Framing Climate Change Research Articles

Climate Change Advocacy and Engagement on Social Media

This study examines how 21 leading environmental organizations framed climate change on Facebook and how these frames were associated with public engagement through reactions (e.g., likes), shares, and comments on the posts. We find that environmental nongovernmental organizations’ (NGOs) posts about climate change tend to emphasize the environmental impacts of climate change, political actions that are being taken by individuals and groups to address climate change, and political threats to climate progress. The results tentatively suggest that Facebook posts with an affective component—either positive or threat-based—are most likely to be associated with greater levels of engagement.

Visual Framing of Climate Change in Selected Newspapers in Kenya

Raw information on issues such as climate change and the environment can be incomprehensible and meaningless to segments of the media audience. To ease audience's understanding of such information, the media may filter and (re)construct both the information and the experiences that generated it; this is called framing. This study analysed how climate change is visually framed in selected print media in a bid to understand how this could influence the audience's understanding of climate change information. This study was guided by the Framing Theory. Data was collected from two newspapers in Kenya (The Standard and Daily Nation) published between January 2013 and December 2017 which were purposively sampled due to their wide circulation and coverage. Qualitative content analysis was used both as a methodology and a data collection tool and the data analysed thematically. The study findings indicated that visuals were rarely used in the selected newspapers. From the findings, the depiction of actors was mainly based on their social class. The most dominant visual frame was the politicians and talking head frame. A new frame that was depicted in this study was the humour imagery frame. The causes of climate change are depicted as small causes and small solutions, but the impacts are depicted as large scale which can lead to low self-efficacy amongst the citizens. This study concludes that visual framing of climate change is an area not fully embraced by the media in presenting climate change, yet it offers an array of opportunities to communicate the climate change message.

Framing Collective Moral Responsibility for Climate Change: A Longitudinal Frame Analysis of Energy Company Climate Reporting

AbstractResponding to climate change and avoiding irreversible climate tipping points requires radical and drastic action by 2030. This urgency raises serious questions for energy companies, one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs), in terms of how they frame, and reframe, their response to climate change. Despite the majority of energy companies releasing ambitious statements declaring net zero carbon ambitions, this ‘talk’ has not been matched with sufficient urgency or substantive climate action. To unpack the disconnect between talk and action, this paper draws on the literature on framing, organisational hypocrisy, and collective moral responsibility. We conduct a longitudinal qualitative content analysis of the framing of climate change used by the ten largest European investor-owned energy companies and the actions they have taken to shift their business practices. Our findings reveal three main categories of energy companies: (i) deflecting, (ii) stagnating, and (iii) evolving. We show key differences in the relationship between framing and action over time for each category, revealing how deflecting companies have larger and persistent gaps between green talk and concrete action and how stagnating companies are delaying action despite increased green talk, while evolving companies exhibit a closer link between talk and action that tends to be realised over time. Our analysis reveals how competing approaches to framing collective moral responsibility help understand the trajectories of talk and action across the different categories of energy companies. This research makes several contributions to the literature on organisational hypocrisy and collective moral responsibility in the context of climate change. Our analysis highlights the complex relationship between collective moral responsibility, organisational hypocrisy and climate action, revealing how different collective framings—diffuse, teleological, or agential—can both enable and offset substantive climate action. The study also enriches our understanding of the performative nature of collective moral responsibility by examining its temporal dimensions and showing how an agential, backward-looking focus is associated with more meaningful climate action.

Climate Justice and Other News Frames in the Coverage of Climate Change in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa

ABSTRACT Media and communication scholars have studied climate change from many perspectives. However, much of the scholarship has focused on Western countries, with limited attention paid to African countries. This study expands climate change communication research by examining framing devices used by prominent newspapers in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. A content analysis of 342 newspaper articles published in Daily Nation (Kenya), Punch (Nigeria) and The Sunday Times (South Africa) in 2021 reveals prominence in framing of climate change as threat to human lives and livelihood, human causes of climate change, a need for climate justice, and remedies in the form of adaptation across the three countries. Differences across the three countries are also noted. For example, even though all three newspapers highlighted climate justice in their coverage, proportionally, this was higher in the Sunday Times than in Daily Nation and Punch. Other differences and implications are also discussed.

