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

0:00 This is one of my favorite episodes to record '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't get 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 the podcast last year before he was just finishing up and he hadn't defended yet, but he is now a full fledged PhD graduate in science communication, especially surrounding whales, north Atlantic, right whales, the critically endangered whale. He's here to talk about one of the papers that just got published at the end of July, looking at the way newspapers and digital online media, like the six major ones like LA Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and so forth, actually communicated North Atlantic right whale material.

0:50 During a time of crisis and how that went up, up and up. There was more articles and then as the population was going down or they didn't really wanna talk about it that much more, you know, the articles just kind of went by the wayside. And we're gonna be talking about why that happens and what that's called in media, and we're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this 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 for a better ocean by taking action. On today's episode, we're gonna be talking about one of my favorite subjects, science communication. In fact, we're gonna be talking about writing a science communication, so like actual.

1:32 Typed out writing. You know, obviously for me, 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 around podcasting, even video podcasting. But today we're gonna be focusing on a paper 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 it was like an add-on to what he had in his PhD looking at the years 2023 and 2024 to see what happens. When an article or these newspapers actually start to discuss and write articles about the North Atlantic right whale, when there's a time of crisis, when there's an actual issue around this type of a whale and looking at how that peaks and then how that declines after a while.

2:18 And then, you know, how do we keep this relevant? That's the question is how do you keep the North Atlantic right? Whales and other whales and other species relevant within the news so that we get more policy action and also hopefully being interesting to the readers. So it's always interesting to talk about science communication and we do that with Marcus here today and I'm so excited to be able to present this interview 'cause it's a lot of fun. You know, Marcus and I get along really well. We talk a lot, we message a lot on LinkedIn quite a bit, and so it's a lot of fun to be able to talk to him virtually face to face, which is a lot of fun. So here is the interview with Dr. Marcus Reamer talking about. Issue Attention cycle of North Atlantic, right Whale Science, conservation, and Policy in six US newspapers from 2023 and 2024.

3:00 We're gonna be talking about that today. Enjoy the interview and I will talk to you after. Hey Marcus, welcome back to the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. Are you ready to talk about whale and communication? I am always ready to talk about whales and communication. All right. This is gonna be a lot of fun. This is something that we've been wanting to talk for a while about. You sent me like, Hey, Andrew, the paper that we talked about a little bit last time when you were on the show, 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 articles are 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 this cycle that happens with, uh, with communication and it goes up and down in terms of popularity.

3:49 And we're gonna talk all about that, especially, uh, not only in the written digital world, but also just in the digital world that we live in, in social media and YouTube and podcasting and all that kind of stuff. So it's gonna be a lot of fun if you are into communication and into marine science. This is gonna be the episode for you. But first, before we get into all of 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 you were 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 that time I, I defended my dissertation at the University of Miami and earned that PhD in Environmental Science and policy.

4:30 Uh, congratulations. That's awesome. Thank you. A five year sprint that started six months before COVID upended everything, including my, my proposed research project. But we made it through. Um, and my dissertation research was about the role of human communication and media in right whale conservation. So lots of cool sort of projects came out of that, including the paper, um, that you had mentioned that just came out at the end of July, which is a follow up to a study that was in my dissertation. Um, and I've got some other work kind of in progress now that should be coming out later this year, early next. So just 'cause I got the degree doesn't mean the work stopped, you know, kept going.

5:12 It's just beginning. It's just beginning now. Right. The, the PhD is permission to do more work. Yes. But, but good stuff and busy and lots of cool stuff to talk about today. So that is the update. That's awesome. Well, congratulations again. I mean, thank you. Feet of PhD is something that is not easily attained, especially during a global pandemic, so congratulations on that. And we, we also collaborated while you 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 about that and what you, what you taught and what the course was all about I thought was a really cool concept. Yeah. And I was happy to have you. Um, so in the spring I taught at the University of Miami at their Rosen Seal School for master's students primarily, uh, course called Marine Conservation Outreach.

6:02 And we really focused on the role of communication and outreach, of course, in marine conservation, but broadened it out a little bit to environmental science and policy because, you know, especially today where things are so fast moving. Not only in communication, but in policy in science. It's really important to understand how communication and outreach and those external facing sort of jobs fit within the organizations that students want to go work for, so that they can do the work better. Whether it's working across organizations and thinking about the flow of information, or educating a non-expert audience of, let's say, school-aged children visiting a zoo or an aquarium, or speaking to policymakers about an important topic that you want.

6:50 To see policy action taken. So it was really cool to talk about sort of the role of human communication. And it wasn't the first time I've taught a course like that. And it's always really interesting because 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 really cool content on social media. Or, I'm a really good illustrator, so I'd be really good at communication. And it's, it's always interesting to, to break those worldviews a little 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 and the, the society portion of things and, and really think of it like a chess board where you have to understand sort of what each piece does and, and how to move it and how to, to.

7:39 See things a couple moves away and, and anticipate. Mm-hmm. And really think strategically about not only what your goals are, but the ways that you're gonna get there. So picking the right tools outta your toolbox. So that was a really cool class. I was really happy to have you on one of our professional development panels and, you know, we got students across multiple tracks in our Master of professional science program, which, you know, I think really demonstrates the 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 is law, if not a form of communication? What is education, if not communication for a specific life stage?

