Integrating Media Studies of Climate Change into Transdisciplinary Research: Which Direction Should We Be Heading?

Research in the area of media coverage on climate change communication represents one of the most prolific areas of inquiry within communication and mass communication studies. This body of literature, which ranges from empirical to critical studies, continues to expand. Much research has focused on representations of climate change causes, effects, and human actions, while some has assessed the impacts of these representations. What is broadly missing from this literature, however, is a discussion of how we might integrate media analysis into transdisciplinary collaborative research aimed at creating solutions to the social, environmental, and economic issues intertwined with climate change. Given the magnitude of problems the society and science are currently grasping with, it behooves us to understand how media studies can contribute most effectively to characterizing and solving problems. We maintain that the move toward integrating media studies into transdisciplinary collaborative research marks an essential transition for environmental communication in general, but climate change communication in particular, given the urgency and magnitude of creating meaningful adaptation and mitigation strategies to address this pressing, complex challenge. Drawing on our work as part of a large transdisciplinary sustainability science team, we provide a case study for understanding what collaborations are key to moving media studies into a transdisciplinary context and the key opportunities and barriers that come along with that move. We argue that media studies must increasingly engage directly in collaboration with other researchers, stakeholders, and communities to serve on-the-ground decision-making and enhance society's ability to take action.     

Elites, climate change and agency in a developing society: the Chilean case

Faced with global climate change, local elites are confronted with the main dilemma of a developing country: development requires economic growth, but this effort also requires consideration of environmental factors and sustainable patterns of production and consumption. Based on empirical evidence from qualitative research on businesses and political elites in Chile—a paradigmatic South American middle-income country—this paper explores the extent to which local elites are aware of the severity of challenges posed by global climate change and identify main climate change concerns in their discourse. The degree to which domestic elites are aware of the paradigm shift they must assume toward clean industrial production is a key issue of environmental governance that involves private non-governmental actors. This paper gives clues to a better understanding of what is happening with strategic actors in developing nations and their understanding of their decision-making capacity concerning environmental policy and investments for facing global climate change. The main conclusion of the research is that awareness of climate change in local elites’ discourse is relative. It is not accompanied by a full acceptance of their agency and is not leading to a paradigm shift toward a clean model of development because of domestic elites’ position within globalization processes.     

Meeting the Climate Change Challenge (MC3): The Role of the Internet in Climate Change Research Dissemination and Knowledge Mobilization

This paper explores the role that Internet and online technologies played in research dissemination and knowledge mobilization in a recent climate change research project, MC³. In addition, the team looked at the potential of online expert-practitioner research collaborations for these purposes. Electronic communication was seen as a key element for creating distributed networks essential to the project and for building new practitioner/research knowledge collaboratives. The paper discusses how online communication strategies and technologies were used for wide dissemination of its research outcomes. MC³'s research dissemination and knowledge mobilization strategies are analyzed, using engagement as the primary measure, to gain insights on the effectiveness and challenges of using Internet-based tools for communicating climate change innovations and actions.     

China as a new shaper of international development: the environmental implications

The emergence of China as a global player challenges the pre-existing dominance of the OECD countries and will continue to be a crucial force for global change in coming decades. The implications of China’s rise will be most significant for low- and middle-income countries, but the outcomes will also affect China’s relations with traditional donors and the understanding of the process of development. While these issues are increasingly explored at the political and economic level, very little analysis is available for the environmental impacts that China has on low- and middle-income countries. It is well understood that China plays a major role in relation to climate change, energy use and natural resource use at the global level; however, the perspective of China’s environmental impacts on low- and middle-income countries is underexplored. This Special Issue, therefore, elaborates the rise of China from the environmental perspective and assesses the impacts of China’s rise on low- and middle-income countries for international research, policy and practice in the field of environment and development. The findings draw on insights relevant for energy, water, forestry and land issues in Asia, Africa and Latin America.     

The relative importance of subjective and structural factors for individual adaptation to climate change by forest owners in Sweden

A growing body of literature argues that subjective factors can more accurately explain individual adaptation to climate change than objective measurers of adaptive capacity. Recent studies have shown that personal belief in climate change and affect are much better in explaining climate awareness and action than income, education or gender. This study focuses on the process of individual adaptation to climate change. It assesses and compares the influence of cognitive, experiential and structural factors on individuals’ views and intentions regarding climate change adaptation. Data from this study comes from a survey with 836 forest owners in Sweden. Ordinal and binary logistic regression was used to test hypotheses about the different factors. Results show that cognitive factors—namely personal level of trust in climate science, belief in the salience of climate change and risk assessment—are the only statistically significant factors that can directly explain individuals’ intention to adapt to climate change and their sense of urgency. Findings also suggest that structural or socio-demographic factors do not have a statistically significant influence on adaptation decision-making among Swedish forest owners. The study also offers valuable insights for communication interventions to promote adaptation. Findings strongly suggest that communication interventions should focus more strongly on building trust and addressing stakeholders’ individual needs and experiences.

