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Panelists: HARNESSING COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE COMMUNICATION

April 30 2012

The panelists participating in the discussion on Harnessing Collective Intelligence for Climate Change are ready. The discussions, scheduled to take place live on May 1, 2012 at 10 am EST, will be broadcast via a livestream link. If you are unable to attend in person, head on over to our live stream page to follow the discussion. The panel, listed below, will take questions from a global audience via Twitter. Send in your comments and questions using the #c4climate hash tag.

After the panel discussions, all panelist research papers and presentations will be uploaded to our Connect4Climate Facebook discussion group for your review and additional commentary. Make sure to join the group, review photos, download and read panelist's materials as a resource to further your discussions.

OPENING REMARKS:

Lucia Grenna
C4C Program Manager, World Bank

Lucia Grenna heads the Communication for Climate Change unit within the World Bank Operational Communications division of External Affairs and is the creator of Connect4Climate. She was the task manager for  the First World Congress on Communication for Development in 2006 that established a vibrant network of decision makers, academics, community organisers and communication professionals. Prior to joining the World Bank, she worked as a journalist in the print and electronic media.

MODERATOR:

Rick Rockwell
Director of the International Media Program,
School of Communication, American University

Rick Rockwell is the co-author of the award-winning book, “Media Power in Central America.” He is the executive producer and host of LinkTV’s weekly radio podcast “Latin Pulse.”  He has worked as a radio and television producer for ABC News, a freelance reporter/producer for the PBS “NewsHour,” and a senior producer for Discovery Communications. Early in his journalism career he won various awards for his environmental reporting, including his award-winning investigative documentary about contaminated drinking water in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.  His articles have appeared in “Newsday,” “The Chicago Tribune,” “The Miami Herald,” “The Baltimore Sun,” and various other publications.
 
Rick is currently the Director of the International Media Program at American University’s School of Communication and also serves as the interim director of the school’s journalism program.

Jagadish Thaker
Graduate Student,
GMU Center for Climate Change Communication

JT’s research focuses on approaches to communicating climate change that foster positive public engagement. His primary research interests are in the human dimensions of adaptive capacity, media content analysis, health communication, and strategic communication campaigns. His dissertation investigates the role of collective efficacy—people’s perceptions of their group’s collective abilities—in enhancing the Indian community’s adaptive capacity to climate change impacts.

He is also working with Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz on the first national sample survey of Indians’ beliefs, attitudes to climate change and other sustainability issues. JT has served as a Graduate Research Assistant on a National Science Foundation grant examining American broadcast meteorologists’ best practices to communicate climate science. He holds a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Hyderabad.

Arno Scharl
Professor of New Media Technology
and Vice President, MODUL University Vienna,
webLyzard Technology

Arno Scharl’s current research interests focus on the integration of semantic and geospatial Web technology, Web mining and media monitoring, virtual communities and environmental online communication.

Prior to his current appointment, he held professorships at the University of Western Australia and Graz University of Technology, was a Key Researcher at the Austrian Competence Center for Knowledge Management, and a Visiting Fellow at Curtin University of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley.

He has edited books on Environmental Online Communication and The Geospatial Web (http://www.ecoresearch.net/springer; www.geospatialweb.com), founded the ECOresearch Network (http://www.ecoresearch.net) and served as co-chair of the 20th International Conference on Informatics for Environmental Protection. He completed his doctoral research and habilitation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Matthew C. Nisbet
Associate Professor in the School of Communication at American University, Washington, D.C.
Writer of the Age of Engagement blog at Big Think.

Matthew Nisbet directs the Climate Shift Project at American University - an initiative producing interdisciplinary research and independent media examining the climate change and energy debates. Climate Shift’s network of social scientists, scholars and professionals train students, researchers and leaders, and convene forums and events that engage the Washington, D.C. community.

He is also a social scientist who studies strategic communication in policy-making and public affairs, focusing on energy and climate change. He is the author of more than 35 journal articles and book chapters and serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Press/Politics and Science Communication.  A 2011 editorial at the journal Nature recommended Nisbet’s research as “essential reading for anyone with a passing interest in the climate change debate.”

Robert Laubacher
Acting Executive Director, Center for Collective Intelligence, MIT

Robert Laubacher’s current research program examines how the Internet is enabling new ways of organizing and undertaking work.

He has published in academic journals and in venues such as the Harvard Business Review, the Sloan Management Review, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He co-edited Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century (MIT Press, 2003), a volume of papers based on a multi-year research project at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Rob holds an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and earned a Masters degree and completed doctoral coursework in modern history at Harvard. He also served as executive producer of two independent feature films, Home Before Dark (1996) and American Wake (2004). Both films are available on Netflix.

Idah Z. Pswarayi-Riddihough
Sector Manager for Environment and Natural Resource Management,
Africa Region, World Bank

Ms. Idah Z. Pswarayi-Riddihough is currently the Sector Manager for Environment and Natural Resources Management within the Africa Region at the World Bank.

A Zimbabwean national, she has been with the World Bank for over 15 years, and has worked on sustainable development issues spanning across South Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, East Asia and the Pacific, and now Sub-Saharan Africa.

She holds a Ph.D. in NRM/Forestry from Oxford University, and has since accumulated diverse expertise on natural resources, agriculture, environment, and water issues in the developing world. The Environment and Natural Resources Management Sector for Africa handles the World Bank’s climate change agenda for the region.