Strategic Communication Research to Illuminate and Promote Public Engagement with Climate Change

Abstract

The Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University was established to develop and apply social science insights to help society make informed decisions that will stabilize the earth’s life-sustaining climate, and prevent further harm from climate change. In this chapter, we describe our program of research and outreach efforts, focusing on the cognitive and affective drivers of climate change issue engagement, the roles of mediated and interpersonal communication in shaping climate change beliefs, attitudes, and actions, and the applications of audience segmentation in developing outreach programs. We also describe the theoretical foundations of our work, and our three major outreach programs: Climate Matters, an innovative collaboration of climate scientists, meteorologists, and social scientists to foster climate change communication among television weathercasters; the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health, an outgrowth of our research that identified a widespread lack of understanding that climate change affects human health; and RepublicEn, an initiative led by conservatives to catalyze a new narrative on climate change among conservatives, based in free-market thinking.