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Popular Climate Science and Painless Consumer Choices:
Communicating Climate Change in the Hot Pink Flamingos Exhibit,
Monterey Bay Aquarium, California
Merav Katz-Kimchi and Lucy Atkinson
Science Communication published online 30 October 2014
DOI: 10.1177/1075547014555998
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555998
research-article2014
SCXXXX10.1177/1075547014555998Science CommunicationKatz-Kimchi and Atkinson
Article
Popular Climate Science
and Painless Consumer
Choices: Communicating
Climate Change in
the Hot Pink Flamingos
Exhibit, Monterey Bay
Aquarium, California
Science Communication
1­–24
© 2014 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/1075547014555998
scx.sagepub.com
Merav Katz-Kimchi1 and Lucy Atkinson2
Abstract
Using critical discourse analysis, we examine the communicative potential
of science centers to engage the public in climate change science. Drawing
on a theoretical framework combining climate change engagement and
communication, science centers as sites of engagement and communication,
ecological citizenship, and insights from social cognitive theory, our analysis
shows that along with popularizing climate science and making it accessible
to the general public, the Hot Pink Flamingos exhibit prioritized individual,
marketplace-based action on climate change over solutions requiring largescale social change or collective action. Responsibility for climate change
was individualized, and the political realm was mostly reduced to lifestyle
choices.
1Ben
Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er Sheva, Israel
of Texas at Austin, TX, USA
2University
Corresponding Author:
Merav Katz-Kimchi, The Department of Communication, Ben Gurion University of the
Negev, PO Box 653, Be’er Sheva 84105, Israel.
Email: [email protected]
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2
Science Communication 
Keywords
museum, climate change communication, political consumption, ecological
citizenship
The early 21st century saw a turning point in the public career of climate
change. After years of scientific uncertainty regarding its causes (Doyle,
2011), anthropogenic climate change came of age as a widely recognized
“global risk” demanding global action to reduce its threats (Beck, 2010).
From the 1980s on, diverse actors including scientists, policy makers, businesses, and environmental groups populated the discursive space of climate
change in mass media (Boykoff, 2011). Artists, community groups, celebrities, science museum curators, and others involved in popular culture did so
in various venues including art exhibits, movies, national parks, and museums (Boykoff, 2011; Doyle, 2011; Hulme, 2009).
Within this context, Cameron (2012) called for a critical examination of
the roles and capacities of science museums as hubs for communicating
knowledge about and participation in climate change decision making.
Science museums are important educational organizations and institutions of
civil society and warrant empirical study. They can shape collective values
and social understandings in important, decisive ways (Luke, 2002) and can
promote active participation in decision-making processes within their premises (Bell, 2008).
Given the United States’ role in international climate policy, we focus on
the American context of science museums as potential hubs for two primary
reasons. First, there are approximately 850 million annual visits to museums
(including aquaria, science museums, and zoos) across the United States,
more than the attendance for all major league sporting events and theme
parks combined (483 million in 2011).1 These data illustrate the potential of
science museums to engage large swaths of visitors in climate change issues.
Second, science museums as venues of informal learning and institutions of
civil society can potentially engage the public in climate change issues. This
significance of museums for potential engagement is made even more important against the backdrop of recent declining mass media coverage of climate
change (Moser & Berzonsky, 2014) and their “debatable limits in terms of
potential conduits to attitudinal and behavioural change” (Boykoff, 2011, p.
2).
Our study assumes that public understandings of climate change are mediated through a range of social and discursive practices, including more accessible mainstream formats, such as movies, entertainment TV, computer
games, and websites (Curtis, 2014; Dudo et al., 2011; Gregory & Miller,
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Katz-Kimchi and Atkinson
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1998; Hart & Leiserowitz, 2009). Understanding how climate change is made
socially and culturally meaningful to particular audiences might pave the
way to better address the issue (Doyle, 2011). Still the majority of studies into
science literacy tend to focus on informational media, mainly print and
broadcast news, to the exclusion of other formats (Gregory & Miller, 1998;
Myers, 2003). In contrast to this solid body of literature on how informational
mass media frame and communicate climate change, only a few studies
examine climate change communication within the unique genres and contexts of informal learning sites and civil institutions such as museums and
national parks (for two exceptions, see Schweizer, Davis, & Thompson,
2013; Spoel, Goforth, Cheu, & Pearson, 2008). Museums as public institutions constitute a critical communicative link between citizens, scientists, and
governments (Bandelli & Konijn, 2013; Bell, 2008; Wilkinson, Bultitude, &
Dawson, 2011) and are potentially key sites of large-scale social change,
including that needed in the case of climate change adaptation and mitigation
(Brulle, 2010).
As our theoretical framework we draw on four perspectives: climate
change engagement and communication, exhibits as engagement and communication sites, ecological citizenship, and social cognitive theory. We then
present our critical discourse analysis of the exhibit’s items, supported by
notes taken during four research visits to the exhibit. Our analysis shows that
along with popularizing climate science and making it accessible to the general public, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Hot Pink Flamingos exhibit, in
line with the broader notion of ecological citizenship, prioritized individual,
marketplace-based climate change action over solutions requiring broad collective action, large-scale social change, or dissent politics. In other words,
responsibility for climate change was individualized and the political realm
was mostly reduced to lifestyle choices.
