Richard North, of the EU Referendum, the only player in the map below to have three balls, points out that Profero has made an “update” on their website. But there’s no update to the hilariously flawed networking map they produced, at least that I can find.
A small group of dedicated people coming from a diverse range of positions and perspectives but working together as a loose federation held together by shared values and beliefs succeeded in accomplishing the most impressive PR coup of the 21st century.
“…by significantly influencing public perception of anthropogenic global warming by single-mindedly applying concerted and consistent pressure at critical junctures in the media ecology here in the UK and abroad.”
Update on the Oxfam online research project into climate change related conversation
Who we are & what we were commissioned by Oxfam to do
We are Unsimplify, a stand-alone company operating under the Profero umbrella, we’ve been working with Oxfam for a number of months on a project to assist them in helping to make sense of how the growth of online peer-to-peer news generation has and could in the future impact their campaigning activities.
We were commissioned by Oxfam to do this because they were looking for an approach that goes deeper than just monitoring and mapping online conversations – although this does form a part of what we do.
What we set out to do was to help Oxfam’s campaigns team make sense of key online conversations and news generators around climate change and international development issues and their dynamics in order that they might question, revise or support their existing mental models for campaigning and to support decision making and facilitate a culture of inquiry and curiosity amongst the campaign team.
If this sounds complex and challenging then that’s intentional because what Unsimplify does is complex, hence the name.
Putting The LeftFootForward piece into context
We’re really excited that people are taking an interest in what we do and hats off to LeftFootForward for getting the scoop on this piece of work but we’d like to clarify what’s being discussed (most of the conversations focus upon a visual representation of some of the key conversations in the form of a landscape map) as it should be understood in the context of an entire report (120 pages or so) which hasn’t been made public.
The report as a whole applies our own bespoke models and frameworks to both quantitative and qualitative data in order to bring to the surface complex dynamics and issues which would otherwise pass un-noticed if an automated technological monitoring solution had been used in isolation.
Why does this matter?
In a complex situation such as the one we were analysing, data alone won’t aid in making sense of what’s happening, but narratives, informed by data, mental models and assumptions, can.
For example, we didn’t examine the entire myriad of Facebook groups which have formed around climate change and international development issues because they were not significant in this context.
So, what’s the story then?
A small group of dedicated people coming from a diverse range of positions and perspectives but working together as a loose federation held together by shared values and beliefs succeeded in accomplishing the most impressive PR coup of the 21st century.
The climate change sceptics did this by significantly influencing public perception of anthropogenic global warming by single-mindedly applying concerted and consistent pressure at critical junctures in the media ecology here in the UK and abroad.
The map that’s being discussed outlines some of the key players and some of the dynamics at play in order to help create a meaningful narrative which captures the sense of what was happening and brings to the surface the key issues.
What happens next?
The ultimate goal of the project was to abstract from all the online noise a narrative and a working model for ‘next practice’ campaigning which would furnish Oxfam, and the progressive community in general, new insights and knowledge about how they might, in future, listen, respond and act into an increasingly complex and turbulent media ecology.
If you have any specific questions about the project please email Managing Director Stewart Conway on unsimplify@profero.com and we’ll do our best to answer them but please do bear in mind that we are really busy.
Alternatively you can visit the Wikipedia page on sense-making which outlines some of the key ideas which have inspired us and which inform our work and approach. The page has some great links to more extensive online resources about how organisations can make sense of, and act into, complex challenges and situations.
This, from Greenpeace, talking about Monckton, which may explain a lot about AGW communication:
“There are many more like him who repeat the denier message for no other reason than because they believe it.”
My emphasis.
http://solveclimate.com/blog/20100324/greenpeace-says-climate-denialism-20-year-industry
I wonder if they’re focusing on quantity, or if they’re considering the type of communication which is taking place. Some sites feature deep math and carefully explained graphs. Some have summaries of many things, with in-depth discussion of details. Some do investigative reporting. Some, like the BBC, spew IPCC assumptions peppered with today’s news detail. Some, like Real Climate, pretend to be authoritative but tend to just say that a news item is obviously true or false but without really providing details and discussion. Guess where the investigative reporting is taking place.
Smokey (10:38:19) :
Slightly OT. Oddly, the whole progressive movement — of which AGW is one part — is based on the simultaneous denial and belief in objective reality. See http://bigdustup.blogspot.com/2010/02/clarity-of-delusion.html
patrick healy (10:01:25) :
i got an interesting and contradictory email yesterday from our beloved leader’s office.
see http://www.number10.gov.uk/page22924 (hope this works).
wondering did any one elso get the same?
