How Aware Are Other Nations of Climate Change? Analyzing Germans’ Second-Order Climate Change Beliefs About Chinese,US American and German People

ABSTRACT

What people believe about the beliefs of other people – second-order beliefs – has been acknowledged as a key factor that shapes public support for international climate policy. However, very little is known about their origins. Based on data from an online survey (n?=?935), we analyzed how German citizens assess the climate change awareness in their own nation as compared to those of the US and China. Even if the public climate change awareness in the US and China factually differs, we found that German citizens equivalently rate both nations similar and much lower than their own, a finding which can be explained with social identity processes and “in-group”/“out-group” biases. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrate that the attention individuals pay towards television and social media predict second-order beliefs on climate change awareness positively, while attention to print media is a negative predictor.     

Climate Hypocrisies: A Comparative Study of News Discourse

This paper conducts a comparative study of how the idea of hypocrisy was invoked in media coverage of climate change in 12 newspapers from four countries (Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) between 2005 and 2015. It develops the concepts, and explores the characteristics, of three distinct types of climate hypocrisy: personalized (which attacks the moral character of individuals based on inconsistencies between their stated beliefs and behavior); institutional-analytic (which identifies contradictions between institutional rhetoric and ongoing policies and practices); and reflexive (which develops sympathetic accounts of the struggles individuals face in reconciling the tension between values and actions). It explores how these types are used to undermine the credibility of climate advocates as well as to argue for more aggressive climate action, and maps out key features of climate hypocrisy discourse including ideological attributes, targeted actors and behaviors, affective intensity, and regional variations. It outlines a number of surprising key findings, such as (i) hypocrisy discourses are more frequently invoked by “progressives” supporting climate change action than by “conservatives” resisting climate change action, and (ii) while both groups use hypocrisy discourse, they tend to use very different types of hypocrisy discourses which each likely have very different impacts on climate change discourse.     

Between Guilt and Obligation: Debating the Responsibility for Climate Change and Climate Politics in the Media

ABSTRACT

The “common but differentiated responsibility” of developed and developing countries to mitigate climate change is a core principle of international climate politics—but there is disagreement about what this “differentiated responsibility” amounts to. We investigate how newspapers in developed countries (Australia, Germany, United States) and emerging economies (Brazil, India) covered this debate during the UN climate summits in 2004, 2009, and 2014. Newspapers in both types of countries attributed more responsibility to developed than to developing countries. In line with social identity theory, however, media in developed countries attributed less causal responsibility (blame) to other developed countries than media in emerging economies. The latter countries’ media, in turn, attributed less responsibility to other developing countries than media in developed countries. At the same time, in line with the “differentiated responsibility”, media in developed countries attributed more responsibility to their own countries than media in emerging economies.     

Flood risk and climate change in the Rotterdam area,The Netherlands: enhancing citizen's climate risk perceptions and prevention responses despite skepticism

Effective communication about climate change and related risks is complicated by the polarization between “climate alarmists” and “skeptics.” This paper provides insights for the design of climate risk communication strategies by examining how the interplay between climate change and flood risk communication affects citizens’ risk perceptions and responses. The study is situated in a delta area with substantial geographic variations in the occurrence and potential impact of flood risk, which has led to initiatives to make the area more “climate proof.” We developed a research model that examines individual differences in processing information about climate change related flood risk, based on the postulate that individuals often make an implicit trade-off between motivation to know “what is real” and motivation to maintain prior beliefs. A field experiment, embedded in a survey (n = 1887), sought to test out how the participants responded to risk frames in which a story on flood was either or not combined with climate change information. The results show that it was possible to increase the participants’ local climate risk perception in combination with increased motivation for flood damage prevention, despite a certain level of climate change skepticism. A general implication of our study is that relevant and diagnostic information about local climate-related flood risks can stimulate citizens’ need to know “what’s real” and their willingness to take responsibility for preparedness.     

Quoting “the Environment”: Touchstones on Earth

Media influence public awareness through agenda setting and framing of news by selecting what is published, how frequently and through what frames. This content analysis compares portrayals of climate change based on political ideology of the media. It examines daily coverage of climate change in Santiago, Chile by the conservative, El Mercurio, newspaper, and the liberal, La Nación. Twenty percent of the 1,628 articles published in 2003, 2005, and 2007 which included the words “cambio climático” (climate change) or “calentamiento global” (global warming) were analyzed for frequency, content, images, and frames. The liberal newspaper published twice as many articles that were twice as long, with four times as many illustrations about climate change. They presented more thematic and diverse frames than the conservative newspaper. Government sources and conflict frames dominated both newspapers, reflecting some similar maturation processes of climate change coverage found in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere.     