8:21 So it was really cool to support students studying things like climate and society, marine conservation, fisheries management and conservation in pursuit of jobs from, you know, wanting to get a PhD and 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 do it and, and I think it's really important in today's conservation workforce. Absolutely. I mean, I, communication to me is one of the most important aspects of conservation because like, especially these days when everybody's consuming information at such a rapid pace, maybe even being, you can probably argue that there we're being overloaded with information.

9:05 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 of information, you know, getting, one of the things that I always started Mark, 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, who know about what's happening with the Kardashians than they do about the ocean. And I didn't want that to happen. I wanted to have the, not to say that 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 knowing some of the fun, like key aspects of what's happening into this life system that we need to survive on this planet.

9:52 And it was important for me to provide that resource that if somebody wanted to learn about it, they can learn about it. Uh, and as of course, it morphed into a lot of different communication styles from writing to video, to audio 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 great to be able to talk to communication with someone like yourself who's been through like a PhD and, and been professionally educated in communication. 'cause like you said, it's not just about. Strategy of marketing on social media. It's about looking at trends and, and what, how these trends affect the way we consume and the way we care and the way we act once we consume like a, a, a, an article, whether it's a written article or a podcast or, or a video.

10:38 Now this paper here that you, that you talk about focused on, on articles, like written articles in like six US newspapers, 2023 and 2024. Can you just tell us a little about, a bit about this paper? Uh, and, and maybe just for, for people who 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 then what was happening in, in this paper. Sure thing. So the, the paper that's out now is in environmental research communications by IOP publishing. And it's a continuation of a study actually, that we talked about this time last year. Um, so it, it's basically the sequel to research I had already done, right?

11:21 And right. Whales have been endangered for more than a century. You know, they were hunted to near extinction during the industrial whaling era and just never really made a recovery despite having, you know, almost a century of multiple layers of legal protections and conservation efforts, um, decades of, you know, dedicated research and rescue efforts. You know, so no shortage of interest in helping the species recover. They were once plentiful throughout the Atlantic Basin, you know, along the coast of North America, Europe, and even West Africa. And now it's a population of about 375 whales that's exclusive almost entirely to the Atlantic coast of the US and Canada.

12:06 And so. I started my PhD six months before COVID blew everything up. I had a project in mind that I wanted to do and there were, you know, just changes in the world that I couldn't go out and talk to people at that point. So I had to pivot. And, you know, that summer there was 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 on this species and its conservation. And that was entangled. It was, uh, by Boston Globe reporter David Abel. And it really focused on right whale conservation in the New England area and the conservation conflicts between lobster fishers and whale experts and advocates.

12:48 Um, and so that really set off my journey in studying. Communication media surrounding right whale conservation. And so, uh, the Canadian counterpart to that documentary came out in 2021 called Last of the Right Whales that focused 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 of conservation efforts to, to reduce things like entanglement and vessel strikes, just human impacts on this species. So those documentaries got me reintroduced to a topic that I had previously worked on in, in other work, uh, non-academically, but.

13:35 There was a turning point at the end of 2022 where I saw a bunch of news articles coming out about this government spending bill at the federal level that was gonna prevent a government shutdown. But Right. Whales kept getting mentioned and I, I just couldn't figure out what was going on there. And it's because there was language introduced to that bill that changed the outcome for right whale conservation, you know, by investing in some activities, but also preventing federal agencies from making new rules about phishing until 2028. Right. So that is the nature of science. I was getting Google alerts about right whales and it kept coming up, this government spending bill.

14:15 And I just asked the question, how did we get here? Hmm. So my first study, we looked at six US newspapers, like you said, and we looked at six of the largest because, uh, in this case, news tends to trickle down from the large publications to the smaller, more local ones. And so we looked at the LA Times USA today, New York Times, the Boston Globe, um, wall Street Journal, um, you know, and the Washington Post. And that gave us a pretty good geographic spread of the news and just did a search in a database and put right whale or right whales, and looked at what was going on.

14:56 And the first study was 2010 to early 2023. That was just the period of time that I had, you know, for the research and the one that was just published. We did the continuation to do the full year analysis for 2023 and 2024 to see what's happened since, because, you know, everything's always changing. Mm-hmm. And really what that paper does is say the thing that we thought would happen pretty much did happen. And I'm hinting at the result without talking everybody through the background, but that's the purpose of this paper. It was to continue on the work and just not leave everybody hanging. You know? Because science and and media are never finished, right?

15:38 So with that, the theoretical framework that we looked at at this topic through, it wasn't a science topic, it wasn't an ecological model, it wasn't a population projection. It wasn't trying to figure out what effect would some policy have on the population, but it was really looking at the predictable rise and fall of public attention and how that relates to policy change and organizational action. It's called the issue attention cycle. It was introduced by Anthony Downs in 1972, and he actually used the rise of the Modern American environmental movement to make his argument about news media more broadly at the time. And so what the issue attention cycle 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 affected by the issue are talking about it, but it doesn't have widespread attention. And then there's some external event that moves us into stage two, which is alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm. And that's usually when we realize that there's a problem. And you start to hear policy makers and industry actors and and interest groups say, we're gonna get this done. We're gonna fix this swiftly 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, policymakers and, and people say, you know what? We're gonna fix this swiftly and decisively. And there's a a flurry of attention, and that's where there's a real spike. And then you move into stage three, which is when you realize what it's actually gonna take to achieve significant progress. That's where you introduce some new actors and say, okay, this change is proposed, but here's how it would affect some group of people or some ecosystem. Or, here's the other sort of outcomes that we might expect. And that can go on for a while. And at some point we move into stage four, which is the gradual decline. In intense public interest. And then we move into the fifth stage, which Downs calls this.

