we talked
about this time last year.
Um, so it, it's basically the sequelto research I had already done, right?
And right.
Whales have been endangeredfor more than a century.

(11:27):
You know, they were hunted to nearextinction during the industrial
whaling era and just never really madea recovery despite having, you know,
almost a century of multiple layersof legal protections and conservation
efforts, um, decades of, you know,dedicated research and rescue efforts.
You know, so no shortage of interestin helping the species recover.

(11:49):
They were once plentiful throughoutthe Atlantic Basin, you know,
along the coast of North America,Europe, and even West Africa.
And now it's a population of about 375whales that's exclusive almost entirely to
the Atlantic coast of the US and Canada.
And so.
I started my PhD six monthsbefore COVID blew everything up.

(12:11):
I had a project in mind that I wantedto do and there were, you know, just
changes in the world that I couldn't goout and talk to people at that point.
So I had to pivot.
And, you know, that summer therewas a documentary film that came out
that was the first that I knew about,um, and turned out being one of the
first, uh, exclusively focused onthis species and its conservation.

(12:34):
And that was entangled.
It was, uh, by BostonGlobe reporter David Abel.
And it really focused on right whaleconservation in the New England area and
the conservation conflicts between lobsterfishers and whale experts and advocates.
Um, and so that really setoff my journey in studying.
Communication media surroundingright whale conservation.

(12:57):
And so, uh, the Canadian counterpartto that documentary came out in 2021
called Last of the Right Whales thatfocused a little bit more broadly.
It looked at the Canadian side of things,the Florida, Georgia side of things in
the southern part of the species range.
It really looked at the sort ofconservation efforts to, to reduce things

(13:20):
like entanglement and vessel strikes,just human impacts on this species.
So those documentaries got mereintroduced to a topic that I had
previously worked on in, in otherwork, uh, non-academically, but.
There was a turning point at the endof 2022 where I saw a bunch of news
articles coming out about this governmentspending bill at the federal level that

(13:44):
was gonna prevent a government shutdown.
But Right.
Whales kept getting mentionedand I, I just couldn't figure
out what was going on there.
And it's because there was languageintroduced to that bill that
changed the outcome for right whaleconservation, you know, by investing
in some activities, but also preventingfederal agencies from making new

(14:04):
rules about phishing until 2028.
Right.
So that is the nature of science.
I was getting Google alerts aboutright whales and it kept coming
up, this government spending bill.
And I just asked thequestion, how did we get here?
Hmm.
So my first study, we looked at sixUS newspapers, like you said, and we
looked at six of the largest because,uh, in this case, news tends to trickle

(14:28):
down from the large publicationsto the smaller, more local ones.
And so we looked at the LA Times USAtoday, New York Times, the Boston
Globe, um, wall Street Journal, um,you know, and the Washington Post.
And that gave us a pretty good geographicspread of the news and just did a search

(14:50):
in a database and put right whale or rightwhales, and looked at what was going on.
And the first studywas 2010 to early 2023.
That was just the period of time thatI had, you know, for the research
and the one that was just published.
We did the continuation to do the fullyear analysis for 2023 and 2024 to see

(15:12):
what's happened since, because, youknow, everything's always changing.
Mm-hmm.
And really what that paper doesis say the thing that we thought
would happen pretty much did happen.
And I'm hinting at the result withouttalking everybody through the background,
but that's the purpose of this paper.
It was to continue on the work andjust not leave everybody hanging.

(15:35):
You know?
Because science and and mediaare never finished, right?
So with that, the theoreticalframework that we looked at at this
topic through, it wasn't a sciencetopic, it wasn't an ecological model,
it wasn't a population projection.
It wasn't trying to figure out whateffect would some policy have on the
population, but it was really lookingat the predictable rise and fall of

(15:58):
public attention and how that relates topolicy change and organizational action.
It's called the issue attention cycle.
It was introduced by Anthony Downs in1972, and he actually used the rise
of the Modern American environmentalmovement to make his argument about
news media more broadly at the time.
And so what the issue attentioncycle looks at are these five stages.

(16:23):
That media coverage follows.
It starts in a pre-pro stage where it's,it's really a niche issue where the
experts and the people most affectedby the issue are talking about it, but
it doesn't have widespread attention.
And then there's some external eventthat moves us into stage two, which is
alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm.

(16:43):
And that's usually when werealize that there's a problem.
And you start to hear policy makersand industry actors and and interest
groups say, we're gonna get this done.
We're gonna fix thisswiftly and decisively.
And we see this with COVID.
We saw it.
We see it with school shootings,natural disasters, hurricanes,
earthquakes, tsunamis, things like that.

(17:04):
Some external event happens, policymakersand, and people say, you know what?
We're gonna fix thisswiftly and decisively.
And there's a a flurry of attention,and that's where there's a real spike.
And then you move into stagethree, which is when you realize
what it's actually gonna taketo achieve significant progress.
That's where you introduce some newactors and say, okay, this change is

(17:26):
proposed, but here's how it would affectsome group of people or some ecosystem.
Or, here's the other sort ofoutcomes that we might expect.
And that can go on for a while.
And at some point we move into stagefour, which is the gradual decline.
In intense public interest.
And then we move into the fifthstage, which Downs calls this.

(17:47):
Uh, it's the post problem stage, butDowns refers to it as this like spasmodic
limbo where you might get some morecoverage than you did in stage one.
It's not like you disappear forever.
People are more knowledgeable, butthere's more editorial resistance
and it's just sort of pops and theneverybody forgets about you again.
And that can go on and on untileither in perpetuity or until a

(18:12):
new issue, attention cycle starts.
So basically what it does isit allows us to follow the rise
and follow a public interest insocial and environmental issues.
What do we know happens inissue attention cycles, and how
does that relate to news media?
Well, what Downs tells us is thatbecause news media organizations.