Analyzing the Framing of Climate Change Discourse in Nigerian Media: Implications for Public Engagement and Policy Development

This paper aims to analyse how well the media has fared in framing climate change discourse in the Nigerian media. Some other questions that would be addressed by this paper border on the implications of this analysis of climate change discourse for public discussion and policy-making. The study may also interact in a condensed way with how previous framing of climate change discourse in the Nigerian media has impacted public opinion and policy making. This paper will serve the Nigerian community in advancing climate change discourse and influence public perspective and policy making. The goal is to furnish the readership with the knowledge necessary for constructive and productive discourse on climate change both among the governmental officials and the citizens, which would help reformulate and reconstruct policies that will attenuate the effects of climate change in the nation. The study does not merely articulate the problem but also highlights the solutions, asserting the fact that while the challenge seems insurmountable, the collective efforts of humans to address will prove useful in the end; especially as the media seeks to formulate its framing of climate change discourse in such a way as to stimulate creative thinking and generate positive public responses.

The importance of variance and microsite conditions for growth and hydraulic responses following long-term rewetting in pedunculate oak wood

Key messageEarly rewetting influenced growth variability and hydraulic uniformity in Pedunculate oak wood on disturbed peatland. Long-term study highlighted vessel widening's importance in adapting to water availability changes.Pedunculate oak (Quercus robur L.) is a widely recognized flood-tolerant tree that thrives on fertile and moist soil conditions, such as on or close to peatland ecosystems. In the frame of climate change counteracting policies, rewetting peatland ecosystems is gaining increasing interest, while the ecological consequences are not always clear. Whereas the effect of flooding on wood anatomical traits of pedunculate oak is widely documented, little is known about the effect of permanent rewetting. In this study, we investigated the wood anatomical responses of 12 pedunculate oak trees located on a formerly drained peatland in NE Germany, that experienced flooding and a consequent rewetting. Wood anatomical traits were analyzed via CARROT, a tool that employs the accuracy and efficiency of artificial intelligence to identify tree rings and vessels. Growth anatomical traits (e.g., tree ring width) showed a sudden increase after the rewetting started in 1995, while hydraulic traits (Dh and Ks) displayed a decreasing trend only after the rewetting process was fostered by the opening of an artificial canal in 2004. Variance analysis highlighted subtle changes in the trait’s distribution over time: high soil water content triggered variability in the growth anatomical traits and, simultaneously, homogeneity in the hydraulic traits. Results suggest the relevance of the “vessel widening” mechanisms to develop coping strategies in response to the later stage of the rewetting, and pose relevant insights concerning the importance of specific site conditions for the implementation of rewetting policies in peatlands with presence of pedunculate oak.

‘Mitigation is global, adaptation is local’: An assessment of the framing of climate change in Nigerian and South African newspapers

The economic impact of climate change, especially in Africa, is tremendous. As Africans battle with severe weather conditions like floods and droughts, their limited infrastructure is overstretched and, in most cases, cannot withstand the impact. The rains are flooding cities in Nigeria as drought ravages cities in South Africa. When events like these occur, people look to the media for information, and studies have shown that the media can influence public perception of climate change through the way they frame the issue. Using the issue-specific frames of mitigation and adaptation, this study analysed Nigerian and South African newspapers’ coverage of climate change. The study spanned 9 months (January-September 2018), and the online editions of The Punch, Leadership, Mail & Guardian and News Everyday were content-analysed quantitatively using tables and frequencies, and qualitatively, using verbatim quotes. A total of 90 stories were obtained from the four newspapers, with the straight news format as the most used story genre. The major sources of news stories on climate change were the reporters, followed by experts/private individuals. The adaptation frame was the most used, showing that the African media understands the need to mobilise citizens locally for a collective fight against climate change.

Computational methods for climate change frame analysis: Techniques, critiques, and cautious ways forward

AbstractFrame analysis is a popular methodological paradigm to investigate how climate change is reported in the media, how it is negotiated by political actors, and perceived by publics. Its scope of application extends across various academic disciplines and transcends traditional boundaries of research such as those between quantitative and qualitative methods. Recent transformations of the media landscape have a strong influence on how frame analysis is conducted and how it is used to investigate climate change communication. Online data mining and computational methods have now become increasingly mainstream to investigate discursive elements in online media. Scholars have highlighted the potential, but also the risks associated with sophisticated computational methods, such as machine learning, increasingly used in the context of frame analysis. This advanced review gathers the scientific literature on computational frame analysis for analyzing climate change communication and discusses ways of dealing with associated risks and caveats by incorporating ideas from Science & Technology Studies (STS) and other stances of critical scholarship. Recommended ways forward include combining methods, practicing theoretical interdisciplinarity, infrastructuring reflexivity in research constellations, and embracing transparency, documentation, and accessibility of methods.This article is categorized under: The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Sociology/Anthropology of Climate Knowledge Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Communication Climate, History, Society, Culture > Technological Aspects and Ideas