     

Communicating climate change for adaptation in rural communities: a Pacific study

The academic literature on climate change communications is growing. However, the majority of this literature focuses on the issue of climate change mitigation in a developed country context, and there is little published material regarding communication in a developing country and adaptation context. Similarly, despite community-based approaches to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction increasing in the Pacific Islands region, there is very limited guidance on how to effectively communicate climate change in a way that enhances people’s resilience. This paper documents the experiences of organisations, including local and international non-government and faith-based organisations, governments, regional technical organisations and donor agencies in communicating climate change for adaptation in the Pacific region. Three key climate change communication challenges are highlighted and suggestions made for overcoming them based on results from interviews, a focus group discussion and an online forum. Finally, recommendations are made for good practice guidance in climate change communication that is empowering and culturally relevant.     

Communicating Local Climate Risks Online Through an Interactive Data Visualization

Literature suggests a need to develop climate communication tools that focus on the impacts of climate change at local scales to increase proximity and communicate the risks on a more personal level. However, the nature of raw climate projection data makes accessibility by the lay audience a challenge and necessitates the need for innovative technological approaches to its distribution. ClimateData.US was created as an interactive visualization tool based on downscaled climate projection data to increase proximity and render climate change as salient and personally relevant. This experiment evaluated whether interacting with ClimateData.US influenced participants’ climate change attitudes and concern and whether this effect varied as a function of geographic proximity. Findings revealed strong effects—regardless of geographic proximity—for interacting with the website on participants’ perceived reality of climate change, attitude certainty, and concern for climate change.     

Mobilizing Facebook Users against Facebook's Energy Policy: The Case of Greenpeace Unfriend Coal Campaign

This research analyzes Greenpeace International Unfriend Coal protest campaign against Facebook's energy policy (2010–2011), as a case study in the organization's approach to campaigning on climate change issues. In the context of Greenpeace protest history and social movement research, we focus on the online mobilization tactics used by Greenpeace, and how they differed from previous campaign practices. The findings are based on a content analysis of all statuses posted on the campaign Facebook page (N = 119), and six semi-structured interviews with key Greenpeace personnel. The analysis reveals that Greenpeace used Facebook extensively both for disseminating information and context about the campaign, and as a platform for mobilizing and facilitating broad public engagement. Greenpeace seized the affordances of the Facebook platform and introduced new means of online mobilization and engagement. These e-tactics proved effective for engaging diverse transnational supporters in the campaign. The implications for environmental non-governmental organizations and the broader environmental movement are discussed.     

Beyond Frames: Recovering the Strategic in Climate Communication

Recent calls for communication scholars and practitioners to identify effective communication means for mobilizing constituencies to address climate change often fall to distinguish between communicative acts that “mobilize” and mobilization that enables a particular end. The latter presupposes an account of the intentional or strategic alignment of mobilization, that is, the predicted or assumed relationships among a mobilized public, the mode(s) of influence or leverage this creates, and the expected consequences of such influence, i.e., how specific communicative efforts are related to outcomes or “effects” within a system. This essay argues that the neglect of strategic alignments in some recent climate communication campaigns have caused these campaigns to be non-adaptive at the scale and/or urgency required. Drawing on case studies of the 2007 Step It Up initiative and the Sierra Club's “Beyond Coal” campaign, the essay proposes viewing the strategic as an heuristic for identifying openings within networks of contingent relationships and the potential of certain communicative efforts to interrupt or leverage change within systems of power.     