(18:35):
They're not only a public service,but they're for-profit organizations.
Yep.
They rely on readership,advertisements, now subscriptions.
Um, what they're gonna do toattract and maintain public
attention is appeal to our brains.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
And they're gonna use social psychologyand the norms of their industry to

(18:56):
simplify problematize and dramatizeproblems to attract and maintain
interest as long as possible.
So that's what I started to lookat through my research on news
media was very much what happened.
You know, did we movethrough this cycle quickly?
Did it happen over years?

(19:17):
Right.
What's going on here?
And so in the first paper, we found thatthere are lots of threats to right whales.
We have known, and scientists havebeen saying for a very long time
that they need swift policy action,and they're critically endangered.
There just wasn't thatsort of catalyzing event.
And it was in 2017 that at least a dozenwhales were found in Canada's Gulf of St.

(19:41):
Lawrence where they weren't expected andwhere they weren't explicitly protected.
That was the catalyzing event thatlaunched this issue, attention
cycle into public view and gotpeople talking about right whales.
So summer of 2017 through 2019, that'swhen everybody's behind like, let's save
the right whale, let's get this done.
Fishing closures, vessel speed reductions,you know, shipping lanes closed off.

(20:06):
And in 2019 we started to really focusin on that conservation conflict between
fishing industry and uh, whale experts andadvocates and grappling with what would
it mean to change fishing regulations?
What are the economic, socialand psychological costs
to fishing regulations?
And that's where we started to seesome of the both sadism of, you know.

(20:31):
Sure we could protect the whales,but are we a source of the problem?
There's so much uncertainty here, right?
Would the change regulationshave any benefit?
And so that started to change theissue attention cycle quite a bit.
And then through until 2022, that's whenwe really saw the most intense period.
Yeah.
You saw seafood sustainabilitylabels changed the designation of

(20:56):
American Lobster or Main Lobster.
So Monterey Bay's Seafood Watchand Marine Stewardship Council
said, you know, the fishing to getlobster is a threat to right whales.
It's not a sustainable choicefor consumers that caught media
attention because retailers likeWalmart, cheesecake Factory, um,
whole Foods stopped selling lobster.

(21:16):
Right, right.
Yeah, I remember that.
And then that led into that governmentspending bill that we mentioned that
was essential to keep the US governmentopen $1.7 trillion at the time.
That's when the main congressionaldelegation put language in that
prevented the National MarineFishery Service from issuing new
fishing rules until December, 2028.

(21:38):
So effectively for theremainder of the decade.
And so what that did was itdeescalated the conservation conflict.
It didn't solve the problem.
Right?
Right.
It's a distinction, but itdeescalated the conservation conflict.
And that's what gets us to this new paper.
We ended at a cliffhanger.
Right.
Everybody was reacting to that.
Bill being signed into lawEnvironmental Group said, this is a

(22:01):
nail in the coffin for the species.
Lobster Fisher said, thisgives us time to figure out.
Sort of what the problem isand what we can do about it.
So I picked up where we left off myco-author, Elisa and I, and we found that
that was the actual inflection point inthe issue attention cycle, and without an
active and ongoing conservation conflict.

(22:22):
Reporters who had previously published,you know, dozens of articles on the topic
suddenly published, maybe one, right?
Yeah.
The, the reporting returned back toepisodic sort of coverage where it was
like, right whale born here, right.
Whale spotted injured here.
Right.
But there are still plenty ofthreats facing right whales, right.

(22:45):
We just kind of fell off becausethis seems to be the dimension
that was the easiest to simplify.
And problematize and dramatize.
It was two sides playing tug of war.
The whales are caught sort of in betweenand everybody loves whales, but everybody
also loves, you know, fishers and Yeah.
And seafood and, and wants to see these,these community jobs and these, you know,

(23:09):
economic engines for communities thrive.
And so it's this really challengingtopic, but without that, there's
not as much public interest.
And so that's what the, theconclusion of the paper is.
You know, whales got mentioned a littlebit in some debates about offshore wind,
mostly misinformation and disinformationcampaigns, but they went from the star

(23:31):
of the show to now this sort of likesupporting point or supporting actor.
And that tells us that the problemis moving into the post problem
stage or the cycle is moving.
And that has implications for policyand organizational change because
those actions are the most likelyat the peak of public attention.
So the point of this paper is thatmedia systems really do play an

(23:55):
important role in conservation.
They don't just tell us what's happening,they influence what's happening.
Correct.
But it also tells organizations thatyes, you should be investing in your
communication, in your public relations,but getting headlines and being mentioned,
we've heard the phrase All press is goodpress or no such thing as bad press.

(24:16):
Yeah.
You know, the amount of coveragedoesn't fix conservation problems.
And so through this paper, whetherpeople work on whales or not, we talk
about how conservation organizationsand advocates can understand and use
these systems to their advantage to.
Not only react when things are reallybad, but to also use these tools to shape

(24:39):
social realities, to make topics feelimportant and personally relevant to
people where they may feel psychologicallyor even physically far away.
Right?
Because we all, like yousaid, are overloaded with
information all the time, right.
Through the issue attention cycle.
We now know why it seems like, itfeels like all bad news all the time.

(25:00):
That's what we pay more attention to.
And so this work was really acontinuation that picked up on the
Netflix cliffhanger, if you will.
Um, and told us sort of, yeah, thethings that we said in that first
paper played out kind of the way wethought they would, unfortunately.
But it's also fortunate because ittells us that, that the theory holds up.

(25:20):
Um, and that gives sort ofactionable knowledge to people, um,
not just right whale conservationexperts, but others working on
other topics in other geographies.
So that's what's reallycool about this paper.
Yeah, that's a little bit of how,how we got the research question.
You know, I saw news coverage onsomething and said, how'd we get here?

