Episode 65 - The Full Climate Workshop with Lee Boot_mixdown_Stereo
7:37PM Feb 18, 2025
Speakers:
Dr. Ian Anson
Jean Kim
Keywords:
UMBC Imaging Research Center
climate communication
interdisciplinary collaboration
social sciences
climate change
media research
digital media
public interest
climate workshop
transdisciplinary approach
climate science
media impact
student involvement
environmental justice
storytelling
Ian, hello and welcome to Retrieving the Social Sciences, a production of the Center for Social Science Scholarship. I'm your host, Ian Anson, Associate Professor of Political Science here at UMBC. On today's show, as always, we'll be hearing from UMBC faculty, students, visiting speakers and community partners about the social science research they've been performing in recent times. Qualitative, quantitative, applied, empirical, normative. On Retrieving the Social Sciences, we bring the best of UMBC social science community to you
As regular listeners to this podcast already know, I grew up in North Carolina, and correspondingly, I am your go to resource for all things Carolina Tar Heels, basketball. I enjoy going back to Chapel Hill every so often to catch a game at the Dean Dome, a mecca of college hoops. Occasionally and begrudgingly, my brother will join me on such excursions. And I say begrudging, because my brother is a graduate of NC State University, and this means his feelings toward the Tar Heels are about as negative as mine are positive. He would much rather welcome me back to his house in eastern North Carolina, just a few miles from the beautiful coastline, for a chance to maybe watch a team we would both enjoy supporting, and more often than not, we end up watching a hockey team with a rather ominous name, the Carolina Hurricanes. It's not lost on my brother that being a fan of the Hurricanes is a strange thing to claim in eastern North Carolina. The coastal area where he lives has been ravaged in recent years by powerful hurricanes like Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018. Even western North Carolina is not safe from the powerful hurricanes of recent memory, like Helene, which devastated the mountain region of the state with flooding in 2024 the folks in my brothers area can agree that hurricanes like these are problems for their community. But not everyone can agree on whether the intensifying storms are a consequence of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have data that supports this argument, but how can this story be told in a way that will effectively convince skeptics. To answer this question on this episode, I'm delighted to speak to Lee Boot, the director of UMBC's Imaging Research Center. Lee recently collaborated with a variety of UMBC stakeholders to create the Full Circle Climate Communication Workshop. The workshop brought together scientists, humanists, culture producers and policy experts from all around the USA. These folks joined together to imagine and design new ways of communicating to accelerate and broaden our human response to climate change. In our interview, Lee tells us about IRC, the full circle workshop, and how we might succeed in future efforts to convince people of the prodigious storm that constitutes anthropogenic climate change.
Today, I'm really delighted to welcome to the program. Lee boot of the Imaging Research Center at UMBC. Lee, thank you again, so much for agreeing to come on the program.
Thank you for having me. Yeah, so
we brought you on today to talk about a recent event that happened at UMBC, which was, in my opinion, really interesting. Clearly a really novel and unique I think, collaboration across a variety of disciplines. I seem like the list of people that was in attendance was really remarkable in terms of just the breadth of coverage, people from the humanities, people from the natural sciences or engineering, people from the social sciences. I mean, it's a really, really wide ranging set. And of course, on retrieving the social sciences, we're interested in the social sciences primarily. But obviously this is an event that touches on these themes, but goes far beyond kind of a canonical characterization of the social sciences. And so I was hoping you might be able to tell us a bit first of all, about IRC, about what this thing is, what your role is in IRC, and exactly how it might connect to some of the topics that we normally talk about on retrieving the social sciences.