The Impact of Global NGOs on Japanese Press Coverage of Climate Negotiations: An Analysis of the New “Background Media Strategy”

This article assesses the success of WWF Japan’s “Background Media Strategy” in influencing Japanese mainstream news outlets’ coverage of climate change negotiations. WWF Japan adopted this “Background Media Strategy” after the Bali COP in 2007; instead of lobbying, it aims to build journalists’ expertise. This article examines its success after seven years through three research approaches: the analysis of participant lists; two surveys (conducted in 2009 and 2015); and a content analysis of climate change articles that appeared in four large mainstream newspapers between April and July 2015. Based on these different data, the author concludes that the new media strategy was successful: Japanese journalists increasingly rely on information provided by WWF Japan and less on information provided by the government and industry. This experiment suggests that a new relationship between global NGOs and the media can improve environmental communications—an approach that could help advocacy groups around the world.     

Climate Change in the Media: Poland’s Exceptionalism

Poland is the largest hard coal producer in the European Union (EU), and remains very dependent on coal for its energy. Despite the significant long-term implications of EU mitigation policies for the Polish economy, coverage of climate change and policy in the Polish media remains very low. This study of the coverage both in print media and on television of the 2013/2014 Assessment Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that the volume of coverage in Poland was much lower than in other European countries. The article explores possible reasons for the “exceptionalism” found in the Polish media.     

Mediating the Science: Symbolic and Structural Influences on Communicating Climate Change Through New Zealand's Television News

Climate change presents scientists, politicians, and media producers with a challenge of articulating to diverse stakeholders both the complexity of issues and the urgency of action. Analyses of how climate change is represented and constructed in broadcast media are useful to capture a reflection of contemporary values. We use an analysis of news frames and production values as well as a limited “circuit of culture” approach to explore climate change communication as both a news product and cultural phenomenon. Our focus is New Zealand, a country which ratified the Kyoto agreement but which is currently noncompliant. Using qualitative framing analysis and in-depth interviews with leading media producers, politicians, and scientists, we examine how climate change is produced, represented, and consumed by New Zealanders via their broadcast media.     

How Grammatical Choice Shapes Media Representations of Climate (Un)certainty

Although mass media continue to play a key role in translating scientific uncertainty for public discourse, communicators of climate science are becoming increasingly aware of their own role in shaping scientific messages in the news. As an example of how future media research can provide relevant feedback to climate communicators, the present study examines the ways in which grammatical and word choices represent and construct uncertainty in news reporting about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Qualifying and hedging language and other “epistemic markers” are analyzed in four newspapers during 2001 and 2007: the New York Times and Wall Street Journal from the USA and El País and El Mundo from Spain. Though the US newspapers contained a higher density of epistemic markers and used more ambiguous grammatical constructs of uncertainty than the Spanish newspapers, all four media sources chose similar words when questioning the certainty around climate change. Moreover, the density of epistemic markers in each newspaper either remained the same or increased with time, despite ever-growing scientific agreement that human activities modify global climate. While the US newspapers increasingly adopted IPCC language to describe climate uncertainties, they also exhibited an emerging tendency to construct uncertainty by highlighting differences between IPCC reports or between scientific predictions and observations. The analysis thus helps identify articulations of uncertainty that will shape future media portrayals of climate science across varying cultural and national contexts.     

Climate Change and YouTube: Deliberation Potential in Post-video Discussions

YouTube videos are a ubiquitous source of information but also a venue for users to comment on discussion boards that addend videos. There are no moderators of these discussions, and thus there is a possibility for self-appointed leaders to emerge, responding incessantly and across a genre of videos. These “elites,” as they are labelled here, use the discussion as a personal campaign tool, diminishing the deliberative potential of provocative topics. To determine whether this is happening and to complement existing research analyzing the content of comments, this paper focuses on the structure of the discussions that follow the most popular climate change-related videos. Network analysis confirms that discussions can be elite-driven, appearing in two different network structure types. Among the core group of elite commenters, most are either climate change activists or sceptics, and the most prolific commenters among this core group are activists.     