Theoretical Framework for Climate Engagement
and Communication in Science Museums
Engaging People In, and Communicating, Climate Science
Following Moser and Dilling (2011), we draw on two normative assumptions.
First, in democratic regimes, policy actions to mitigate climate change require
public support and engagement. This engagement can take three forms: cognitive (including knowledge and understanding), affective (including interest and
concern), and behavioral (including personal actions and participation in decision making about collective societal actions. Lorenzoni, Nicholson-Cole &
Whitmarsh, 2007). It can focus on a number of public realms, including
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professional, social, and civic-political spheres (Moser & Berzonsky, 2014).
Second, communication is essential to link scientists, politicians, and the public, and therefore it should play a role in enabling public engagement with climate change. We take popular climate change communication efforts to be part
of a broader field of popular science. Scholars identify two general factors challenging effective popular climate change communication. First, individuals
feel a high degree of spatial and temporal distance from the issue, making it
hard to comprehend (Hulme, 2009; Moser & Dilling, 2004; O’Neill &
Nicholson-Cole, 2009; Wibeck, 2014). Second, communication efforts often
incorporate excessive scientific information, relying on fear and catastrophe
frames, which can be enervating (Moser & Dilling, 2011). Recent public opinion studies indicate awareness of climate change as an issue has reached nearsaturation levels, although understanding of, and agreement with, the causes
show considerably less consensus (Moser, 2010), such that climate change
communication should no longer be about awareness or education but about
translating understanding and concern into practices and behaviors that help
mitigate climate change (Maibach, Roser-Renouf, & Leiserowitz, 2008).
Peterson and Carvalho’s (2012) typology of climate change communication strategies offers the possibility of climate change politics. Their typology
includes three components: persuasive social marketing campaigns encouraging individuals to change their behavior, like reducing home energy consumption; public dialog and involvement with government and institutional
actors to advocate for viable climate change policies; and agonistic politics,
which rejects consensus, instead promoting political and institutional change
by delegitimizing hegemonic discourses and placing difference and confrontation at the center of public life. We will further explore the spectrum of
political possibilities in our Discussion section.
Ecological Citizenship and Social Cognitive Theory
To understand the behavioral and attitudinal outcomes of better climate
change communication campaigns, we look to ecological citizenship and
social cognitive theory. In the context of accelerated globalization and growing environmental concerns, political scientists have explored theoretical
links between citizenship and the environment. One such theory, ecological
citizenship (Dobson, 2003), is a normative green political theory explaining
“an action-oriented notion of citizenship beyond the state” (Dobson, 2003, p.
21). Rooted in critiques of asymmetrical globalization that mostly benefits
the First World and often harms the rest of the world, ecological citizenship
is concerned with just distribution of resources across the globe, expanding
the scope of justice beyond the state.
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Katz-Kimchi and Atkinson
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Historically, liberal and civic republican models of citizenship framed citizens’ relationship with the state as contractual, distinguished between what
was public (and therefore rightly considered political) versus what was private, and emphasized citizen obligations within narrow spatial and temporal
bounds. Per Dobson (2003), the principal characteristics of ecological citizenship that extend beyond the remits of liberal and civic republican traditions are (a) the nonreciprocal, noncontractual nature of the obligations
associated with it, (b) its recognition that political space reflects both private
and public spheres, (c) its focus on virtue, and (d) the nonterritorial yet material nature of its sense of political space.
More specifically, ecological citizenship is explicitly noncontractual. Its
focus is not on what the state can provide citizens in exchange for acknowledging it as legitimate. Instead, its prime obligation is to ensure ecological
footprints are sustainable, and if not, then individuals are obligated to reduce
them. Unlike traditional citizenship models, ecological citizenship acknowledges the private sphere of the home is a crucial site of citizenship activity
and private acts can have public implications in the sense of ecological footprints. The practices of everyday living become important political sites.
They also reflect behaviors adopted with the public good in mind and
grounded in the virtues of care, compassion, and justice that usually emerge
in the private sphere of the home. Last, rather than defining membership
according to defined space or state territory, ecological citizenship focuses on
relationships between citizens and promotes membership in political communities regardless of whether they are coterminous with a nation-state.
To understand how climate change communication can convey these ecological citizenship norms and values, we turn to social cognitive theory.
Social cognitive theory posits individuals learn about appropriate social
norms, for example, those related to reducing one’s carbon footprint, either
directly through first-hand social interaction or indirectly through mass mediated messages (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1961). Individuals observe the
behaviors modeled by others, both direct and mediated, and assess the outcomes of these behaviors, whether models are rewarded or punished for their
actions (Bandura et al., 1961). It is widely applied in the context of mass
media and consumer behavior, and its influence on affective, cognitive, and
behavioral outcomes (Atkin, 1976; Bandura, 2001; Buijzen & Valkenburg,
2008; Cotte & Wood, 2004; Kinsky & Bichard, 2011; Ward, 1974). Social
cognitive theory has been used to explain the modeling of science- and environment-related behaviors via television programming, video games, and
public service announcements (Dudo, Cicchirillo, Atkinson, & Marx, 2014;
Long et al., 2010; Tanner, Duhe, Evans, & Condrasky, 2008). We extend its
application here and argue that messages communicated via contemporary
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museums incorporating climate change appeals might also be effective means
of learning about expected behaviors related to ecological citizenship.