Climate change and human health in Latin America: drivers, effects, and policies

Many people would be increasingly affected by living under critical conditions in Latin America if, as expected, global warming aggravates disease and pest transmission processes. Heat waves and air pollution would increase heat-related diseases and illness episodes in large cities. Fire smoke has been associated with irritation of the throat, lung and eyes, and respiratory problems. Climate extreme increases associated with climate change would cause physical damage, population displacement, and adverse effects on food production, freshwater availability and quality. It would also increase the risks of infectious and vector-borne diseases. Climate change impacts the geographical range, seasonality, and the incidence rate of vector-borne diseases, such as malaria. Climate-related ecological changes may expand cholera transmission, particularly among populations in low-laying tropical coastal areas. El Niño conditions may affect the incidence of infectious diseases, such as malaria. Ocean warming would increase temperature-sensitive toxins produced by phytoplankton, which could cause more frequent contamination of seafood. A clearer understanding on the current role of climate change in disease patterns will be able to improve forecasts of potential future impacts of projected climate change and support action to reduce such impacts.     

Spreading the News on Carbon Capture and Storage: A State-Level Comparison of US Media

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has received abundant federal support in the USA as an energy technology to mitigate climate change, yet its position within the energy system remains uncertain. Because media play a significant role in shaping public conversations about science and technology, we analyzed media portrayal of CCS in newspapers from four strategically selected states. We grounded the analysis in Luhmann's theory of social functions, operationalized through the socio-political evaluation of energy deployment (SPEED) framework. Coverage emphasized economic, political/legal, and technical functions and focused on benefits, rather than risks of adoption. Although news coverage connected CCS with climate change, the connection was constrained by political/legal functions. Media responses to this constraint indicate how communication across multiple social functions may influence deployment of energy technologies.     

Canadian Weathercasters’ Current and Potential Role as Climate Change Communicators

ABSTRACT

Climatologists worldwide are calling for urgent action to manage climate change, but public engagement remains a significant challenge. This lack of engagement is often attributed to psychological distance: climate change is perceived as something happening far away, to other people, or in a hypothetical future. TV weathercasters are ideally situated to communicate the geographically and temporally proximate impacts of climate change and increase public engagement. This study explores the status of climate change reporting amongst weathercasters in Canada, where no such research has been conducted. The respondents suggested that many, but not all, weathercasters are engaged with climate change and interested in presenting local, climate-related content; however, their on-air climate change communication behavior is highly limited. This analysis builds on research conducted with American weather broadcaster by indicating that Canadian weathercasters share their potential as effective climate change communicators, but are highly uncertain about their capacity to support this role.     

Reconstituting “America”: The Clean Energy Economy Ventriloquized

With the foregrounding of “clean energy” policies by climate change concerns, the rhetorical constitution of “America” as a collective subject, mobilized to adopt the clean energy economy (CEE), becomes crucial. Here, I analyze the constitutive rhetoric of Pew Charitable Trusts’ landmark 2009 report on the CEE, drawing from the ventriloqual perspective to communication. I argue that this approach provides a more pragmatic, conversational understanding of the interpellative process constituting “America,” noting it to be hybridized and composed of various human and nonhuman agents. Tracing the ingoing interaction among agents—some manifest in the text, others spectral—sheds light on the complex relations of power at stake, recognizes the open-ended possibilities (and restrictions) of agency, and the role of material structures shaping environmental communication and policy.     

Aiding multi-level decision-making processes for climate change mitigation and adaptation

Progress towards climate change aware regional sustainable development is affected by actions at multiple spatial scales and governance levels and equally impacts actions at these scales. Many authors and policy practitioners consider therefore that decisions over policy, mitigation strategies and capacity for adaptation to climate change require construction and coordination over multiple levels of governance to arrive at acceptable local, regional and global management strategies. However, how such processes of coordination and decision-aiding can occur and be maintained and improved over time is a major challenge in need of investigation. We take on this challenge by proposing research-supported methods of aiding multi-level decision-making processes in this context. Four example regionally focussed multi-level case studies from diverse socio-political contexts are outlined—estuarine management in Australia’s Lower Hawkesbury, flood and drought management in Bulgaria’s Upper Iskar Basin, climate policy integration in Spain’s Comunidad Valenciana and food security in Bangladesh’s Faridpur District—from which insights are drawn. Our discussion focuses on exploring these insights including: (1) the possible advantages of informal research-supported processes and specifically those that provide individual arenas of participation for different levels of stakeholders; (2) the complexity of organisation processes required for aiding multi-level decision-making processes; and (3) to what extent progress towards integrated regional policies for climate change aware sustainable development can be achieved through research-supported processes. We finish with a speculative section that provides ideas and directions for future research.     

