Victoria Wibeck

Learning in focus groups : An analytical dimension for enhancing focus group research

The focus group is a research methodology in which a small group of participants gathers to discuss a specified issue under the guidance of a moderator. The discussions are tape-recorded, transcribed and analysed. Notably, the interaction between focus group participants has seldom been evaluated, analysed or discussed in empirical research. We argue that considering the focus group in light of current research into interaction in problem-based learning (PBL) tutorial groups would facilitate the deliberate exploitation of group processes in designing focus groups, staging data collection and analysing and interpreting data. When the analytical focus shifts from mere content analysis to an analysis of what the participants themselves are trying to learn, one can explore not only what the participants are talking about, but also how they are trying to understand and conceptualise the issue under discussion.

Enhancing learning, communication and public engagement about climate change – some lessons from recent literature

This paper sets out to develop key messages for the theory and practice of environmental education from a review of recent research literature on climate change communication (CCC) and education. It focuses on how learners of climate science understand messages on climate change, the communicative contexts for education on climate change, the barriers that can be found to public engagement with climate change issues, and how these barriers can be addressed. 92 peer-reviewed studies were examined. The analysis focuses on the goals and strategies of CCC, and how barriers can be addressed given the research findings on: (a) the content of CCC, (b) visualizations, (c) framing, (d) audience segmentation. The paper concludes that CCC and education need to address barriers to public engagement on several levels simultaneously. It recommends that scholars of environmental education focus critical attention on how practice addresses senses and spheres of agency; sociocultural factors; and the complexities of developing scientific literacy given the interpretative frames and prior understandings that are brought to bear by the public in non-formal education settings.

Social representations of climate change in Swedish lay focus groups: Local or distant, gradual or catastrophic?

This paper explores social representations of climate change, investigating how climate change is discussed by Swedish laypeople interacting in focus group interviews. The analysis focuses on prototypical examples and metaphors, which were key devices for objectifying climate change representations. The paper analyzes how the interaction of focus group participants with other speakers, ideas, arguments, and broader social representations shaped their representations of climate change. Climate change was understood as a global but distant issue with severe consequences. There was a dynamic tension between representations of climate change as a gradual vs. unpredictable process. Implications for climate change communication are discussed.

Framings and coverage of climate change in Swedish specialized farming magazines

Climate change is a fundamental challenge for which agriculture is sensitive and vulnerable. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified relevant information as key to enabling appropriate climate adaptation and mitigation action. Information specifically directed to farmers can be found, for example, in specialized farming magazines. While recent studies examine how national news media frame climate change, less—if any—studies have addressed climate framings and coverage in specialized media. Media framings are storylines that provide meaning by communicating how and why an issue should be seen as a problem, how it should be handled, and who is responsible for it. This paper analyses the framings and coverage of climate change in two Swedish specialized farming magazines from 2000 to 2009. It examines the extent of the climate change coverage, the content of the media items, and the dominant framings underlying their climate change coverage. The study identifies: increased coverage of climate change starting in 2007; frequent coverage of agriculture’s contribution to climate change, climate change impacts on agriculture, and consequences of climate politics for agriculture; and four prominent frames: conflict, scientific certainty, economic burden, and action. The paper concludes that climate change communicators addressing farmers and agricultural extension officers should pay attention to how these frames may be interpreted by different target audiences. Research is needed on how specialized media reports on climate-related issues and how science-based climate information is understood by different groups of farmers and which other factors influence farmers’ engagement in climate mitigation and adaptation.

Images of environmental management : competing metaphors in focus group discussions of Swedish environmental quality objectives.

In managing environmental problems, several countries have chosen the management by objectives (MBO) approach. This paper investigates how focus group participants from the Swedish environmental administration used metaphors to describe the mode of organization needed to attain environmental objectives. Such analysis can shed light on how an MBO system is perceived by actors and how it works in practice. Although the Swedish government intended to stimulate broad-based cooperation among many actors, participants often saw themselves as located at a certain “level,” i.e., “higher” or “lower,” in the MBO system—that is, their conceptions corresponded to a traditional, hierarchical interpretation of MBO. Prepositions such as “in” and “out” contributed to feelings of inclusion and exclusion on the part of MBO actors. However, horizontal metaphors merged with vertical ones, indicating ongoing competition for the right to interpret how the system of environmental objectives should best be managed. The paper concludes that any organization applying MBO could benefit from discussing alternate ways of talking and thinking about its constituent “levels.”

Visualizing Climate Change: the Potential of Dome Presentations as a Tool for Climate Communication

This study presents the outline of a climate visualization programme directed to various target groups that was presented in a dome environment. The efforts of climate and visualization researchers ...

Proximate causes and underlying driving forces of land-use change among small-scale farmers - illustrations from the Loess Plateau, China

Small-scale farmers on marginal land in the Loess Plateau of China are adapting their livelihood to new situations and changes such as varying climate, new land-use policies, changing employment opportunities and new market situations. To avoid generalising explanations with regard to land-use change, interactions between proximate causes and underlying driving forces adopted from a meta-analysis model are explored through 23 in-depth interviews. This was done through collaborative work with farmers in northern Shaanxi Province and focused on the land-use situation between 1982 and 2005. The result reveals five categories of land-use change. The interaction pattern is broken down into eight proximate causes and four underlying driving forces. The dominant underlying driving forces are economic forces with short time horizons arising partly from compensation through policies, changes in crop demand from an expanding nearby market and a need for cash because of an increasingly cash-based lifestyle. The direct proximate causes were vividly described by the farmers as tools or means by which they are adapting to more abstract and indirect factors. These factors were identified as underlying driving forces. Hence, the knowledge and ability to separate the interaction into proximate causes and underlying driving forces are crucial in policy-making.

Making sense of climate engineering: a focus group study of lay publics in four countries

This study explores sense-making about climate engineering among lay focus group participants in Japan, New Zealand, the USA and Sweden. In total, 23 qualitative focus group interviews of 136 participants were conducted. The analyses considered sense-making strategies and heuristics among the focus group participants and identified commonalities and variations in the data, exploring participants’ initial and spontaneous reactions to climate engineering and to several recurrent arguments that feature in scientific and public debate (e.g. climate emergency). We found that, despite this study’s wide geographical scope, heterogeneous focus group compositions, and the use of different moderators, common themes emerged. Participants made sense of climate engineering in similar ways, for example, through context-dependent analogies and metaphorical descriptions. With few exceptions, participants largely expressed negative views of large-scale deliberate intervention in climate systems as a means to address anthropogenic global warming.

Localizing Climate Change: Nordic Homeowners’ Interpretations of Visual Representations for Climate Adaptation

ABSTRACT In recent years, effort has been put into developing various forms of climate visualization to create opportunities for people to explore and learn about local climate change risks and adaptation options. However, how target audiences make sense of such climate visualization has rarely been studied from a communication perspective. This paper analyses how Nordic homeowners made sense of a specific climate visualization tool, the VisAdapt™ tool. Involving 35 homeowners from three cities in 15 group test sessions, this study analyses the interpretive strategies participants applied to make sense of and assess the relevance of the visualized data. The study demonstrates that participants employed a set of interpretive strategies relating to personal experience and well-known places to make sense of the information presented, and that critical negotiation of content played an important role in how participants interpreted the content.

Communicative challenges in assessing progress towards environmental quality objectives

Assessment of trends in the state of the environment constitutes one important aspect of efforts to achieve environmental sustainability. Assessments are often undertaken via indicators which measu ...