In our analysis, we examine the ways in which the responsibilities, obligations, and virtues of ecological citizenship as well as the importance of the
domestic private sphere are articulated in the Hot Pink Flamingos exhibit
and, in so doing, serve to model socially desirable attitudes and behaviors in
keeping with the norms of ecological citizenship. First, we outline the ways
museums might serve as agents of public engagement with climate change
science.
Communicative and Political Potential of Museums
Modern museums are public institutions historically identified as sites for the classification and ordering of knowledge, for the education of people, and for the production of an ideology of progress (Hooper-Greenhill, 1992). With the emergence
of the modern environmental movement during the 1960s, these institutions
absorbed the conservation ethic and promoted it in their programs (Davis, 1996).
Barrett (2011) notes museums’ historical importance as public institutions
involved in the political process. She reworks Habermas’s (1989) notion of
the public sphere as a cultural public sphere and examines the relationship
between museums and the public in modern societies. In Habermas’s account,
the historical public sphere existing between the state and the private body of
people in France during the 18th century refers to the conduct of public discourse to contemplate matters of public and political importance in salons
and cafés, that is, to identify pressing problems, develop solutions, and create
sufficient political pressure to sway government to address the problems. Yet
Habermas’s work does not fully engage with space and visuality and therefore ignores public museums born at the same time as salons and cafés as an
institution of political importance.
Barrett argues art was important in communicating ideas, information, and
expectations about social and political life to the public during this time. In
addition, museums were a public space that functioned as a stage for public
discourse. Today, museums exist within new political and cultural contexts,
having significant agency both in reproducing contemporary cultural preoccupations and in modifying them (Barrett, 2011). They are arenas in which
various messages including political ones are displayed, conveyed, and converted into meaning by museum professionals and the audiences who view
and review them (Luke, 2002). They hold considerable promise as arenas for
generating greater public engagement on important issues such as climate
change (Bud, 1995; Heath, Lehn, & Osborne, 2005). Whether museums fulfill this promise or realize their political potential remains an open question.
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Case Study: Hot Pink Flamingos Exhibit
Our study answers Cameron’s 2012 call. It presents an exploratory case
study, examining how California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA) sought
to actively engage the public in climate change via an exhibit entitled Hot
Pink Flamingos: Stories of Hope in a Changing Sea (HPF; 2010-2011).2
MBA, a not-for-profit corporation opened in 1984 “to inspire conservation of
the oceans,”3 is one of the leading public institutions on the West Coast to
have undertaken the task of communicating and “staging” (Beck, 2010)
global risks of climate change following the 2007 IPCC report.4 It attracts
approximately two million visitors annually and has received grants from the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to support its climate
change communication program.
The HPF exhibit ran from March 2010 to September 2011, and it drew
about 2.2 million visitors during this period. The 7,000-square-feet, $3.5 million special exhibit was divided into six subgalleries conflating the exhibiting
styles of museums and aquaria in a creative manner. It featured live animal
aquaria exploring the different ways climate change has affected ocean animals such as coral reefs and Magellanic penguins. Alongside these were videos and interactive stations addressing how energy use from fossil fuels creates
carbon pollution and affects the oceans via ocean acidification and disappearing food sources. The exhibit also featured repurposed iconic posters like
those used to promote national wartime solidarity or mobilize the public for
social change. In their revised content, these posters highlighted the challenges of living sustainably in a changing world and encouraged visitors to
make a difference in their daily lives. The exhibit featured large areas, including the “Green kitchen” and “Hope-taking-root,” that modeled the kinds of
steps every individual should take in the context of climate change action.
Method
To explore how climate change was communicated to the public, a multimodal analysis (Machin & Mayr, 2012) of the 42 exhibit items was conducted.
“Items” were defined as aquaria (e.g., of sea creatures), posters, installations,
videos, computer stations, and their accompanying texts. We drew on three
main resources detailing the items: the MBA copy labels file, an exhibit summary listing the items and their photos (Randi Korn & Associates, 2011), and
research notes and photos taken during four visits to the exhibit.
Our analysis adheres to standard methods used in critical discourse analysis (CDA). CDA is an approach for critically analyzing discourse including texts, spoken language, films, visuals, and images (Machin & Mayr,
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2012) and as such has much more in common with conventional content
analyses of media messages rather than studies of media effects or visitors’
studies. Discourse is understood here as a particular outlook or cognitive
map used by members of society to understand reality and to act on it. It is
a semantic construction of certain aspects of reality that serves the interests
of particular historical and/or social contexts (van Leeuwen, 2008) and is
embedded in a variety of texts and visual representations. As a public body
of knowledge intertwined with material reality, social structures, and everyday practices, discourse is socially shaped and at the same time plays a
constitutive role in the workings of society (van Leeuwen, 2008). Critical
approaches to discourse analysis are rooted in Western Marxism and
Frankfurt School critical theories aimed at revealing concealed ideology
while describing and documenting common patterns in discourse (Machin
& Mayr, 2012). What unites these approaches is a shared interest in the
semiotic dimensions of power, injustice, and political-economic or cultural
change in society (Fairclough, Mulderring, & Wodak, 2011). Discourse
analysis has been used widely in studies of environmental issues, including
climate change (Cherry, Hopfe, MacGillivray, & Pidgeon, 2013; Davies,
2013; Gauthier, 2010; Jaspal, Nerlich, & Koteyko, 2013; Stamou,
Lefkaditou, Schizas, & Stamou, 2009; Weingart, Engels, & Pansegrau,
2000; Young, 2013). CDA reveals connections between language, power,
and ideology hidden from casual readers. While texts are potentially open
to multiple interpretations and explanations, in museum exhibits, exhibit
items are developed with an intended meaning and a preferred interpretation in mind designed to reach mass audiences (Hooper-Greenhill, 2000),
limiting the number of possible interpretations.
