More Like this

1. Closing the concern-action gap through relational climate conversations: insights from US climate activists

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s44168-022-00027-0  

   Fine, Julia Coombs (December 2022, Climate Action)

   Abstract Several studies have found that relational climate conversations can be an effective method of increasing conversational participants’ concern about the climate crisis and encouraging them to take collective action. However, little work has yet examined how such conversations are practiced by climate activists, a group with expertise in relational organizing. Drawing on surveys and semi-structured interviews with climate activists across the USA, this analysis finds that activists frequently have climate conversations with friends and family, most of whom are politically progressive and somewhat to very concerned about the climate crisis. These findings might seem to suggest that climate activists only have climate conversations with like-minded others, producing an echo chamber effect that could entrench the political polarization of the issue. However, climate activists report strategic reasons for choosing like-minded audiences, such as personal response efficacy. Additionally, they report that one of their primary conversational goals is to move people who are already concerned about the climate crisis to take collective action in accordance with values of climate justice. The results identify obstacles to collective climate action even among concerned audiences and suggest that relational climate conversations can be useful in overcoming these obstacles. Graphical Abstract 

   more » « less
2. Supporting Youth Activists’ Strategic Use of Social Media: A Qualitative Investigation of Design Opportunities

   Irannejad Bisafar, Farnaz; Foucault Welles, Brooke; D’ignazio, Catherine; Parker, Andrea G. (January 2020, Proceedings of the ACM on humancomputer interaction)

   Social Networking Sites (SNS) provide a platform for engaging youth in activism (e.g., by helping mobilize civic action). While youth typically employ casual approaches to online activism (i.e., quick actions, such as broadcast posts to advertise social justice events), more strategic practices (i.e., those that are more creative and informed) can increase the likelihood of successful online campaigns. However, little work has examined how youth activists can be supported to use SNS more strategically. To address this research gap, we conducted interviews with youth activists, exploring how youth made sense of social network visualizations and their perspectives on how such tools could support their activism efforts. Our findings characterize how participants made inferences about followers’ identities based on their hashtag use, and how they used those inferences in outreach decisions. We conclude with design implications for future research in this area. 

   more » « less
3. Computer-Assisted Heuristic Evaluation of Data Visualization

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90436-4_33  

   Zhu, Ying; Gumieniak, Julia A (January 2021, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Visual Computing)

   Bebis, George (Ed.)

   Heuristic evaluation has been an important part of data visualization. Many heuristic rules and guidelines for evaluating data visualization have been proposed and reviewed. However, applying heuristic evaluation in practice is not trivial. First, the heuristic rules are discussed in different publications across different disciplines. There is no central repository of heuristic rules for data visualization. There are no consistent guidelines on how to apply them. Second, it is difficult to find multiple experts who are knowledgeable about the heuristic rules, their pitfalls, and counterpoints. To address this issue, we present a computer-assisted heuristic evaluation method for data visualization. Based on this method, we developed a Python-based tool for evaluating plots created by the visualization tool Plotly. Recent advances in declarative data visualization libraries have made it feasible to create such a tool. By providing advice, critiques, and recommendations, this tool serves as a knowledgeable virtual assistant to help data visualization developers evaluate their visualizations as they code. 

   more » « less
4. The exchange between citizens and elected officials: a social psychological framework for citizen climate activists

   https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2020.41  

   SHERMAN, DAVID K.; SHTEYN, MICHELLE F.; HAN, HAHRIE; VAN BOVEN, LEAF (January 2020, Behavioural Public Policy)

   null (Ed.)

   Citizen activists play a role in translating public concern about the climate crisis to policymakers and elevating it on the political agenda. We consider the dynamic between citizen activists and the decision-makers they seek to influence and we review psychological research relevant to advocating for climate legislation. We conducted a study with citizen activists who lobby the US Congress for a carbon pricing policy to address climate change. The study assessed how activists think about four social psychological approaches: affirmation, social norms, legacy and immediacy. The findings provide a window into activists’ intuitions about which strategies to use, whom to use them with and their perceived effectiveness. A strategy of establishing shared values and common ground (affirmation) was used most frequently overall. A strategy emphasizing the long-term costs and benefits of addressing climate change (legacy) was employed less frequently than affirmation and seen as less effective by activists but it was the only strategy that was associated with perceived increases in Congressional Representatives’ support of the policy. Citizen activists and their interactions with elected officials provide an opportunity for social-behavioral scientists to understand and potentially overcome barriers to enacting climate policy. 

   more » « less
5. VAPOR: A Visualization Package Tailored to Analyze Simulation Data in Earth System Science

   https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10090488  

   Li, Shaomeng; Jaroszynski, Stanislaw; Pearse, Scott; Orf, Leigh; Clyne, John (September 2019, Atmosphere)

   Visualization is an essential tool for analysis of data and communication of findings in the sciences, and the Earth System Sciences (ESS) are no exception. However, within ESS, specialized visualization requirements and data models, particularly for those data arising from numerical models, often make general purpose visualization packages difficult, if not impossible, to use effectively. This paper presents VAPOR: a domain-specific visualization package that targets the specialized needs of ESS modelers, particularly those working in research settings where highly-interactive exploratory visualization is beneficial. We specifically describe VAPOR’s ability to handle ESS simulation data from a wide variety of numerical models, as well as a multi-resolution representation that enables interactive visualization on very large data while using only commodity computing resources. We also describe VAPOR’s visualization capabilities, paying particular attention to features for geo-referenced data and advanced rendering algorithms suitable for time-varying, 3D data. Finally, we illustrate VAPOR’s utility in the study of a numerically- simulated tornado. Our results demonstrate both ease-of-use and the rich capabilities of VAPOR in such a use case. 

   more » « less