Audience Understandings of Climate Change News - Emotion, Scepticism, and Uncertainty

• In Event: Cultures of Fact Travel

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse climate scepticism and emotional responses in news media audiences exposed to climate change news. The news is full of hotly contested debates over climate change. The public is the piggy in the middle between scientists striving to make the complex science clear and vested interests' sustained campaigns to perpetuate confusion to stave off mitigation. This paper uses qualitative methods to analyse survey responses to a news article about climate change adjusted to include/exclude emotion and have three levels of journalistic quality. An open-ended question invited Australian participants (n=400) to note their reactions by expressing thoughts, feelings and considerations. A notable proportion of participants is sceptical or called it scaremongering. By contrast many expressed their frustration with deniers. Many participants said they feared for their family and the future. People felt angry, guilty, sad, ashamed, overwhelmed, disappointed, surprised, or confused, others were glad to learn that action was being taken. Many said action was urgently needed and worried that the world's leaders would not agree on timely solutions. Some said they found the article scary others found it boring. Some said it was hard to read, some said it was factual or interesting and others said they were uncertain about the information or worried about not knowing. The results suggest climate change denial lives but support for mitigation policies is widespread. The issue is highly emotional with fear dominating hopefulness, raising questions about future journalistic focus on solutions.
This paper arises from an international collaboration and contributes to more nuanced understandings of public responses to climate change news.

Authors

• Andreas R.T. Schuck, Amsterdam School of Communication Research, Communication Science, Faculty of Social and Behavioural

• Catriona Bonfiglioli, University of Technology Sydney