Supporting Activism in Latin America: The Role of Science Communication, Science Journalism, and NGOs in Socio-environmental Conflicts

ABSTRACT

This exploratory paper addresses the relationship of science journalism, science communication, environmental activism, and social movements. It draws on data from Latin America, exploring how journalists and activists use science communication as a tool for telling stories about environmental conflicts that frequently turn violent (more than 1600 land and environmental activists lost their lives between 2002 and 2020 in Latin America, more than three times that of all other regions of the world combined). The main goal of the paper is to understand how scientific storytelling by NGOs helps them present their points of view for journalists and to influence public opinion. Our data is drawn from the formal reports of four NGOs and from semi-structured interviews with representatives from each NGO’s staff about their use of science communication. Our analysis suggests that Latin American NGOs use science communication tools such as scientific storytelling and scientific explanation to support journalists and to communicate with broad publics about complex phenomena such as socio-environmental conflicts, contributing to efforts to reduce the alarming amount of violence in the region.

KEYWORDS:

• Latin America
• science communication
• environmental activism
• socio-environmental conflicts
• NGOs
• public communication of science and technology‌

Acknowledgements

We thank the representatives we interviewed from the NGOs discussed in the paper. To protect their identity, we are not identifying them further. DLO thanks the Department of Communication at Cornell University for hosting him as a visiting researcher.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Because of our focus on institutions rather than individuals, the Cornell University Institutional Review Board for Human Participant Research deemed our research exempt from review.

2 https://www.globalwitness.org/.

3 Pastoral Commission of Land, in free translation; https://www.cptnacional.org.br/

4 Editorial Board, in free translation; https://consejoderedaccion.org/.

5 Mexican Center for Environmental Law, in free translation; https://www.cemda.org.mx/.

6 CPT defines a massacre as when three or more people are killed for the same reason, at the same moment, in the same place.

7 “The term ‘Afghanistanism’stems from an earlier, less-connected world, when an editor” (around 1948) told his colleagues that “ … many editorial writers can't hit a short range target … You can pontificate about the situation in Afghanistan in perfect safety. You have no fanatic Afghans among your readers.” Hungerford and Lemert (1973)