Climate change is expected to severely impact agricultural practices in many important food-producing regions, including the Northeast United States. Changing climate conditions, such as increases in the amount of rainfall, will require farmers to adapt. Yet, little is known with regard to farmers' perceptions and understandings about climate change, especially in the industrialized country context. This paper aims at overcoming this research limitation, as well as determining the existing contextual, cognitive, and psychological barriers that can prevent adoption of sustainable practices of farmers in New York State. The study is framed within the adaptive capacity and risk perception literature, and is based on a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with farmers in 21 farms in two counties in Central New York. The results reveal diverging views about the long-term consequences of climate change. Results also reveal that past experience remains as the most important source of information that influences beliefs and perceptions about climate change, confirming previous research.

In late 2009, a series of e-mails related to climate research were made public following the hacking into a server and the e-mail accounts of researchers at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. According to some skeptics of climate change research, the content of those e-mails suggested data were being manipulated, while climate scientists said their words were taken out of context. The news coverage of this scandal provides an opportunity to consider media framing. This study has two aims: to extend previous research using a cluster analysis technique to discern frames in media texts; and to provide insight into newspaper coverage of the scandal, which is often referred to as “Climategate.” This study examines the frames present in two British and two American newspapers’ coverage of the issue.

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Social media for environmental action: what prompts engagement and intent toward activism?2 While environmental groups once relied on local, grassroots campaigns and traditional media to broadcast their messages, social media offer an additional delivery method for their messages. This study examines whether fear or information frame is more effective to spur environmental activism and engagement. We also research how perceived efficacy and fear affect behavioral intent toward environmental action. Results show people are motivated to act when frightened, threatened, and responses exist that could alleviate those threats.keywords: social media, Framing, Media, NPOs, behavioral intent, efficacy protest. User comments were not properly managed, thus bringing Nestlé to its knees (Fox 2010). Here we can see how effective YouTube videos can be to spur the intent to be environmentally active and engaged among people, and which framing methods are more effective at doing so.

Wildfire news coverage gains importance not only for information provided, but for images created. Using 10 historically significant U.S. wildfires for analysis, with framing and social cohesion theory as framework, this study examines news cycles for news hook, theme and source usage. Results show agency personnel and citizens are nearly equal, with scientists later in coverage. Framing mirrors patterns in environmental reporting: presenting this hazard in capital terms rather than a social or societal issue.