(25:42):
Design the study.
Did a search, you know,read over 400 news articles.
So no one, no one else has to, um,and, and really applied this framework
over the body of coverage because it'snot about what you read in one article
is gonna change your whole worldview.
It's all of the media thatwe're consuming all the time.

(26:02):
And so the, the big point here is thatmarine mammals are beloved worldwide.
They are the beneficiary ofdecades of conservation marketing.
Um, they're some of the mostpopular animals worldwide.
People love them.
They support their conservationeven if they don't fully understand
the animals or how complicatedtheir conservation is, of course.

(26:23):
And so if it was this challenging for aspecies of whale to get public attention
and also get policy support, right?
What does that mean for seastars, sea cucumbers, plankton.
The things that are, that areholding up ecosystems and food webs

(26:43):
and how are we talking about those?
We're probably nottalking about 'em at all.
No.
And if we are, it'ssporadic here and there.
Yeah.
So that's where the broaderimplications come in.
And that's why I felt that this kindof work and, and looking at whale
conservation through human communicationand media felt really important.
It's, it's really interesting.
You mentioned, there's a coupleof things that I, I'm looking at

(27:04):
the graph in the paper by the way.
Thank you for allowing it tobe open, open, uh, access.
We appreciate that.
In, in the graph, like figure three.
Uh, and, and, and people cantake a look at the paper.
I'll put the link inthe, in the show notes.
Um, but it shows like, you know, the,the, it's a comparison of, of like
the, the estimate of the populationof, of North Atlantic Red Whale.

(27:26):
And then the, the next graph belowthat is what you're comparing
it to is like the number of newsarticles about the, about the whale.
Now, it, it takes a, it looks likeit's a little bit of an Aspen to, at
the beginning it's kind of steady,the population is pretty steady,
and then the news articles are maybearound 15 per year or so, or so forth.
And then as the population decreases,so the population was about 500.

(27:50):
This is around like 20 10, 20 12, 20 13.
All of a sudden around 2016, it takesa dip, uh, a, a pretty large, a pretty
significant dip going from about 500in, uh, 2015 down to, as we mentioned
in 2017 it was, it was quite low.
And then all the way down tolike 2020, uh, down to about.
340 and it's starting to like it.

(28:12):
It's slowly starting tokind of come back up.
And according to this, the populationseems to, by 2024, seems to have
for one year anyway, have kindof bought or, or states the same.
But what was interesting is from2017 or 2016 to even 2024, it's,
it's, there was a pretty significantjump in the number of articles as
you mentioned, like the, the issue.

(28:33):
But it took a little bit of a dip in 2020.
Do you think it just took a dip?
Because there's so many articlesabout COVID at that time that maybe
like the, the, the, the environmentjust took a little bit of a, of, of
a backseat because then it goes upafter that like in 20 21, 20 22 and
it peaks in 2023 and then goes down.
Do you think it was a COVID thing thatkind of, you know, broadened that out?

(28:56):
'cause it wasn't as if there was ahuge, well, mind you, there was a bit
of an a dip that was probably the lowestpart of when the, the whales got, but
then they started to increase slowly.
Anyway, just wondering like whatyour interpretation of that is.
Yeah, it's a good question.
It's, it's a point in our first paper,which is available open access as
well in Frontiers in Communication.
So, you know, we can send the linksto both of those, but it, it appears

(29:20):
to be a COVID thing because mm-hmm.
What the issue, attention cycleframework tells us, it's not the amount
of coverage that tells you which stageyou're in, it's how reporters and their
sources are talking about the issue.
Okay.
That tells us what's happening.
So what you're looking at is the sort ofquantitative or mathematical aspect of

(29:40):
the paper, and that graph tells us, youknow, it shows us that, that we have a
statistically significant relationship.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
Mm-hmm.
To work through.
And so you're noticing that as thewhale population goes down, the media
coverage goes up, and if we overlaythose graphs on top of each other, they
would crisscross right about at 2017.

(30:02):
And we found a statisticallysignificant relationship there,
which means it wasn't by chance.
And it was indirect.
So, you know, it's not that reporterswere just talking about how many
whales there were or were not, um,in their coverage, they were talking
about the policy responses mm-hmm.
To that, that change in population.

(30:24):
And so the count, it just tells ussort of that there was a relationship.
And what we found in 2020 is thata, a lot of the aerial surveys and
the research that was going on wasinterrupted by COVID shutdowns.
And so there was just less to report on,but also some of the policy efforts were

(30:45):
paused or, you know, just slowed down.
Because a lot of your publicmeetings were, were virtual or Right.
You know, the, the focus was on COVIDand the economy and people like you were
saying, and a little bit less about.
Sort of any of this.
So it, it appears to be multiplefactors related to COVID.

(31:06):
Took a dip, but then reached an all timehigh, you know, in the couple years after.
And so just going back to your firstpoint about sort of what you're seeing in
that top chart, I intentionally set thetime period for this study at 2010 where
the population was at its modern peak.

(31:27):
So the most right whales thatwe have had in the post whaling
era is about 500 in 2010, right?
Mm-hmm.
And so we've looked, we've nowgot 15 years worth of data on news
coverage from these six newspapers.
We, we didn't just.
Decide out of nowhere.

(31:47):
Right.
Like the, the research design pullsfrom that biological ecological
conservation science mm-hmm.
And merges it with communication becauseI wanted to take a more 360 view to
figure out how these things are relatedto and interacting with each other.
Yeah.
I could have just gone in and justsearched and not really thought about, you

(32:07):
know, the, the measuring that relationshipbetween the coverage and the population.
So I'm, I'm glad to hear that that is thefigure that, that sort of caught your eye
here because it does lay the groundwork.
It tells us that there's somethingthere and that's what helped us continue
doing the research and, and made readingall of those articles worthwhile.