The two authors independently analyzed the 42 items in the exhibit, examining the ideas, framings, and norms by means of denotations, that is, showing particular events, people, or animals, and connotations, that is,
communicating abstract ideas. We paid attention to specific settings, the
salience of certain features in compositions, and the broader social context
(Machin & Mayr, 2012). When appropriate, we focused on specific verb or
word selections (e.g., carbon pollution) or role allocations (e.g., victim). We
aimed to identify major themes represented in the exhibit and the ways they
adhered to or deviated from the wider discourse on climate change and
approaches to mitigate and adapt to it. After independently analyzing the first
10 items, we compared notes to determine any major discrepancies. We continued analyzing the rest of the items. Overall, our separate findings were
highly similar although occasionally our different cultural backgrounds
entailed slightly different interpretations. Any differences were discussed and
resolved.
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Findings
The analysis yielded several themes that illuminated how popular forms of
climate change discourse can inform the general public. At a macro level,
these themes fall into two categories, having to do first with the explicit goals
of the exhibit and how they were achieved, and second, with the implicit
assumptions woven into the exhibit and how they endorse a narrow set of
values and presumed solutions. First, the selection, layout, and description of
each item in the exhibit reflect a particular perspective adopted by MBA. The
structure of the show, the choice of images, and the written materials indicate
a specific point of view about climate change communication, one that seeks
to make climate change information accessible, compelling, and mobilizing.
But as a result of these choices, the HPF show also conveyed a set of implicit
values and social norms. By focusing on lifestyle and consumer-oriented
solutions, the exhibit prioritizes individual, marketplace-based action over
solutions requiring collective and political action. We discuss these two broad
themes in the section below.
Making “Sense” of Climate Change
As part of MBA’s mission to inspire conservation of the oceans, its goal was
to present museumgoers with a compelling and interesting, but also informative, exhibit on the causes and consequences of climate change. Our discourse analysis indicates this mission was reflected in two ways: first, through
popularizing or mainstreaming climate change science, and second, by modeling normatively preferred social behaviors that might mitigate the effects of
climate change.
Popularizing Climate Change Science. Items in the HPF exhibit were presented
in a manner that allowed scientific content, for example, information about
increasing acidity of water and changing wildlife migration patterns, to be
conveyed in easily understood ways. In and of itself, this is not surprising,
given the public mission of the MBA and its focus on public education. What
is of note, however, is the way in which MBA made climate change science
accessible and relevant to a wide population.
First, the exhibits relied on images and popular culture references that
would likely resonate widely with visitors. Posters were exhibited throughout
the space and all of them were based on well-known poster art from various
historical eras. Many were based on American, Canadian, and British wartime campaigns carried out by governments to encourage its citizens to help
shore up domestic security and do their part to ensure wartime victory. Other
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posters drew on pop art or commercial images. For example, a poster inspired
by the work of Roy Lichtenstein, showing a thermometer inserted into the
Atlantic Ocean on the Earth’s surface, was used to depict rising ocean temperatures, while another draws on the iconic 1896 Toulouse-Lautrec bicycle
poster to promote the idea of climate change, stating in French “change pour
le climat, c’est la verité” (“climate change, it’s the truth”). By drawing on
widely circulated, sometimes commercial poster images and styles, the HPF
exhibit taps into the currency and meaning of well-established visual tropes.
Visitors likely already have these images (or similar ones) in their schema, so
processing new information becomes a relatively straightforward task
(DiMaggio, 1997).
Second, the exhibits often depicted scientific information in humorous,
irreverent ways (Yollin, 2010). The installation “Hope Electrified” highlights
alternative energy sources and promotes the conversion of cow manure into
electricity. The installation depicts a life-size cow wearing a gas mask to
avoid smelling its own flatulence, which is made audible to visitors thanks to
full sound effects. The plaque next to the cow is titled “Manure Happens” and
reads, “When life gives you cow pies, make electricity. . . . Using manure this
way is a win-win solution because less climate-changing methane enters the
atmosphere, and the farms make energy—cow pie power!”
Another installation, “Coral Graveyard,” takes an equally innovative
though more serious approach in its depiction of species affected by acidification of the coral reefs. Located just opposite the colorful coral reef aquarium, it identifies 10 species, including sea urchins and giant clams, at risk of
extinction due to the growing acidity of the oceans. Each at-risk species is
marked with a tiny headstone, as if it were a graveyard of coral reef animals.
Far less humorous than the cow depicted in the “Hope Electrified” installation, the “Coral Graveyard” installation is equally dramatic and cutting-edge
in its effort to appeal to audiences in a meaningful and manageable way rather
than relying only on statistics and reports.