I'm very happy to talk a bit about the IRC. I've been with the IRC in one form or another for maybe 23 years. I came to UMBC, actually, because UMBC showed that it was making a kind of early bet, and that was, you know, not common, especially digital media back in the late 90s. Well, certainly in the late 90s, that was not true, but even in the early 2000s it was pretty, pretty rare. And so I came to UMBC to teach in the visual art department originally, which was really started by. Very famous media artist named Stan Vander Beek. And soon after, you know, it became a kind of home for fresh thinking about media. And then a department head, a little later on, started the Imaging Research Center. It was, it is the oldest Research Center at UMBC, founded in 1987 and it's a Media Research Lab. Most people have no idea what that is. When they say that there's a few dozen. I mean, they come and go surprisingly quickly, so I always have to kind of monitor things to know how many there are in the US. There's a lot nationally, internationally. I'm sorry, there's many more internationally, but in the US, you know, a few dozen. We're about the same age as the oldest one I know, which is MIT's famous Media Lab. And so a media lab or Media Research Center, which is what we are. And I say media, we use the word imaging, because we are very focused on visual media. When people hear media, they often think visual anyway, not always, but so, you know, these things are a little interchangeable, but, you know, we are mostly visual media. But the Imaging Research Center is a little bit unique, I would say, the way it's it's developed even among Media Labs and Media Research Centers, in that we really try to focus on, what are the pressing questions in the digital media and image environment that we are in? What are the things that we are trying to do with these tools to advance public interest that are not really being accomplished or maybe even tried by the private sector. You know, it's interesting to note that most research in the United States is done in the private sector. That switched back to the private sector in 2019 for the first time since 1945 it's kind of surprising for a lot of people, but in media, digital, media and imaging, that's 10 times more true. You know, 99% of what we get comes from industry. And so we ask, you know, what is industry not doing that we need? I mean, if you kind of Venn diagram, what industry is looking for profit, obviously, and what the public needs, and I can talk about that in more detail, but what the public needs, there's a lot of overlap. Everybody's really glad that we have spreadsheets and word processing and video podcasts, but they're not the same exactly, you know. So there's a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram, but they're not just one circle, you know. So we kind of live in that delta. So that's what we do. And we also do work with faculty who are interested in exploring the way digital media could be used to kind of promote or disseminate their work in a different way. Are you willing to measure the impact of what you make? Because we're a research lab, and that's new for a lot of people. Wait a minute. I'm gonna I'm gonna make this video, I'm gonna make this film and make this game, I'm gonna make this whatever. And you want to measure what happens with it, you know, and you know how people interact with it, what its potential is, and we're like, yep, that's what we want to do. And so, you know, that's kind of the stipulation for working with faculty, but we we do, and we encourage that, and we work with lots of students. So there's a two part mission to the IRC, there's a research mission that I just described, and there's an education mission, and we're just as passionate about the education mission as we are the research mission. We, in fact, believe that research centers have a huge role to play in the education of students, because of the way working in a research lab complements your coursework, your classroom work. You know, specifically, it's collaborative across a wide array of disciplines. It's project oriented, it's hands on. It's just, you know, it's got a rhythm to it. It's real world. You know, we're not doing assignments, per se. You know, we're doing things that we hope matter in the world. So we're very serious about that as well. So that's the IRC in a nutshell.
Well, speaking of things that matter in the world, it seems very much like the evolution of our digital technology and what's essentially happened over the past couple. Decades has only served to reinforce the message here of what IRC is doing. It seems, from my perspective, from an outsider's perspective, that this is just perennially important and something that that deserves a lot more recognition, and especially because we're dealing with some really big problems in the world right now. I think I can say that with without, you know, qualification, there's a lot of big issues that we need to tackle, and one of those, obviously, is the issue of climate change, which, you know, continues to be a vexing issue, because in part, as you're saying, right, reaching the public and trying to explain some of the science to the public seems to me to be one of the biggest challenges. And so this was one of the goals of the full circle workshop that was held at UMBC recently. And so I wanted to ask you about this workshop. Obviously, IRC played a leading role in the workshop, but there was also other stakeholders from campus and from beyond campus that were there. So I heart, for example, at UMBC, and if you want to learn more about that, I encourage listeners to check out the show notes for some some details about IARP. And then, of course, our very own sponsor, the Center for Social Science scholarship, was also involved in that project as well. So again, bringing together a number of different groups from across the disciplines into this workshop trying to better understand how to reach people. So tell us about how IRC specifically figured into this workshop. And, you know, how did this workshop even get started? What was the impetus behind it?
