Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft

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Browsing Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft by Subject "Climate change"

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    Communicating climate change : how proximising climate change and global identity predict engagement
    (2018) Loy, Laura Sophia; Trepte, Sabine
    The majority of scientists express an urgent need to limit climate change in order to ensure sustainable development, but our societies are not reacting decisively enough to achieve this goal. My research aims to understand how news about climate change can be communicated to convey scientific knowledge and support climate protection. Proximising climate change by focussing on local instead of global or remote consequences has been recommended as a promising communication strategy. The reasoning is that many people seem to perceive climate change as a phenomenon that affects mainly other people in far-off places (i.e., psychological socio-spatial distance). Proximising might bring climate change closer. However, the recommendation still lacked convincing empirical evidence. Thus, my research investigated the communication of proximity vs. distance in news coverage. Specifically, I examined the process assumed to be behind proximising effects, namely a reduction of the psychological socio-spatial distance of climate change, which might increase issue relevance and in turn promote climate protective behaviour and climate change knowledge. In Study 1 (N = 498), people were asked to what extent the news communicated climate change as something affecting mainly other people in distant locations. The more they perceived news communication as socio-spatially distant, the higher their psychological socio-spatial distance of climate change and the lower relevance they attributed to the issue. Perceived communicated socio-spatial distance was indirectly and negatively related with climate protective behavioural knowledge through higher psychological socio-spatial distance. Study 2 (N = 99) found no evidence that communicating socio-spatial proximity vs. distance of climate change in a news text influences psychological socio-spatial distance, relevance attributed to the news text, climate protective behaviour, and climate change knowledge. However, the test power was not sufficient to detect small effect sizes. In Study 3 (N = 508), proximising climate change in a news text decreased the psychological socio-spatial distance of climate change and indirectly and positively predicted climate protective behaviour as well as climate change knowledge through lower psychological socio-spatial distance and higher relevance attribution. While the indirect relations were small, stronger relations might arise if people repeatedly receive local information. I thus suggest that it is worthwhile to complement news about global climate change with reports about regional impacts. As a second objective, I aimed to illuminate whether the concept of a global identity helps to explain why proximising might not always be necessary or useful. I assumed that the more people identify with people all over the world, the more relevant they evaluate climate change to be and the more they are motivated to take climate protective action and acquire climate change knowledge. Moreover, I supposed that people with a strong global identity might evaluate climate change as relevant regardless of whether they perceive that the consequences mainly affect other people in distant places. In other words, a global identity might bridge the psychological socio-spatial distance of climate change. In Study 1, global identity positively predicted the relevance attributed to climate change and climate protective behaviour, as well as climate change knowledge indirectly through relevance attribution. In Study 2, the global identity dimension of self-investment positively predicted climate protective behaviour. However, global identity did not bridge the psychological socio-spatial distance of climate change in either study. I further reasoned that the negative relation between psychological socio-spatial distance and relevance attribution might be weaker if global identity is made salient. In other words, a salient global identity might bridge the psychological socio-spatial distance of climate change. In Study 3, before reading the news text, participants watched either a control video or a video showing a man dancing with people all over the world, which communicated a feeling of connectedness. While participants who received the control video evaluated the news text as less relevant as their psychological socio-spatial distance of climate change increased, there was no such relation among participants who received the connectedness video. Moreover, communicated proximity vs. distance in the news text did not indirectly predict climate protective behaviour and climate change knowledge in the latter group. This suggests that communicating connectedness might be a way to bridge the distance of climate change communication and render issues that are perceived as affecting mainly other people in far-off locations more relevant to recipients.