I led a major audit of global media coverage on ocean protection. Here’s what we learned.

Being at COP28 made the globe feel very small. It is one thing to be tapping out press releases about ocean science from the moderate climes of South East England. It is quite another to be pitching experts to talk about rising sea levels when you have just chatted in the coffee queue with a delegate from the Philippines, swapped notes with a campaigner from Indonesia, taken a group pic for a team from Chile…

At the time it felt like a story like no other: a story which dominated the media for months on end. But now heat domes, wild fires and wayward ocean currents are sharpening our focus on the climate crisis. So it is worth asking what lessons research communicators can learn today from the media’s response to the Covid pandemic.

Putting people at the heart of stories is Comms 101. But why is it? A question from the floor at a conference recently prompted me to think afresh about this question.