What we know about debunking misinformation
Misinformation is everywhere. Never before have people had access to such a huge amount of incorrect information. Of course misinformation can make people make bad decisions and it can tarnish the reputations of people and organisations that have done nothing wrong....
Advanced audience segmentation – how to appeal to socially excluded people
PR students around the world are urged to target their communications approach to different audiences. This is often the first topic of PR101. To help them do this students are routinely told to think about their audience's education levels, age, gender, income levels...
Book Review: Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda
Do not rush out and buy this book. At least not just yet. This resource is part report and part book and was released in hardcover form just two weeks ago. It aims to fix a common but important problem. As a wise man once said to me "There are usually only two reasons...
Fight climate change misinformation with inoculation theory
The only way to fight climate change is by countering misinformation. I say that because while the fact that our climate is changing and that humans are the primary cause for this change is known, public opinion about these facts is not only divided - its highly...
Some definitions for fake news and other types of misinformation
Everyone seems to be talking about fake news with little agreement about what it is and how it is different from other types of misinformation. In fact many people are throwing around the term to mean different things, particularly in the fallout from the recent...
Opinion: Trump election symbolises post truth politics
Some of you might know that I recently went to America, partly for a holiday and partly to work on the recent election campaign. I said during this trip that America is like our bigger brother. A brilliant brother. A brother that put people on the moon, that ended...
Fear appeals won’t solve our big climate change communication problem
It is the biggest problem the world faces right now - how to respond to climate change. Overwhelming evidence shows that our climate is changing and that humans are causing it. But underlying this problem is the fact that many humans simply deny these facts. This puts...
Good news about front footing your bad news
"You'd better get onto the front foot - if you can." Fifteen years ago, as a young political staffer I wasn't sure exactly what this phrase meant - apart from the cricketing reference. If you haven't yet discovered the joys of cricket, getting on the front foot is a...
Opinion: How Malcolm Roberts defeated Brian Cox on Q&A
Celebrity physicist and science communicator Brian Cox recently found himself on a political talk show panel debating climate science with Malcolm Roberts, a Senator-elect from the right-wing One Nation party. And he lost. He lost because he didn't fully use the...
Mass reporting can shut down your opponents on Facebook
Don't like something on Facebook? You can shut down the page. That unfair option is apparently now open to anyone with a large Facebook following. This week a pro-science Facebook page with more than 70,000 followers was shut down because a mass complaint was...
Multiscreening opens you up to persuasion, but does it lead to behaviour change?
Remember when watching just one screen was enough? In 2014 more than fifty per cent of Australians aged between 18 and 49 used the internet while watching TV. This is up from just 36 per cent in 2011 (Roy Morgan, 2014). A new meta-analysis analysed 49 studies to find...
Can we predict who might become an active anti-vaxxer?
What causes someone to suddenly embrace conspiracy theories? A new study suggests that people who express distrust in governments on social media are much more likely to embrace irrational beliefs such as anti-vaccination attitudes. Mitra, Counts, & Pennebaker...