Climate Change Communication Research Articles

Climate Communication, Public Health, and Social Media: Examining the Role of Health Agencies in Addressing the Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health

The impacts of climate change on human health are a critical public health concern, with previous studies highlighting its clear effects on well-being. Understanding how state and territorial health agencies (STHAs) are addressing these emerging risks is important. This study conducted 26 in-depth interviews across the U.S. to explore the perceptions and communication strategies of STHA officials regarding climate change’s impact on human health. Additionally, the study sought to identify the primary challenges faced by these officials to effectively communicate the impacts. Thematic analysis of the data revealed three major themes: community building and coalitions, climate denialism on social media, and misinformation about climate change and its effects on human health. These findings offer valuable insights for climate change and public health communication. The importance of the STHAs’ development of technical and informational capacity to effectively communicate climate-related risks and threats is emphasized.

Dialogue and Disruption at the Doorstep: Participant Perceptions during a City Walk as a Climate Communication Format

Since there is a broad empirical consensus that linear science communication focusing on disaster framing rarely empowers audiences and prompts transformative action, alternative climate communication formats are needed. This paper explores an alternative climate communication format, which integrates the issue into a local context (Munich, Germany) via transdisciplinary cooperation, specifically through collaboration with local climate educators and tapping into the scientific expertise of local stakeholders. The conceptualized format of a City Walk on the subject of climate justice addresses urban citizens and tests the effectiveness of climate justice as an alternative framing. Drawing on an accompanying empirical study with qualitative group discussions (n = 14, October 2023), this article explores how the format and framing are perceived by the participants. Based on these findings, we discuss the potentials and pitfalls of the format for transdisciplinary science communication. In summary, the City Walk deepened participants’ understanding of local climate justice—that is to say, how heat and flooding could amplify existing inequalities, and why adaptation and mitigation measures have not yet been implemented more thoroughly. Here, the crucial point is not whether the shift from climate change being a general topic to a personal one is supported by technical aspects of communication (e.g., virtual simulations). However, perceived local climate justice barriers (like bureaucracy) led participants to prioritize individual action (‘footprint’) over collective action (e.g., addressing local change). With these results, this study underlines the importance of new transdisciplinary formats for climate communication to address local change.

Understanding climate-related visual storytelling on TikTok

This cross-cultural study investigates the prevalence and impact of climate-related campaigns on TikTok, with a specific focus on climate-related visual storytelling in Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Computational methods are employed in the study to analyse a dataset of 7,564 videos, providing insights into prominent visual characteristics and regional variations. The findings underline the significance of cultural and political contexts in shaping climate storytelling on TikTok. Furthermore, this research explores the potential of computational visual data analysis in studying climate communication, demonstrating the integration of computer vision and topic modelling to examine visual styles and communicative functions in TikTok’s climate storytelling. The study enhances our understanding of climate communication on digital platforms and emphasizes the value of leveraging computational methods to gain meaningful cross-cultural insights into visual storytelling in the context of climate change.

Climate concepts for supporting political goals of mitigation and adaptation: The case for “climate crisis”

AbstractClimate concepts are crucial to understand the effects of human activity on the climate system scientifically, and to formulate and pursue policies to mitigate and adapt to these effects. Yet, scientists, policymakers, and activists often use different terms such as “global warming,” “climate change,” “climate crisis,” or “climate emergency.” This advanced review investigates which climate concept is most suitable when we pursue mitigation and adaptation goals in a scientifically informed manner. It first discusses how survey experiments and social science reviews on climate frames draw normative recommendations about which terms to use for public climate communication. It is suggested that such normative claims can be refined by including the scientific alongside lay uses of a climate concept, and by using explicit assessment conditions to evaluate how suitable a concept is for formulating mitigation and adaptation goals. Drawing on philosophical theories of conceptual change in science and conceptual engineering, a novel framework with two assessment conditions is introduced and then applied to “global warming,” “climate change,” “climate emergency,” and “climate crisis.” The assessment suggests that currently, “climate crisis” is most suitable to formulate and pursue climate mitigation and adaptation goals. Using this concept promotes the epistemic goals of climate science to a high degree, bridges scientific, political, and activist discourse, and fosters for democratic participation when articulating climate policies.This article is categorized under: The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Climate Science and Decision Making The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Knowledge and Practice Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Communication

Trust in climate science and climate scientists: A narrative review

Trust in climate science provides the foundation for evidence-based policymaking on climate change mitigation and adaptation and public perceptions of the urgency of climate change. Here we consider the possibility that lack of public trust in climate science and climate scientists may undermine the effectiveness of climate science communication. To this end, we narratively review three topics of relevance to climate science and climate scientists: 1) The current state of trust; 2) Reasons for distrust; 3) How political engagement affects trust. We then draw on insights from communication and behavioral science to recommend how climate change communicators can become more trustworthy.