A Comparative Analysis of Climate Change Framing in Nepali Newspapers

Nepal, because of its specific topographical and geographical characteristics, is at the epicenter of vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. This study investigates the way three Nepali newspapers, namely Kantipur, Nagarik, and Nayapatrika Daily framed climate change from January 1, 2023, to December 31, 2023. The research provides a comprehensive approach to investigating the framing ways used by these newspapers, identifying and evaluating five prominent frames: environmental impact, humanitarian, policy, and governance, economic, and global justice. Through rigorous examination of chosen reports and articles from the required timeframe, the study indicates a noticeable trend in framing preferences among these three publications. Significantly, the results highlight the centrality of the Policy and Governance Frame as the main focus, which comprises more than half of the total coverage, then following the Environmental Impact Frame. The research presented here provides vital insight into each of the methods applied by media sources to convey climate change in Nepal. The study highlights the significance of using a diverse framing approach for addressing the many facets of this complicated issue, acknowledging the nation's varied climate-related challenges. This research not only contributes to the scholarly knowledge regarding climate change communication but also has practical implications for professionals in the media, policymakers, and the general public. The need for a more varied and diverse framing approach is emphasized, showing the potential for more successful communication tactics that are tailored to Nepal's particular context and challenges in the face of climate change.

“Human Activities” and Climate Justice: Reframing Media Narratives on Climate Change Mitigation Efforts Towards Africa

Abstract The study delved into media framing of climate change narratives and mitigation efforts towards Africa. The study selected 30 newspaper articles published between June 2021 to December 2021. Content analysis was used to analyze the framing of climate change narratives against a framework of decolonizing media narratives on climate change. It further discussed climate justice and detailed how communities most impacted by climate change are the least contributors to climate change. The study was guided by the following questions: (a) Who are the humans in the “human activities” in the climate change media narratives? (b) What harms are caused by climate change, and how can those who have created the most harm be called to bear the cost of fixing or making significant amendments? (c) How can the media frame climate change mitigation efforts in a fair, just, and equitable approach?

Convergence in action: framing the climate crisis at the 2021 Pre-COP counter-summit in Milan

ABSTRACT With the emergence of Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion, youth climate activism has attracted increasing attention. Climate strikes are part of a long trajectory of mobilizations for climate justice, rooted in global justice and environmental struggles. Although research on social movements has analyzed differences and continuities within these, there have been few systematic comparisons between youth climate strikes and ‘traditional’ climate justice marches. Our paper contributes to fill this gap. We focus on the framing of climate change in two different protest actions that took place in Milan, Italy, during the Pre-COP26 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2021: a climate strike by Fridays for Future, and a ‘traditional’ climate justice march by a wide coalition of actors. Relying on protest surveys and qualitative interviews, we discuss differences, similarities, and spaces for convergence among activists in these different fora, focusing on the framing of climate change, and on the meanings attached to ‘system change’.

Presence and framing of climate change in the digital press of Uruguay

Cerca del 80% de los uruguayos perciben una baja presencia del cambio climático (CC) en la prensa (PNUD Uruguay, 2021). Este artículo analiza cómo el periodismo digital de Uruguay informa y encuadra el CC e identifica oportunidades para mejorar la cobertura periodística del tema y de la Política Nacional de Cambio Climático. El análisis de contenido revela, entre otros hallazgos, falta de énfasis en explicaciones científicas y posibles soluciones tecnológicas a los problemas del CC, medidas políticas desatendidas por los medios y un uso casi inexistente de contenidos audiovisuales para informar. El artículo concluye con recomendaciones sobre cómo las autoridades políticas y los medios pueden comunicar sobre el CC para que los ciudadanos comprendan el fenómeno y su relación con él.