Climate and conflicts: the security risks of global warming

Since the publication of the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, the securitization of global warming has reached a new level. Numerous public statements and a growing research literature have discussed the potential security risks and conflicts associated with climate change. This article provides an overview of this debate and introduces an assessment framework of climate stress, human security and societal impacts. Key fields of conflict will be addressed, including water stress, land use and food security, natural disasters and environmental migration. A few regional hot spots of climate security will be discussed, such as land-use conflicts in Northern Africa; floods, sea-level rise and human security in Southern Asia; glacier melting and water insecurity in Central Asia and Latin America; water conflicts in the Middle East; climate security in the Mediterranean; and the potential impact on rich countries. Finally, concepts and strategies will be considered to minimize the security risks and move from conflict to cooperation in climate policy.     

“Environmentally Friendly Oil and Gas Production”: Analyzing Governmental Argumentation and Press Deliberation on Oil Policy

This article exemplifies an approach to analyzing political arguments and press deliberation on the issue of climate change and oil policy. I apply political discourse analysis to examine an oil minister's press conference presentation of the key official document on Norway's future oil policy, and evaluate how he attempted to reconcile the country's expansive petroleum policy with its self-proclaimed ambition of being world leading in responsible climate policy. The analysis displays how the minister's argumentation served to legitimate an expansive oil policy by projecting an altruistic motivation and invoking the authority of the tradition of the industry. This is supplemented by an analysis of newspaper editorials and commentaries on the speech, identifying a major split in viewpoints between local and national newspapers. The analyses evaluate arguments in an explicit manner, for example by critically questioning their value premises, thus suggesting an approach that could benefit critical research on environmental communication.     

A comparative review for understanding elite interest and climate change policy in China

China’s climate change policy has rapidly evolved from one of neglect to necessity with sinologists drawing on a wide range of theories in trying to explain this shift. The rising influence of citizens' movements coupled with international pressure are often cited as significant drivers behind the government’s evolving climate change strategy. But can the influence of public pressure and international lobbying offer a complete explanation for the government’s dramatic policy changes? In this article, we advance theoretical pluralism where three contending schools of thought are made complementary to offer distinct explanations for understanding the mechanisms and rationale for Beijing’s elite-driven climate change policy. In brief, by bridging three separate theoretical streams including rational choice theory, authoritarian environmentalism and advocacy coalition framework, we show that the interests of elites in China’s upper political echelon are the driving force behind the country’s climate change policy.     

Perceived Collective Efficacy and Trust in Government Influence Public Engagement with Climate Change-Related Water Conservation Policies

Water insecurity, induced or intensified due to climate change, has emerged as a key policy challenge in poor and developing countries such as India. Drawing on social cognitive theory, this paper examines the role of perceived collective efficacy—people's shared beliefs about their group's capabilities to accomplish collective tasks—and trust in government as factors influencing Indians' engagement with government water conservation policies. Using a national survey of Indians (N = 4031), we found that individuals with high levels of perceived collective efficacy and trust in government are more likely to support government water conservation policies. Moreover, for individuals with low trust in government, higher collective efficacy is associated with greater policy support. Perceived collective efficacy is also associated with activist behaviours, while distrust is not. Increasing collective efficacy beliefs, for example through mass media channels and targeted campaigns, could help increase citizens' engagement with climate change adaptation policies.     

Explaining Agricultural Expansion, Resource Booms and Growth in Latin America

The following paper examines the main factors determining long-run agricultural land expansion in Latin America compared to other tropical regions. Given the importance of natural resource-based sectors for most economies in Latin America, the impact of price-induced "resource booms" on economic growth in the region is explored. In addition, the paper examines whether there is an inherent "boom and bust" pattern of economic development associated with agricultural land expansion in Latin America, and the extent to which economic policies in the region exacerbate this problem. The paper concludes by examining the role of targeted policies in alleviating the structural obstacles to Latin American agricultural and economic development.     

Press Briefings in International Climate Change Negotiations

Press conferences are an important element of a government's communication strategy at climate change summits. From a theoretical perspective, press conferences should serve two main functions: exerting pressure in negotiations and informing the public. These functions correspond to two logics of action: a logic of consequence where governments use press conferences as negotiation tools and a logic of appropriateness where governments organize press conferences to increase transparency. Based on new data from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change archives, we find limited support for these two logics of action. Neither democracies, which, we argue, are more likely to follow a logic of appropriateness, nor vulnerable countries, which are more likely to follow a logic of consequence, organize systematically more press conferences. Other factors, such as capacity and a government's function in the negotiation structure, seem to play a more important role.