Communicating Climate Is the Focus of Inaugural Boston University Center for Media Innovation & Social Impact Summit
COM’s November 7 event will feature policy experts, scholars, communicators—and a circus acrobat
Eric Gordon (center), director of COM’s Center for Media Innovation & Social Impact, hopes the Communicating Climate summit will exhibit the center’s creativity. Photo by Derek Palmer
Communicating Climate Is the Focus of Inaugural Boston University Center for Media Innovation & Social Impact Summit
COM’s November 7 event will feature policy experts, scholars, communicators—and a circus acrobat
Boston University’s College of Communication opened its Center for Media Innovation & Social Impact (MISI) in spring 2025 with a bold mission: to rebuild trust in science, democracy, and community. “This center was born out of ambitions to help society unlock its potential through amazing communication,” says COM Dean Mariette DiChristina (COM’86).
The center’s first public event, the Communicating Climate Summit on Friday, November 7, will be held at the Duan Family Center for Computing & Data Sciences—and MISI director Eric Gordon hopes it will set the tone for the innovative work the center has planned. It is free and open to journalists, communications professionals, climate scientists, government officials, academics, and students.
“We need to be experimenting. We need to be creating different kinds of tools that are in support of movements, in support of institutions, and in support of people who are trying to make a difference in the world,” Gordon says. “It’s going to be a very serious event. We’re going to have serious conversations with serious people, but we also know that part of the solution here is to think creatively, to think boldly, to have fun. We do this by thinking across disciplines and across practices. In this way the summit will embody what the center embodies.”
Panel discussions will feature prominent scholars, communicators, and policy experts, but will also include a creative twist: Pedro Mello e Cruz, a circus acrobat and educator, will lead a midday workshop intended to reveal how individuals and groups react to risk—and how people can collaborate better while solving problems.
“To be able to embody the feeling of risk is a great way to start identifying appropriate policies and communication tactics,” Gordon says. He borrowed the idea from a friend who had arranged similar workshops for officials at the World Bank and the United Nations.
Part of the solution here is to think creatively, to think boldly, by thinking interdisciplinarily. We want the summit to embody what the center embodies.
A summit schedule, speaker bios, and free registration are available online.
The schedule includes:
- Power, Policy, and the Climate Narrative, a keynote conversation with Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law School professor and a former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and Michael Grunwald, author of The Earth Is Eating Itself.
- Policy, Science, and Public Engagement in an Age of Skepticism, a discussion with Carol Gregory, senior vice president of communications and marketing at the Conservation Law Foundation, Melissa Hoffer, climate chief of Massachusetts, and Nathan Phillips, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of Earth and environment.
- Ground Truth: Local Action and the Fight Against Climate Misinformation, a discussion with Kenneth Bailey, cofounder of the Design Studio for Social Intervention, and Patricia Fabian, a School of Public Health associate professor of environmental health and associate director of the BU Institute for Global Sustainability.
- Telling the Climate Story: Journalism, Trust, and Cultural Relevance in a Time of Crisis, a discussion with Andrew Revkin, a climate journalist at the New York Times, Ian Cheney, a documentary filmmaker, and Meera Subramanian, a freelance journalist and graphic novel author.
- The Business of News: Audience Trust and the Future of Science and Climate Policy Journalism, a discussion with Brian McGrory, COM chair of journalism and former editor of the Boston Globe, Sue Robinson, a University of Wisconsin professor of journalism, and Dan Mauzy, WBUR executive editor for news.
- Signals and Noise: Emerging Media, AI, and the Climate Crisis, a discussion with Ethan Zuckerman, a University of Massachusetts Amherst associate professor of public policy, communication, and information, Joan Donovan, a COM assistant professor of journalism and emerging media studies, Ainissa Ramirez, a scientist and science communicator, and Santi Garces, City of Boston chief information officer.