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“Fridays for Future” – Can the next generation save our world?

by Fenja De Silva-Schmidt

Young people are often criticised as self-centred and politically disinterested. But recently, the next generation has been engaging more and more in climate politics, and their voice is getting heard – at least in media coverage.

On a public Christmas tree in Eckernförde, children and young adults hung up their wishes for the future. One tag names “preventing climate change”. (Private photo from January 2019)

 

 

 

 

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First results of our new survey

by Fenja De Silva-Schmidt

During the first week of the recent COP 24 in Katowice/Poland, we reran our survey from 2015 and questioned a sample of German nationals about their climate change knowledge and attitudes. The German newspaper DIE ZEIT published an article about our first results – here is a summary for our English speaking readers: Continue reading First results of our new survey

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“Paris 2.0”? Why we are planning to rerun our survey from 2015

by Fenja De Silva-Schmidt

During this year’s climate conference in Katowice (Poland), we are going to rerun our Down to Earth quantitative survey from December 2015. By surveying another national German quota sample three years after our initial study, we want to examine long-term effects: Did the Germans’ knowledge or attitudes towards climate politics change in the meantime? How is the summit in Poland received via the media, especially in comparison to the “milestone” conference of Paris?

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Workshop on Sustainable Lives: Food Choices as Politics and Lifestyle

by Radhika Mittal and Fenja De Silva-Schmidt

The Food Project is a multidisciplinary endeavor at Hamburg University, funded by KNU with seed money, bringing together collaborating researchers from various disciplines to examine the relay and utilization of a critical issue like sustainable food practices in the public sphere.

At the University of Hamburg, researchers from the disciplines of Journalism and Communication Studies, Sociology, Economics and Linguistics are engaged in conducting pilot experiments. They are joined by a researcher from the University of Graz, Austria to examine the topic within the area of Social Geography.

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Sustainable Lives: Consumption as Politics and Lifestyle

food

The Sustainable Lives Project is a multidisciplinary project that investigates the drivers of consumption choices, i.e. food choices, and the impact of changing discourses, norms and attitudes around food on actual patterns of food consumption. We ask: What drives food choices and how are they influenced by ideas and discourses related to more sustainable lifestyles?

The project assembles a rich and diverse set of pilot experiments to examine how society engages with food through the lens of sustainability. These explorations are spread across the fields of communication studies, linguistics, social geography, sociology and economics, with project partners within and outside the university in these areas. You can find an overview of all researchers working on the project and all external partners on the Center for a Sustainable University website.

We adopt a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach that looks at both, discourses about food and the everyday practices of food consumption. Researchers in the WISO lab analyze local, international, youth and online media outlets and conduct surveys and experiments.

Project directors: Michael Brüggemann (speaker), Jannis Androutsopoulos, Imke Hoppe, Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw, Stefanie Kley, Grischa Perino and Anke Strüver

Project coordinator: Fenja De Silva-Schmidt (Radhika Mittal from March 2018 to September 2019)

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New paper published: From “Knowledge Brokers” to Opinion Makers: How Physical Presence Affected Scientists’ Twitter Use During the COP21 Climate Change Conference

The paper “From “Knowledge Brokers” to Opinion Makers: How Physical Presence Affected Scientists’ Twitter Use During the COP21 Climate Change Conference” was published in the International Journal of Communication. This study investigates the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference summit and examines scientists’ social media use by analyzing “digital traces” that scientists left on social media during the summit. Using geolocated tweets, we compare the Twitter use of scientists who attended the conference with those who did not. Combining automated, quantitative, and qualitative content analysis, the study shows how scientists participating in the conference provided live reporting and formed a transnational network. Scientists at the conference and elsewhere engaged in political advocacy, indicating a shift toward a new pattern of hybrid science communication, which includes characteristics that have formerly been attributed to journalism and advocacy.

The full paper is available online.

The paper was published by Stefanie Walter, PhD, Fenja De Silva-Schmidt, M.A., and Prof. Dr. Michael Brüggemann.

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New paper published in nature climate change

The paper `The appeasement effect of a United Nations climate summit on the German public´ was published in the current issue of the journal nature climate change. It presents first findings from the research project `Down to Earth´, directed by Prof. Dr. Michael Brüggemann and funded by the cluster of Excellence `CliSAP´.

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Down to Earth – Publications

Mahl, Daniela, Brüggemann, Michael, Guenther, Lars, & De Silva-Schmidt, Fenja (2020). Public opinion at a tipping point: Germany’s path to engaging with climate change. Down to Earth Working Paper, March 2020. DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.851

De Silva-Schmidt, Fenja & Brüggemann, Michael (2019). Klimapolitik in den Medien – Das Publikum erwartet mehr. Befunde einer Befragung zu den UN-Klimagipfeln 2015 und 2018. Media Perspektiven 3/2019, 107-113. Available online

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Workshop: Redefining the Boundaries of Science and Journalism in the Debate on Climate Change

by Fenja De Silva-Schmidt

As a kick-off for a new research project, the research team of Prof. Michael Brüggemann organized a workshop at the University of Hamburg from June 21 to 23. The team discussed the changing roles of science and politics in times of post-normal science communication with national and international guests.

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Review 2016: One Year of Climate Change Debates on Twitter

by Stefanie Walter and Fenja De Silva-Schmidt

Our Online Media Monitor has been collecting tweets for roughly a year now – time for a little retrospection.

The tool provides ongoing monitoring of the transnational online media debate on climate change by searching for related tweets. Tweets are collected if they contain the following hashtags or key words: #climatechange OR “climate change” OR “global warming” OR “Klimawandel”. Additional criteria are that the tweets got at least 5 retweets and contain at least one link.

OMM Twitter 2016 - frequency

 

 

 

 

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