The Mutual Reinforcement of Media Selectivity and Effects: Testing the Reinforcing Spirals Framework in the Context of Global Warming (original) (raw)
Related papers
Media Consumption Effects On Climate Change Beliefs
2021
Climate change is in everyday conversation and on the platform for many elections. This issue has grown bigger to where action needs to be taken in order to counteract its effects. One way to examine this subject is through the media. Media allows for an outlet of communication between those with vital information and the public audience. This usage of media can be influential in informing people, as well as changing causation beliefs towards either side. Through this project, the question of how media consumption affects people’s climate change causation beliefs is examined. Using data provided through the American National Election Survey, relationships between media and climate change causation were exposed. Partisanship is also examined in the project as a factor in influencing media’s information as it is consumed by the audience
The News You Choose: news media preferences amplify views on climate change
Environmental Politics, 2018
How do choices among information sources reinforce political differences on topics such as climate change? Environmental sociologists have observed large-scale and long-term impacts from news media and think-tank reports, while experimental science-communication studies detect more immediate effects from variations in supplied information. Applying generalized structural equation modeling (GSEM) to recent survey data, previous work is extended to show that political ideology, education, and their interaction predict news media information choices in much the same way they predict opinions about climate change itself. Consequently, media information sources serve as intervening variables that can reinforce and, through their own independent effects, amplify existing beliefs about climate change. Results provide empirical support for selective exposure and biased assimilation as mechanisms widening political divisions on climate change in the United States. The findings fit with the reinforcing spirals framework suggesting partisan media strengthens climate change beliefs which then influences subsequent use of media.
2011
Contemporary science and environmental news coverage of global warming increasingly portrays scientific consensus. Political news coverage of global warming, however, typically portrays controversy. We hypothesize that attention to science and environmental news is associated with beliefs more consistent with the global warming science and higher risk perceptions, and that the opposite is true of attention to political news. Furthermore, we hypothesize that science-based beliefs and risk perceptions are positively associated with support for policies aiming at reducing global warming. These hypotheses were confirmed by survey data from a nationally representative sample of adults . These findings support and extend the cognitive mediation model of news learning and have important practical ramifications.
An Attack on Science? Media Use, Trust in Scientists, and Perceptions About Global Warming
There is a growing divide in how conservatives and liberals in the USA understand the issue of global warming. Prior research suggests that the American public's reliance on partisan media contributes to this gap. However, researchers have yet to identify intervening variables to explain the relationship between media use and public opinion about global warming. Several studies have shown that trust in scientists is an important heuristic many people use when reporting their opinions on science-related topics. Using within-subject panel data from a nationally representative sample of Americans, this study finds that trust in scientists mediates the effect of news media use on perceptions of global warming. Results demonstrate that conservative media use decreases trust in scientists which, in turn, decreases certainty that global warming is happening. By contrast, use of non-conservative media increases trust in scientists, which, in turn, increases certainty that global warming is happening.
An attack on science? Media use, trust in scientists, and perceptions of global warming
Public Understanding of Science, 2013
There is a growing divide in how conservatives and liberals in the USA understand the issue of global warming. Prior research suggests that the American public’s reliance on partisan media contributes to this gap. However, researchers have yet to identify intervening variables to explain the relationship between media use and public opinion about global warming. Several studies have shown that trust in scientists is an important heuristic many people use when reporting their opinions on science-related topics. Using within-subject panel data from a nationally representative sample of Americans, this study finds that trust in scientists mediates the effect of news media use on perceptions of global warming. Results demonstrate that conservative media use decreases trust in scientists which, in turn, decreases certainty that global warming is happening. By contrast, use of non-conservative media increases trust in scientists, which, in turn, increases certainty that global warming is ...
Journal of Communication
Two online news browsing experiments were conducted with national samples of U.S. adults to test the effects of six different climate change frames on selective exposure to climate change news; the frames emphasized the implications of climate change for either public health, the economy, national security, the environment, morality, or political conflict. Effects were compared between liberal-Democrats, moderate-Independents, and conservative-Republicans. In Study 1, participants could select only from articles about climate change. In Study 2, climate change news competed for attention with other news topics. Results show that a public health frame increased exposure to climate change news relative to other frames; however, these increases were confined to liberal-Democrats and, in Study 1, also moderate-Independents. Conservative-Republicans' exposure to climate news was unaffected by framing. Overall, the findings suggest framing plays only a limited role in driving exposure to climate change news.
Public understanding of the politics of global warming in the news media: the hostile media approach
This study uses the politics of global warming in the US to investigate an affective mechanism of hostile media perception and the democratic consequences of such perception, in an effort to delineate audience and journalistic barriers to stimulating urgent concern about climate change. The study confirms that partisanship played a significant role in perceptual differences with regard to media bias in an important area of science journalism—climate change. News consumers’ anger perception was tested as a mediator in seeking an affective mechanism of hostile media perception. Hostile media perception has important democratic consequences in that it is positively associated with individuals’ trust in news coverage of global warming and with selective media use.
This exploratory study examines whether readers'assessments of the certainty of scientific findings depend on characteristics of news stories. An experimental design tested whether adding controversy and/or context to a news story about global warming influenced readers' perceptions of its certainty. Respondents (N = 209) were randomly assigned to read one treatment and answer a questionnaire. Overall, there was a significant difference in readers'assessment of the certainty of global warming across treatments (F = 12.59, p = .00). The context treatment produced the highest level of certainty about global warming and differed significantly from the control treatment (with neither context nor controversy) and from the controversy treatment. Control and controversy treatments resulted in the lowest levels of certainty. There was an interaction effect between treatment and environmental ideology upon certainty (F = 1.64, p = .03) and a correlation between environmental ideology and prior certainty about global warming (r = .35, p = .01), suggesting that those with proenvironmental ideology were less swayed by the treatments.
Atlantic Marketing Journal, 2016
The purpose of the study was to assess the opinions of two equal groups of QUALTRICS panelists, one having lived through a CAT 5 storm and the other not, on their respective beliefs about the effect man-made global warming has had on increasing the intensity of major weather events. The authors identified individuals in each group based on individual eco-orientation. The author then tested for opinion differences based on three factors related to eco-orientation as well as the role played by the media on influencing opinions related to man’s impact on increasing storm intensity
European Journal of Communication, 2015
This article examines the role of news media on climate change and sustainable energy in the shaping of audience opinions and beliefs and the possible relation of these to behaviours. It reports on a series of studies conducted between 2011 and 2014 which develop existing approaches to audience reception analyses by using innovative methodologies which focus specifically on the negotiation of new information in response to existing beliefs, perceptions and behavioural patterns – both in the short and long term. Audience groups are introduced to new information, to which the range of responses is examined. This approach allows for an exploration of the interplay of socio-political and personal factors as well as the identification of the potential informational triggers for change. The findings suggest that media accounts are likely to have a shaping role in relation to behaviours under a range of specific and coinciding conditions.