Climate Change: Spread Hope Not Fear

by Jaedyn Billerbeck

When consuming information presented by media outlets, I often notice that emotionally evocative language and imagery are used. Obvious examples of this include ASPCA commercials, which show pictures and videos of abused animals, along with statistics or facts about those animals. After watching these commercials, I feel sadness and pity, and I also feel guilty in a way. Of course, seeing abused animals isn’t exactly something that brings joy, but I became interested as to why I feel guilty, because I wasn’t the one hurting the animals. This sparked my curiosity, and so I investigated how the media purposefully uses words, images, and videos to elicit emotional responses–especially when the topics are political or social–in order to influence people’s overall perceptions (Otieno et al., 2013). This concept is known as news framing. After learning about news framing, I realized it has heavily influenced my perceptions of many topics, including climate change.

News framing affects how climate change information is presented to and perceived by society. Stories in the media often focus on the impacts and dangers of climate change. Such stories do so by using words or phrases like “code red,” “catastrophe,” and “environmental crisis,” along with pictures depicting devastating climate disasters (Feldman & Hart, 2018). Using words and phrases with negative connotations can have detrimental effects. When people see stories that focus on the results of climate change, they often feel hopeless, afraid, and angry, leading to avoidance behaviors or even climate change denial (Feldman & Hart, 2018). Engaging with these stories makes me feel fearful and hopeless about the state of the planet, leading to my perception that climate change is irreversible and out of my control. However, I now realize that I experience these feelings and perceive climate change this way because of how the information is being presented. Therefore, it is imperative to consider using other ways to frame climate change, ways that would have a positive impact.

Positive news framing of climate change can provide examples of individual and collective actions to reduce climate change or adapt to its impacts and can present eco-friendly technologies and products available to the public (Jin & Atkinson, 2021). These articles might use words like “alternative options,” “sustainable solutions,” or “actions.” This positive framing makes me feel hopeful about the future because it alters the way I view climate change: I see climate change as something myself and others can do something about. Thus, I feel more willing to engage in climate action and to encourage others to do the same. I’m not the only one who experiences this effect: Research has shown that positive news framing of climate change minimizes fear and anger, while increasing hope and the likelihood of people fighting against climate change (Jin & Atkinson, 2021). Therefore, it is important that media outlets – social media sites, TV, podcasts, articles, radio stations, and websites – are conscious of the type of framing they use when discussing climate change. Besides media outlets, we ourselves should be conscious of the way we present climate change information to others, whether that be personal conversations or formal climate change presentations and papers. Together, we can change the way the world thinks and feels about climate change, thus helping individuals and groups take effective action.

References

Feldman, L., & Hart, P. S. (2018). Is there any hope? How climate change news imagery and text influence audience emotions and support for climate mitigation policies. Risk Analysis, 38(3), 585-602. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12868

Jin, E., & Atkinson, L. (2021). The moderating role of emotion: The combinatory effects of positive emotion and news framing techniques on climate change attitudes. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 98(3), 749-786. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699020988105

Otieno, C., Spada, H., & Renkl, A. (2013). Effects of news frames on perceived risk, emotions, and learning. PLoS ONE, 8(11), 1. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0079696

Jaedyn Billerbeck became a member of the Interactive Measurement Group in the Spring of 2022. Since joining the lab, she been both a poster team leader and a teaching assistant for introductory statistics. She has also mentored lab members through several workshops and projects. Jae is graduating this spring with a B.A. in psychology and will be attending UNLV’s School Psychology Educational Specialist Master’s program starting in Fall 2023.