Apocalyptic Visions and Anthems of Hope: Climate Change Communication and Future Possibilities

Within the emerging field of evolutionary psychology a consensus is developing that the triggering of emotions is integral to the human response to threats. This understanding of human psychology underlies a vigorous debate within the contemporary activity of climate change communication regarding the efficacy of the emotions of fear vis-à-vis hope for mobilising human behavioural change. Noting the contours of this debate and the paucity of radical future vision casting within contemporary western political discourse, the article examines how images of terror function within the ‘Little Apocalypse’ passage in Matthew 24 and potential insights this offers to our contemporary situation. Building upon this biblical reflection, the article contends that the Christian practices of preaching and singing have significant power to shape communal imaginative visions of alternative futures. As such, these practices are critical gifts that the church can offer the environmental movement and broader society in this moment of time.

Exploring how the tone of written climate change communication influences coping strategies

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence that various tones of written climate change communication have on coping strategies. 126 New Jersey college students responded to a quantitative questionnaire that had a passage on climate change written in one of the following tones: dreadful, cautiously optimistic, or hopeful. Students then answered 9 Likert scale questions that assessed their coping strategies in response to climate change: problem-focused, meaning-focused, and/or emotion-focused coping. Previous research has found that problem-focused and meaning-focused coping is positively correlated to pro-environmental behavior, but little research exists on what tones of climate change communication evoke problem-focused and meaning-focused coping. In this study, no statistical difference was found with respect to evoking problem-focused coping across the three tones. However, there were statistical differences in evoking meaning-focused and emotion-focused coping. Namely, those who responded to a cautiously optimistic or hopeful tone were more likely to resort to meaning-focused coping, and those who read a dreadful tone were more likely to apply emotion-focused coping. The findings of this study suggest using cautiously optimistic and hopeful tones in climate change communication in education to encourage environmental engagement and mitigate climate change related mental health concerns.

Strategies for climate change communication through social media: Objectives, approach, and interaction

Social media are prominent channels to foster the social debate about climate change. This research explores the strategies that institutions supporting scientific consensus on climate change undertake in order to communicate through social media. We conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with community managers and communication directors of organizations of different characteristics in several countries. From the responses we have identified strategies that are based on communicators’ perceptions and experience. We identified strategies that: (a) orientate the communication objectives, (b) help to approach citizens in an effective way, and (c) create interaction with the users. This provides a repertoire of well-grounded strategies that can work as a guide that may help organizations to design their actions to communicate climate change through social media. We conclude that including higher levels of interaction in social media strategies remains a challenge that could lead to a more effective social debate on climate change.

The effect of misinformation and inoculation: Replication of an experiment on the effect of false experts in the context of climate change communication

An important communication strategy of climate skeptics is the use of fake experts, who act as spokespersons, although they do not possess any expertise in the field. One promising approach to tackle the effect of misinformation is inoculation. Previous research focuses on the United States, and the comparably low effect sizes of previous research call for further examination and consolidation. This study aims to complement those findings with data for Germany and replicates and extends an experiment by Cook et al. with a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. Our study confirms the importance of pre-existing worldviews for climate-related attitudes. Regarding the effects of misinformation messages and most notably, the effects of inoculation messages we could not replicate the findings of Cook et al.: At least in our setting, the misinformation message and also inoculation preceding misinformation had hardly any effect on the climate-related attitudes under study.

Pulling on Heartstrings: Three Studies of the Effectiveness of Emotionally Framed Communication to Encourage Workplace Pro-Environmental Behavior

We investigated whether the emotional framing of climate change communication can influence workplace pro-environmental behavior. In three quasi-experimental studies, we examined whether emotional displays in climate change communication affected participants’ subsequent workplace pro-environmental behavior. In Studies 1 and 2, undergraduate and master’s students viewed a fictional news video about climate change, where the newsreader displayed one of five emotions: sadness, fear, anger, contentment, and hope. The dependent variable was recycling behavior following the viewing. In Study 3, office employees viewed the same news videos online; the dependent variable was requesting further information to increase pro-environmental behavior in the workplace. The results from all three studies show that displayed emotion significantly affected pro-environmental behavior and that sadness, in particular, resulted in significantly less workplace pro-environmental behavior. These results indicate the need to study the effect of discrete emotions, rather than assuming that emotions of the same valence have similar effects. The results also underscore the importance of using experimental designs in advancing the field. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for research, theory, and practice of emotionally framed communication of sustainability messages.