Hands-on climate engagement: principles for effective hands-on activities and demonstrations

Communicating climate change to foster engagement and action is a challenge for science communication requiring novel, creative and diverse methods. In this practice reflection, we explore the potential of climate change related hands-on activities and demonstrations. Following a rapidly implemented COVID-19 project creating climate activities and workshops in the Pacific, we reflect on the underlying qualities of such activities to generate principles to guide design and facilitation of hands-on climate engagement. Through a fusing of theory, literature and practice, five principles are generated: personal and collective relevance, balancing risks/impacts with solutions, deliberative discussion and collaborative/participatory critical thinking, intrinsic motivation and positive emotional engagement, and opportunities for agency and action — with inclusive approaches providing foundation. We then describe applying the principles to refine content and create new activities.

One Day When We Were Young: Nostalgia Brings Climate Change Temporally Closer

ABSTRACT The perceived temporal distance of climate change impacts has been considered a long-standing barrier to climate engagement. Because nostalgia has distinct cognitive properties related to temporal thinking, three experimental studies are conducted to investigate nostalgia's potential for shortening temporal distance. Study 1 shows that nostalgia increases climate engagement by reducing temporal distance. Study 2 further identifies vivid imagery as a mechanism for the nostalgia effects across US and Chinese samples. Study 3 shows that nostalgic public service announcements increase climate engagement more than non-nostalgic ones. This study provides strong evidence that evoking nostalgia can be a useful climate change communication strategy.

Reconceptualising Barriers to Engagement with Climate Change

This paper contributes to the discourse on climate change by emphasising the imperative for inclusive engagement, particularly at the intersection of socio-economic challenges and climate impacts in Glasgow, Scotland. Despite recent shifts towards a ‘Just Transition’ and increased public engagement efforts, working-class voices remain marginalised. To address this gap, the paper first reviews existing literature on Climate Change Communication (CCC), examining some of the competing conceptualisations of barriers and public engagement and their policy implications, and more specifically, participatory policymaking and its role in engagement. Through doing so, the central debates of how public engagement with climate change ought to be pursued will be established, and to what degree this can be understood in the context of developing engagement with working-class people. Subsequently, it proposes a novel framework synthesising insights from Lorenzoni, Sutton, and Tobin utilising an ecological Marxist perspective that aims to address barriers to climate change engagement among the working class.

Dealing with the Quiet Opposition? News Coverage of Climate Skepticism in Two Finnish Newspapers 1990–2021

ABSTRACT This article examines news coverage of climate skepticism in two Finnish newspapers between 1990 and 2021. It approaches climate skepticism as a professional problem that involves a tension between conventional professional ideals that underscore balanced coverage of conflicts and emerging ideals that stress communicating climate change responsibly. Content analysis focused on two core forms of climate skepticism that have remained relatively stable throughout the 31-year research period: evidence and process skepticism. The presence of all kinds of skeptical contents (skeptical arguments, arguments against skepticism, and descriptions of skepticism) was examined to evalutate the overall media visibility of climate skepticism. The analysis then focused specifically on the coverage of skeptical arguments. The role of sources as well as the use of journalistic voice in the presentation of skeptical contents was examined. This study elaborates earlier anecdotal accounts concerning the limited public role of climate skepticism in Finland. Four per cent of news articles included sources who were quoted presenting their own skeptical views. Skeptical arguments were mainly presented by quoting foreign sources whereas arguments against skepticism were presented by quoting domestic climate scientists. “Climategate” caused the most notable increase in the volume of skeptical contents during the research period.

