Changing the Message About Climate: Gauging Reactions – Part two

By Seth Tanenhaus

Students from two environmental classes at FGCU produced videos as part of an experiment to see whether hope or fear is more effective at convincing people to care about the environment.  The classes, taught by professor of environmental studies Win Everham and assistant professor of communication Mary Walch, have been working on this project during the spring 2019 semester.

The students created two videos –one fearful, one hopeful– during the semester.  At the end of the semester, the videos were shown at FGCU’s annual Community Engagement Day.  This summer, colloquium students will be shown selected videos, then surveyed about their reactions.

Everham and Walch said they believed that the hopeful videos would impact viewers more, but on Community Engagement Day, they were surprised to find out that the fear-based videos got stronger reactions.

Graduate research assistant Taylor Hancock, who managed the showcase along with Integrated Studies instructor A.J. Nunes-Zaller, said that the message of fear resonated with many of the viewers.

“Everybody walked away like ‘wow, that was gruesome, I’m personally affected by that,’” Hancock said.  “Everyone [also] said that such fear tactics were necessary.”

Hancock said he believes that the fear videos seemed to get a stronger reaction because the students had easier access to and inspiration from fearful imagery, particularly that of red tide, which has been in the news for the past year and which dominated many of the fear-based videos.

Why does fear seem to be more effective?  Everham said he believes the answer lies in how messages have been delivered through mass media.

“[Fear is] a tool we’ve used through the last two generations, and so everybody has learned it,” Everham said.  “I think we have fewer tools to do hope.”

Everham jokingly suggested that the fearful videos might do better not because fear is more effective, but because nobody knows how to make hopeful videos. Walch was interested in how the reaction of the current generation would stack up to prevailing research.

“A lot of research indicates that fear is not effective, but I wonder if we’ve reached a tipping point where to get people to act, they have to see that it’s serious enough,” Walch said.

Walch noticed that hope was much more difficult for the students to capture as early as the first batch of videos.

“Not everybody’s really articulated hope,” Walch said.  “They might have articulated action or suggestions with a more upbeat tone but it didn’t seem incredibly optimistic and hopeful.”

“The hope video’s like ‘oh you can recycle’ and it has upbeat happy music showing people smiling and recycling, and it’s like ‘recycle and save this much plastic,’” Hancock said.  “The fear is like ‘we’re all going to die,’ everything’s dying and it shows some really gruesome and effective imagery.  When you have that comparison, the fear’s way better.”

Jennifer Manegold, chair of the management department at FGCU’s Lutgert College of Business watched the videos at Community Engagement Day. She also studies the dichotomy between hope and fear, and said that it cuts across disciplines.

“We address this question in the ethics course I teach,” Manegold said.  “Do power tactics and fearmongering make people more likely to follow the ethical rules, or do stories of accomplishments and people overcoming things inspire people to be more ethical?  We’ve adopted more of the positive approach ourselves, so I think I lean more toward the message of hope.”

Manegold remembered a clip in one of the hopeful videos of hatching sea turtles.

“It definitely makes you sad to see the sea life suffering and to watch the deterioration of our environment,” Manegold said.  “The hatching sea turtles stuck out to me as a message of hope where even in the face of pollution and adversity, life goes on.”

Jessica Marcolini, Integrated Studies instructor, is writing the questions for the survey that C students will take after watching the videos. The survey questions will ask students to rate the videos on various criteria, such as the knowledge gained, awareness raised, and motivation to action.

Marcolini realizes that the questions must be crafted very carefully.

“Typically, when you create a survey, you want to make sure you’re not leading,” Marcolini said.  “You’re not going to ask, ‘How much do you like this?’ We want to make sure the questions are vague enough so it’s not leaning anyone to a certain bias that we have, but also specific enough so that they understand what we’re asking.”

Marcolini explained that because the fear videos are stronger, they may have a leg up. But there’s always the possibility that a video from either perspective may go “too far in.” As an example, she mentioned how some of the fear videos might be too scary for some of the students and turn them off from doing anything, which is the exact opposite of what Everham and Walch want the videos to do.

Marcolini said she believes that the two tones may serve two completely different but equally important purposes.

“I think if we’re dealing with knowledge, fear might be a good tool,” Marcolini said.  “If we’re thinking about encouraging people to want to make change, I think hope might be a better tool. It could be overwhelming if I just started throwing climate change statistics at you as opposed to a solutions-based approach.”

Everham said that surveying students has certain shortcomings.

“You’re asking students to self-report on their feelings, which is not the same thing as their actions,” Everham said.  “At some level, I wish there was a way we could measure whether people get out there and get involved.”

Despite this, Everham and Walch plan to move forward with the surveys.  In addition to the surveys of summer Colloquium classes, Everham and Walch will survey their own classes about how they felt about the creative process.

Everham and Walch said that the experiment had its challenges.

“There seems to be a little resistance when working with people from different backgrounds,” Walch said, of combining science students and communication students.  “When someone develops a specialty, it’s very common for a team to [be] synergistic.  I’m hoping that was the outcome of this.”

Everham said that he was somewhat surprised with his own experience teaming with other faculty members for the project.

“Better products come from collaboration, but collaboration’s harder than doing it yourself, I knew that,” Everham said.  “I [was] suddenly working with a large team of other faculty that are sometimes hard to get together.  I had to trust that I work with good people and not think that everything had to be the way I wanted it to be.”

Both Everham and Walch want to revisit this experiment with future classes. For that reason, they plan to schedule their spring 2020 classes to meet at the same time.

As of now, many of those who viewed the videos, such as Manegold, are hopeful about the good the videos can do.

“We’re the protectors of the [environment,] or at least we should be,” Manegold said.  “Whether fear or hope wins out as far as the videos go, I think they’re going to stir people to action and that’s going to be great.”

This is the second part of a two-part series on a semesterlong student experiment at FGCU. To read part one, go here.