17:47 Uh, it's the post problem stage, but Downs refers to it as this like spasmodic limbo where you might get some more coverage than you did in stage one. It's not like you disappear forever. People are more knowledgeable, but there's more editorial resistance and it's just sort of pops and then everybody forgets about you again. And that can go on and on until either in perpetuity or until a new issue, attention cycle starts. So basically what it does is it allows us to follow the rise and follow a public interest in social and environmental issues. What do we know happens in issue attention cycles, and how does that relate to news media?

18:30 Well, what Downs tells us is that because news media organizations. 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 to attract and maintain public attention is appeal to our brains. Mm-hmm. Right. And they're gonna use social psychology and the norms of their industry to simplify problematize and dramatize problems to attract and maintain interest as long as possible. So that's what I started to look at through my research on news media was very much what happened.

19:12 You know, did we move through this cycle quickly? Did it happen over years? Right. What's going on here? And so in the first paper, we found that there are lots of threats to right whales. We have known, and scientists have been saying for a very long time that they need swift policy action, and they're critically endangered. There just wasn't that sort of catalyzing event. And it was in 2017 that at least a dozen whales were found in Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence where they weren't expected and where they weren't explicitly protected. That was the catalyzing event that launched this issue, attention cycle into public view and got people talking about right whales.

19:53 So summer of 2017 through 2019, that's when 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. And in 2019 we started to really focus in on that conservation conflict between fishing industry and uh, whale experts and advocates and grappling with what would it mean to change fishing regulations? What are the economic, social and psychological costs to fishing regulations? And that's where we started to see some of the both sadism of, you know. Sure we could protect the whales, but are we a source of the problem?

20:35 There's so much uncertainty here, right? Would the change regulations have any benefit? And so that started to change the issue attention cycle quite a bit. And then through until 2022, that's when we really saw the most intense period. Yeah. You saw seafood sustainability labels changed the designation of American Lobster or Main Lobster. So Monterey Bay's Seafood Watch and Marine Stewardship Council said, you know, the fishing to get lobster is a threat to right whales. It's not a sustainable choice for consumers that caught media attention because retailers like Walmart, cheesecake Factory, um, whole Foods stopped selling lobster.

21:16 Right, right. Yeah, I remember that. And then that led into that government spending bill that we mentioned that was essential to keep the US government open $1.7 trillion at the time. That's when the main congressional delegation put language in that prevented the National Marine Fishery Service from issuing new fishing rules until December, 2028. So effectively for the remainder of the decade. And so what that did was it deescalated the conservation conflict. It didn't solve the problem. Right? Right. It's a distinction, but it deescalated the conservation conflict. And that's what gets us to this new paper. We ended at a cliffhanger.

21:56 Right. Everybody was reacting to that. Bill being signed into law Environmental Group said, this is a nail in the coffin for the species. Lobster Fisher said, this gives us time to figure out. Sort of what the problem is and what we can do about it. So I picked up where we left off my co-author, Elisa and I, and we found that that was the actual inflection point in the issue attention cycle, and without an active and ongoing conservation conflict. Reporters who had previously published, you know, dozens of articles on the topic suddenly published, maybe one, right? Yeah. The, the reporting returned back to episodic sort of coverage where it was like, right whale born here, right.

22:38 Whale spotted injured here. Right. But there are still plenty of threats facing right whales, right. We just kind of fell off because this 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 between and 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, economic engines for communities thrive. And so it's this really challenging topic, but without that, there's not as much public interest.

23:19 And so that's what the, the conclusion of the paper is. You know, whales got mentioned a little bit in some debates about offshore wind, mostly misinformation and disinformation campaigns, but they went from the star of the show to now this sort of like supporting point or supporting actor. And that tells us that the problem is moving into the post problem stage or the cycle is moving. And that has implications for policy and organizational change because those actions are the most likely at the peak of public attention. So the point of this paper is that media systems really do play an important role in conservation. They don't just tell us what's happening, they influence what's happening.

24:00 Correct. But it also tells organizations that yes, 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 good press or no such thing as bad press. Yeah. You know, the amount of coverage doesn't fix conservation problems. And so through this paper, whether people work on whales or not, we talk about how conservation organizations and advocates can understand and use these systems to their advantage to. Not only react when things are really bad, but to also use these tools to shape social realities, to make topics feel important and personally relevant to people where they may feel psychologically or even physically far away.

