Abstract
The Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University was established to develop and apply social science insights to help society make informed decisions that will stabilize the earth’s life-sustaining climate, and prevent further harm from climate change. In this chapter, we describe our program of research and outreach efforts, focusing on the cognitive and affective drivers of climate change issue engagement, the roles of mediated and interpersonal communication in shaping climate change beliefs, attitudes, and actions, and the applications of audience segmentation in developing outreach programs. We also describe the theoretical foundations of our work, and our three major outreach programs: Climate Matters, an innovative collaboration of climate scientists, meteorologists, and social scientists to foster climate change communication among television weathercasters; the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health, an outgrowth of our research that identified a widespread lack of understanding that climate change affects human health; and RepublicEn, an initiative led by conservatives to catalyze a new narrative on climate change among conservatives, based in free-market thinking.
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Notes
- 1.
They differ from Social-Cognitive Theory in the emphasis some place on emotions—specifically, fear—as drivers of behavior.
- 2.
While the climate science community prefers the term “climate change,” we continue using “global warming” in our surveys because it is still the most commonly used term among Americans (Leiserowitz, Feinberg, et al., 2014).
- 3.
In November, 2009, over 1000 stolen emails between climate scientists were publically released, along with claims that they were evidence of scientific misconduct to mislead the public about climate change. Dubbed “Climategate,” the event drew widespread media attention. Multiple university investigations showed the charges against the scientists to be unfounded, and cleared them of all charges.
- 4.
Humans are capable of reducing climate change because humans are causing it; hence, human causation is a logical foundation for efficacy.
- 5.
The 2017 hurricane season may change this. At this writing, however, it is too early to say.
- 6.
Figure 6.8 shows only a small piece of the model-testing. The analysis assessed six different models, including models with both synchronous and lagged effects of belief certainty and personal experience at T1 and T2, as well as all relevant controls, for both the highly and less engaged groups. Only two variables are shown here for simplicity. See the full paper for complete results.
- 7.
Twenty-one percent of Americans are Catholic, second only to Evangelical Protestants, who make up a quarter of the population (Pew Research Center, 2013).
- 8.
This is a misperception. Boycotts that receive at least some national media attention have about a one-in-four success rate in influencing corporate practices (Friedman, 1985; King, 2008; Roser-Renouf, Atkinson, Maibach & Leiserowitzl, 2016); and for those that include public protests or demonstrations, the success rate jumps to about half (Friedman, 1985).
- 9.
The full segmentation screener with all 36 items, a 15-item abbreviated screening instrument, and the methodology used in the segmentation can be found in Maibach et al. (2011).
- 10.
This pattern does not describe affective involvement, as reflected in worry, concern, or personal importance. These characteristics follow the same pattern as attitudinal valence.
- 11.
This is readily apparent in the comments sections accompanying online news reports about climate change, which typically contain large numbers of comments disputing climate science.
- 12.
- 13.
The authors note that although weather did not affect opinions during the years they analyzed, it could in the future.
- 14.
Over the past 7 years, we have made consistent efforts to educate members of this community about climate change, primarily through presentations and workshops at their annual professional meetings. In our 2017 survey of weathercasters, we found that 95% now say climate change is happening, an increase of 41 percentage points. Understanding of human causation has also changed, though less dramatically: 49% now say it is mostly or entirely human-caused, an increase of 18 percentage points, and another 21% say it is equally caused by human activity and natural events (Maibach et al., 2017).
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Roser-Renouf, C., Maibach, E.W. (2018). Strategic Communication Research to Illuminate and Promote Public Engagement with Climate Change. In: Hope, D., Bevins, R. (eds) Change and Maintaining Change. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, vol 65. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96920-6_6
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