Klimawandel und Mediennutzung. Wirkungen auf Problembewusstsein und Handlungsabsichten

Media Consumption and Regional Perceptions of Global Climate Change: Findings from Germany

“…Both dimensions lie slightly above average (acceptance of policies: M = 0.58, SD = 0.28; perceived behavior: M = 0.57, SD = 0.22). Once again it is the females and -on a significant level -the better-educated individuals who show top levels of acceptance (Arlt et al, 2010;but different Taddicken & Neverla, 2011). Therefore I can conclude that those citizens who are most interested in the global warming process and who are supposedly the most concerned (see below) are also those who are the easiest to convince that fighting climate change might cause personal restrictions.…”

“…Awareness of the global climate challenge is an attitudinal construct which embraces cognitive, affective, and behavioral components (Krosnick et al, 2006;Arlt et al, 2010). These include a) the interest in and knowledge about reasons and consequences of global climate change, b) its emotional and moral evaluation, c) trust and distrust towards responsible actors, and d) the disposition to behave in a climate-conscious manner.…”

“…It seems that the more media people consume (habitually or with regards to specific information about global warming), the more they know about climate change (Taddicken & Neverla, 2011). This effect might be the larger the more salient the issue of climate change is on the media agenda, that is, when people hardly can avoid media reports on climate change even if they do not intentionally look for them (Besley & Shanahan, 2004;Arlt et al, 2010). This was precisely the case in 2007, when Germany held the EU Council Presidency and accentuated climate policy (Schmid et al, 2010), and in 2008 before the global financial and economic crisis set in.…”

“…There seems to be a difference between the environmental concerns and actions of people who watch television and who read newspapers (Besley & Shanahan, 2004). For example, while use of public TV newscasts seems to stimulate climate-related awareness and even behavioral intentions among Germans, consuming print media seems to exert either no impact (Taddicken, 2013) or a negative impact -at least cognitively (Arlt et al, 2010). By contrast, newspaper consumption had a positive effect on global warming perceptions on a representative sample of Americans (Zhao, 2009).…”

“…Initially, the focus lay on media coverage and public and scientific discourse (Bell, 1994;Nitz, 2001;Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004;Good, 2008;Brown, Budd, Bell, & Rendell, 2011;Schä fer, Ivanova, & Schmidt, 2011;Neverla & Schä fer, 2012). By contrast, individual perceptions of the global warming process and the impact of media consumption on these perceptions have only recently gained scientific attention (Zhao, 2009;Arlt, Hoppe, & Wolling, 2010;Taddicken & Neverla, 2011;Scruggs & Benegal, 2012;Taddicken, 2013). It is exactly this subfield of research to which this paper wants to contribute.…”