Matin Mahmoudi
November 29, 2018
Introduction
Even though many reports underlining climate change have been released the past decade, there seem to still be a lot of skepticism with regards to climate change, with the newest report being released a few days ago, only to be dismissed by President Trump (BBC, 2018a). Especially with the rise of social media, everyone has the opportunity to spread information or misinformation, regardless of background. There some good aspects to this kind of media, but there are also some obvious poorer features. The impact of media, both mainstream and social, will be discussed in this essay, with the main focus being the understanding of why scientific communication has failed with respect to climate change. As a basis for social media, Twitter will be investigated.
Public perception of and engagement with climate change
It is argued that the debate on climate change is no longer about whether it takes place or not, but whether it is of an anthropogenic nature (Pearce et al., 2014). Although 97 % of active climate change scientists agree that human activity is significantly contributing to climate change, the public does not universally seem to share the same belief: a study reported that in April of 2013, 63 % of Americans believed that climate change was taking place however, only 49 % believed it was of an anthropogenic nature. The proportion dropped to 38 % when asked whether they believed the consequences were harming people around the world (Cody et al., 2015). On a list of more than 20 issues that Americans feel are important to address, climate change ranks among the last (Hart and Feldman, 2014). There has been a growing polarization of climate change belief over the past few years, especially in the United States (Capstick et al., 2015). Skepticism has also grown in the UK and Australia compared to other locations around the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa and South America (Capstick et al., 2015). Media coverage has seen an increase in the inclusion of skeptical opinions in the US, the UK and Australia (Capstick et al., 2015) and scholars believe that trying to communicate climate change often lead to further polarization of the issue (Hart and Feldman, 2014).
Another issue with climate change perception is that people tend to confuse different environmental problems, which will not lead to appropriate behavioral responses (Taylor et al., 2014). Although quite a few people may identify the challenges caused by climate change, a very few identify them as being salient towards their lives (Akerlof et al., 2010, Lorenzoni et al., 2005, Hart and Feldman, 2014, Hanson-Easey et al., 2015). It is not personal nor local enough to take into consideration. This notion is supported by how weather changes influences people’s beliefs in climate change (Cody et al., 2015). It has also been observed that search volumes on climate change related terms go up around the time of climate change related events, such as the release of new reports, extreme weather conditions, calls to action, or release of climate related movies (Anderson, 2017). For many people the timescale is way too far in the future to consider now, this might be due to the lack of knowledge to that regard (Hanson-Easey et al., 2015). Seeing as people who live in areas that are categorized as being at risk of flooding do not recognize that themselves echoes that lack of knowledge (Akerlof et al., 2010).
The likelihood of hazards is underestimated in places where they have not been experienced previously (Taylor et al., 2014). However, it has been noted that when more knowledge about negative impacts are known, people are less willing to change behavior, possibly due to a feeling of powerlessness (Shi et al., 2015). This notion has been supported by another paper pointing out, that if the individual does not feel that their response will have any efficacy, the individual will go into a fear response rather than engage (Hart and Feldman, 2014). Successful calls for action require that indirect action is believed to be effective, as the greatest prospect for mitigation depends on political intervention (Hart and Feldman, 2014).
Mainstream media and climate change
Mainstream media has been very important for a very long time, as it has allowed the assimilation of information to the mass. From the point of view of the public understanding of science (PUS) movement, it has played a major role, by allowing scientists to communicate to the public the advances they have achieved. However, some issues have been pointed out with PUS; in some instances PUS actually leads to more skepticism rather than understanding (Bowater and Yeoman, 2012). The reason for that is the construct of PUS and mainstream media. Some of these issues will be discussed in this section and the next, describing how science communication is moving towards the public engagement with science and technology (PEST) model.