24:48 Right? Because we all, like you said, are overloaded with information all the time, right. Through the issue attention cycle. We now know why it seems like, it feels like all bad news all the time. That's what we pay more attention to. And so this work was really a continuation that picked up on the Netflix cliffhanger, if you will. Um, and told us sort of, yeah, the things that we said in that first paper played out kind of the way we thought they would, unfortunately. But it's also fortunate because it tells us that, that the theory holds up. Um, and that gives sort of actionable knowledge to people, um, not just right whale conservation experts, but others working on other topics in other geographies.

25:31 So that's what's really cool about this paper. Yeah, that's a little bit of how, how we got the research question. You know, I saw news coverage on something and said, how'd we get here? 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's not about what you read in one article is gonna change your whole worldview. It's all of the media that we're consuming all the time. And so the, the big point here is that marine mammals are beloved worldwide. They are the beneficiary of decades of conservation marketing.

26:12 Um, they're some of the most popular animals worldwide. People love them. They support their conservation even if they don't fully understand the animals or how complicated their conservation is, of course. And so if it was this challenging for a species of whale to get public attention and also get policy support, right? What does that mean for sea stars, sea cucumbers, plankton. The things that are, that are holding up ecosystems and food webs and how are we talking about those? We're probably not talking about 'em at all. No. And if we are, it's sporadic here and there. Yeah. So that's where the broader implications come in.

26:53 And that's why I felt that this kind of work and, and looking at whale conservation through human communication and media felt really important. It's, it's really interesting. You mentioned, there's a couple of things that I, I'm looking at the graph in the paper by the way. Thank you for allowing it to be open, open, uh, access. We appreciate that. In, in the graph, like figure three. Uh, and, and, and people can take a look at the paper. I'll put the link in the, 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 population of, of North Atlantic Red Whale. And then the, the next graph below that is what you're comparing it to is like the number of news articles about the, about the whale.

27:35 Now, it, it takes a, it looks like it'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 maybe around 15 per year or so, or so forth. And then as the population decreases, so the population was about 500. This is around like 20 10, 20 12, 20 13. All of a sudden around 2016, it takes a dip, uh, a, a pretty large, a pretty significant dip going from about 500 in, uh, 2015 down to, as we mentioned in 2017 it was, it was quite low. And then all the way down to like 2020, uh, down to about. 340 and it's starting to like it. It's slowly starting to kind of come back up.

28:15 And according to this, the population seems to, by 2024, seems to have for one year anyway, have kind of bought or, or states the same. But what was interesting is from 2017 or 2016 to even 2024, it's, it's, there was a pretty significant jump in the number of articles as you mentioned, like the, the issue. But it took a little bit of a dip in 2020. Do you think it just took a dip? Because there's so many articles about COVID at that time that maybe like the, the, the, the environment just took a little bit of a, of, of a backseat because then it goes up after that like in 20 21, 20 22 and it peaks in 2023 and then goes down. Do you think it was a COVID thing that kind of, you know, broadened that out?

28:56 'cause it wasn't as if there was a huge, well, mind you, there was a bit of an a dip that was probably the lowest part of when the, the whales got, but then they started to increase slowly. Anyway, just wondering like what your 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 links to both of those, but it, it appears to be a COVID thing because mm-hmm. What the issue, attention cycle framework tells us, it's not the amount of coverage that tells you which stage you'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 of quantitative or mathematical aspect of the paper, and that graph tells us, you know, it shows us that, that we have a statistically significant relationship.

29:50 Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. To work through. And so you're noticing that as the whale population goes down, the media coverage goes up, and if we overlay those graphs on top of each other, they would crisscross right about at 2017. And we found a statistically significant relationship there, which means it wasn't by chance. And it was indirect. So, you know, it's not that reporters were 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. And so the count, it just tells us sort of that there was a relationship. And what we found in 2020 is that a, a lot of the aerial surveys and the research that was going on was interrupted by COVID shutdowns.

30:39 And so there was just less to report on, but also some of the policy efforts were paused or, you know, just slowed down. Because a lot of your public meetings were, were virtual or Right. You know, the, the focus was on COVID and 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 multiple factors related to COVID. Took a dip, but then reached an all time high, you know, in the couple years after. And so just going back to your first point about sort of what you're seeing in that top chart, I intentionally set the time period for this study at 2010 where the population was at its modern peak.

31:27 So the most right whales that we have had in the post whaling era is about 500 in 2010, right? Mm-hmm. And so we've looked, we've now got 15 years worth of data on news coverage from these six newspapers. We, we didn't just. Decide out of nowhere. Right. Like the, the research design pulls from that biological ecological conservation science mm-hmm. And merges it with communication because I wanted to take a more 360 view to figure out how these things are related to and interacting with each other. Yeah. I could have just gone in and just searched and not really thought about, you know, the, the measuring that relationship between the coverage and the population.

32:13 So I'm, I'm glad to hear that that is the figure that, that sort of caught your eye here because it does lay the groundwork. It tells us that there's something there and that's what helped us continue doing the research and, and made reading all of those articles worthwhile. Because if there wasn't a relationship, if there wasn't really anything going on, right. Would there have really been an issue attention cycle? Because not all topics that are covered go through them. Right, right. And so doing those counts and doing 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, you know, you talk about this type of cycle.

32:55 The issue attention cycle you mentioned is it is not always issue attention cycles, but is it the majority are issue because 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's clickbait ish, or, uh, you know, they want, they want it for click. 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 something that'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 of communication that's done, not necessarily just for environment, but just in general?

