The Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media will host its first Research Day on Friday, April 18.
Showcasing the ongoing work at PCSSM, the Research Day will include research talks by a number of PCSSM staff and researchers, as well as a poster and networking session. PCSSM research focuses on a range of topics in communication science, including climate and health, energy justice, behavioral science, climate distress, and solutions-focused research.
PCSSM Associate Director Heather Kostick — who organized the event — wrote to The Daily Pennsylvanian that sharing these research efforts with partners and colleagues is crucial to further PCSSM’s mission to address climate communication challenges, including misinformation and disinformation.
“I personally believe that doing science is pointless unless we share the work we’ve been doing,” Kostick wrote.
The event will be open to both the Penn community and the greater Philadelphia area, creating opportunities to strengthen existing partnerships and network with new people and groups, according to Kostick.
PCSSM Joan Bossert Postdoctoral Research Fellow Allie Sinclair will be one of the featured speakers. Her research with PCSSM focuses on ways to motivate people to take action and spread awareness around climate change in their everyday lives.
According to Sinclair, the opportunity to work with Annenberg Vice Dean Dr. Emily Falk on an "intervention tournament" project — aimed at identifying strategies to motivate individuals to adopt environmentally-friendly behaviors — was the initial inspiration for her decision to begin working at PCSSM.
“The idea is to brainstorm and then test a whole bunch of different ideas for strategies we might use to motivate people to take action, and then to systematically test them all at once in a big group of people and compare which ones are most effective,” Sinclair told the DP.
She added that this research is now “more important than ever” to address the climate crisis.
Sinclair is also involved in research on how the emotional framing of news headlines can impact engagement with climate change media, which she said complements her work with PCSSM.
PCSSM Gloria and Melvin Chisum Postdoctoral Research Fellow Eryn Campbell will also deliver a research talk at the event. Campbell's research at PCSSM focuses on climate and health equity communication, specifically whether messaging around energy justice trade-offs could advance support for a renewable energy transition.
By calling attention to the harms that renewable energy opposition causes for vulnerable communities, Campbell found that people become more aware of health disparities and more willing to support policies that address them.
“This is some of the first work of its kind and demonstrates there is an important (and positive!) opportunity for this type of messaging to contribute to progress towards climate and health equity and climate solutions,” Campbell wrote in a statement to the DP.
The event will conclude with a poster session highlighting undergraduate and graduate student research projects.
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