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Climate Change Communication Studies: Inquiries into Beliefs, Information and Stories

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Climate Change and Storytelling

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Environmental Sociology and Policy ((PASTESP))

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Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of selected aspects of social sciences’ studies on the phenomenon of climate change. In particular, this chapter discusses studies in the realm of risk perception and risk communication; it pays specific attention to insight from discourse analysis and findings in media research, such as the norm of balanced reporting. Scholarship of public understanding of science and science communication provides additional information on how societies perceive the risk of climate change. With this in mind, the chapter closes with a closer look at cultural theory and cultural study approaches to the topic before introducing the cultural sociological perspective as the theoretical basis for the following empirical analysis.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Boholm differentiates three basic modes of knowledge about risk: everyday experience, science driven scenarios, and collective narratives.

  2. 2.

    For a profound overview of studies that have explored media attention to climate change, see Schmidt et al. (2013: 1235–1237).

  3. 3.

    IPCC is the abbreviation for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an intergovernmental body under the auspices of the United Nations set up to assess and evaluate scientific findings in the field of climate change.

  4. 4.

    In 1988, climatologist James E. Hansen elaborated the trend of global warming before Congressional committees in the USA. His testimony helped to raise broad awareness of the issue.

  5. 5.

    Alternatives to Downs: Ungar’s explanation of attention to global climate change focuses on the social scare that the hot summer of 1988 precipitated: real world events attract social attention, the real world impacts of the drought of 1988 brought global warming into view as a legitimate threat to personal wellbeing. This social scare catalyzes demand for news, to which the media responded (Ungar 2007).

  6. 6.

    Concerning journalistic influence on scientific reporting also refer to the realm of gatekeeper research, e.g. Robinson (1973).

  7. 7.

    For an in-depth analysis of the lobbying efforts against this anti-smoking-development see Oreskes and Conway (2011).

  8. 8.

    The veil of ignorance implies that a just society would be possible if no member knows anything about the background or motifs of the other members (such as race, gender, social background). This way all members of a society would have to agree on a set of rules that are not compromised by special interests (Rawls 1999).

  9. 9.

    This study stands out among most of other media studies since it does not examine newspaper articles or TV reports, but looks into the impact of popular culture, i.e. movies, and shall thus be described here to more detail: Lowe et al. interviewed focus groups in the UK before and after a viewing of the blockbuster movie “The day after tomorrow”, which depicts consequences of an abrupt climatic change, giving rise to a new ice age. The researchers asked respondent to estimate the likelihood of extreme impacts, their overall concern about climate change, their motivation to personally take action and the just distribution of responsibility for the problem of climate change. Even though most viewers saw the movie as fiction and not scientific fact, a significant amount was more committed to taking action than before seeing the movie. But, this movie as well works with fear and the authors here come to a similar conclusion as Aronson (2008), Ereaut and Segnit (2006), and others, which is that a terrifying message is not helping to change behavior if precise, effective, and doable strategies are offered.

  10. 10.

    In the debate about climate change the term climate justice argues for a proportional burden sharing of the costs the ecological crisis will cause (Birnbacher 2010).

  11. 11.

    This modern understanding of nature, rooted in the beginnings of the industrial revolution, supersedes a cultural pattern of men that originally did not put nature into an inferior role. Hunger (Hunger and Wilkens 2010) claims that climate change will force societies to re-think their relationship with nature and the value of its resources. This deduction might be depicted as naïve, since work on technical solutions to global warming is already undertaken. It also takes off from the assumption of a balanced nature-man-relation and the industrial revolution as a turning point within this relation, thereby omitting Christian heritage of ‘govern the earth’ that influenced western societies’ culture and handling of nature.

  12. 12.

    See also Hoffman (2011) for an explicit treatment of climate skeptics.

  13. 13.

    Here, the fatalist’s worldview is missing from the analysis, the authors do not offer an explanation for this. Jones, at another occasion, simply remarks that “it is common in CT scholarship to exclude fatalists form analysis” (Jones 2010: 68). A possible, however weak, explanation at least in this context could be that the fatalist’s worldview is more introversive and does not influence social life as much as the other’s do.

  14. 14.

    On a more specific aspect of social consequences of global warming, Bettini (2012) examines storylines that emerge in the discourse about climate refugees. Based on an analysis of different reports, the study detects four discursive families: a capitalist, a humanitarian, a radical, and a scientific discourse. Even though the study is purely explorative – dealing with only four reports – it is worth mentioning in this context, since it is looking into discursive dealing with climate change.

  15. 15.

    Heyd focuses not only on the perception side but even further on the cultural possibilities of answers to climate change.

  16. 16.

    Additional work on media usage and construction of narratives can be found in Jacobs (1996), Gronbeck (1983), and Darnton (1974).

  17. 17.

    As a result of the 2010 UN climate summit in Cancún the UN member states agreed on the target that the average global surface temperature must not increase of 2 °C over the pre-industrial average to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.

  18. 18.

    UNFCCC is the abbreviation for United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

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    Annika Arnold

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Arnold, A. (2018). Climate Change Communication Studies: Inquiries into Beliefs, Information and Stories. In: Climate Change and Storytelling. Palgrave Studies in Environmental Sociology and Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69383-5_2

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