You know, it's, it's, it's kind of interesting. Again, the way the IRC is developed in that, you know, once you're working in kind of media, research regular, you know, there's no department of visualization or something at UMBC, we're a research center, so kind of exists between the departments, if you will. And we've just been interdisciplinary since the very start. And really, to sharpen that, interdisciplinary can mean just a whole bunch of people working in the same room with everybody doing their individual part. It can, actually, you can be interdisciplinary and still be very siloed. We work more trans disciplinary. So we end up, you know, if we're working with historians or scientists or people in the in the in the arts, we learn about what they're doing, they learn about what we're doing. It's a collaboration. We kind of bleed over at the edges. In fact, we kind of joke at the IRC. You know, leave your discipline at the door. Glad you glad you have one that gave you expertise. You get to be at the table. But we're really creating a trans disciplinary culture here, that for the work involved will supplant your your your domain culture. So that's our history, and one of our key strengths, when people come to the IRC, I always show them the conference table, and I say this is where most of the work gets done. You're trying to get, you know natural scientists who, who you know, might believe that there's just one truth when it comes to some question, they just haven't discovered it yet, or maybe they have, whereas in the humanities, people believe there are many truths, you know, and and everything in between. So getting folks to work together is not as easy as it sounds. There's all kinds of cultural and methodological differences that are not not trivial. So anyway, because that was our skill set, we started working with the I Heart Project and Vandana janesia, who is the principal investigator of that project over a year ago, on an exhibit about climate change and climate change communication. We're building a virtual climate Museum in a virtual ice cave. So it's really fun. We showed that at the at the conference. But anyway, she said, Hey, we love the way you guys think and drag, she was kind of new to the IRC, do you want to do this workshop? And we said, Yeah, I mean, we would want to bring all the disciplines together, because the current challenges in curbing climate change are largely social, political, cultural, the science is super important. Do not get me wrong on that, but the climate science, but the social science and the humanities and media and the arts and all that are probably a little more pressing right now, given where we are. We shared this plan with her, and she said, yeah, go ahead. And I think as she saw what we were really going to do, it was kind of like, but Wait, aren't we going to have the scientists all give long talks about their work? Yeah, no, not really. There's going to be total parity between everybody. And she's been a really great sport and supporter watching it all develop. But yeah, that's how, that's how it came. Out, and so I guess we had a few months to put it together. Yeah,
that's fascinating to think that the modality of the conference itself might be different in part due to the vision that you bring from this interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary perspective, as you're saying. So what were some of the big things that came out of the conference? What were some of the highlights, I guess I would ask, as you, you know, implemented this transdisciplinary approach to actually sharing your perspectives and your research from the disciplines and across the disciplines.
Well, you know, first of all, it was a lot of work. I had never done a workshop before. I now know that that's a lot of work, and the support of my colleagues and just the fun of working with them, you know, from different disciplines. You know Eric stoke hand and Rebecca Williams and Nita cum laude and Fonda Nikki. That's just a wonderful group of people. Josephine, I could go on,
yeah, but that sounds like an all star cast, yeah.
You know, it took, it took everybody with other staff as well, to put it together. But what came out of it, that I think we're so proud of, is that, first of all, people responded to the call that was, you know, it isn't like you're gonna make, let's see it. Is the proposition for people who would come to the workshop was not that your career is probably going to get advanced much by this. And I say that because I mean your career on paper, your your promotion and tenure, your publishing CV. Because you know, the academic research enterprise with large is still almost entirely disciplinary, despite all the rhetoric. Otherwise, don't believe it, you know, and so, and we're not a traditional conference or annual meeting, we're not going to publish, you know the the proceedings per se, but come and talk to people from disciplines you've never talked to about this really pressing problem, because we made the case of the call it requires us all to tackle this. So we were really pleased about the response and the fact that people actually came. We asked people to divide into groups of about six or about 50 people. They divided into groups about six or seven or eight in some cases, and we produced six sketches of viable plans for climate communication that had to take into account a whole diagram, a whole set of milestones that range from what is the climate phenomenon you want to talk about, to what is the human impact of those phenomenon, to What is the human contributor to that to, what is the thing that human beings could do differently to not contribute to what is the social science theory that you would use to motivate some kind of change in people? Then what is the communication theory that you're going to use, and we have speakers on all of these points, you know, how are you going to reach people? What's the rhetorical approach, and so on so forth. And then, what is the media asset that you're going to create, and how are you going to measure its impact? So, no kidding, all of those things that these hard working groups had to ring and and ring them. They did, you know, they had 10 hours. It was really a kind of climate communication hackathon, yeah, yeah. They worked very hard. And so unfortunately, we can't quite publish these yet, because even though they're on Google Sites and, you know, they are published in bulk. We have to work with these researchers a little more post conference, because, you know, they would just clip things and put it in their plan, and they didn't have the rights to use that image or whatever. You know, there's those kinds of tactical things we have to do, but they produced the plan. So we were super delighted about that. Like, in other words, it worked. People were fascinated to hear from each other. You could hear them saying this throughout the conference, you know, we'd have a speaker on social science, we'd have a speaker on, you know, narrative or on the history of of climate media. And people would just, I never knew anything about that, you know. So it was really interesting. And yet, I think my biggest personal takeaway, and this is actually huge, I am still processing this, you know, I always kind of thought that the reason there isn't more trans disciplinary. Very interdisciplinary work was really kind of a resistance to change. You know, universities are disciplined machines. It's like what we do. You know, how are you going to change that? Actually, people were thrilled to be doing this work. The problem was that they didn't know how. They had no experience with that. Nobody had ever set up a structure for them to say, Oh, well, let's divide up this way. Let's come up with this, this plan of what we're trying to hit. So that was like an eye opener. I thought, yeah, people need a structure that helps them understand how this work happens.