Internet Memes,Media Frames,and the Conflicting Logics of Climate Change Discourse

ABSTRACT

Media frames have been applied to news information for decades to influence the manner in which news is both delivered and interpreted. However, media frames have tended to focus on traditional news media channels, but the emergence of new media platforms now necessitates a recalibration of how media framing is understood in relation to media and communication studies. With a focus on the issue of climate change, this study explores how framing is employed by the phenomenon of Internet memes in the new media landscape. Specifically, memes presented demonstrate the representation of five common media frames from the perspectives of both the “convinced” and “skeptical” logics. It is argued that through the use of common meme templates combined with the typical humorous or ironic message they convey, Internet memes represent a potentially powerful form of socio-political participation in the online community.     

“Stop Blaming the Cows!”: How Livestock Production is Legitimized in Everyday Discourse on Facebook

In 2016, Swedish climate reporting declined in quantity and shifted focus somewhat from climate change as such to the harmful climate impacts of meat consumption. The latter prompted discussions in social media—an increasingly important forum for public debate but infrequently studied in environmental communication research. Despite strong evidence that a meat and dairy-based diet is harmful for the environment, meat consumption is increasing, and this qualitative study aims to—through the lens of social representation theory—contribute knowledge about how livestock production is legitimized in everyday discourse on Facebook. The article identifies representations that legitimize livestock production through polarization between (1) livestock production and other (environmental) issues, (2) environmentally “good” and “bad” countries, and (3) “reliable” and “unreliable” information. It concludes by discussing the influence of national ideology on the legitimization of livestock production and the potential of social media to counter the post-politicization of environmental issues.     

Between Active Seekers and Non-Users: Segments of Science-related Media Usage in Switzerland and Germany

ABSTRACT

Citizens’ attitudes toward science are related to their use of science-related information from various sources. Evidence is scarce regarding citizens’ individual media repertoires for staying informed about science as segmentation studies so far have primarily focused on scientific attitudes. In this paper, we explore audience segments regarding their science-related information behavior and whether such segments are comparable or vary between two countries with similar information environments. Based on two surveys in Switzerland and Germany, we identify national audience segments that differ in their science-related information repertoires, and analyze their sociodemographic characteristics and science-related attitudes. In both countries, we find very comparable information user segments ranging from those who inform themselves frequently about science (“Active Seekers”/“Science Consumers”) to those who hardly get in contact with any information about science and research (“Non-Users”). Those segments which get in contact with information about science frequently show generally more positive attitudes.     

Geopolitics of global climate change and energy security

Currently,the problem of climate change is already far beyond the category of scientific research,and it affects the economic operation mode,interests pattern,and geographical relationships and becomes the focus of global governance.During the transition period of the international economic and social development and the critical transformation period of the world geopolitical pattern reorganization,China’s industrialization is still at the intermediate stage,and tackling with climate change is also China’s internal demand under this development stage.With more influence of climate change on national competitiveness,climate change and geopolitics present complex multiple relations,and climate change in the era of geopolitical landscape gradually affected the national strategy and diplomacy.This article offered some relevant suggestions based on evaluating the new geopolitical characteristics of climate change:(1)weighing of interests and properly handling the complex relations among major powers during international climate negotiations;(2)strengthening risk judgments and actively cooperating with the United States and the European Union on energy and climate change;(3)relying on the"One Belt(Silk Road Economic Belt)and One Road(twenty-first century Maritime Silk Road)"to ensure China’s energy security and actively participating in the global energy governance;(4)strengthening the"south-south cooperation"mechanism innovation and increasing the investment.     

Examining User Comments for Deliberative Democracy: A Corpus-driven Analysis of the Climate Change Debate Online

The public perception of climate change is characterized by heterogeneity, even polarization. Deliberative discussion is regarded by some as key to overcoming polarization and engaging various publics with the complex issue of climate change. In this context, online engagement with news stories is seen as a space for a new “deliberative democratic potential” to emerge. This article examines aspects of deliberation in user comment threads in response to articles on climate change taken from the Guardian. “Deliberation” is understood through the concepts “reciprocity”, “topicality”, and “argumentation”. We demonstrate how corpus analysis can be used to examine the ways in which online debates around climate change may create or deny opportunities for multiple voices and deliberation. Results show that whilst some aspects of online discourse discourage alternative viewpoints and demonstrate “incivility”, user comments also show potential for engaging in dialog, and for high levels of interaction.     

Everyday vulnerabilities and “social dispositions” in the Malian Sahel,an indication for evaluating future adaptability to water crises?