=====================================
Yes, I got mine a couple of days ago. I was not surprised that the following was stated
“”Our confidence that the Earth is warming is taken from multiple sources of evidence and not only the HadCRUT temperature record, which CRU scientists contribute to. The same warming trend is seen in two independent analyses carried out in the United States, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Goddard Institute of Space Studies at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). These analyses draw on the same pool of temperature data as HadCRUT, but use different methodologies to produce analyses of temperature change through time.””
Confident despite the fact that the emails that inspired the investigation involved others across the pond in the US. the hockeystick was debunked, UHI effects are clearly not analysed appropriately as can be seen in the US record of rural vs urban sites. Yamal divergence was covered up so if the tree rings are right then the recent temps are wrong or vice versa or both are wrong. That there has been no statistically significant waming for 15 years, that model projections deviate from recent temperatures, that storms are not getting worse, that Arctic sea ice is returning to average and Antarctic sea ice is growing. That the IPCC dossier on weather of mass destruction has clear evidence of being “sexed up”. Satelite temp record diverges from surface temp record. The predicted tropospheric hot spot signature of AGW has not been found. Linzen finds atmospheric sensitivity much lower than suggested by AGW adherents. That there is lots of money to be made out of AGW industry so it has to be right. That our met office can’t get short to medium range forecasts right etc etc.
I guess it’s the same sort of confidence that our PM had that the days of boom and bust are over.
“Oxfam, and the progressive community in general”. So Oxfam is progressive, as are others who subscribe to the link between CO2 and Global Warming. Those persons organisations that do not must then be retrogressive or stuck in the mud at best.
We have already seen that the diagram is not balanced. (Forget about the missing balls. How can the IPCC be presented as neutral?) But since ScottR has already referred to George Orwell it is worth reminding ourselves that he reserved some of his most scathing satire on those who deliberately misused the English language.
Richard North has three balls?
A kid I grew up with, allegedly at least, suffered from the same condition. If I recall correctly, it was the result of a go-kart accident.
/sarcoff (but true story!) Mods feel free to snip, no worries 😀
Well, Oxfam just kissed goodbye to any charitable donations I might be extending this year – and to think that I might have donated to them in the past! Bah! I want my money back, I thought it was going to helping starving kids not this kind of gobbledegook research.
Apropos of nothing, this Profero outfit puts me in mind of nothing except the Profumo Affair. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profumo_Affair
Seems oddly fitting somehow!
Euroreferendum, Richard North’s excellent blog, does a pretty good job following and exposing the money trail as well as shady semi-political organisations.
Limerick snip if necessary
There was a young man from Madras,
Whose balls were made out of brass.
In windy weather they clanged together,
And sparks flew out of his arse!
Coalsoffire (07:54:21) :
The term “unsimplify” could mean “obfuscate” which is what they are doing.
Re: Les Johnson (Mar 25 10:56),
“There are many more like him who repeat the denier message for no other reason than because they believe it.”
I have a slight feeling that we will be hearing this quote from the good Lord on numerous occasions!
BTW, I am a little surprised that some commentators are just now figuring out what Oxfam is really all about. If an organization gets mostly positive media (MSM) coverage, you can bet its run by progressives.
As I see it, advocacy groups like “Greenpeace” are controlled not by scientists but by “political scientists”, marketing people and politicians. To them, facts are fungible. So they’re trying to find out “what” the sceptic “community” did to outflank them. They’re looking for hidden “spin” and subliminal marketing techniques, technical marketing methods that can be utilised to get their view to overcome that of the sceptical community.
They’ve completely failed to realise that when it comes to a factual, scientific debate, facts and scepticism speak louder than mere presentation.
That’s because their chart refers only to Climategate. It’s not talking about the whole war, just about one battle. This was explicit (IIRC) in the predecessor to this thread, and implicit in their statement:
…………………….
@p.g.sharrow “PG” (07:50:56) :
The word you wanted is ‘losing’ (rhymes with oozing); and the term you were trying to express is ‘loose-knit’.
Somehow ‘loosing’ (rhymes with ‘goosing’, and actually means something) has almost entirely replaced the correct spelling of ‘losing’. I am baffled by this (and it drives me crazy).
Otherwise I agree with you.
Mix and match:
The existing mental models of the stand-alone umbrella facilitate a culture of critical junctures in the meaningful narrative. Peer-to-peer bespoke models abstract from all noise ‘next practice’ campaigning dynamics commissioned by the automated technological monitoring solution.
The related key conversations within the landscape map of visual representation support decision making and the future impact of online news generation. International development campaigning activities are understood in the context of frameworks of quantitative and qualitative data, bringing to the surface complex dynamics used in isolation.
The entire myriad of turbulent media ecology informed by sense-making loose federations of data, mental models and assumptions within the the progressive community might, in the future, go deeper than just a meaningful diverse range of positions and perspectives and shared values and beliefs, if concerted and consistent pressure significantly influencing public perception unsimplifies a PR coup narrative.