Wow, that's really incredible to just think about the room, right? And the energy and the activity they're in, and then people feeling like they've got actionable stuff that they can bring to bear on these questions. That's like, I mean, I've been to my fair share, I guess I'll say of workshops, conferences and things where, you know, there's a couple of takeaways, things, things feel, you know, it's nice that you met some people, but you don't feel as much like there's this product that's come out of it, and that's really exciting to think that, you know, maybe it's not quite in the stage it needs to be yet, but, you know, maybe this group of scholars, of practitioners, are getting closer to actually reaching This audience in a way that could make a dent, because after, all right, that's what we need, pretty urgently, is to actually start making this dent in people's perceptions. And you know, I'm especially interested in specifically how imaging plays a role in this. I think, you know, from an outsider's perspective, it seems like climate communication is is, is so much about how we visualize what people are seeing about the climate, because it's a very hard thing, you know. You can't give a, you know, a lay audience, a regression table or something, right? And say, look, here's the stats, right? Things are bad. You need a way to show them that, you know, without using some sort of glib, you know, picture of a polar bear or something, right? It's got to be something that's that conveys the science, but also is meaningful, has a an emotional impact on people. Is that the kind of thing that you all were working on creating, absolutely,
and it's and it's delightful to be talking to a social scientist and to be addressing, you know, folks who listen to this podcast, because personally, I believe that the social sciences are are just absolutely pivotal in this whole thing. In fact, if I were to think imagine a fulcrum in this endeavor, I think it would really be the social sciences. So yes, imagery is profoundly important, because you can say so much in a short period of time and profoundly. You know, long before we were writing, we were making pictures, and it remains incredibly powerful, but without an understanding of what causes people to shift beliefs, attitudes and tensions and behaviors. You know, is you can create all the imagery in the world, and it really doesn't have a lot of effect. You know, the polar bear image that is, you know, a trope is great for creating a moment of empathy, potentially, and not much else you know. And you know people believe either that the information alone will do it. I think you did a good job of saying, yeah, no, but, but also, you know, a lot of people think, well, if you just feel more the pain that animals or people are going through, that that will be sufficient. And, you know, there's, there's many things that are required that's only one piece that may or may not be important, but it's only one piece of the puzzle. So, you know, we use imagery, we use digital media. We at the IRC up to our eyeballs in the latest technology we're working with computer you know, we're half computer science, half, well, we're about a third computer science, a third sort of visual arts and a third information systems, most of the time, in terms of the student employees or or GA's or whatever. But it's really making the imagery is just, you know, if you're a writer, making the words is super important, but it's only a piece. What are you writing about?
Yeah, I think that's such a an important sentiment for those of us who are in the social sciences, who are often, you know, doing some of this research on human motivations and behavior, and only getting so far as conveying our findings or the things that we think are important to a scholarly audience. And we have to think beyond that. I think we're often grasping at straws. And so, you know, talk about the fulcrum, right? I think really the accelerator is the is the image, and is. The communication so absolutely wonderful to talk to you about this, and I'm so excited that this conference happened at UMBC, and that presumably these kinds of events are going to continue to be fostered and cultivated. Yeah, what's next? Glad that you asked and thinking
about how students can be involved. Yes, is, is, is, is part of the answer to what's next. You know, people saw that this was novel, that it was exciting, that it was engaging. I think students and faculty alike sense that there's a kind of shift in intention, in the goal when you do something like this, from, how do I discover more knowledge that may be useful for the world, to, how do I make a difference because of this urgent climate crisis? And if you think about it, you know when we say things are academic, it's what academia does. We're not really used to focusing on, you know, to judge, to judging our success as universities against impact in the world. Production is more grants and more papers, right? Or more monographs, more books, whatever it's it's not, did I make a difference in the world? So that's a shift. I just want to kind of point that out, especially for students, because I believe the young people who work in our lab, I've always thought this, are just they see what's around the corner. They see what is urgent in their world, and what they understand. For one thing students, in our view, you don't have to convince students that media systems, digital media systems, are the central systems to our lives. Now they know this. You know, in the US, we don't even fund research. That's how far behind our systems are, behind, you know, from where students so I think part of it is just the heart of a student is going to be potentially engaged in working on this, but more specifically, in order to get these six plans that were created at the