33:40 No. And Downs provides three characteristics of topics that are likely okay to go through issue attention cycles. Um, and what I'll say is that the nature of news supports issue attention cycles, but it doesn't define news media. Okay. So if it bleeds, it leads, you may have heard that phrase. And yeah. And going back to the chart we just 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 characteristics of topics that are most likely to go through an issue, attention cycle versus just being published about. Right.

34:21 It's who the problem affects the most. And what Downs tells us is that that's some minority in society, whether that's by identity or whether that's by numbers. Right? Right. So some minority in, in society is affected most by the problem. Right. We also look at the source of the problem, and it's usually created by some social agreement that benefits some social majority. Right. And so that tells us that there's an inequality. Mm-hmm. Um, that, that we can identify somewhere where somebody's harmed and somebody benefits from this problem. And whatever the source of the problem is, that majority sort of benefits from the status quo.

35:05 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 is that the problem itself has no intrinsic, exciting qualities. Right, right. Whales existing. Not inherently all that exciting and headline grabby. I think they're really cool, right? For some, yeah. But most people are not gonna 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 a right whale or a humpback whale if they're, they're whale watching or just out on their boat and sea whales, right? The fact that there's so few of them, that's a little bit more exciting.

35:46 But we can really turn the temperature up when we say for whale conservation, for the right whale population to really come out ahead. Lobster fishers have to lose, right? Mm-hmm. When we pit those things against each other in a tug of war. Yeah. Right? E, even if those groups are working 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. 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 things that I saw in media. So what we did in the first paper was evaluate based on what we were reading, does this topic meet any or all of these criteria?

36:30 We found that it did and then we went a little bit deeper and said, 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 topics are gonna go through an issue attention cycle just because they're in the news. Right, right. Some things they last for one small cycle for not even 24 hours, and then we forget about it 'cause it's just a one-off thing. Uh, maybe it's news that's like an announcement on your local news news channel about like a local school board change or here's what the local girl scout troop did. That was cool. Or you know, a cow got loose on the road today. Like those aren't gonna go through issue attention cycles.

37:10 Those are just stories one off too. Yeah. But the thing that we know about issue attention cycles is that they play out on different timescales, so there's no defined timeline for when it'll move from stage one through stage five. And sometimes they repeat the middle stages, so two and three for a while because there's just so much changing. We saw that with the study of issue attention cycles, with the start of the Iraq war at the, the start of the millennium. Right. There are researchers who found that we cycled through stage two and three for quite a while, almost a decade before we moved past. And so, wow, they're these kind of stretchy 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 these ingredients, we're gonna get this outcome.

38:01 Um, so summation there, summary, uh, not all 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 if you work for a conservation organization and you're trying to keep up with a lot of different topics, it's really hard to know that you're in one when you're in one until it's most of the way through. Interesting. Okay, now, um. When we discuss this, these articles are coming to, you know, like the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times. These big, these big, uh, newspapers, us newspapers.

38:41 Who's providing the information? Is these, I know like they have, they own, they have their own trusted sources. They'll have scientists, maybe academia or academics. Uh, they'll probably have nonprofit organizations like contacts, either PR and comms teams that will provide those as they reach out. But is the news, you know, each, each organization, nonprofit organization, say like Oceania, ocean Conservancy, and like, especially the big ones, as we're talking about big news items, newspapers, they write their own articles on their site, right? Um, and then they may reach out. Will they, well, I guess that's the question, I guess is will they reach out to like the New York Times and all these big ones and say, Hey, by the way, we've written this.

39:24 Here's a pr uh, uh, press release on what we have. We think this is really important. There's a dire need say for the North Atlantic, right. Whale. Um, could you please publish this? And then vice versa. Could the reporters of the New York Times, as they hear some, maybe some small articles or some, some, uh, idea of what's going 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 is it largely driven by the nonprofit organizations and scientists and academics that want to want more people to pay attention to this type of uh, this type of idea? Yeah. I think what you're getting at here is the importance of having skilled communications teams, because this is what we call the co-construction of reporting.

40:13 There, there's a lot of people involved in the news stories that you read, at least the standard sort of long form articles. Right. And so in this case, we saw the Boston Globe between the first study and the second study was the leading voice. So that's the paper where the most articles came from. They had authors who had published the most repeat articles on the topic. Um, David Abel in particular was a leading voice, especially through, uh, the most intense period. And so that tells us that this is of regional interest versus like national interest.

40:54 We didn't see a lot of coverage, let's say in the LA Times. Mm-hmm. When we saw coverage in the Wall Street Journal, it was mostly about the lobster industry rather than being 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 the publication and the journalist who is on that beat, the coverage is gonna take shape of sort of what their angle is. Right? And then for a journalist to take notice in an issue, it could go either way. They could be pitched to by an organization, they could receive a press release, see something on social media is really common.

41:39 They could read, um, an article on 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 could start to, to be interested in it. And so for science and environmental reporters too, they sometimes look to the academic literature or policy documents. And in this case, it seems like the North Atlantic right Whale Consortium. Which is a body of organizations focused on right whale conservation, but they publish the population estimate each year they host the, the annual right whale sort of conference.

