Maxwell Boykoff: Engaged Scientists: Academic Climate Advocacy and Activism in 2021

Is academic climate advocacy to be celebrated or derided? There are various flavours of climate advocacy and activism among academic researchers. Some facilitate engagement about their research; others abstain under pressure from their scientific peer communities not to over-reach beyond their research specialty. A literature review suggests there are three advocacy approaches: avoidance of all advocacy (Type 0), advocacy for (scientific) evidence (Type I), and advocacy for policy outcomes (Type II). These represent three distinct nodes across a spectrum of chosen engagements. There is dynamism in these flavours of engagement across issues and over time, along with a range from low- to high-stakes situations, sometimes for the same academic researcher. There are differences in both the frequency and the efficacy of advocacy. I link this to research from my book (Boykoff 2019).

• Boykoff, M. (2019). Creative (Climate) Communications. Cambridge University Press.
• Boykoff, M. andOonk, D. (2018) Evaluating the perils and promises of academic climate advocacy Climatic Change 10.1007/s10584-018-2339-3
• Kotcher, J. E., Myers, T. A., Vraga, E. K., et al.(2017). Does engagement in advocacy hurt the credibility of scientists? Results from a randomized national survey experiment. Environmental Communication, 11(3), pp. 415-429.
• Sparkman, G. andAttari, S.Z., (2020). Credibility, communication, and climate change: How lifestyle inconsistency and do-gooder derogation impact decarbonization advocacy. Energy Research & Social Science, 59, 1-7.