Mainstream media deliver stories of climate change by framing them in a certain context (Hart and Feldman, 2014). That is, a certain feature that might be the consequence is identified, and the story of climate change is delivered in that regard. Using public health as a frame has induced support for climate change mitigation, and in some circles so has national security (the impact of climate change on humanitarian crises and military strategies). However, it has been argued that using national security as a frame may backfire by stirring up anger and tension (Hart and Feldman, 2014). In contrast, a frame based on economy has been used by climate change skeptics, by saying the mitigation through regulation and restriction on greenhouse gas emission will cause substantial damage to the economy (Hart and Feldman, 2014). Investigation into U.S. News networks showed that 59.3 % of news broadcasts mentioned impact of climate change and 59.1 % discussed action that may be taken for climate change to be addressed (Hart and Feldman, 2014). However, only 39.8 % of broadcasts discussing actions to be taken also touched upon the impacts, whereas 87.3 % of broadcasts discussing impacts did not mention actions to be taken (Hart and Feldman, 2014). Editors of mainstream media tend to dislike reporting on climate change issues, as they believe the audience struggles with understanding the concepts (Park, 2018). Another force that keeps broadcasters from talking about climate change is the advertisements that promote the consumption of products or use of services that contribute to greenhouse emissions, and thus leaving the broadcasting companies in a conflict of interest (Park, 2018). Mainstream media (especially in the United States) mostly use government or corporate sources (Park, 2018). This may lead to less coverage of climate change news by American broadcasters as these sources prioritize other news over climate change. The lack of climate change broadcasting leads to the cut of full-time climate change journalists, leaving less knowledgeable journalists having to cover it. Obviously, as these journalists do not have the expertise, the coverage gradually continues to decrease (Park, 2018). Another driving force for the lack of climate change activism is the influential impact of the fossil fuel industry, that publish books, films and other media to influence the opinions of the public in support of the industry (Park, 2018).
Many scholars have suggested the internet helps to reduce the knowledge gap that may be caused due to socioeconomic background (Anderson, 2017). A shift in the way in which communication to the public takes place has developed, where social media is taking over from mainstream media outlets (Cody et al., 2015). It has even been noted that 62 % of adults in the United States get their news on social media, with 44 % of them getting their news on Facebook (Anderson, 2017). This might seem worrying for some but does leave an incredible opportunity for scientists. This shift will allow scientists to overcome some of the challenges that were linked to the PUS (Bowater and Yeoman, 2012).
Twitter’s involvement in climate change debate
The use of social network sites in the United States have gone up, with only 8 % of adults using them in 2005, but 72 % doing so in 2013 (Anderson, 2017). The actual engagement has been quite high with 55% of Americans having actively commented online. Twenty five percent of internet users comment on online news stories and blog posts and 17 % of them have shared links to the items on social media (Anderson, 2017). With the majority of the users of Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter in the United states get their news while they are using the sites (Anderson, 2017), the potential to influence public opinion and knowledge is underlined. The role of social media has grown drastically over the past few years, making it an important medium to consider in science communication. Social media may be able to overcome some of the challenges that are linked with mainstream media (the lack of coverage, conflict of interest, prioritization of climate change news). Social media has been categorized as both expressive and consumptive (Anderson, 2017), and thus allows engagement and debates to take place with the involvement of everyone in society; this opens the possibility for science communication to move towards the model of Public Engagement with Science and Technology (Bowater and Yeoman, 2012).
A recent news article from the University of Pennsylvania suggested that social media may be a factor in reducing polarization related to climate change opinion (Centola and Guilbeault, 2018). By allowing interaction to take place and notes to be shared, interpretation of data by climate change activists and sceptics will become more in tune with the ones of scientists. This notion came from the findings of an experiment carried out by a research group within the university (Centola and Guilbeault, 2018). This is however not the first time that the benefit of social network structure with regards to climate change has been highlighted. Several papers have noted that social networks show great potential in affecting opinions and behavior in regards to climate change, due to attitude of peers and the influence it has on the perception of climate change by individuals (Williams et al., 2015). To understand the importance of Twitter, the uses of it need to be explored.
Tweets can be analyzed using the social representation theory (SRT), which looks at the representations of specific scientific issues in respect to their adoption in social groups and how they shape common-sense (Veltri and Atanasova, 2017). According to SRT, there are opposing definitions of an issue in the public, referred to as social representations. These definitions are framed in certain ways to inflict a certain opinion or attitude (Veltri and Atanasova, 2017). Understanding this will allow the interactions to be more effectively analyzed. It has for example been noted that climate change is perceived in different ways, and that the difference of opinions can be determined by observing the word choice. On Twitter, climate change sceptics tend to use the hashtag #globalwarming more frequently, whereas activists use #climatechange (Williams et al., 2015, Cody et al., 2015, Anderson, 2017). Where climate change activists tend to structure their tweets more informative with high use of the words “green”, “environment”, “earth”, “future”, “pollution”, “hunger”, “risk”, “threat”, and “problem”, climate change sceptics have seem to structure their tweets in a sarcastic manner by combining #globalwarming with words such as “freezing”, “snow”, and “Christmas” (Cody et al., 2015). Sceptics tend to also use the hashtag #climaterealist in conjunction with “lies”, “scare”, “conspiracy”, and “scandal” (Cody et al., 2015). In a different paper it was shown that half of the sampled users were activists, a quarter were sceptics, and a slight lower number of users were neutral (Pearce et al., 2014).