42:22 Um, they're the sort of hub for information. And it seems like because we saw them cited quite a bit, um, you know, everybody knew to sort of look there and 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. So in this case, environmental organizations, lobster fishers, trade industries, recreational boaters, the Coast Guard, what have you, to offer background through interviews or to serve as sort of external validators through quotes.

43:03 And so. All of that sort of gets mixed into a bowl, if you will. The journalist takes their sort of story angle, um, maybe they were assigned by their editor, or maybe they're gonna pitch it to their editor and then they go and talk to people about it to shape their reporting. And that's why we call it co-construction of reporting. Mm-hmm. The reporters' byline goes on it, the editor approves it and publishes it, but a lot of other people are usually involved in a case like this. And why that matters in context of conservation is because it creates not just a place for you to exchange in this free marketplace of ideas, but it also makes media political, and I don't mean partisan, right?

43:48 I don't mean democrat, republican, I mean a competition for limited 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 policy decisions in your favor, right? But the other people, the other sources that a journalist talk to can also do the same thing, right? And that's not even to mention the function of, of opinion editorial letters and some of that crowdsourced material. Um, that doesn't go through a journalist, right? And so what that does is it incentivizes certain sort of norms and behaviors and practices, and a lot of it relies on the, the relationship between journalists and their sources.

44:38 And in media literature or research about mass media, we see that. Journalists go to the same sources over and over, whether that's because that's who they have access to or that's who has the most expertise, right? There's a lot of different reasons that they might go to the same sources over and over again, but that also makes being represented in news media and expression of power, who is included and who is excluded from the conversation, right? Right. And so all of that together, which is really complicated, right? If, if there are listeners out there who are feeling lost, like this is a career path, media relations and journalism, like this is an art, it's a science.

45:22 There's a lot that goes into it. But what that, what I am getting across here is that, you know, information comes from a lot of different places. It's the journalists and the editor's job to sort of fact check and. Shape the, the texts, you know, in line with their, their organization's practices and with the, the norms and practices of the field. Right. And it operates from a different logic than science, which goes through Yeah. Peer review with multiple experts in a field, multiple rounds of revisions. And it's really slow. All of this in news is happening sometimes within hours.

46:02 Yeah, for sure. You're lucky if you get a couple days on stories, right? And so we're operating from different logics in pursuit of different goals and on different timelines, um, which is where we get a sort of tension between science and journalism, even if journalists want to support a science or an environmental topic. So the main point here is it's really complicated. There's a lot of professionals who work on 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 marketing that 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 getting in front for a reason is because they're, they've got good marketing teams 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 know about podcasts as well is like the more you market, the more you get in front of people's faces, the more you you get. That is that, that, um, struggle for attention not vying for attention. It's, it's really an attention game these days. Um, so how, like when we talk about issues with, you know, like issue attention cycles and trying to keep. Say Northern white whales, or like, I know, we know gray whales are having trouble right now.

47:32 They're they're dying at, at record numbers this year. It's been a, a really tough couple years for them, you know, and we, and it's, it's, it's great to bring attention to it when it happens. Um, but you know, there's always like context of like what was happening before and what happens after. Like you mentioned in this one, you know, you start, we're starting to see a decrease in the number of articles. Well, look, we know the policy has changed and how is it doing? You know, why don't we get these types of, 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 relevant with these topics after an issue or before and after an issue?

48:14 How do we get in these big, like, six newspapers all the time? Um, or is it, we have to be, you know, we have to have that context in smaller newspapers or smaller sort of like digital. Content such as podcasts or videos, YouTube videos or so forth. It's, I'm gonna give the academic answer and say, it depends, um, but I'll give a more satisfying answer because everyone hates that one. Um, so really what you're looking at is the importance of a diversified sort of toolbox, right? Having communication strategies that don't only rely on getting a headline placed in the New York Times, for example, right?

48:57 Because there's just not room for everybody. There's not enough reporters to cover it. It's just there's, there's a lot going on. They don't cover all topics. It's not relevant to their audience. So there's a lot of factors involved here, but I think this is a conversation that I am having with organizations who wanna talk about my research. They say, well, what do we do now? I've heard from organizations that have said, you know, it's really interesting to read what you've written out because we've now experienced it. You know, where I could get a reporter on the phone before really easily to talk about updates. The threshold is a lot higher to break through because we've kind of already heard it all. Yeah. But, but to your point, like there is great work that's happening.

49:40 There's money from the Inflation Reduction Act from the Biden administration that went toward testing, robless, fishing gear technology in partnership with lobster fishers that didn't receive 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 not gonna be part of the solution. Right. And it wasn't somebody saying, well we should make this technology it. 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 in pursuit of solutions and so where traditional medium will not or chooses not to cover that, right?

50:28 That's where you have other avenues like podcasts or your own social media channel if you're an environmental organization, your website, right? Uh, documentary film is, is One Avenue Art going out to talk to people in the communities where this is relevant, right? Mm-hmm. Um, and I think that was an opportunity that we saw coming out of the first paper that we saw a little bit in the second paper, in that the news media coverage was so focused on New England lobster fishing, and that's only part of the right whales range, of course, right?