The efforts by MBA to convey important climate change information
underscores research done by Lorenzoni et al. (2007), who have argued that
effective engagement with climate change issues must incorporate a cognitive component (in addition to affective and behavioral components) that
involves knowledge and understanding. The HPF exhibit brings the issue of
climate change to a wide audience, not only to educate them but potentially
also to motivate them. As Moser (2010) has stated, effective climate change
communication must speak to the ways in which lay publics attend to and
process scientific information and incorporate it into their decision-making
processes. The exhibit also speaks to the need to broaden our conceptualizing
of science communication to include popular forms (Myers, 2003).
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Social Modeling and Social Norms. One important way HPF engages the public
is by focusing on “typical” Americans and “typical” American lifestyles. The
exhibit provides numerous examples of everyday behavioral changes people
can make to help mitigate the impact of climate change within social marketing framework (Peterson & Carvalho, 2012). For example, a segment titled
“Faith and Action” describes steps being taken by five religious organizations
to help combat climate change. The segment describes how groups like the
San Francisco Zen Center in California and the Bridgeview Islamic Center in
Illinois are opting for solar power to minimize their carbon footprint. These
examples are presented as environmentally friendly behaviors museumgoers
could easily adopt in their own lives.
Perhaps no segment of the exhibit does this more effectively than the
“Hero at Home” installation. In this segment, museumgoers are offered a
cornucopia of potential behavior changes, such as recycling, eating less meat,
and using compact fluorescent (CF) light bulbs, all of which are presented as
easily adopted and incorporated into typical daily lives. The installation
describes the “simple choices” you can make and advises, “Making small
changes at home can add up to big changes in the world.” Many of these proenvironmental behaviors, such as starting a compost pile, buying energyefficient light bulbs, and adjusting the thermostat, are framed not only as easy
to make but also as ways to save money, and that “small choices every day
really add up—and save money too.”
The segment is, in effect, modeling normatively preferred behaviors
(Bandura, 2001) that are seen as helpful in the battle to mitigate climate
change. These pro-environmental actions are reinforced via the clearly stated
social and economic rewards that result from opting for the socially correct
or responsible behavior. This echoes claims made by Dobson (2003) about
ecological citizenship and the idea that meaningful, engaged citizenship as it
relates to the environment is a complex system of responsibilities.
Furthermore, the focal pro-environmental behaviors take place primarily in
the private realm. This approach hews closely to the claims made by Dobson
that ecological citizenship makes no distinction between the public and the
private and that many private choices and domestic issues are rightly subjects
of political concern.
The exhibit also was effective at circumscribing a clear set of social norms,
a particular set of values and attitudes museumgoers ought to ascribe to and
emulate. For example, the Emotional Climate Poll installation asks audiences
to indicate how they feel about the environment and climate change. On a
computer screen, visitors saw six words (“worried,” “hopeful,” “unsure,”
“discouraged,” “curious,” “unconcerned”) inspired by the Six Americas
research findings (Maibach, Roser-Renouf, & Leiserowitz, 2009) and were
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asked to choose which of these words best described their feelings. When
they touched one of the words, the computer showed the total visitor data
percentages for each of the words.
By presenting museumgoers with a report indicating how many other people share the same feeling, it presents a feedback loop and allows visitors to
calibrate their own feelings against a larger social cohort. In a sense it normalizes their feelings by suggesting audience members are not isolated or
acting alone, but rather they are members of a social group, making their own
thoughts and feelings mainstream and acceptable. Past studies on pro-environmental behavior indicate social norms and beliefs that other like-minded
people are being environmentally friendly are powerful moderators in the
context of, for example, reusing hotel bathroom towels or adopting energy
efficient habits (Schultz, Nolan, Cialdini, Goldstein, & Griskevicius, 2007).
The exhibit was able to harness the power of social norms by offering a multitude of examples of green behaviors that typical, everyday Americans —
rather than radical environmentalists—are making.
Making “Cents” of Climate Change
These practical decisions about how to structure the exhibit belied an implicit
set of values that underscore and reinforce a particular set of normative assumptions regarding climate change and how to resolve it. These values emphasize
a point of view that locates climate change solutions in the marketplace and
highlights alternative or decreased consumption as the means of effecting
social change. The exhibit has the effect of prioritizing informal consumer
behavior at the expense of more formal collective action. Consequentially, the
emphasis on marketplace-based lifestyle choices ends up framing climate
change solutions in a highly privatized, individualized, and gendered manner.
The focus on individual, consumer-oriented solutions raises a problematic tension between, on the one hand, making climate change resonate with individuals and motivating them to act, while on the other hand, reinforcing the status
quo and the values and lifestyles exacerbating the ecological crisis. It represents a contradiction or double bind (Johnston & Swanson, 2003) wherein the
“solution” is also part of the “problem.” Although the exhibit might be advocating for “better,” more sustainable consumption, it does so by reinforcing a
“weak ecological modernization” that does little to challenge Western consumerist lifestyles and situates “environmental protection as compatible with unbridled economic growth and the associated growth in high-consumption
lifestyles” (Kurz, Augoustinos, & Crabb, 2010, p. 605).
Throughout the exhibit, consumer choices are highlighted not only as the
cause of climate change but also as the solution to the environmental crisis.
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Katz-Kimchi and Atkinson
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In the context of causes of climate change, the exhibit holds in its crosshairs
the quotidian habits and choices made by typical Americans. For example,
the poster “Cheeseburger,” modeled on the cartoon-inspired poster by
American artist Roy Lichtenstein, shows a woman with a cheeseburger in one
hand while the other hand holds her head in despair. The caption reads, “Is
my cheeseburger causing global warming?” The rhetorical question invites
museumgoers to ask (and presumably to answer in the affirmative) whether
any of their own daily lifestyle choices are contributing to climate change.