A medical language for climate discourse

Innovative communication theories propose that we understand messages not by decoding their meaning but by inferring what speakers intend to express. However scientifically accurate the messages climate scientists have put forward, the appropriate inferences may not have been drawn by most of their audiences. One of the main reasons may be that scientific metaphors allow for multiple interpretations, yet, because of their expressive power, they impact discourses disproportionately. Climate communication took a path of euphemistic scientific expressions partially due to the noble scientific norms of self-restraint and modesty, but the hidden implications of climate jargon distort the way non-experts think about the heating climate. Consequently, the current climate jargon hinders informed decisions about Earth’s life support systems. Changing the softened expressions of climate language, from the cool of basic research to the heat and compassion of medical contexts, may allow for more productive public and political debates – which may lead to more powerful policy solutions. Speaking and thinking in medical terms could turn the perception of worst case scenarios from hypotheticals or doomism to life-saving interventions. We typically start reducing fever before it gets out of control, let alone crosses a threshold of potential death. Instead of putting on a positivist mascara, a calm and serious discussion of safety measures in medical terms, for example, talking about climatic tipping cascades as metastases, could foster a more honest evaluation of the required legal and regulatory steps to keep our home planet habitable.

Do climate concerns and worries predict energy preferences? A meta-analysis

Public perceptions of energy choices will play a major role in the energy transition. Climate-related emotions, particularly concerns and worries, influence these perceptions, as they signal a heightened awareness of climate risks and greater personal salience of climate change. Here we conduct a series of meta-analyses to estimate whether climate worries and concerns influence energy preferences (k = 233; N = 85,285; 36 countries). Our findings reveal that climate worries and concerns translate into support for renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, and modest opposition to fossil fuels, particularly coal and gas. Climate worries and concerns are not associated with nuclear energy, albeit with a high degree of variance. Socio-demographic moderators, such as gender, education, and political orientation, did not influence these associations, while age and national energy supply attenuated these associations. These results suggest that climate concerns and worries translate into support for renewable energy, but not equal opposition to fossil fuels. More broadly, this meta-analysis underscores the role of climate-related emotions in shaping energy preferences, providing insights into the influence factors of energy policy support, the psychology of climate change, and climate change communication.

Navigating the climate change minefield: the influence of metaphor on climate doomism

Climate doomism is an increasing concern for climate change communication. In the United States, this opinion regarding anthropogenic climate change is now more prevalent than climate skepticism, and is the primary reason cited for opposition to climate action. Doomism is the belief that catastrophic warming of the planet is now inevitable, and that effective mitigation is impossible. The behaviors resulting from this view are comparable to the result of climate skepticism: doomism produces paralyzing eco-anxiety and subsequently inaction. Prior work has hypothesized that the rise in climate doomism and eco-anxiety is linked to climate change risk communication. This study investigates the possibility that the metaphoric language used to communicate the severity and urgency of climate change could inadvertently promote doomism. We employ a survey model to test the influence of metaphoric language on perception of urgency, feasibility, and individual agency in relation to the climate crisis. American English-speaking participants (N = 1,542) read a paragraph describing climate change either as a “cliff edge” or “minefield,” with human agency manipulated to be present or absent. Responses were considered to be doomist if they reported a high sense of urgency, paired with a low sense of feasibility and/or agency; this indicates they have a high awareness of the risks associated with the climate crisis, but a low belief that it will be addressed, and/or that their actions can produce meaningful change. Use of either metaphor improved perceived feasibility without a reduction in urgency, indicating that metaphor is an effective climate communication strategy for conveying risk without promoting doomism. However, metaphoric presentation is only effective when paired with human agency, suggesting that agency is a necessary component for successful metaphoric climate communication strategies.

