Better Ways To Talk About The Climate

Tailoring climate change messaging for conservatives could shift understanding of crisis: Study; Researchers studied how to make climate change communication more persuasive.

Julia Jacobo, June 14, 2021 (ABC News)

“…Tailoring online messaging and advertising toward Republican voters could shift their views on climate change…[Research shows that in 2020,] 73% of Americans believed that global warming was happening, and 62% think that it was caused by human activities…[up from 2010’s] 57%...But, the shift in public opinion on climate change has largely been driven by Democrats…just 22% of Republicans said it should be a ‘high’ or ‘very high’ priority, compared to 83% of Democrats…

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…[A]ltering the messages to appeal to conservative ideals can increase Republicans' opinions of climate change…[according to a] one-month advertising campaign field experiment that tailored climate change-themed online messaging for conservative voters in two competitive districts -- Missouri-02 and Georgia-07…The campaign presented a series of videos called ‘New Climate Voices,’ which used social identity theory, elite cues and theories of persuasion presented by spokespersons who were likely to resonate with conservatives… [The videos increased by several percentage points] understanding among Republicans in the two districts on two topics: that global warming is happening and that it's being ‘caused mostly by human activities.’

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…The belief that climate change is ‘somewhat,’ ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ personally important and that it would cause ‘moderated’ to a ‘great deal’ of harm to future generations also increased…The tricky part is getting the messaging through in a competitive environment where people are fielding messages across multiple platforms…[and] it is unclear how much results might vary depending on geographic location or cultural context…” click here for more

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