Communicating ecosystem services during affective events: the campaign of ecologists to engage a diversity of actors in nature conservation

Résumé En

Desperate and feeling powerless face to the unsustainable use of nature, some ecologists have started to redirect their former research to work on the notion of Ecosystem Services (ES), which designates the benefits that human societies derive from nature. Hoping that the notion would help them to communicate about nature conservation to a diversity of publics, ES ecologists have developed transdisciplinary research projects and engaged various actors in knowledge co-production. In this paper, I present how ES ecologists used different communication devices to communicate ES affectively and campaign about the need to conserve nature. My research draws on interviews conducted with ecologists, nature managers, and a diversity of actors, as well as observations conducted in projects where they worked together. I consider science communication as a performative process taking place during affective events. The results first explain how different models of science communication have been used by ES scientists to communicate about nature conservation and how these different models operate affectively. I then analyse in more details how two communication devices operate. Games frame participation in knowledge production in terms of entertainment and help to establish a trusted relation between ES ecologists and other participants. The entertaining atmospheres they induce are, however, ephemeral and dissipate rapidly. Scenarios facilitate communication affectively by helping to moderate hopes, but have also limits as communication tools when futures become too realistic or too uncertain.