Since the 1970s, precipitation in the Sahel has decreased and become very irregular, leading to widespread drought, whilst the human need for water has rapidly increased. A new “dispositions”-based approach was adapted in order to analyse human interactions with environmental hazards and applied to the case of Hombori village in north-eastern Mali. This article explores how the population and political stakeholders perceive, live with and respond to the increasing scarcity of water. It also explores how their current vulnerability and ability to cope with variations in available water resources indicate future adaptability to climate shocks. On the one hand, this research shows how the population copes with variations in water resource availability: the population’s socio-spatial organisation explains the inhabitants’ exposure to this problem and some of the factors affecting vulnerability, the elderly and women being the hardest hit. The water issue is generally managed on a “day-to-day” basis and considered a big problem only in the dry season, thus lowering any incentive for self-protection. The main two variables that could explain this kind of risk management are the conflicting local governance and current social rules. On the other hand, the discussion of results, based on a conceptual model of social responses, explains why these current “social dispositions” to cope with and even address the water scarcity issue do not guarantee future adaptability to climate change.     

The 2014 Walrus Haul Out: A Case Study of Selective Exposure to Environmental News Coverage

In this article we examine in real time the political selective exposure process involved when the public confronted the “walrus haul out” of October 2014, a news event attributed by some climate change researchers to the effects of the climate change-driven reduction of Arctic sea ice. Analyzing data assessing the amount of major TV and cable news network coverage of the haul out, and evaluating public opinion data collected from a rolling cross-sectional survey of US adults take at the time, we show that coverage of this event was not equitably distributed across news media news sources, that exposure to news source is related to the respondents’ ideological dispositions, and that exposure to coverage of the walrus haul out is related to ideology, the selectivity of political news habits, and climate change knowledge. We conclude with a discussion of the apparent inevitability of selective exposure to media coverage of climate change-related events and the implications for effective climate change communication.     

YouTube,Social Norms and Perceived Salience of Climate Change in the American Mind

This online experiment explored how contextual information embedded in new media channels such as YouTube may serve as normative social cues to users. Specifically, we examined whether the number of views listed under a YouTube video about climate change would elicit inferences regarding how “others” feel about the climate issue and, consequently, might influence perceptions of issue salience. Participants in this experiment were exposed to a YouTube video about climate change using two experimental conditions, one providing a small number of views under the video and the second listing a large number of views. Results suggest that the “number of views” cue did, indeed, influence participant perceptions of the importance assigned by other Americans to the issue of climate change. Further, compared to low self-monitoring participants, high self-monitoring participants registered an increase in their own judgment of issue importance.     

Energy revolution:for a sustainable future

The discovery and use of fossil fuels have not only helped the evolution of human society from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization,but also caused serious environmental and climate problems.The earth is calling for a sustainable future,and a change from industrial civilization to ecological civilization based on the new"energy revolution".A macroscopic quantitative analysis of China’s environmental capacity and climate capacity shows that China is in urgent need of changing the extensive developing mode and having an energy revolution.It is foreseeable that fossil fuels will remain the most consumed source of energies in China now and in the next few decades.Although the efficient and clean use of fossil fuels are very important,this is not an energy revolution or the fundamental solution to environmental and climate problems.Unconventional gases including shale gas play an important role in the mitigation of environmental problems and climate change,but"shale gas revolution"or"shale gas era"is not suitable to China since the proportion of natural gas in primary energy structure in China can only be increased by a maximum of 20%.The transition of Chinese energy structure from fossil-fuels-dominating stage to multiple-energy-sources stage and then to a nonfossil-fuels-dominating stage is the inevitable future,with the help of great contribution from renewable energy and nuclear energy.Among renewable energies,the proportion of non-hydro renewable energies will gradually increase.Improvement of their market competitiveness(economic efficiency)relies on technological innovation.Renewable energies will be the main energy source for the earth in future.Despite the impact of the Fukushima nuclear disaster,the whole world,including China,will not give up nuclear energy development.Safe,steady,and large-scale development of nuclear power is a rational choice of China.Transition from nuclear fission power plant to nuclear fusion power plant is the inevitable future.Nuclear energy will be a sustainable energy source and another main energy source of the earth in future.China needs to enhance energy security consciousness,promote energy saving,and change the energy supply-demand patterns,that is the transition from"meet a too-fast-growing demand with an extensive supply"to"meet a reasonable demand with a rational supply".All countries need to work together to address global environmental problems and climate change.Energy revolution is the foundation for a sustainable future.With a wide range of international cooperation,the win-win cooperation is the only way of overcoming these challenges.