Climate communication


Climate communication or climate change communication is a field of environmental communication and science communication focused on facilitating the communications of the effects of anthropogenic climate change. Most climate communication focuses on bringing knowledge about and potential action for responding to scientific consensus on climate change to a broader public.
The field of climate communication explores two main areas: the efficacy of existing communications strategies, and supporting the development of recommendations for improving that communication. Improving climate change communication has become the focus of several major research institutes, such as the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and Climate Outreach in the UK, as well as major international organizations, such as the IPCC and UN Climate Change Secretariat, and NGOs.

History

In her encyclopedia article in Oxford's Communications Research Encyclopedia, scholar Amy E. Chadwick describes Climate Change Communication as a new field emerging in the 1990s. Early studies were connected to other environmental communications concerns such as exploring awareness and understanding of ozone depletion., most research in this field has been conducted in the United States, Australia, Canada, and Western European countries.

Major issues

Barriers to understanding

Climate communications is heavily focused on methods for inviting larger scale public action to address climate change. To this end, a lot of research focuses on barriers to public understanding and action on climate change. Scholarly evidence shows that the information deficit model of communication—where climate change communicators assume "if the public only knew more about the evidence they would act"—doesn't work. Instead, argumentation theory indicates that different audiences need different kinds of persuasive argumentation and communication. This is counter to many assumptions made by other fields such as psychology, environmental sociology, and risk communication.
Additionally, climate denialism by organizations, such as The Heartland Institute in the United States, and individuals introduces misinformation into public discourse and understanding.
There are several models for explaining why the public doesn't act once more informed. One of the theoretical models for this is the 5 Ds model created by Per Epsten Stoknes. Stokes describes 5 major barriers to creating action from climate communication:
  1. Distance - many effects and impacts of climate change feel distant from individual lives
  2. Doom - when framed as a disaster, the message backfires, causing Eco-anxiety
  3. Dissonance - a disconnect between the problems and the things that people choose in their lives
  4. Denial -- psychological self defense to avoid becoming overwhelmed by fear or guilt
  5. iDentity -- disconnects created by social identities, such as conservative values, which are threatened by the changes that need to happen because of climate change.
In her book Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life, Kari Norgaard's study of Bygdaby—a fictional name used for a real city in Norway—found that non-response was much more complex than just a lack of information. In fact, too much information can do the exact opposite because people tend to neglect global warming once they realize there is no easy solution. When people understand the complexity of the issue, they can feel overwhelmed and helpless which can lead to apathy or skepticism.

Climate literacy

Though communicating the science about climate change under the premises of an Information deficit model of communication is not very effective in creating change, comfort with and literacy in the main issues and topics of climate change is important for changing public opinion and action. Several agencies and educational organizations have developed frameworks and tools for developing climate literacy, including the Climate Literacy Lab at Georgia State university, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Such resources in English have been collected by the Climate Literacy and Awareness Network.

Creating change

As of 2008, most of the environmental communications evidence for effecting individual or social change were focused on behavior changes around: household energy consumption, recycling behaviours, changing transportation behavior and buying green products. At that time, there were few examples of multi-level communications strategies for effecting change.

Behaviour change

Since much of Climate communication is focused on engaging broad public action, much of the studies are focused on effecting behavior change. Typically, effective climate communication has three parts: cognitive, affective and place based appeals.

Audience segmentation

Different parts of different populations respond differently to climate change communication. Academic research since 2013 has seen an increasing number of audience segmentation studies, to understand different tactics for reaching different parts of populations. Major segmentation studies include:
A significant part of the research and public advocacy conversations about climate change have focused on the effectiveness of different terms used to describe "global warming".

History of global warming

Health

Climate change exacerbates a number of existing public health issues, such as mosquito-borne disease, and introduces new public health concerns related to changing climate, such as increase in health concerns after natural disasters or increases in heat illnesses. Thus the field of health communication has long acknowledged the importance of treating climate change as a public health issue, requiring broad population behavior changes that allow societal climate change adaptation. A December 2008 article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine recommended using two broad sets of tools to effect this change: communication and social marketing. A 2018 study, found that even with moderates and conservatives who were skeptical of the importance of climate change, exposure to information about the health impacts of climate change creates greater conern about the issues.

Media coverage

The effect of mass media and journalism on the public's attitudes towards climate change has been a significant part of communications studies. In particular, scholars have looked at how the media's tendency to cover climate change in different cultural contexts, with different audiences or political positions, and the tendency of newsrooms to cover climate change as an issue of uncertainty or debate, in order to give a sense of balance.

Popular culture

Further research has explored how popular media, like the film The Day After Tomorrow and popular documentary An Inconvenient Truth change public perceptions of climate change.

Effective climate communication

Effective climate communications require audience and contextual awareness. Different organizations have published guides and frameworks based on experience in climate communications. This section documents those various guidelines.

General guidance

A 2009 handbook developed by the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at the Earth Institute at Columbia University describes eight main principles for communications based on the psychological research about Environmental decisions:
  1. Know your audience
  2. Get the Audience's Attention
  3. Translate Scientific Data into Concrete Expereinces
  4. Beware the Overuse of Emotional Appeals
  5. Address Scientific and Climate Uncertainties
  6. Tap into Social Identities and Affiliates
  7. Encourage Group Participation
  8. Make Behavior Change Easier

    By experts

In 2018, the IPCC published a handbook of guidance for IPCC authors about effective climate communication. It is based on extensive social studies research exploring the impact of different tactics for climate communication. The guidelines focus on six main principles:
  1. Be a confident communicator
  2. Talk about the real world, not abstract ideas
  3. Connect with what matters to your audience
  4. Tell a human story
  5. Lead with what you know
  6. Use the most effective visual communication

    Visuals

Climate Visuals a nonprofit, published in 2020 a set of guidelines based on evidence for climate communications. They recommend that visual communications include:
  1. Show real people
  2. Tell new stories
  3. Show climate change causes at scale
  4. Show emotionally powerful impacts
  5. Understand your audience
  6. Show local impacts
  7. Be careful with protest imagery.

    Sustainable development

The impacts of climate change are exacerbated in low- and middle income countries; higher levels of poverty, less access to technologies, and less education, means that this audience needs different information. The Paris Agreement and IPCC both acknowledge the importance of sustainable development in addressing these differences. In 2019 nonprofit, Climate and Development Knowledge Network published a set of lessons learned and guidelines based on their experience communicating climate change in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Important organizations

Major research centers in climate communication include: