Climate communication
Climate communication or climate change communication is a field of environmental communication and science communication focused on discussing the causes, nature and effects of anthropogenic climate change.
Research in the field emerged in the 1990s and has since grown and diversified to include studies concerning the media, conceptual framing, and public engagement and response. Since the late 2000s, a growing number of studies have been conducted in countries in the Global South and have been focused on climate communication with marginalized populations.
Most research focuses on raising public knowledge and awareness, understanding underlying cultural values and emotions, and bringing about public engagement and action. Major issues include familiarity with the audience, barriers to public understanding, creating change, audience segmentation, changing rhetoric, public health, storytelling, media coverage, and popular culture.
History
Scholar Amy E. Chadwick identifies Climate Change Communication as a new field of scholarship that truly emerged in the 1990s. In the late 80s and early 90s, research in developed countries was largely concerned with studying the public's perception and comprehension of climate change science, models, and risks and guiding further development of communication strategies. These studies showed that while the public was aware of and beginning to notice climate change effects, the public's understanding of climate change was interlinked with ozone depletion and other environmental risks but not human-produced emissions. This understanding was coupled with varied yet overall increased net concern that continued through the mid-2000s.In studies from the mid-2000s to the late 2000s, there is evidence of rising global skepticism despite growing consensus and evidence of increasingly polarized views due to climate change's growing use as a political "litmus test." In 2010, researcher Susanne C. Moser viewed both the expansion of climate change communication's focus, which began to include subjects such as materialized evidence of climate change effects in addition to science and policy, as well as more prolific conversation/communication from a variety of voices as increasing climate change's relevance to society. Surveys through the mid-2010s showed mixed concern for climate change depending on global region —notably consistent concern in developed Western countries but a trend towards global unconcern in countries such as China, Mexico, and Kenya.
In 2016, Moser noted an increase in the total number of climate communication studies in both Westernized countries and the Global South and an increased focus on climate communication with indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities since 2010. As of 2017, research remained focused on public understanding and had since begun to also analyze the relevance of the media, conceptual framing, public engagement and response, and persuasive strategies. This expansion has legitimated climate change communication as its own academic field and has yielded a group of experts specific to it.
Primary goals of climate communication
Most climate communication and research within the field is concerned with the mechanisms related to the public's understanding/awareness of and perception of climate change which are intertwined with personal cultural values and emotions related to social norms and how these components can influence the engagement and action that may emerge as a response to communication.Within the academic field, there are debates over which is more important: knowledge-based communication or emotion-driven communication. Though both are inherently linked to action, researchers often view increased understanding as leading to increased action. A 2020 study by Kris De Meyer et al. attempts to push back against that notion and argues that action produces belief.
Analyzing and increasing public understanding and perception
One line of climate communication study is concerned with analyzing public understanding and risk perception. Understanding public perception of risk and its relevant influences, as well as public knowledge, concern, consensus, and imagery is thought to help policymakers better address the concerns of constituents and inform further climate communication. This notion has opened the realm of climate communications to political communications, sociology, and psychology.Achieving increased public understanding is often associated with communicating levels of scientific consensus and other scientific facts or futures in order to spur action and address the "information-deficit" model but can also be related to connecting with values and emotions. Perception is often related to personal recognition to impacted locations, times, weather events, or economics, which has placed emphasis on different methods of framing and rhetoric when communicating. Connection of the self with events, such as those mentioned and often times through perceiving problems as local, increases recognition of the larger problem of climate change. These methods of communication presently include scientific communication, knowledge transfer, social media, news media, and entertainment amongst others, which are also studied individually regarding climate change.
Some experts focus on how public perceptions of climate change can be related to public perceptions of smaller parts of the environment. Through teaching about the interconnectedness of humans and nature, some environmental writers believe that a fundamental shift in thinking is possible, and that this in turn would lead to greater desire to preserve the natural world.
Connecting to values and emotions
In addition to studies regarding knowledge, climate communication researchers inspect existing values and emotions related to climate change and how they are impacted by various communication strategies and can influence the effects of communication modes. Understanding and relating to the audiences' moral, cultural, religious, and political values, identities, and emotions are viewed as imperative to appropriate and effective communication because climate change can otherwise seem intangible due to uncertainty and distance. Recognizing and understanding these values is key to impacting perception of climate science and mitigative action because values serve as filters through which information is processed. Emotional reactions to climate change and the role emotions can play in decision-making have encouraged researchers to study the emotional side of climate change. Appeals to emotions and to values can also be used in communication strategies. It is unclear whether negative emotions or positive emotions better promote climate change action. Emotions can also be analyzed by their level of pleasantness and/or to the extent they evoke action, which is often understudied.Instead of warning of global warming's impending negative impacts, some renewable energy lobbyists emphasize economic benefits, profitability, job creation, and energy dominance—items that fossil fuel advocates have traditionally touted. The goal was to "harness" self-interest rather than condemn it, and to "meet the audience where they are".
Producing engagement and action
Studying climate communications can also be focused on civic engagement and the production of behavior changes for adapting or increasing resiliency to climate change. Engagement and action can occur on multiple geographic scales, and examples include participation in climate justice movements, support for policies or politics, changes to agricultural practices, and addresses to vulnerabilities to extreme weather vulnerabilities. Behavioral changes can also address more fundamental norms and values that influence lifestyles, life choices, and society as a whole. Engagement can also involve how those who communicate climate change interact with researchers studying the field of communications.Studies have recognized that increased understanding and perception does not automatically produce action and have argued for increased means of enabling action in communication methods. Research into engagement and action often focuses on the perception and understanding of different demographics and geographic locations. Some politicians, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger with his slogan "terminate pollution", say that activists should generate optimism by focusing on the health co-benefits of climate action.
A study published in Nature Human Behaviour in 2025 found that presenting people with binary climate data—for example, a lake freezing versus not freezing—significantly increases the perceived impact of climate change compared to when continuous data such as temperature change is presented. The researchers said the findings confirmed the boiling frog effect for climate change communication.
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. Stoknes describes 5 major barriers to creating action from climate communication:
- Distance – many effects and impacts of climate change feel distant from individual lives
- Doom - when framed as a disaster, the message backfires, causing Eco-anxiety
- Dissonance – a disconnect between the problems and the things that people choose in their lives
- Denial -- psychological self defense to avoid becoming overwhelmed by fear or guilt
- iDentity -- disconnects created by social identities, such as conservative values, which are threatened by the changes that need to happen because of climate change.
A study published in PLOS Climate studied defensive and secure forms of national identity—respectively called "national narcissism" and "secure national identification"—for their correlation to support for policies to mitigate climate change and to transition to renewable energy. The researchers concluded that secure national identification tends to support policies promoting renewable energy; however, national narcissism was found to be inversely correlated with support for such policies—except to the extent that such policies, as well as greenwashing, enhance the national image. Right-wing political orientation, which may indicate susceptibility to climate conspiracy beliefs, was also concluded to be negatively correlated with support for genuine climate mitigation policies.
A study published in PLOS One in 2024 found that even a single repetition of a claim was sufficient to increase the perceived truth of both climate science-aligned claims and climate change skeptic/denial claims—"highlighting the insidious effect of repetition". This effect was found even among climate science endorsers.