CASE STUDIES

How Alliance for Science Evolves the Conversation Around Scientific Innovation

Discover how the Alliance for Science used Cision Insights to understand public perception of agricultural biotechnology and build messaging that counters misinformation and evolves the conversation.

100,000+

traditional media articles analyzed

1.7 million

social media interactions tracked

3 years

of continuous monitoring and analysis

Challenge

In its ongoing mission to promote education and awareness of environmentally sustainable issues, the Alliance for Science at the Boyce Thompson Institute was eager to understand the general public's current understanding of – and perceptions around – agricultural biotechnology (Ag Biotech), genetically modified organisms (GMO), gene editing and gene drive. The Alliance was particularly interested in understanding the coverage drivers and the tone of the conversation, and how those were developing over time in traditional and social media. It approached Cision Insights for help gathering the information it needed, sorting through the data and making sense of the findings. Ultimately, the Alliance was hoping to get the right insight to inform a more effective communications strategy around these topics.

Solution

Using media monitoring and social listening tools, Cision's Insights team tracked key messages in stories such as access to innovation for farmers, scientific consensus on GMO safety, food security, and climate resilience in crops and livestock – working with Cision's analysis experts to derive meaning from the findings and understand how the Alliance could leverage them. Over the course of three years, Cision looked at the volume, reach and tone of over 100,000 online and print articles published in English in top-ranked media, as well as 1.7 million social media interactions, employing automated computer analysis alongside a team of analysts who provided human validation of thousands of articles and social posts each month.

Results

Through its engagement with Cision's team of experts, the Alliance was able to drill down into the data and better understand how these topics were covered in traditional media outlets – from TV and radio to print to podcasting – and discussed on social media. With deep insight into how key audiences both consumed this information and what they thought about it, the Alliance was able to build meaningful messaging that resonated and addressed real questions the public was asking, counter misinformation, and influence the conversation. Armed with a baseline of data and a new communications plan in place, the Alliance continued to track conversations and coverage to see where and how its communications efforts were making an impact.

Key features

Headquarters Boyce Thompson Institute, Cornell University campus

Size 10-50 members

Industry Science communications & advocacy

Website http://allianceforscience.org/

The Alliance for Science is a global communications and training initiative dedicated to advocating for agricultural innovations and evidence-based policies. It counters conspiracy theories and misinformation in contentious science issues, such as genetic engineering, vaccines, infectious diseases and climate change, and shares accurate information about these topics. The Alliance is based at the Boyce Thompson Institute on the Cornell University campus, with an office in Nairobi, Kenya.

What the Alliance hoped to learn

One of the major goals was to gain better insight into how topics related to GMOs are covered in the media and discussed on social media – insight that would enable the Alliance to evolve its messaging to address real questions consumers were asking, counter misinformation, and influence the conversation in a meaningful way.

In addition to Cision's automated tools and team of analysts – who provided human validation of 10,800 top-tier English-language articles and 54,000 social media posts per month – the Alliance ran focus groups nationwide and conducted surveys centered on consumer perceptions around GMOs and gene editing, to supplement the data.

What the data revealed

In total, 103,084 traditional media articles covering GMOs were analyzed, alongside 1,716,071 pieces of social media content.

Among the major findings and observations from the analysis – which were published in the open-source academic journal GM Crops & Food:

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Early on, traditional media coverage of GMOs tended to be somewhat more positive than social media conversations on the topic; however, that gap disappeared over time.

newsmode

Traditional media coverage of the GMO issue increased significantly, while GMO-related posts on social media trended downward.

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Both traditional and social media saw trends toward increasing favorability, with the positive trend especially robust in social media.

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Cyborgs and bots represented about a third of the users engaged in the GMO social media debate, and their posts were substantially more negative in sentiment than human accounts – suggesting intent behind the accounts to “sow dissent and make the GMO conversation appear more negative and polarized than it is.”

“To date, this study represents one of the most comprehensive views of GMO perception within both social media platforms and general news media, leveraging over three years of continuous tracking and analysis conducted by our team at Cision.”

A new challenge: The fight against misinformation

Since the GMO study, the Alliance has partnered with Cision's Insights team twice more, for two major initiatives:

An analysis of public perception around COVID and the spread of misinformation around it: The Alliance tapped Cision to conduct an ad hoc study using the NextGen Cision Comms Cloud, which revealed key insight into who was driving the conversation that was contributing to the spread of COVID misinformation. This finding led to a white paper , which was subsequently featured in over 30 top-tier outlets, including The New York Times (where it was widely syndicated globally in seven languages), Reuters, the Guardian, the Washington Post and CNN.
A COVID vaccine misinformation report, in collaboration with Center for Science in the Public Interest and Vaccinate Your Family: This study resulted in a peer-reviewed journal article, COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation in English- Language News Media: Retrospective Cohort Study that was published in British Medical Journal Open.

Ready to bring it all together?

The Alliance for Science's experience shows how deep, sustained media and social listening can turn public perception data into messaging that actually counters misinformation – not just tracks it.

Talk to one of our experts to see how Cision can help you understand the conversation around your organization and turn insight into action.

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