This poster’s image and text draw a vivid line between climate change on the
one hand and consumption on the other. It identifies a prototypical American
food item, the cheeseburger, and suggests it is the cause of climate change. In
so doing, Americans’ mainstream consumption choices (in this case, related
to food) are made directly responsible for climate change.
Not only does the HPF exhibit situate the dominant causes of climate
change in the domain of private consumption, the solutions to the environmental crisis are also to be found in alternative or decreased consumption,
particularly the context of household consumption and domestic provisioning
of items like food. In the exhibit section called “Hero at Home,” audiences
are presented with numerous household objects and modes of consumption
said to exacerbate climate change. The installation encourages people to
reevaluate their household appliances and identify those that are wasting
electricity. It invites audience members to be “watt-busters” and evaluate
power usage in their kitchens, for example, by asking, “How much energy is
that ancient fridge really using?” Individuals are also encouraged to “Stab
your energy vampires through the heart! Put your energy hogs on a diet!”
One exhibit poster, titled “Food Makes a Difference,” brings home the
point that objects of consumption, particularly food, are ammunition in the
fight against climate change. The poster includes a picnic basket overflowing
with fruits and vegetables. It is modeled on a 1918 American World War I
poster by John E. Sheridan, with the original copy (“Food is Ammunition,
Don’t waste it”) repurposed to say “Food Makes a Difference.” The original
poster is an example of World War I “propaganda” and was an effort to
encourage housewives, those “fighting” on the domestic home front, to do
their part as “Mrs. Consumer” to win the war at home. In the exhibit the message is the same: Consumers are admonished to fulfill their obligations as
good, frugal consumers. Rather than opting for energy-intensive meat, the
poster encourages consumers to choose less resource-intensive fruits and
vegetables. It is important to note the message here is not to stop consuming
but to consume smartly and conscientiously.
Although varied, each of these solutions is focused on the sphere of consumption. They are emblematic of what Luke (2008) might call the “politics
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of true convenience,” and by focusing on consumption within established
liberal, free-market capitalism, they do little to challenge the root causes of
unsustainable development and its concomitant climate crisis. Rather, they
serve to gloss over the real challenges and difficult choices that come with
mitigation of and adaptation to climate change and instead serve to “sustain
the true convenience of national prosperity amidst an environment facing too
many inconvenient truths regarding the inequitable and irrational use of
energy, resources, and information in a new global economy” (Luke 2008, p.
1813). Far from challenging museumgoers to make difficult, fundamental
changes to their way of life, the exhibit asks them to make easy tweaks to
their current lifestyles. Rather than consume less, the exhibit asks audiences
to consume differently.
As a consequence of focusing on these marketplace-based modes of
change, the exhibit has the effect of emphasizing particular values and orientations that might ultimately undermine the success of any efforts focused on
consumer behavior. Specifically, the way the exhibit focuses on consumption
and the forms of consumption it highlights results in a privatized, individualized, and gendered form of action.
With only one exception, the exhibit promotes behavior change that can
be made privately (i.e., in the domestic, household sphere) and that seeks to
effect change outside the political realm of collective action or public debate.
The exhibit’s suggestions—eating less meat, using energy-efficient appliances, buying seasonal produce—are all focused on actions done alone (or
within the nuclear family) and revolve around actions carried out in the private, domestic sphere. This focus on locating climate solutions in the private
sphere of consumption is a counterpoint to analyses of U.S. news broadcasts
from 2005 to 2011 that find solutions to climate change tend to focus on
potential government actions, rather than individual behavior changes (Hart
& Feldman, 2014). These individual consumer-based actions require no
engagement with the public sphere, in the Habermasian sense, in which private individuals might engage in rational-critical debate with other individuals or government authorities within the confines of the museum (Barrett,
2011). Instead, these consumer-based attempts at social change are emblematic of Habermas’s critique of the contemporary public sphere, in which consumer culture, advertising, and public relations represent pernicious forces
and serve to demobilize the public sphere by blurring the lines between public and private and realigning public action to the private domain.
One installation in the exhibit stands out as an exception to this pattern. In
a corner of the exhibit hall, an interactive station called Speak up Senator
E-card invited audiences to contact their senators and urge them to act. The
exhibit sates, “Our leaders in Washington have the power to create legislation
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Katz-Kimchi and Atkinson
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to help solve the climate crisis. In fact, we need governments to make really
big changes—like giving us the choice of renewable energy.” It is interesting
to note that while government is cited as a means of effecting change, it ultimately comes down to legislation allowing individuals to exercise their consumer autonomy, such as choosing renewable energy. It should also be noted
that this station was located at the very end of the exhibit, and according to a
summative evaluation of museum visitors (Randi Korn & Associates, 2011),
was one of the least visited interactive components. Presented almost as an
afterthought, it reinforces the overall focus of the exhibit on the ways in
which citizens, acting as private individuals in the marketplace, can effect
change rather than as public actors engaging in collective action.