51:09 But then what about where they go down South Florida and Georgia, where they rear their young and they reproduce. The right whale is the state of Georgia's state marine mammal. It is symbolically and culturally important, and we just weren't seeing that, that geographic spread, um, in the first part of the research. But we saw USA today, which is the largest network of newspapers in the us, um, taking greater interest in the second round. So in this, these more recent two years. So telling stories throughout the right whales range, not just when they're in crisis, not just when we see them.

51:49 Yeah. Right. In distress or when we find them dead. But, you know, I, in these last two papers and, and in my dissertation research and in the conversations that I have, I also encourage what's called solutions journalism. It's not, uh, a tried and true, like perfect approach, but it's an emerging, uh. Style of journalism that doesn't shy away from the problem that exists. Mm-hmm. But it, it focuses more on people working together to find solutions or identify solutions working towards whatever it's Right. And that's a different kind of storytelling and, you know, it doesn't necessarily fit the, the model of all newspapers, but you have sort of alternative publications that are not mainstream large newspapers, let's say a National Geographic or a Manga Bay.

52:45 Right, right. Or, you know, an Anthropocene magazine who are more interested in the nuance because that's, that's the, the important part here, right? Whales, they move through lots of legal jurisdictions, they move through really busy waters. The science is really complicated. And so the nuance is where you can lose people. The timeline is where you can lose people. Um, and so solutions journalism is an approach that we can try outside of, or in partnership with journalists and editors who wanna try it, you know, and include calls to action.

53:26 Tell people what they can do about this. Where can they donate money? Or where the, where can they volunteer 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 the problem, here are these two sides that don't agree, make your own conclusions. You know, people are trying other approaches to journalism for social and environmental problems that get us closer to solutions. Yeah, I think it's so important, uh, to have that, that call to action at the end. And I, I, I agree it allows us to stay with the topic if we want to, or for people who choose to dive deeper into the, the article, whether it be a nonprofit organization, whether it be a research lab at a a, at an academic institution.

54:17 I think that's, that's really 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, there are other nuanced, um, publications 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 age kind of morphing into podcasts and, and video, does the strategy change because the, the, the type of media changes or are like issue attention?

55:07 Because like a lot of the stuff that 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 because I cover such a wide breadth. I, I cover something on the podcast that has to do with northern right whales, where you mentioned earlier the sea star wasting disease back in, you know, 20 15, 20 16, 20 17 when we started to really under, really see massive effects of, of this wasting disease. Um, I covered it quite a bit and anytime there was an article about it, I covered it and then I, it just kind of went away. And then recently there was an article that 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.

55:47 So I covered that one because there's like, there's, there was a finding, there was not necessarily a solution, but a path towards the solution. So I guess the, the amount and there are more articles about that. Uh, so that's gonna increase the amount of articles. But the span is quite long, you know, in terms 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's not that iconic species like a whale. How do you keep that relevant? Or is it sometimes you just have to like, cover it when it, when we find like a new solution or new information that comes out either in a published article or a non-published article where you talk to somebody that you, you, you kind of figure out a little bit another piece to the puzzle.

56:33 How do you approach those where the timescales are like, could be a, a decade or more? Let's get real philosophical here. I, I won't give you the academic answer, it depends. But I will give you the academic sort of philosophical musing here, which is that I think the institution of science, the way that we share knowledge with each other, but also with broader non-expert publics, incentivizes the big findings. It incentivizes discovery, the aha, the eureka, right? Versus the more incremental or even publications of research that didn't work out right, that didn't tell us anything new and maybe just didn't work at all.

57:21 And so there is a sort of bias in the 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, the the new discovery, the new material, and that's what makes its way into science journalism. Mm-hmm. Right. That's why you seem to only hear, you know, a, a c star wasting disease, for example. It's really bad. You forget about it for 10 years unless you're like really close to the issue and it's something local and then a decade's gone by and then you hear, oh, we found what it is finally.

58:02 Right. Right. We don't hear about the process of that science, at least in news media in that way. It's not like you have a reporter following this same topic and and reporting on it weekly or monthly for the full decade. The science just kind of happens, but that's when you have supplemental tools in your communication toolbox. Universities can share updates and, and show the bus behind the scenes through YouTube or social media or you know, scientists can go out. To conferences or, you know, educational events or work with aquariums, things like that. Um, to have conversations with people and remind them that this is a thing.

58:43 So news media is an important part of the communication sort of ecosystem, but it's not the only thing because there's no way that we could expect that a leading reporter at the science desk at the New York Times is gonna follow, let's say what I'm doing where I'm sort of critiquing news media as they're happening. Mm-hmm. But it was really related to the policy outcomes. They're not gonna follow the mundane basic science that goes on that's more common than the eureka aha moments. Right. And so I think that speaks to the importance of having communications teams. Who, to your earlier point.

59:25 The strategy doesn't necessarily change. They understand what their goals are and how they want to reach them, but as new tools become available and as the speed 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 now show people the inside of a C star and 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 different than a long form YouTube video in the lab where they're injecting things into a C star, for example, or, you know, AI is all the rage now.