Having understood how the groups frame their definitions of climate change, to what extend do they actually interact? Papers have found that there is very weak interaction between groups of opposing opinions, referring to that state as homophily (Williams et al., 2015, Pearce et al., 2014). This type of behavior showed statistical significance. It has further been observed that neutral users are most frequently mentioned in tweets by the other groups (Pearce et al., 2014), possibly as the psychological distance between the neutral users to either group is smaller than the opposing groups from each other, which is considered to lead to easier active engagement (Anderson, 2017). Mentions by sceptics directed to activists do however seem to be more frequent than the other way around (Pearce et al., 2014). An investigation showed that negative sentiment promotes retweeting of news-driven tweets (Veltri and Atanasova, 2017), resonating classic selection theory in mainstream media, where negative sentiment leads to propagation, and positive sentiment would drive non-news tweets. This could explain the skewed interaction frequency. Both groups express similar levels of negative sentiment (Williams et al., 2015), however where climate change activists seem to construct more informative news-like tweets, the sceptics are more sarcastic or ridiculing in their construct (Cody et al., 2015).
Shift from PUS to PEST
Unlike the Shannon-Weaver model of communication, the transaction model does not regard communication a linear interaction form source to receiver but considers a two-way interaction of the parties, the context, and their shared experiences (Bowater and Yeoman, 2012). This model therefore takes into account that responses might be different between different individuals, which is a barrier of previous models of science communication. PEST and social media can overcome this as it allows for an open dialogue. This will allow for adaptation from the source, where needed. Another great advantage of social media is that the public may take control of the direction the news is going, without being controlled by big corporations. PEST allows for personalization, which will allow a reduction of the psychological distance between the person and climate change making the issue easier to comprehend (Anderson, 2017). When people personally perceive experiences related to climate change, they will grow a greater belief for the issue (Anderson, 2017). A British artist is trying to achieve this through climate art: John Akomfrah has put together a 10-minute video clip which shows scenes from different countries and the disappearing biodiversity within them, which will be broadcasted from May 26 to September 2, 2019 (Kagubare, 2018a). Giving the public such experiences may in effect lead to a better understanding of climate change (Anderson, 2017). Although social media could be a great tool in transitioning to PEST, it seems as if it is still used in a PUS model manner, due to the homophily.
As no great interaction is made between opposing groups on social media, and the amount that is has negative connotations, it does not allow for any progress on the matter. It might seem very strange and incomprehensible for climate change activists that the sceptics are sceptics, however that is not rooted in their lack of belief in the importance of science but the distrust in the leaders of the scientific community as boosted by Climategate, even though the scientists were cleared of wrong-doings in this case (Anderson, 2017). If the sources are not trusted how could the conclusions be? The strength of social media compared to mainstream media is that due its nature it will put news and information in a social and more personalized context as interactions with friends and relative takes place deeming the issue more tangible and comprehensible to the public (Anderson, 2017).
Conclusion and final remarks
One might think that the number of people that are actively climate change sceptics is great however, this might not be the case. Considering how over half of tweets about climate change were from climate change activists, and only a quarter were sceptics, it’s not as big as one might think. Although a quarter is quite a big proportion, one would have thought that they would be bigger considering the media coverage. This can be explained by the data that showing how climate change skeptics tend to direct tweets towards activists, more so than the activity other categories show (Pearce et al., 2014). Another factor could be how mainstream media tends to balance out opinions, which might lead to overexpression of the minority (Park, 2018). Despite the skepticism, there seem to be a quite strong foundation for the activists, as seen in multiple occasions just the past month. In California and Oregon for example, fishermen sued oil and gas companies for hurting the fishing market in the Pacific Ocean in mid-November of this year, due to the rising temperatures on earth (Hulac, 2018). The companies involved are Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., BP PLC, and others, and were accused for knowing that fossil fuels warm the planet. In another story form mid-November of this year, Minnesota was brought up as it is on its way to reach its goals for renewable energy (Kagubare, 2018b). A year ago it was predicted that vegetarian and vegan meals would increase over the year (Vegan, 2018, BBC, 2018b), and considering the effect of meat consumption on greenhouse gases this as well is a good step forward. Although the consensus of climate change taking place, there is a lack of agreement on how much the public wants to engage for a better day. Scientists and politicians who believe in the scientific reports set forth shall interact with the opposing groups even more.
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