Not only does climate change science presented in this way favor the private citizen over the public actor, it does so in a way that individualizes
responsibility and puts the onus for change at the individual level rather than
the institutional or governmental level. By highlighting the numerous ways
individual consumers can mitigate the effects of climate change—such as by
carpooling—and staying silent on the ways industry and government can
contribute to solutions, it takes attention away from those systemic barriers to
climate change mitigations efforts. Keeping with the example of environmentally friendly transportation, the exhibit identifies ways audience members can contribute, such as riding a bicycle to work, rather than on large-scale
institutional changes requiring the collective backing of various institutional
and governmental actors to be realized. As Luke points out in his critique of
consumption-based climate change solutions, these efforts offer little by way
of radical transformation and fail to challenge the underlying “existing networks of corporate organization and expert technocracy” (Luke, 2008, p.
1811). Rather than holding corporations to task or inciting government agencies to act, this framing of climate change information locates the obligation
squarely on the shoulders of individuals.
The exhibit portrays solutions to the climate change crisis as ones that can
be readily incorporated into daily life without an excessive amount of sacrifice. By this we mean the consumption-based solutions certainly entail a
degree of effort and compromise, but they are not too onerous. For example,
audiences are encouraged to buy produce in season, so tomatoes in summer
rather than in winter, or reduce their meat consumption by introducing vegetarian meals once a week. The majority of suggested lifestyle changes are
neither highly restrictive nor do they threaten the overall comfort of the typical American lifestyle. Rather than relying on a fear appeal, which past
research suggests is ineffective (O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009), the
exhibit paints a more positive, easy picture of pro-environmental behavior.
But unlike the more effortful forms of environmental politics, like contacting
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elected officials or mobilizing the public to support policy changes, these
private forms of environmental action are weak and have only minimal
impacts (Stern, 2000).
Last, the effect of relegating many of these climate change solutions to the
domestic sphere implicitly places the burden for carrying them out on the
shoulders of women. One exhibit poster, called “Change,” makes this
assumption very clear. The poster is based on a 1917 Canadian World War I
poster by Joseph Ernest Sampson. It depicts a young girl looking up plaintively, as if pleading with the viewer, and the copy reads, “Oh please do!
Daddy, Buy me a victory bond.” In the HPF version, the copy has been
revised to say, “Oh please do! Mommy, Save my future.” By changing the
gender of the parent, the mother is implicitly identified as the primary player,
especially in the context of household or child-related choices.
The gendering of these consumer-oriented climate change solutions is
apparent elsewhere. Museumgoers learn about the various ways they can
mitigate their ecological footprint, for example, by opting for reusable shopping bags or shopping at farmers’ markets. These are actions that fall under
domestic provisioning, for which women tend to be responsible as the chief
“household purchasing agent” (Cook, 1995), resulting in a gendered division
of household labor that leaves women responsible for the majority of household purchases (including food, cleaning products, clothes, etc.), which are
the focus of many of the alternative consumption suggestions in the HPF
exhibit.
By emphasizing consumption choices dominant in the domestic sphere,
the exhibit also serves to raise the bar on household expectations for women.
As Sandilands (1993) has argued, environmentally friendly consumption
tends to promote earth-friendly products or practices that mean more labor
for women. For example, the exhibit advises museumgoers to forsake the
dryer and opt for the outdoors instead: “Putting it on the line. Hanging laundry out to dry is free, and carbon-free—it gets me outside too!” This nugget
of advice glosses over the extra labor involved in line drying clothes, labor
that tends to fall to women and adds what has been called a green “third shift”
to the responsibilities of women (Atkinson, 2014; Sandilands, 1993).
Discussion
By design, the HPF exhibit seeks to engage with audiences in a popular,
approachable manner. It made the issue of climate change relevant to lay
publics and brought the discussion out of the realm of policy issues and scientific discourse and into more popular formats. In so doing, it sought to
overcome many of the challenges of climate change communication, namely,
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Katz-Kimchi and Atkinson
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by making invisible causes visible, distant consequences real, and complex
environmental scenarios understandable (Moser, 2010). It also seems to
adopt, at least in part, the perspective emphasized by ecological citizenship
(Dobson, 2003). That is, the exhibit emphasizes the responsibilities and obligations rather than rights of individuals to help mitigate climate change. It
also focuses on the private sphere as a legitimate domain of political action.
In particular, a person’s ecological footprint, based largely on their consumption choices, represents the means through which individuals ought to enact
their ecological citizenship and focus on the responsibilities they have to
others.
While this consumerist approach is narrow and unidimensional, it does
have its merits. Specifically, it meets audiences where they are, makes climate change personally relevant, and offers solutions that are doable and
within reach for many consumers. Overall, pointing to these specific consumerist solutions in the exhibit, along with the notion of ecological citizenship, is in keeping with persuasive social marketing campaigns that encourage
individuals to change their behavior (Peterson & Carvalho, 2012) while
insisting on the efficacy of individual political agency (Sáiz, 2005). Overall,
our findings are in line with a common theme in analyses of public communication campaigns (see Rice & Atkin, 2013).