1:00:07 That's a new tool that communication and external affairs teams have to, to navigate for a lot of reasons. One being just like. Making sure that factual information like these ar ai crawlers can find it so that misinformation is not going out. But also like the discovery of websites is going down because search engine optimization is now less important change because what, what's, what's Google giving you now? It's not saying, oh, go to the Oceania website to learn more. It's answering the question for you. Using the aggregate information in that statistical model to predict the answer.

1:00:48 And so communications teams have to understand the media ecosystem, and that's why like social media managers are always like, uh, every time a new platform comes out, or Yeah, meta, meta changes the, the algorithm. The algorithm, yeah. This back and forth with TikTok because like your strategy as an organization may stay the same, but your tools and your metrics and your impact sort of change within that. Yeah. So. I hear this one a lot too, where people are like, well, it's digital first, so why are you even paying attention to journalism? And journalism still has that agenda setting power for sure, especially in the science and environmental space.

1:01:32 A lot of the content, at least that I see, 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 front of a green screen that's a headline that, 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 news media reporting is different. Trusts in news media organizations is a topic of discussion right now, but it still matters, right? Because a lot of your digital and social and short form content is drawing from these, these legacy institutions, right?

1:02:14 And. You know, all of that matters when you're working for an organization that's trying to achieve conservation goals because it's not just you're trying to share information and get people to think differently. 'cause that's not how it works, right? We need to hear things over and over again. We need to feel that stories are accessible. We need to feel that they're relevant to us, right? We need to hear it from other people in our real communities. It needs to be a topic of discussion. And so communication is more than transmitting knowledge, but it's really about shaping social realities. I talked earlier about whales being so popular, it's because.

1:02:55 You know, as whaling decreased, we saw organized whale watching started. We got recordings of humpback whale songs from Roger Payne SeaWorld and other, uh, you know, uh, organizations, people could go see and interact with these animals. Yeah. Right. Uh, the Flipper TV show brought dolphins into everybody's living room at six o'clock at night on NBC every night. Right. The Greenpeace saved the whales campaign, like decades of these efforts piling up made us fall in love with these animals and wanna protect them. Absolutely. That's really how communication works. And when you're in a position, let's say you work for a small nonprofit where you're just responding to fires and you have all of your team members saying, oh, just post it to social media.

1:03:42 Right. That's not contributing to a broader discourse. And so that's the importance of having that kind of internal expertise. And then that expertise across organizations and coalitions, especially if you're trying to get to policy change or industry action. And that's where a lot of the frustration happens with not just conservation topics, but things like climate change communication. Right? Yeah. So really long answer there to tell you that yes, the tools matter, but, but the strategies and the overarching sort of approach to communication stays the same. Yeah, it almost feels like one of the ways to really perpetuate a, a news article, and I think this has been used for a lot of time and I've, it is happened with me where organizations will contact me and be like, Hey, we wanna talk about this new project that we're doing.

1:04:34 Well, can we come on the podcast and, and talk about it? And then it's almost like for me, if I want that news to get out there, I should talk to individual creators to be like, Hey, can you talk about this? 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 your own sort of, you know, social following so that we continue to. Grow those networks and see how those things go across, not just from me specifically, it's a really interesting concept that I should, I should dive into a little bit more as I, you know, want more and more people to listen to, to oceans, not necessarily from me, but from people who might be able to connect to their own community. Um, you know, whether it be in the us, in Canada, around the world, doesn't matter.

1:05:15 Everybody needs to be, uh, looking at that. This is, uh, this has been a fascinating conversation, something that makes me really excited, uh, to talk about communication, talk about whales and so forth. 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 from now 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 it the next time you come on. And we talk more about, uh, science communication. I think this is a really, um, I think, I feel like this is something that we could really talk about, really dive into a number of times. So, uh, thank you again for, for coming on the podcast and, and sharing this story and, and sharing this article. Yeah, always a pleasure to be here.

1:05:56 And like you mentioned earlier, the, the new research is open access. Anybody can, can look it up without a paywall. That's really important to me. That's huge. Um, so anybody who's interested should go check it out and can feel free to reach out with questions or commentary. I'm always happy to have those discussions. And we've got some other work coming 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 joining us on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. It was great to be able to talk science communication with you, especially of whales, something that's very important to a lot of people, like iconic species. We also got to talk about a lot of other things.

1:06:37 You know, looking at digital media. How things have changed over this time. How we can use digital media to spread the word, how we can try and continue to keep ocean relevant and ocean species and habitats relevant in the general public's eye. We see a lot of distractions that there's a lot of competition for information and so it's a real challenge to be able to keep the ocean on people's top of mind so that they can, you know, make better decisions and live for a better ocean. So I think it's really important that we talk about this type of research and I'm really happy that Marcus is here 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 of his colleagues to be able to talk about more science communication in the future. I think it's really great to see work like this done.

1:07:19 So thank you Marcus, for joining us. And of course I would love to hear what you think of this episode in science communication in general. Let me know in the comments below what you thought, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. And of course if you want to get ahold of me, you can do so in two ways. You can go to speak up for blue.com. Slash contact, fill out the information on the page. It goes right to my personal email. Or you can DM me on Instagram at how to protect the ocean That's at How to protect the ocean. I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the True Nordstrom and free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time in Happy Conservation.