Abstract

Public health communication strategies, including entertainment-education, can effectively change human behavior, improving health outcomes from climate change. Tools from social psychology, including social modeling and building self and collective efficacy, can help us to create a new model for current, culturally-relevant stories that can help communities adapt to climate change. As an example we will share key learnings from Rhythm and Glue, an applied television prototype, based on research from an NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning submission. Best practices for climate communication include adaptations of entertainment-education techniques for culturally grounded representations of climate engagement positive outliers. As science communication progresses in adapting social psychology and sociology practices for climate communication, we would like to share how this prototype applies the methods and suggests some new directions that further adapt the practices to account for limited resources and media fragmentation challenges. While this work focuses on climate, it has broad implications for future science communication practices.