Theory and language of climate change communication

Abstract

Climate change communication has become a salient topic in science and society. It has grown to be something of a boom industry alongside more established 'communication enterprises', such as health communication, risk communication and science communication. This article situates the theory of climate change communication within theoretical developments in all three fields. It discusses the importance of and difficulties inherent in talking about climate change to different types of public using a various types of communication tools and strategies. It engages with the difficult issue of the relationship between climate change communication and behaviour change and it focuses in particular on the role of language (metaphors, words, strategies, frames and narratives) in conveying climate change issues to stakeholders. In the process, it attempts to provide an overview of emerging theories of climate change communication, theories that, quite recently, have begun to proliferate quite dramatically. We end with an assessment of how communication could be improved in light of the theories and practices discussed in this article. Introduction:The importance of communicating about climate change to 'publics'The topic of climate change communication has recently become more salient in society and among social scientists, resulted in 'the recent explosion of climate change communication from movies to grassroots movements'.1 Analyses of climate change communication and its impact on 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 F o r P e e r R e v i e w 2 the general public have been proliferating in communication and related discipline journals since the late 1990s. Despite this, carbon emissions continue to increase both globally and domestically, and society continues to be vulnerable to climate variability. This raises questions about the effectiveness of current communication efforts, and about the ability of their audiences to implement change in response to these communications. This concerns the persuasiveness of the messages, but also concerns the structure of society and considerations of the extent to which citizens are empowered to make effective change.In this paper however we will concentrate on recent analyses of communications about climate change and highlight some key findings. We provide an overview of a selection of government, citizen, and science-led approaches to climate change communication, identify trends in media portrayals of climate change, and we will revisit the role of language in constructing messages about the topic. Because of the sheer volume of climate change communication studies, the scope of this review is limited, and does not include every peerreviewed, or popular press article on the subject. Nevertheless, this review of applied and research case studies will provide a framework with whic...

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