Archive for July, 2009

Photo Courtesy Orin Optiglot via Flickr

This article in Time Magazine summarizing how males and females react differently to words in pictures is fascinating – but I’ll fess up that I can’t draw any clear environmental communication advice from it.

The gist of the story is that market researchers set up a group of teenage boys and girls with pictures of other teens and a description of a social situation. While the teens contemplated the pictures and scenario, the researchers scanned their brain activity using a “functional magnetic resonance imaging” device. The result: boys’ and girls’ brain activity patterns were quite different, leading one of the researchers to conclude:

… girls are hardwired to care about one-on-one relationships, while the brains of boys are more attuned to group dynamics and competition with other boys.

According to the article, that particular conclusion is controversial even among the researchers — but here’s the message I took away: People’s subconscious plays a huge role in determining how they react to words and pictures — including the words and pictures that appear in your brochures, web pages, advertisements, emails, and other environmental communication pieces.

Beneath the rational facade we humans present to the world, the Darwinian impulse to pass genes down across generations is ever present — and influencing how your audience reacts to your message.

Maybe someday I’ll get to hook some people up to a “functional magnetic resonance imaging” device and analyze their brain patterns while showing them foolproof photos and telling them words that work. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Click here to read the Time Magazine article.

Judy Petersen, fearless leader of the Kentucky Waterways Alliance, has started blogging on the Louisville Courier Journal’s Kentuckiana Green blog.

Scoot on over and leave her a supportive comment.

It was an honor to share the microphone with Jonathan Doherty of the Chesapeake NEMO program at the Government and Social Media conference yesterday. We enjoyed presenting about both our successes and lessons learned launching the Chesapeake Network — an online community for nature protection and pollution control professionals.

Click here to download our presentation.

Good luck with all your efforts!

I’ll be honest that I haven’t yet read the advance company of Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought, that the publisher was so kind to send me. But that won’t stop me from blogging about it! I’m intrigued by this phrase on the cover: “permanent drought.”

We desperately need a word that conveys to everyday citizens that we just don’t have enough water to waste like we do. It’s a struggle. I often see nature protection and pollution control people using the phrase “running out of water,” but researchers find that it strikes the everyday citizen as apocalyptic and far fetched…

Running out of water is something that most people have not considered and do not believe — communicating something that is unbelievable is ineffective.

Source: Texas Water Development Board Focus Group Report, 2004

And when I’ve sat in on focus groups myself, I’ve noticed that many attendees actually can’t distinguish between water pollution and water supply issues. They tend to see that the consequence of “too much pollution” is “not enough clean water.” And they see water everywhere, but wonder if enough of it is clean to meet human’s and nature’s needs.

But that there’s just flat out not enough water at all? Even in places like Arizona, Colorado and Texas, that strikes many as preposterous.

Reflecting that, I’ve put the phrase “enough clean water” on the Words That Work list, but I recognize it’s a bit clunky, somehow.

So what do you think of “permanent drought?” Did the author nail it? How about “artificial drought?” or “man made drought?”

Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought was written by a Jamie Workman, a former Interior Department colleague of mine and all around good egg. Given the way he used to edit some of my earlier environmental writing, I’m sure this will be worth the time. I’ll get around to reading it soon, I promise!