(32:30):
Because if there wasn't arelationship, if there wasn't
really anything going on, right.
Would there have really beenan issue attention cycle?
Because not all topics thatare covered go through them.
Right, right.
And so doing those counts anddoing that math allowed us to
say, okay, there's something here.
Let's keep pulling at the thread.
Yeah.
Now, the interesting thing about this, youknow, you talk about this type of cycle.

(32:55):
The issue attention cycle you mentionedis it is not always issue attention
cycles, but is it the majority are issuebecause like, you know, we, we talk,
we see the way news works these days,or we talk about it a lot in the, in
sort of regular news, is everything'sclickbait ish, or, uh, you know,
they want, they want it for click.

(33:15):
So whether it's for a video for, uh,an article that's written or a podcast,
you gotta have a, an enticing headline.
Something that will make somethingthat's, you know, quote unquote sexy,
that'll make this type of, of thing click.
So this issue, attention cycle,I can see really working.
Is this the predominant, uh, type ofcommunication that's done, not necessarily

(33:36):
just for environment, but just in general?
No.
And Downs provides three characteristicsof topics that are likely okay to
go through issue attention cycles.
Um, and what I'll say is that the natureof news supports issue attention cycles,
but it doesn't define news media.

(33:58):
Okay.
So if it bleeds, it leads, youmay have heard that phrase.
And yeah.
And going back to the chart wejust talked about, we found math
behind that that says Yep, for sure.
Right.
As we're tanking, we're talking about it.
Yeah.
But, um, the, the characteristicsof topics that are most likely to
go through an issue, attention cycleversus just being published about.

(34:19):
Right.
It's who the problem affects the most.
And what Downs tells us is that that'ssome minority in society, whether that's
by identity or whether that's by numbers.
Right?
Right.
So some minority in, in societyis affected most by the problem.
Right.
We also look at the source of theproblem, and it's usually created

(34:41):
by some social agreement thatbenefits some social majority.
Right.
And so that tells us thatthere's an inequality.
Mm-hmm.
Um, that, that we can identifysomewhere where somebody's harmed and
somebody benefits from this problem.
And whatever the source of theproblem is, that majority sort

(35:03):
of benefits from the status quo.
Right?
So they wanna keep things the same,the the minority that's affected
probably wants things to change.
Right.
And then that third factor isthat the problem itself has no
intrinsic, exciting qualities.
Right, right.
Whales existing.
Not inherently all thatexciting and headline grabby.

(35:26):
I think they're really cool, right?
For some, yeah.
But most people are notgonna see right whales.
They're not right whale scientists,they're not out there on the water.
They don't know if they're seeing aright whale or a humpback whale if
they're, they're whale watching or justout on their boat and sea whales, right?
The fact that there's so few of them,that's a little bit more exciting.
But we can really turn thetemperature up when we say for whale

(35:50):
conservation, for the right whalepopulation to really come out ahead.
Lobster fishers have to lose, right?
Mm-hmm.
When we pit those things againsteach other in a tug of war.
Yeah.
Right?
E, even if those groups areworking together towards solutions,
which they have been, right?
Not speaking universally, you know,there's just a broad spectrum of
perspectives here, but you know.

(36:12):
Lobster fishers are stewards of the ocean.
They, they rely on the ocean,they are eyes on the water.
They, they love being out there.
Like those are the thingsthat I saw in media.
So what we did in the first paperwas evaluate based on what we
were reading, does this topicmeet any or all of these criteria?
We found that it did and then wewent a little bit deeper and said,

(36:34):
okay, it has the characteristics,has it undergone the cycle?
And we found that it did.
Mm-hmm.
So to answer your question, not all topicsare gonna go through an issue attention
cycle just because they're in the news.
Right, right.
Some things they last for one small cyclefor not even 24 hours, and then we forget
about it 'cause it's just a one-off thing.

(36:54):
Uh, maybe it's news that's likean announcement on your local news
news channel about like a localschool board change or here's what
the local girl scout troop did.
That was cool.
Or you know, a cow gotloose on the road today.
Like those aren't gonna gothrough issue attention cycles.
Those are just stories one off too.
Yeah.
But the thing that we know about issueattention cycles is that they play out

(37:18):
on different timescales, so there's nodefined timeline for when it'll move
from stage one through stage five.
And sometimes they repeat the middlestages, so two and three for a while
because there's just so much changing.
We saw that with the study ofissue attention cycles, with the
start of the Iraq war at the,the start of the millennium.

(37:39):
Right.
There are researchers who foundthat we cycled through stage two
and three for quite a while, almosta decade before we moved past.
And so, wow, they're these kind ofstretchy things where they help us
interpret what we're seeing in the news,but they're not like a crystal ball or a
calculator that says, okay, put in theseingredients, we're gonna get this outcome.

(38:01):
Um, so summation there, summary, uh, notall issues go through the cycle and when
they do, they don't all look the same,which makes them really hard to identify
and even harder to navigate, especially ifyou work for a conservation organization
and you're trying to keep up with a lotof different topics, it's really hard to

(38:21):
know that you're in one when you're inone until it's most of the way through.
Interesting.
Okay, now, um.
When we discuss this, these articlesare coming to, you know, like the New
York Times, Washington Post, LA Times.
These big, these big, uh,newspapers, us newspapers.
Who's providing the information?

(38:43):
Is these, I know like they have, theyown, they have their own trusted sources.
They'll have scientists,maybe academia or academics.
Uh, they'll probably have nonprofitorganizations like contacts,
either PR and comms teams that willprovide those as they reach out.
But is the news, you know, each, eachorganization, nonprofit organization,
say like Oceania, ocean Conservancy,and like, especially the big ones,

(39:06):
as we're talking about big newsitems, newspapers, they write their
own articles on their site, right?
Um, and then they may reach out.
Will they, well, I guess that's thequestion, I guess is will they reach
out to like the New York Times andall these big ones and say, Hey,
by the way, we've written this.
Here's a pr uh, uh, pressrelease on what we have.