And yet, by adopting this perspective, the exhibit introduces a problematic
wherein a particular set of norms is promoted, with the effect of emphasizing
certain values and behaviors that endorse consumption as the site of ecological citizenship and favor a privatized, individualized, and gendered picture of
climate change solutions. This framing of the exhibit presents a contradiction
or tension. The concern is not that consumption is seen as an important avenue for climate change mitigation, but that it is presented as the only (or at
least most viable) means of effecting change. The exhibit’s focus on consumer-based options is at the expense of including ideas that challenge the
system and promote political, collective action, and agonistic or dissent politics (Peterson & Carvalho, 2012). This approach has been criticized elsewhere for constructing ecological solutions as technical or marketplace ones
rather than issues requiring extensive reform of political, economic, or social
institutions (Kurz et al., 2010). By promoting what is often called “weak” or
economistic ecological reform, the status quo is maintained. Rather than relying on strong interventions and radical shifts in lifestyle, consumer-based
environmental change is seen as compatible with, rather than antagonistic to,
continuing economic growth and lifestyles of consumption (Kurz et al.,
2010).
However, to the extent climate change is caused by humans, institutions,
industries, commercial principles, and infrastructures, it would seem to
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require responses beyond the reach of individual actions to involve political
leaders, public policy experts, and other civil society actors (Leiserowitz,
Maibach, Roser-Renouf, & Smith, 2011). Focusing on the consumer removes
these civic players from the equation and exacerbates what Giddens (2009)
has criticized as a lack of politics of climate change. “In other words, we do
not have a developed analysis of the political innovations that have to be
made if our aspirations to limit global warming are to become real” (Giddens,
2009, p. 4). What is needed according to Giddens is for the state to act as a
facilitator, an enabler to help stimulate and support the diversity of groups in
society that will drive policy onwards.
A related consequence of the focus on individual consumption, rather
than civic and political action to mitigate climate change, is the positioning of the individual subject as a consumer rather than a citizen. If the goal
of exhibits like HPF is to initiate a conversation (Barrett, 2011) about climate change and how to resolve it, then we must ask what the consequences are when we locate agency and influence in the individual qua
consumer, not citizen. Whereas citizens are actively engaged in shaping
society, consumers “simply choose between the products on display”
(Lewis, Inthorn, & Wahl-Jorgensen, 2005, p. 6). This approach renders
individuals passive rather than active actors in climate change politics.
This undermines what some see as a viable means for enacting change. As
Ockwell, Whitmarsh, and O’Neill (2009) have argued, instead of choosing
between personal behavioral change that is not sufficient or regulation that
governments are reluctant to enact, climate change communication ought
to create public engagement for the purpose of creating citizen “demand”
for environmental regulation, using a bottom-up approach to facilitate a
top-down solution. This approach, however, requires individuals to act in
ways that extend beyond their roles as consumers. Overall, popular climate communication efforts have the potential to reconstitute climate
change for large numbers of the public (Peterson & Carvalho, 2012). They
must, however, be supported by policy, economic, and infrastructures
changes (Moser & Dilling, 2011).
For museums to fulfill their political promise and to play a more expansive
and explicit role in brokering social futures for communities confronted by
climate change (Cameron & Deslandes, 2011), future exhibits on the topic
might need to stress civic elements like joining an environmental nongovernmental organization, contacting and pressuring policy makers at the local and
national levels, encouraging public deliberation on policy proposals through
the provision, to citizens, of a range of experts and as much information as
they need to make a decision, promoting policy measures at the community
level, and so on.
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Katz-Kimchi and Atkinson
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Future studies could add insights into how museums and science centers can successfully engage lay audiences with climate change. One possible avenue would be interviews with curators to understand their
curatorial choices. By examining their individual motives and goals with
respect to climate change, we might gain better insight into why a specific
discourse is used, how individual exhibit items are selected and placed in
the museum space, and what decisions and tradeoffs went in to choices
about framing the issue of climate change. Similarly, analyzing audience
response to the exhibit based on theories from visitors’ studies might also
add a relevant dimension to the interpretation. How do audiences accept or
challenge the dominant framing of climate change in science centers and
museums?
In sum, the findings outlined here offer a preliminary analysis of the role
of science centers and museums in framing and communicating information
about climate change. Based on critical discourse analysis of the exhibit
items, the findings indicate public institutions like the Monterrey Bay
Aquarium bring a well-defined normative frame to the issue of climate
change solutions. Less clear are the long-term implications of this framing or
the degree to which these exhibits help public institutions fulfill their political
and civic promise.
Authors’ Note
Both authors contributed equally to the article. We would like to thank Ronald E. Rice
and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an early draft.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. See http://www.aam-us.org/about-museums/museum-facts. There are no separate data related to visits to science museums and science centers. According to
the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), every year 175 million people
visit AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums (https://www.aza.org/).
2.The HPF exhibit is not the only one to have engaged issues of climate change
and the environment. Similar exhibit foci were seen at science centers and museums in other parts of the United States, including Jellies Invasion: Oceans out
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of Balance at the national aquarium in Baltimore, and Feeling the Heat: The
Climate Challenge, at the Birch Aquarium in San Diego, as well as in Europe,
for example, Strange Weather at the Science Gallery in Dublin.
3. See https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/about
4. The different parts of the report are available on the IPCC website: http://www.
ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml
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Author Biographies
Merav Katz-Kimchi (PhD, Bar Ilan University, Israel) is a lecturer at the Department
of Communication in Ben Gurion University and the Porter School of Environmental
Studies in Tel Aviv University. She has published in the fields of history of communication, science communication, and environmental communication.
Lucy Atkinson (PhD, University of Wisconsin–Madison) is an assistant professor in
the Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of
Texas at Austin. Her research looks at the role environmental communication, particularly advertising, plays in connecting individuals’ political and consumer
orientations.
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