workshop in shape to publish, we are working With students that are connected to the I Heart Project, which, incidentally, this needs to be said, funded this workshop. I can't, you know, stress that enough, it's expensive to do these things. But and these students will, you know, they're in the climate sciences or data science or whatever. They're not going to be working with social scientists unless social science students, unless social science students say, Wow, this sounds really interesting. I would love to be working on these plans and so on. So we would like to have a fuller roster, potentially, of people to work on it. I don't think there's the money to pay them answering that question right off. So we can't do a lot here now. I'm mopping up after this research and making those things ready to see. But for the next climate workshop like this, I think there's a huge opportunity for more students. We had a lot of students, but I think, you know, students in the next generation, and they're the ones who are going to be dealing with the brunt of of climate change. So I think it's, it's, it's imperative that we have students across the board. And again, I think the social sciences are are critical. And you know, I think this is really important for your generation of researchers and for students, we have to talk about how far behind the systems that we all work in are when it comes to addressing not just climate change. You know, our lab, I started out in kind of public health. Well, I'm a painter and filmmaker and performance artist, but when I got into research 25 years ago, you know, I started out in in health communications, and we've done work in education, climate, obviously, in poverty and economic development. All of these issues are ones that the smart people in America, so to speak. In other words, the academic Industrial Complex has not made a difference in in 50 years. I mean, you can, we can haggle over, you know, minor improvements. I think there's been great stuff in some social justice areas, and that's not at all trivial, but in the minds of most Americans, when you look at these back breaking issues that we face on the landscape, there hasn't been nearly enough progress. And so I think the social sciences, because it's a social world, are really need to be lifted up. And when you look at a pie chart of all federal spending on science, there's like a few. In hairline, that is, you know, the social sciences. It's really, really frustrating. And the same is true, you know, if you look at all the money that is spent, you know, compared to what's spent in the arts, it's even worse. The arts probably come in at, you know, a 100th, if that, of the social sciences which come in. At, you know, 1000s. You know, it's the numbers are devastating. And there's nothing really about working together that these systems promote social scientists go to social science conferences. Climate scientists go to climate science conferences. You know, this does not work. System change is imperative if we are going to face problems like climate change successfully. Yeah,
that's I can't agree more. I mean, obviously the point about funding is very well taken and very acutely aware of that, and it is very, very frustrating, Lee, thank you again, so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Lee boot is the director of the Imaging Research Center at UMBC, and congratulations on a successful workshop. And we look forward to hearing more, much more about these projects in the time to come.
it's time for campus connections, the part of the broadcast where we connect today's featured content to other work happening at UMBC. Take it away, Jean,
Hi, Dr Anson, for this campus connection, we will be looking at the work of Dr Ellen Cole, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems here at UMBC. Her research focuses on environmental governance and activism, examining how intersectional oppressions create and maintain persistent places of environmental injustice. In her article from 2021 titled making the invisible visible, telling stories to animate environmental injustices, Dr Cole highlights the importance of integrating a multi disciplinary lens to address societal challenges, something we just learned from our conversation with Dr Lee boot. The paper explores how the woman of Newtown florist club, a social and environmental justice organization in Gainesville, Georgia, used storytelling to challenge environmental and social injustices, drawing on black geographies and black feminist storytelling, the paper argues that stories are both a theoretical and methodological tool for critical environmental justice scholars. These stories reveal how activists navigate contradictions. Draw strength from connections to people in place, and use historical narratives to link personal and political experiences. The paper concludes by emphasizing how listening to activist stories helps researchers engage with critical environmental justice work, and that's all for today's Campus Connection. Back to you, Dr Anson, you soon.
Thanks so much for tuning in today. I hope that this recap of the full circle workshop has inspired you to think about how you might collaborate on conveying the message of climate change to a skeptical audience, and that, as always, you'll keep questioning, retrieving the social sciences is a production of the UMBC Center for Social Science scholarship. Our acting director is Dr Eric stoken, and our undergraduate production assistant is Gene Kim. Our theme music was composed and recorded by Dawn Moreland at the UMBC class of 2024 find out more about CS three at Social science.umbc.edu and make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, where you can find full video recordings of recent CS, three sponsored events until next time, keep questioning foreign.