Regional climate change: consensus, discrepancies, and ways forward

Climate change has emerged across many regions. Some observed regional climate changes, such as amplified Arctic warming and land-sea warming contrasts have been predicted by climate models. However, many other observed regional changes, such as changes in tropical sea surface temperature and monsoon rainfall are not well simulated by climate model ensembles even when taking into account natural internal variability and structural uncertainties in the response of models to anthropogenic radiative forcing. This suggests climate model predictions may not fully reflect what our future will look like. The discrepancies between models and observations are not well understood due to several real and apparent puzzles and limitations such as the “signal-to-noise paradox” and real-world record-shattering extremes falling outside of the possible range predicted by models. Addressing these discrepancies, puzzles and limitations is essential, because understanding and reliably predicting regional climate change is necessary in order to communicate effectively about the underlying drivers of change, provide reliable information to stakeholders, enable societies to adapt, and increase resilience and reduce vulnerability. The challenges of achieving this are greater in the Global South, especially because of the lack of observational data over long time periods and a lack of scientific focus on Global South climate change. To address discrepancies between observations and models, it is important to prioritize resources for understanding regional climate predictions and analyzing where and why models and observations disagree via testing hypotheses of drivers of biases using observations and models. Gaps in understanding can be discovered and filled by exploiting new tools, such as artificial intelligence/machine learning, high-resolution models, new modeling experiments in the model hierarchy, better quantification of forcing, and new observations. Conscious efforts are needed toward creating opportunities that allow regional experts, particularly those from the Global South, to take the lead in regional climate research. This includes co-learning in technical aspects of analyzing simulations and in the physics and dynamics of regional climate change. Finally, improved methods of regional climate communication are needed, which account for the underlying uncertainties, in order to provide reliable and actionable information to stakeholders and the media.

Public understanding of climate change terminology in Germany

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other institutions communicate about climate change to international audiences without a background in climate science, including the general public. The effectiveness of climate change communications may be undermined by their use of complex terminology. Bruine de Bruin et al. (2021) found that Americans struggled to understand key terms from IPCC reports. Here, we examined how 24 Germans interpreted German translations of these key terms, including tipping point, unprecedented transition, carbon neutral, carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere, adaptation, mitigation of climate change/ of greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable development, and abrupt change. We also presented these terms in the context of sentences taken from German-language IPCC reports. We identified common themes and misunderstandings. Overall, 93% of the themes arose by the 10th interview, and no new themes arose after the 18th interview. While interviewees initially rated most terms as easy to understand, both climate-concerned and climate-ambivalent interviewees were unfamiliar with some terms or combinations of terms, unsure of the link to climate change, and confused about details. Some also expressed mistrust. Moreover, all sentences were perceived as too long and complex. We discuss the implications of these findings for climate change communications.

Transforming young adults’ climate learning and actions through a co-created climate communication retreat

This article brings climate communication approaches to transformational climate learning by critically evaluating an experimental climate communication retreat that brought 20 young adults from across Europe together in Austria to co-create climate communications as a constitutive dimension of climate action. Structured around the transformational principles of interdisciplinarity, multidimensionality, collaborative project-based learning, reflexivity and action-oriented, the retreat specifically focused upon the creative co-production, between peers, of climate communication as communicative meaning-making and action. The retreat experience transformed young people’s sociocultural understandings of climate change, and climate communication as meaning-making and action, and increased their self and group efficacy. The key factors contributing to these transformations were: the forging of collective identity, peer-to-peer learning, emotional sharing, reflexive spaces, inspiring learning environment, interdisciplinary learning, multidimensional experiences, and collaborative project-based communications. Situating co-created climate communication within transformational learning can help facilitate collective experiences beyond direct climate action participation, helping create education for social change.

A study of easy-to-read adaptations in climate communication: a corpus analysis

AbstractAccess to clear and scientifically verified information is crucial to understand the scale of the challenge of the climate crisis, allowing policymakers, governments, and individuals to better respond to it. However, for some, including people with cognitive disabilities as well as individuals who have difficulty reading, climate science can be difficult to understand with complex sentence structures and jargon obscuring important environmental information. The aim of this paper is to assess the main linguistic barriers to information about the climate crisis for people with cognitive disabilities and reading difficulties. Using the examples of the Greater London Authority’s Environment Strategy Executive Report and the Northern Ireland Executive Discussion Document on a Northern Ireland Climate Change Bill, and their adaptations into Easy-to-Read as our corpus, we will examine the different morphosyntactic and lexical elements of each text to determine their overall level of complexity, such as sentence structure or vocabulary. Our results show that both Easy-to-Read versions were generally easier to understand than the standard versions. However, the Northern Ireland Easy-to-Read text was more syntactically complex with longer and more complicated sentence structures, owing to its function as a consultation document. We conclude that the main access barriers in the Northern Ireland Easy-to-Read text are related to its morphosyntactic elements, a conclusion supported by our manual analysis of the standard text. More generally, the lexical aspects of both Easy-to-Read texts showed positive results, which suggests that they may be more easily simplified compared to morphosyntactic aspects. However, more systemic and contrastive research is required to confirm our findings, in addition to user testing with people with cognitive disabilities and individuals who have difficulty reading.