If this sounds complex and challenging then that’s intentional. Please do bear in mind that we are really busy.
Considering that I don’t blog as such, I’m intrigued over my apparent prominent position.
I reckon this network schematic was some kind of route trace obtained within the last month or so, but quite a long time after the Climategate email release. I don’t recall having any mention of Climategate on my website, so the network diagram is unlikely to be directly related to that.
There are many far more influential UK blogs and websites not listed. Some notable omissions (UK based) being An Englishman’s Castle, Roger Helmer MEP blog, TFA (The Freedom Association), NumberWatch, etc.
“A small group of dedicated people………succeeded in accomplishing the most impressive PR coup of the 21st century.”
I think this sentence shows how wrong their thinking is. They can only see this situation in terms of PR, whereas climate realists are thinking in terms of truth and the real scientific method.
It seems the whole AGW movement has completely missed the point and thinks it is only a question of getting their message across.
I’m hoping this will prove to be their achilles heel.
“The climate change sceptics did this by significantly influencing public perception of anthropogenic global warming by single-mindedly applying concerted and consistent pressure at critical junctures in the media ecology here in the UK and abroad.”
They just don’t get it. The climate change skeptics did nothing more or less than tell the truth. This is not a PR campaign. This is merely an example of the old axiom: “the truth will out.”
Special interest groups just don’t seem to be able to wrap their heads around that one.
@ur momisugly Mike D. (13:12:35)
I like your post… but April 1st is several days away yet. You can do better!
Cheers,
Neil
I loved this bit of the updated “report”:
“In a complex situation such as the one we were analysing, data alone won’t aid in making sense of what’s happening, but narratives, informed by data, mental models and assumptions, can.”
Brilliant! Now I know where I have been going wrong all these decades.
I thought that I needed to obtain data,
to determine the accuracy, precision and reliability of the data,
then to assess the data
to determine the valid interpretations that could be made from the data, and
to determine the limitations of those interpretations,
together with identification of methods to falsify those intrpretations.
Clearly, I could not have been more wrong!
I should have invented “naratives” then generated “mental models and assumptions” and looked for data that would support the “naratives”.
And all these decades I thought I was doing science. Silly me!
Richard
I like it when WOOT oops WUWT, gets smutty.
The problem, i think for Unsimplify and OXFAM, is that they just dont get it.
There is no line in the sand or a line drawn on a demographic graph. The online community tends to be of two different types, you have echo chamber societies, like RealClimate for instance. Which really are very tribal and brutal in nature, but not in robust debate but purely in terms of debate.
Other sites are evaluating on evidence or even say mathematical modelling itself.
This debate is one of science not belief systems and hence instead of a line down the centre chart, a Venn type construct would be more appriate to decide influences and effects. The above construct is narrow you or me philosophy at play, whereas the debate really is pony up and show.
They seem to think it’s all rhetorical and it is not, the one thing that amazes me about this blog is the range of differing expertises linked by science and common sense that comments.
I think this one paraphrase of theirs says it’s all
For example, we didn’t examine the entire myriad of Facebook groups which have formed around climate change and international development issues because they were not significant in this context.
THey dont get that this entire debate got interpersonal, as in instant and wide spread communication years ago. That is why the poll numbers plummeted from the highs to a stage where, even political leaderships are destabilised into reassessment of these nonsense alternative dangerous power policies. They seem to think they are the only ones to have a right of opinion on environmentalism and good technology.
They seem to think that everyone is in total religious or political agreement and they are wrong.
There is a lot of interest, some self for sure but a lot is based on good policy based in best of best science reasoning as it should be.
INstant communication appears more of an enabler than a controller to these old internet’s sea dog eyes and it is becoming more and more so.
Suffer in yer Jocks, control freakshow dead wood. Just annother attempt at mass mind control, masquerading as care and compassion.
I reject this network diagram as there is no reference to “Bulldust”… I would have thought I had earned a small sphere, or elephant stamp or sumptin’, for coining the ClimateGate term /huff
Here’s the trick. Download the full text. Chop it into pieces with nouns in one list, verbs in the other. Then randomly select from the lists to create new sentences. There are thousands of possible arrangements. Since it is all gibberish in the first place, any new arrangement is just as sensible as the original, which is to say, it makes no sense at all.
If I had more time, I would make a little program with these BS phrases in a data base. Then the program would do the random selection. Using it, one could create hour-long lectures filled with trite, meaningless sentences. Impress your friends, win contracts, get elected — there’s no end to the possible uses.
I think the claims about sceptic campaigns & networks, however loose, could probably be understood to be primarily a token of their own projective attempts at understanding. They obviously don’t countenance the possibility that people can have arrived at a position independently but rather its coordinated & stage managed – people must be persuaded or artificially driven …and that’s probably due to inductive thinking and drawing on their own position.