Editing IPCC:Wg1:Chapter:Chapter-1-comments (section)

==== 1.2.3.4 Media Coverage of Climate Change ====

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Climate services focus on users with specific needs for climate information, but most people learn about climate science findings from media coverage. Since AR5, research has expanded on how mass media report climate change and how their audiences respond ( [[#Dewulf--2013|Dewulf, 2013]] ; [[#Jaspal--2014|Jaspal and Nerlich, 2014]] ; [[#Jaspal--2014|Jaspal et al., 2014]] ). For example, in five European Union (EU) countries, television coverage of AR5 used ‘disaster’ and ‘opportunity’ as its principal themes, but virtually ignored the ‘risk’ framing introduced by AR5 WGII ( [[#Painter--2015|Painter, 2015]] ) and now extended by the AR6 (Cross-Chapter Box 1.3). Other studies show that people react differently to climate change news when it is framed as a catastrophe ( [[#Hine--2016|Hine et al., 2016]] ), as associated with local identities ( [[#Sapiains--2016|Sapiains et al., 2016]] ), or as a social justice issue ( [[#Howell--2013|Howell, 2013]] ). Similarly, audience segmentation studies show that responses to climate change vary between groups of people with different, although not necessarily opposing, views on this phenomenon (e.g., [[#Maibach--2011|Maibach et al., 2011]] ; [[#Sherley--2014|Sherley et al., 2014]] ; [[#Detenber--2016|Detenber et al., 2016]] ). In Brazil, two studies have shown the influence of mass media on the high level of public climate change concern in that country (Rodasand Di Giulio, 2017; [[#Dayrell--2019|Dayrell, 2019]] ). In the USA, analyses of television network news show that climate change receives minimal attention, is most often framed in a political context, and largely fails to link extreme weather events to climate change using appropriate probability framing ( [[#Hassol--2016|Hassol et al., 2016]] ). However, recent evidence suggests that Climate Matters (an Internet resource to help US television weather forecasters link weather to climate change trends) may have had a positive effect on public understanding of climate change ( [[#Myers--2020|Myers et al., 2020]] ). Also, some media outlets have recently adopted and promoted terms and phrases stronger than the more neutral ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’, including ‘climate crisis’, ‘global heating’, and ‘climate emergency’ ( [[#Zeldin-O’Neill--2019|Zeldin-O’Neill, 2019]] ). Google searches on those terms, and on ‘climate action’, increased 20-fold in 2019, when large social movements such as School Strikes forClimate gained worldwide attention ( [[#Thackeray--2020|Thackeray et al., 2020]] ). We thus assess that specific characteristics of media coverage play a major role in climate understanding and perception ( ''high confidence'' ), including how IPCC assessments are received by the general public.

Since AR5, social media platforms have dramatically altered the mass-media landscape, bringing about a shift from uni-directional transfer of information and ideas to more fluid, multi-directional flows ( [[#Pearce--2019|Pearce et al., 2019]] ). A survey covering 18 Latin American countries ( [[#StatKnows-CR2--2019|StatKnows-CR2, 2019]] ) found that the main sources of information about climate change mentioned were the Internet (52% of mentions), followed by social media (18%). There are well-known challenges with social media, such as misleading or false presentations of scientific findings, incivility that diminishes the quality of discussion around climate change topics, and ‘filter bubbles’ that restrict interactions to those with broadly similar views ( [[#Anderson--2017|Anderson and Huntington, 2017]] ). However, at certain moments (such as at the release of the AR5 WGI report), Twitter studies have found that more mixed, highly-connected groups existed, within which members were less polarized ( [[#Pearce--2014|Pearce et al., 2014]] ; [[#Williams--2015|Williams et al., 2015]] ). Thus, social media platforms may in some circumstances support dialogic or co-production approaches to climate communication. Because the contents of IPCC reports speak not only to policymakers, but also to the broader public, the character and effects of media coverage are important considerations across Working Groups.

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