Climate Endgame – How to Research and Communicate Extreme Climate Risks?
“Are we screwed?”, “How bad is it gonna get?” – these are the questions that I most frequently get when I mention that I am in climate science. Newspaper coverage of a recent perspective article in PNAS seemed to suggest that we are actually headed towards a global catastrophe with potential extinction and that we […]
Telling the Truth, Uniting Behind the Science – Climate Coalitions and Science’s Place in Society
In recent years, a new wave of climate activist groups, such as Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future and the Sunrise Movement have reshaped public debates on climate action. In so doing they refer to scientific evidence. But, how exactly do they understand science’s relationship to society? Drawing on documentary evidence, our recent study argues that […]
Global Climate Change in Local Journalism: How to Make Local Journalists Rethink Their Framing
Not only in photography do choice of angle and frame decide what we see. Photo by Ludovic Charlet, Pixabay. Framing of climate change in local newspapers considerably influences how citizens perceive climate change in their living environment. A master thesis entitled “Global climate change in local journalism” takes a closer look at the main source […]
Nachhaltigkeit geht alle an – drei Beiträge zum Thema Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation
(English summary below) Die aktuelle Ausgabe der Zeitschrift Communicatio Socialis versammelt diverse interessante Beiträge zum Thema Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation. Das Plädoyer darin: Nachhaltigkeit geht alle an, und auch Journalismus und Wissenschaft können sich nicht länger auf einen distanzierten Beobachterstatus zurückziehen. Die Zeitschrift ist leider nicht frei lesbar. Für alle, die keinen Zugang zum Journal haben, sind hier […]
RCP-8.5: Business-As-Usual or Unrealistic Worst-Case? The contested interpretation of climate change scenarios
RCP-8.5 is not only the arguably most popular climate change scenario, it is also often framed in a very specific manner: as the business-as-usual trajectory that humanity is on if no climate change policies are adopted. For an academic discipline that actively tries to be policy-relevant, climate science in the context of the IPCC is […]
Why Don’t We Act Now? The discrepancy between climate change awareness and action
The 6th IPCC Report of Working Group 3 was published just about two months ago, on April 4, and stated once more and in further detail the urgency to mitigate climate change. As known, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consists of politicians and scientist of the United Nation, grouped in three working groups […]
Climate Attention on Twitter: 2021 breaks attention records
by Amelia Peach Still very much in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2021 saw climate change continue its fight for public attention. Although still not quite able to match 2019’s daily average tweet count of 1429, with an average of only 1237 daily tweets, 2021 did see the top 3 highest peak days yet.
The Power of Data Transparency
Next year, in 2022, the IPCC will finalize its sixth assessment report. A report that is unarguably one of the most cited, far-reaching sources for trying to understand and argue policies that can mitigate the climate crisis and its impacts. It is exactly this type of imperative research that showcases the importance of transparent and […]
Comparing Coverage of Climate Change Across the Global North and South
India and Thailand are among the countries affected most by climate change. Still, we know little about how news media in these nations cover climate change. In a recent study, we wanted to change that and asked: How and how much do countries from the Global North and South cover climate change?
COP26: Media and Twitter Attention at All-Time High
A quick update with visuals drawn from our Online Media Monitor on Climate Change (OMM) Good news: COP26 has refocused news media attention and Twitter attention to climate change to an all-time high since 2017. This is also true when dating back to 2004, according to Max Boykoff’s observatory on media coverage, which shows–based on […]