FutureCoast: A Playful Way to Assess Public Perceptions for Better Climate Change Communication

ABSTRACT We examine how the FutureCoast storytelling game creates an accessible, online space to explore the climate problem and its impacts, as well as to glean insights regarding player perceptions. Through FutureCoast, players imagine a climate-changed future by creating stories about an altered world. A total of 251 voicemail responses generated from game participants recruited through social media and other channels were coded and analyzed. Subject engagement with the storytelling game provided valuable data about climate change understanding, as well as rich, player-created narratives that document the complexity of public thinking about climate-changed futures. Commonly occurring themes include Adaptation, Challenge, Technology, Weather, Governance and Policy, and Food. FutureCoast participants perceived optimistic scenarios for technology, energy and mitigation, and pessimistic scenarios for weather, food, water and adaptation. From FutureCoast stories, we gain an understanding of public perceptions toward climate issues that can help communicators develop more informed and effective climate change communication strategies. Key policy highlights Through playful approaches, such as FutureCoast, we can gain an understanding of public perceptions toward climate issues that can help communicators develop more informed and effective climate change communication strategies. Using novel approaches such as games to understand perceptions can elicit information from people who would otherwise not engage in surveys or other research methods. An innovation of the FutureCoast approach is its ability to produce rich, player-created narratives, which can be analyzed to uncover complex thinking about climate-changed futures. Responses may reveal where the public identifies and voices emerging issues earlier than experts. Identifying optimistic and pessimistic trends around climate issues gives communicators the opportunity to re-frame negative climate perceptions toward actions and solutions, thus empowering their audiences with information that can elicit climate action.

Development and validation of the Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS) stimuli set

Climate change is widely recognised as an urgent issue, and the number of people concerned about it is increasing. While emotions are among the strongest predictors of behaviour change in the face of climate change, researchers have only recently begun to investigate this topic experimentally. This may be due to the lack of standardised, validated stimuli that would make studying such a topic in experimental settings possible. Here, we introduce a novel Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS) stimuli set. ECCS consists of 180 realistic short stories about climate change, designed to evoke five distinct emotions—anger, anxiety, compassion, guilt and hope—in addition to neutral stories. The stories were created based on qualitative data collected in two independent studies: one conducted among individuals highly concerned about climate change, and another one conducted in the general population. The stories were rated on the scales of valence, arousal, anger, anxiety, compassion, guilt and hope in the course of three independent studies. First, we explored the underlying structure of ratings (Study 1; n = 601). Then we investigated the replicability (Study 2; n = 307) and cross-cultural validity (Study 3; n = 346) of ECCS. The collected ratings were highly consistent across the studies. Furthermore, we found that the level of climate change concern explained the intensity of elicited emotions. The ECCS dataset is available in Polish, Norwegian and English and can be employed for experimental research on climate communication, environmental attitudes, climate action-taking, or mental health and wellbeing.

Does the Use of Media and Other Information Sources Cause the Perceived Experience of Climate Change or is it the Other Way Around?

ABSTRACT The perceived experience of climate change can be an important motivator of individual climate action. Recent scholarship argued that the use of media and other information sources is a basis of perceived experience. The current study analyzed a cross-lagged panel model to know if the use of information causes perceived experience or vice versa. Analysis of longitudinal data from a sample of Singapore residents (N = 466) showed that the use of traditional media, but not social media or interpersonal sources, explained change in perceived experience. In contrast, perceived experience explained change in the use of traditional media and interpersonal communication. We discuss these findings vis-à-vis the reinforcing spirals model of media effects and offer practical insights for climate change communicators, especially journalists.

Publishing strategies and professional demarcations: Enacting media logic(s) in European academic climate communication through open letters

Abstract The mediatization concept rests on the increasing centrality of media in everyday spheres. Within academia, mediatization is explored in various ways, such as through the use of social media, news media, and researchers’ adoption of certain media logic(s). While many studies focus on media logic(s) as an explanatory device, it can also be seen as a contextual relationship between actors enacted for various purposes. This paper explores how academics enact media logic(s) in climate communication and for what purpose. By drawing on interviews with initiators of open letters on climate change, this paper illustrates that media logic(s) is evoked as a publishing strategy and a way to demarcate academics from news media journalists. The study thus suggests a conceptual shift from debates about what media logic(s) is to what it does in specific communication contexts.