4 - Public scares: changing the issue culture

Summary

The communication of urgency about climate change is a central theme of many chapters in this book. But the selling of a social problem is not done in a vacuum and ultimately depends on wider social phenomena such as issue cultures, bridging metaphors, and cultural whirlwinds. For that matter, simple luck in the timing of fortuitous events can be critical. Success cannot be guaranteed for any issue to get on the radar screen of public attention, but these wider social processes provide a landscape for artful activity that can improve the chances of gaining public and media attention.

Issue cultures

Issue cultures can be defined as cognate sets of social problems that become a commanding concern in society. Perhaps the clearest example is anything to do with the security in the United States after the 9/11 terror attacks. Another issue culture has built around the fear of emerging diseases, ranging from Ebola and mad-cow disease though West Nile, SARS, and maybe more recently avian flu. Scientific findings or real-world events related to these problems are immediately selected for coverage by the media and often occasion attention from spokespersons in different public arenas. Social problems that can be linked to and coalesce with extant issue cultures are thus far more likely to attract sustained media and other coverage than problems that are “outliers.”