Constructing climate change: Exploring how cities frame climate change in the Arctic

ABSTRACT Framing climate policy actions to be acceptable by various stakeholders in cities poses a critical task for urban governance. Despite the proliferation of studies on urban climate change governance in the past decades, framing as a mechanism for agenda-setting in local policymaking has received little attention. This paper draws on the literature on climate change discourse to analyze the content of framing and its reasoning in the two municipalities located in the Arctic: Murmansk (Russia) and Tromsø (Norway). Using qualitative research methods, including semi-structured interviews, document reviews, and discourse analysis, the paper finds that climate change is absent in the political discourse in Murmansk. At the same time, Tromsø authorities recognize climate change as a global and a local problem and incorporate it into local policies. It also identifies three factors that explain the (non)framing of climate change by the municipal authorities: (1) local authority to frame climate issues, (2) local political party branches’ climate preferences, and (3) prior experiences with weather extremes and scientific knowledge. Given that cities in the Arctic are on the front lines of climate change, learning from their framing experiences, other cities across the globe can seize the opportunities for their efforts to address climatic impacts.

Between a Burden and Green Technology: Rishi Sunak’s Framing of Climate Change Discourse on Facebook and X (Twitter)

The issue of climate change has been one of the critical foci of political discourse worldwide (Wagner, 2023). Given that political debates and political discourse are quite often communicated on Social Networking Sites (SNSs), for instance Facebook and X (Araújo & Prior, 2021), it appears highly relevant to tap into political actors’ discourse on SNSs that addresses the issue of climate change. Guided by the importance of SNSs in political discourse on climate change, the present article introduces and discusses a study on how Rishi Sunak, the current prime minister of the United Kingdom (the UK), frames the issue of climate change on his official Facebook and X accounts. Specifically, the aim of the study was to identify the types of frames used in Sunak’s climate change discourse in a corpus of his posts on Facebook and X. The corpus was collected and analysed in accordance with the methodology proposed and developed by Entman (2007). The results of the analysis revealed that Sunak’s framing of climate change involved a pragmatic economy-oriented aspect, which was presented discursively by imparting it a personalised dimension that involved multimodality. In particular, it was discovered that Sunak frequently framed the issue of climate change via the frames Burden and Green Technology. The findings were discussed in conjunction with the prior research on framing in climate change discourse.

Education in international climate pledges – identifying education framings in countries nationally determined contributions (NDCs)

Although education is acknowledged as an important tool to address climate change, only some countries refer to education within their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Using a mixed-methods approach, we explore the question of how countries frame education within their climate pledges. First, we examine NDCs with a discourse network analysis (DNA) to identify country framings of education and climate change and potential discourse coalitions among countries. Education is most often referred to as an instrument to adapt to climate change and to a lesser extent as an instrument to mitigate climate change. Second, we use a regression analysis to complement the DNA results. We find that countries with a higher exposure to climate change impacts are more likely to mention education, which explains the prevalence of the adaptation framing. Moreover, we find that countries with a higher GDP per capita are less likely to include education within their NDCs. These results confirm the traditional divide between Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 countries also with regard to education in NDCs.

Framing effects on sustainable behavior

AbstractThe impacts of climate change are profound and widespread. Investigating the impact of strategic climate change communication is crucial for informing effective communication strategies and ultimately driving meaningful action toward addressing climate change. This research aims to develop effective climate change communication on Facebook with the objective of fostering sustainable behavior. It seeks to accomplish this by evaluating the influence of strategic climate change frames on sustainable behavior intentions and examining the moderating effect of greenwash awareness. We conducted two experimental studies: A 10 (frames) x 2 (greenwash awareness: high vs. low) between‐subject experiment with 710 responses and a 25 (frames) x 2 (greenwash awareness: high vs. low) between‐subject experiment with 1586 responses. Results indicate that communication framed in natural well‐being, sustainable expertise, and environmental frames encouraged sustainable behavior more than other frames. Multiple frames are more persuasive than single frames in increasing the intention of sustainable action. Greenwash awareness exerts moderating impacts on the framing effects. The current research is the first exploration to shed light on framing strategies of climate change communications by taking non‐climate frames and greenwash awareness into consideration. We offer actionable insights into how enterprises can strategically use frames to improve performance and accountability in sustainable development.