(39:29):
We think this is really important.
There's a dire need say forthe North Atlantic, right.
Whale.
Um, could you please publish this?
And then vice versa.
Could the reporters of the New YorkTimes, as they hear some, maybe some small
articles or some, some, uh, idea of what'sgoing on from their sources that they may
have like trusted sources over the years,write an article just because of that.
Like d does it, does it happen both,I guess it happens both ways, but is

(39:52):
is it largely driven by the nonprofitorganizations and scientists and
academics that want to want morepeople to pay attention to this
type of uh, this type of idea?
Yeah.
I think what you're getting at hereis the importance of having skilled
communications teams, because this is whatwe call the co-construction of reporting.

(40:13):
There, there's a lot of people involved inthe news stories that you read, at least
the standard sort of long form articles.
Right.
And so in this case, we saw the BostonGlobe between the first study and the
second study was the leading voice.
So that's the paper wherethe most articles came from.

(40:35):
They had authors who had publishedthe most repeat articles on the topic.
Um, David Abel in particular was aleading voice, especially through,
uh, the most intense period.
And so that tells us thatthis is of regional interest
versus like national interest.
We didn't see a lot of coverage,let's say in the LA Times.

(40:56):
Mm-hmm.
When we saw coverage in the WallStreet Journal, it was mostly about
the lobster industry rather thanbeing centered on the right whales
because what's the Wall Street Journal?
It's, it's more a financial publication.
Right, right.
And so.
The first point there is that thepublication and the journalist who is

(41:17):
on that beat, the coverage is gonna takeshape of sort of what their angle is.
Right?
And then for a journalist to take noticein an issue, it could go either way.
They could be pitched to by anorganization, they could receive
a press release, see somethingon social media is really common.

(41:39):
They could read, um, an articleon an organization's website,
which we call owned media.
Right?
Right.
Um, so they could see something there.
They could receive something, uh,a tip or, you know, someone else
could cover it and they couldstart to, to be interested in it.
And so for science and environmentalreporters too, they sometimes look to the

(42:01):
academic literature or policy documents.
And in this case, it seems like theNorth Atlantic right Whale Consortium.
Which is a body of organizationsfocused on right whale conservation,
but they publish the populationestimate each year they host the, the
annual right whale sort of conference.

(42:22):
Um, they're the sortof hub for information.
And it seems like because we sawthem cited quite a bit, um, you know,
everybody knew to sort of look thereand to government agencies just to
understand that the problem was happening.
Mm-hmm.
And then as the story developed,you have the journalists sort of
reach out to the affected parties.

(42:46):
So in this case, environmentalorganizations, lobster fishers,
trade industries, recreationalboaters, the Coast Guard, what have
you, to offer background throughinterviews or to serve as sort of
external validators through quotes.
And so.
All of that sort of gets mixedinto a bowl, if you will.

(43:08):
The journalist takes their sort ofstory angle, um, maybe they were
assigned by their editor, or maybethey're gonna pitch it to their editor
and then they go and talk to peopleabout it to shape their reporting.
And that's why we call itco-construction of reporting.
Mm-hmm.
The reporters' byline goes on it,the editor approves it and publishes
it, but a lot of other people areusually involved in a case like this.

(43:32):
And why that matters in context ofconservation is because it creates
not just a place for you to exchangein this free marketplace of ideas,
but it also makes media political,and I don't mean partisan, right?
I don't mean democrat, republican,I mean a competition for limited

(43:53):
space and representation.
So when you're called by a reporter,that's your opportunity to offer your
perspective and shape the narrative.
Public opinion and policydecisions in your favor, right?
But the other people, the othersources that a journalist talk to
can also do the same thing, right?

(44:15):
And that's not even to mention thefunction of, of opinion editorial letters
and some of that crowdsourced material.
Um, that doesn't go througha journalist, right?
And so what that does is it incentivizescertain sort of norms and behaviors
and practices, and a lot of it relieson the, the relationship between

(44:35):
journalists and their sources.
And in media literature or researchabout mass media, we see that.
Journalists go to the same sourcesover and over, whether that's because
that's who they have access to or that'swho has the most expertise, right?
There's a lot of different reasons thatthey might go to the same sources over

(44:56):
and over again, but that also makes beingrepresented in news media and expression
of power, who is included and who isexcluded from the conversation, right?
Right.
And so all of that together, whichis really complicated, right?
If, if there are listeners out there whoare feeling lost, like this is a career

(45:17):
path, media relations and journalism,like this is an art, it's a science.
There's a lot that goes into it.
But what that, what I am getting acrosshere is that, you know, information
comes from a lot of different places.
It's the journalists and the editor'sjob to sort of fact check and.
Shape the, the texts, you know, inline with their, their organization's

(45:43):
practices and with the, thenorms and practices of the field.
Right.
And it operates from a different logicthan science, which goes through Yeah.
Peer review with multiple experts ina field, multiple rounds of revisions.
And it's really slow.
All of this in news is happeningsometimes within hours.
Yeah, for sure.
You're lucky if you get acouple days on stories, right?

(46:07):
And so we're operating from differentlogics in pursuit of different goals
and on different timelines, um, whichis where we get a sort of tension
between science and journalism, evenif journalists want to support a
science or an environmental topic.
So the main point here isit's really complicated.

(46:27):
There's a lot of professionals who workon this, and it's really important to
have and invest in those expert teams.
Because like you were saying earlier,there's a lot of money that goes
into communication and marketingthat money's for products and shows
like the Kardashians reality tv,the, the stuff that we see more often
than we do science about whales.

(46:49):
Yeah, yeah.
There's a reason for that.
You know, it's, it's people are gettingin front for a reason is because
they're, they've got good marketingteams and comm teams and and PR teams
or whatever you'd like to, to call it.
Yeah.
And a lot of money to do that.
Yeah, for sure.
And I know I noticed that, you knowabout podcasts as well is like the more
you market, the more you get in frontof people's faces, the more you you get.
That is that, that, um, struggle forattention not vying for attention.

(47:13):
It's, it's really anattention game these days.
Um, so how, like when we talk about
issues with, you know, like issueattention cycles and trying to keep.
Say Northern white whales, orlike, I know, we know gray whales
are having trouble right now.
They're they're dying at,at record numbers this year.

(47:35):
It's been a, a really tough coupleyears for them, you know, and we,
and it's, it's, it's great to bringattention to it when it happens.
Um, but you know, there's always likecontext of like what was happening
before and what happens after.
Like you mentioned in this one, youknow, you start, we're starting to see
a decrease in the number of articles.
Well, look, we know the policyhas changed and how is it doing?

(47:56):
You know, why don't we get these typesof, of articles and why aren't more
of these, um, newspapers, you know,following up on, on these types of things.
How do we continue to stay relevantwith these topics after an issue
or before and after an issue?
How do we get in these big, like,six newspapers all the time?

(48:18):
Um, or is it, we have to be,you know, we have to have that
context in smaller newspapersor smaller sort of like digital.
Content such as podcasts orvideos, YouTube videos or so forth.
It's, I'm gonna give the academicanswer and say, it depends, um, but
I'll give a more satisfying answerbecause everyone hates that one.

(48:41):
Um, so really what you'relooking at is the importance of a
diversified sort of toolbox, right?
Having communication strategies that don'tonly rely on getting a headline placed in
the New York Times, for example, right?
Because there's justnot room for everybody.
There's not enough reporters to cover it.
It's just there's, there's a lot going on.

(49:03):
They don't cover all topics.
It's not relevant to their audience.
So there's a lot of factors involvedhere, but I think this is a conversation
that I am having with organizationswho wanna talk about my research.
They say, well, what do we do now?
I've heard from organizations thathave said, you know, it's really
interesting to read what you've writtenout because we've now experienced it.

(49:25):
You know, where I could get areporter on the phone before really
easily to talk about updates.
The threshold is a lot higherto break through because we've
kind of already heard it all.
Yeah.
But, but to your point, like thereis great work that's happening.
There's money from the Inflation ReductionAct from the Biden administration
that went toward testing, robless,fishing gear technology in partnership

(49:49):
with lobster fishers that didn'treceive mention in the texts that
I analyzed in the second article.
Right.
It was just absent.
But that was the positive.
It wasn't Fisher saying we're notgonna be part of the solution.
Right.
And it wasn't somebody saying, wellwe should make this technology it.

(50:11):
There was money behind it.
That work, right.
You know, is still happening.
As far as I know, it's still being tested.
Yeah.
And so people are working inpursuit of solutions and so where
traditional medium will not orchooses not to cover that, right?
That's where you have other avenueslike podcasts or your own social media

(50:33):
channel if you're an environmentalorganization, your website, right?
Uh, documentary film is, is One AvenueArt going out to talk to people in the
communities where this is relevant, right?
Mm-hmm.
Um, and I think that was an opportunitythat we saw coming out of the first paper

(50:55):
that we saw a little bit in the secondpaper, in that the news media coverage
was so focused on New England lobsterfishing, and that's only part of the
right whales range, of course, right?
But then what about where they go downSouth Florida and Georgia, where they
rear their young and they reproduce.
The right whale is the state ofGeorgia's state marine mammal.

(51:18):
It is symbolically and culturallyimportant, and we just weren't seeing
that, that geographic spread, um,in the first part of the research.
But we saw USA today, which isthe largest network of newspapers
in the us, um, taking greaterinterest in the second round.
So in this, these more recent two years.

(51:41):
So telling stories throughout the rightwhales range, not just when they're
in crisis, not just when we see them.
Yeah.
Right.
In distress or when we find them dead.
But, you know, I, in these last twopapers and, and in my dissertation
research and in the conversationsthat I have, I also encourage
what's called solutions journalism.

(52:04):
It's not, uh, a tried andtrue, like perfect approach,
but it's an emerging, uh.
Style of journalism that doesn't shyaway from the problem that exists.
Mm-hmm.
But it, it focuses more on peopleworking together to find solutions
or identify solutions workingtowards whatever it's Right.

(52:26):
And that's a differentkind of storytelling and,
you know, it doesn't necessarily fit the,the model of all newspapers, but you have
sort of alternative publications that arenot mainstream large newspapers, let's
say a National Geographic or a Manga Bay.
Right, right.

(52:47):
Or, you know, an Anthropocenemagazine who are more interested in
the nuance because that's, that'sthe, the important part here, right?
Whales, they move through lotsof legal jurisdictions, they
move through really busy waters.
The science is really complicated.
And so the nuance iswhere you can lose people.

(53:07):
The timeline is where you can lose people.
Um, and so solutions journalism is anapproach that we can try outside of,
or in partnership with journalistsand editors who wanna try it, you
know, and include calls to action.
Tell people what they can do about this.

(53:28):
Where can they donate money?
Or where the, where can theyvolunteer their time, or how can
they keep track, right, right.
Or stay updated on the topic.
Where can they learn more?
And so instead of just saying, here's theproblem, here are these two sides that
don't agree, make your own conclusions.