A Comprehensive Seismic Monitoring of the Pillar Threatening the World Cultural Heritage Site Chauvet‐Pont d'Arc Cave, Toward Rock Damage Assessment

AbstractFragile geological features must undergo frequent structural health assessments to prevent catastrophic failure events. The mechanical behavior of natural sites is largely guided by vibrations of the earth and environmental exposure, but damage is rarely assessed, except empirically. The Chauvet‐Pont d’Arc cave, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, represents a shining example of fragility that would benefit from monitoring. It is overhung by a rock column known as Abraham's pillar that extends out from the cliff like a natural tuning fork. For this study, we monitored dancing movements of this pillar for over 2 years to analyze its elastic response to weather conditions. Using ambient‐seismic‐noise‐based methods, we identified the pillar's first two natural resonance modes. Through extensive monitoring of the site, we observed the striking temporal evolution of these two resonance frequencies on hourly, daily, seasonal, and pluriannual scales in response to changes in air temperature and insolation. Based on thermo‐acousto‐elastic modeling with a simplified 3D geometric structure, we determined how thermally‐induced stress stiffening affects the rock material, by applying convective and radiative heat fluxes to the model. From the results obtained, we suggest a novel quantitative method based on daily observations that can estimate the level of damage within the rock material. Our work provides a foundation for distinguishing between reversible processes and damage for hazard studies in the frame of climate change. Such knowledge is crucial not only for the preservation of heritage sites but also for enhancing risk assessment protocols and informing conservation efforts worldwide.

Between evidence first and political fight – understanding dynamics of (de-)politicization in US climate movements’ future narratives

ABSTRACT Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion and Sunrise Movement are among the new climate movements that have come into the public spotlight since 2019. While their successes in agenda-setting are undisputed, conclusions vary on whether and how this re-politicizes climate discourses. This article presents a new framework to analyze the dynamics of (de-)politicization along the dimensions of vision, agency and process. Based on a narrative analysis, we compare US movement and media documents from 2019 and identify five key narratives, namely, ‘Evidence First,’ ‘Intergenerational Divide,’ ‘Climate Justice & Intersectionality,’ ‘System Change’ and ‘Political Fight.’ While all movements use politicizing notions, we find that tensions between the dimensions inhibit the articulation of alternative visions of the future. This overall depoliticizing tendency appears to be rooted in process understandings that originate in dominant discursive framings of climate change and of science–policy interfaces – a finding that is informative for climate discourses in general.

Livestock and climate change frames and interaction strategies in East Africa: exploring tensions between adaptation and mitigation options

ABSTRACT East African livestock systems, which support many livelihoods, are suffering from climate change but also contribute a large portion of national greenhouse gas emissions. There are various ways to frame livestock and climate change problems and solutions. We use data from interviews, policy documents and participant observations of science-policy interfaces in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda to answer: (1) How do frames used by scientists and policymakers affect discussions about climate change and livestock keeping in East Africa? and (2) What framing interaction strategies are employed to deal with ambiguity in science-policy interfaces? Findings show emphasis is given to framings describing livestock and climate change problems and less to response framings. While adaptation and mitigation are both used as issue frames in general discussions, funding availability to address climate issues draws attention to the need for measurement, reporting and verification systems, leading to more concrete discussions on mitigation-related response options and less attention on adaptation. Actors use different interactional framing strategies to co-construct meaning around problems and response options. The findings highlight the need for governments and partners to co-create knowledge on how livestock interventions can address adaptation and mitigation simultaneously to move away from the adaptation-mitigation divide in response framings.

Local climate change action plans in France: between formal compliance and grassroots appropriation

ABSTRACT This article examines the process of producing and appropriating climate action plans in rural and semi-rural territories of Nouvelle Aquitaine, France. The aim is to ascertain whether and how the political construction of climate change as a policy issue takes place at a local scale. Based on qualitative interviews analyzed from a constructivist perspective, this research first highlights a hiatus between, on the one hand, a standardized and stereotyped process made compulsory by France’s central government and, on the other, the variety of degrees of appropriation of this state’s goals found in the localities studied. We analyze the factors explaining these differences and conclude that, crucially, even in the areas where framings of climate change are the most favorable for action by local government, politicization of the public problem to be addressed at the local scale has rarely taken place. In so doing, our analysis contributes to a comparative study of local government climate change governance, to how it is affected by national–local relations, and to a more general literature on the politicization and depoliticization of public policy and its making.