(53:48):
You know, people are trying otherapproaches to journalism for
social and environmental problemsthat get us closer to solutions.
Yeah, I think it's so important, uh, tohave that, that call to action at the end.
And I, I, I agree it allows us to staywith the topic if we want to, or for
people who choose to dive deeper into the,the article, whether it be a nonprofit

(54:12):
organization, whether it be a researchlab at a a, at an academic institution.
I think that's, that'sreally important to, to add.
Now this article covered newspapers,uh, so written content, uh, you know,
where there's a lot, as you mentioned.
There's, there are other, thereare other nuanced, um, publications

(54:32):
like Monga Bay and so forth, uh,that also cover very niche down,
um, you know, environmental news.
And they're great, by the way,Monga Bay, huge fan of them.
We cover a lot of their, uh, their,their, their, uh, articles on the podcast.
And so it's very nice to, to see that.
Um.
Now with the, with the digital agekind of morphing into podcasts and,

(54:57):
and video, does the strategy changebecause the, the, the type of media
changes or are like issue attention?
Because like a lot of the stuffthat I'll cover, I, I, you know, I
think about how I categorize myself.
A lot of it is, you know,issue attention cycle.
So I'll cover something becauseI cover such a wide breadth.

(55:18):
I, I cover something on the podcast thathas to do with northern right whales,
where you mentioned earlier the seastar wasting disease back in, you know,
20 15, 20 16, 20 17 when we startedto really under, really see massive
effects of, of this wasting disease.
Um, I covered it quite a bit and anytimethere was an article about it, I covered
it and then I, it just kind of went away.

(55:39):
And then recently there was an articlethat showed that, hey, we actually know
what happened to it, you know, and,and, and this podcast all happened,
probably the podcast out before this one.
So I covered that one because there'slike, there's, there was a finding,
there was not necessarily a solution,but a path towards the solution.
So I guess the, the amount andthere are more articles about that.
Uh, so that's gonna increasethe amount of articles.

(56:01):
But the span is quite long, you know, interms of timescale, how do you like, say
something like sea star wasting disease,sea stars are, are wonderful species,
people are interested in it, but it'snot that iconic species like a whale.
How do you keep that relevant?
Or is it sometimes you just have tolike, cover it when it, when we find
like a new solution or new informationthat comes out either in a published

(56:26):
article or a non-published articlewhere you talk to somebody that you,
you, you kind of figure out a littlebit another piece to the puzzle.
How do you approach thosewhere the timescales are like,
could be a, a decade or more?
Let's get real philosophical here.
I, I won't give you theacademic answer, it depends.
But I will give you the academic sort ofphilosophical musing here, which is that

(56:51):
I think the institution of science, theway that we share knowledge with each
other, but also with broader non-expertpublics, incentivizes the big findings.
It incentivizes discovery,the aha, the eureka, right?
Versus the more incremental or evenpublications of research that didn't work

(57:16):
out right, that didn't tell us anythingnew and maybe just didn't work at all.
And so there is a sort of bias inthe academic publishing and, and
there are efforts to change that,but in academic publishing, the thing
that makes it out into the world.
Are the interesting findings,the statistically significant,

(57:39):
the the new discovery, the newmaterial, and that's what makes
its way into science journalism.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
That's why you seem to onlyhear, you know, a, a c star
wasting disease, for example.
It's really bad.
You forget about it for 10 yearsunless you're like really close to
the issue and it's something local andthen a decade's gone by and then you

(58:01):
hear, oh, we found what it is finally.
Right.
Right.
We don't hear about the processof that science, at least
in news media in that way.
It's not like you have a reporterfollowing this same topic and
and reporting on it weekly ormonthly for the full decade.
The science just kind of happens,but that's when you have supplemental
tools in your communication toolbox.

(58:23):
Universities can share updates and,and show the bus behind the scenes
through YouTube or social media oryou know, scientists can go out.
To conferences or, you know,educational events or work with
aquariums, things like that.
Um, to have conversations with peopleand remind them that this is a thing.

(58:43):
So news media is an important part of thecommunication sort of ecosystem, but it's
not the only thing because there's noway that we could expect that a leading
reporter at the science desk at the NewYork Times is gonna follow, let's say what
I'm doing where I'm sort of critiquingnews media as they're happening.

(59:04):
Mm-hmm.
But it was really relatedto the policy outcomes.
They're not gonna follow the mundanebasic science that goes on that's more
common than the eureka aha moments.
Right.
And so I think that speaks to theimportance of having communications teams.
Who, to your earlier point.

(59:25):
The strategy doesn't necessarily change.
They understand what their goals areand how they want to reach them, but as
new tools become available and as thespeed of communication changes, they're
able to adapt within that because Right.
You know, vr, augmented reality, it,it's been a conversation for a while,
but what if you could go in and nowshow people the inside of a C star and

(59:50):
what this bacteria that we found Yeah.
You know, has done Right.
That's now a new tool that we have.
That's something a little bit differentthan a long form YouTube video in
the lab where they're injectingthings into a C star, for example,
or, you know, AI is all the rage now.
That's a new tool that communicationand external affairs teams have to,

(01:00:13):
to navigate for a lot of reasons.
One being just like.
Making sure that factual informationlike these ar ai crawlers can find it
so that misinformation is not going out.
But also like the discovery ofwebsites is going down because
search engine optimization is nowless important change because what,

(01:00:34):
what's, what's Google giving you now?
It's not saying, oh, go to theOceania website to learn more.
It's answering the question for you.
Using the aggregate information in thatstatistical model to predict the answer.
And so communications teams have tounderstand the media ecosystem, and
that's why like social media managersare always like, uh, every time a new

(01:00:57):
platform comes out, or Yeah, meta,meta changes the, the algorithm.
The algorithm, yeah.
This back and forth with TikTokbecause like your strategy as an
organization may stay the same, butyour tools and your metrics and your
impact sort of change within that.
Yeah.
So.

(01:01:18):
I hear this one a lot too, wherepeople are like, well, it's
digital first, so why are you evenpaying attention to journalism?
And journalism still has that agendasetting power for sure, especially in
the science and environmental space.
A lot of the content, at least that Isee, and maybe this is the algorithm that
I've built brick by brick, but you know,it's a lot of content creators speaking in

(01:01:42):
front of a green screen that's a headlinethat, that they're speaking incredibly
to something that came out in the news.
So the way that we report is different.
The way we consume newsmedia reporting is different.
Trusts in news media organizationsis a topic of discussion right

(01:02:02):
now, but it still matters, right?
Because a lot of your digital and socialand short form content is drawing from
these, these legacy institutions, right?
And.
You know, all of that matters whenyou're working for an organization
that's trying to achieve conservationgoals because it's not just you're

(01:02:25):
trying to share information andget people to think differently.
'cause that's not how it works, right?
We need to hear thingsover and over again.
We need to feel thatstories are accessible.
We need to feel that they'rerelevant to us, right?
We need to hear it from otherpeople in our real communities.
It needs to be a topic of discussion.
And so communication is more thantransmitting knowledge, but it's

(01:02:49):
really about shaping social realities.
I talked earlier about whalesbeing so popular, it's because.
You know, as whaling decreased, wesaw organized whale watching started.
We got recordings of humpback whale songsfrom Roger Payne SeaWorld and other, uh,
you know, uh, organizations, people couldgo see and interact with these animals.

(01:03:11):
Yeah.
Right.
Uh, the Flipper TV show brought dolphinsinto everybody's living room at six
o'clock at night on NBC every night.
Right.
The Greenpeace saved the whalescampaign, like decades of these efforts
piling up made us fall in love withthese animals and wanna protect them.
Absolutely.
That's really how communication works.

(01:03:32):
And when you're in a position, let'ssay you work for a small nonprofit
where you're just responding to firesand you have all of your team members
saying, oh, just post it to social media.
Right.
That's not contributingto a broader discourse.
And so that's the importance of havingthat kind of internal expertise.
And then that expertise acrossorganizations and coalitions,

(01:03:55):
especially if you're trying to getto policy change or industry action.
And that's where a lot of thefrustration happens with not just
conservation topics, but thingslike climate change communication.
Right?
Yeah.
So really long answer there to tell youthat yes, the tools matter, but, but the
strategies and the overarching sort ofapproach to communication stays the same.

(01:04:20):
Yeah, it almost feels like one of the waysto really perpetuate a, a news article,
and I think this has been used for a lotof time and I've, it is happened with
me where organizations will contact meand be like, Hey, we wanna talk about
this new project that we're doing.
Well, can we come on thepodcast and, and talk about it?
And then it's almost like for me, ifI want that news to get out there, I
should talk to individual creators tobe like, Hey, can you talk about this?

(01:04:43):
Because this is a really important,here's what I said about it, and
here's like the, the facts and stuff.
Can you talk about it in yourown sort of, you know, social
following so that we continue to.
Grow those networks and see how thosethings go across, not just from me
specifically, it's a really interestingconcept that I should, I should dive
into a little bit more as I, you know,want more and more people to listen

(01:05:05):
to, to oceans, not necessarily fromme, but from people who might be able
to connect to their own community.
Um, you know, whether it be in the us, inCanada, around the world, doesn't matter.
Everybody needs to be,uh, looking at that.
This is, uh, this has been afascinating conversation, something
that makes me really excited,uh, to talk about communication,
talk about whales and so forth.

(01:05:25):
It's always fun.
Uh, Marcus again, congratulations on, uh,on your PhD and again, receiving your PhD.
So I should call you Dr. Reamer fromnow on and, uh, uh, you know, good luck
with, with, uh, you know, your new.
Your new path of whatever that might be.
Can't wait to talk about itthe next time you come on.
And we talk more about,uh, science communication.
I think this is a really, um, Ithink, I feel like this is something

(01:05:47):
that we could really talk about,really dive into a number of times.
So, uh, thank you again for, for comingon the podcast and, and sharing this
story and, and sharing this article.
Yeah, always a pleasure to be here.
And like you mentioned earlier, the,the new research is open access.
Anybody can, can lookit up without a paywall.
That's really important to me.
That's huge.
Um, so anybody who's interested shouldgo check it out and can feel free to

(01:06:09):
reach out with questions or commentary.
I'm always happy tohave those discussions.
And we've got some other workcoming out, uh, like I said,
later this year or early next.
So hopefully I'll be back soon.
Perfect.
Can't wait.
Looking forward to it.
Thank you so much.
All right, my friend.
I'll see you next time.
Thank you, Marcus, for joiningus on today's episode of the How
to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
It was great to be able to talk sciencecommunication with you, especially of

(01:06:32):
whales, something that's very importantto a lot of people, like iconic species.
We also got to talk abouta lot of other things.
You know, looking at digital media.
How things have changed over this time.
How we can use digital media tospread the word, how we can try
and continue to keep ocean relevantand ocean species and habitats
relevant in the general public's eye.
We see a lot of distractions that there'sa lot of competition for information and

(01:06:55):
so it's a real challenge to be able tokeep the ocean on people's top of mind
so that they can, you know, make betterdecisions and live for a better ocean.
So I think it's really important thatwe talk about this type of research
and I'm really happy that Marcus ishere to talk about it and the fact
that he does this type of research.
So it's really, really interesting.
We'll have Marcus back on and some ofhis colleagues to be able to talk about
more science communication in the future.

(01:07:16):
I think it's really greatto see work like this done.
So thank you Marcus, for joining us.
And of course I would love to hearwhat you think of this episode in
science communication in general.
Let me know in the comments belowwhat you thought, if you have any
questions, comments, or concerns.
And of course if you want to get aholdof me, you can do so in two ways.
You can go to speak up for blue.com.
Slash contact, fill out theinformation on the page.

(01:07:39):
It goes right to my personal email.
Or you can DM me on Instagram athow to protect the ocean That's
at How to protect the ocean.
I wanna thank you so much forjoining me on today's episode of the
How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin fromthe True Nordstrom and free.
Have a great day.
We'll talk to you nexttime in Happy Conservation.