Transforming the stories we tell about climate change: from ‘issue’ to ‘action’
By some counts, up to 98% of environmental news stories are negative in nature. Implicit in this number is the conventional wisdom among many communicators that increasing people’s understanding, awareness, concern or even fear of climate change are necessary precursors for action and behavior chang...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IOP Publishing
2020-01-01
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| Series: | Environmental Research Letters |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abcd5a |
| _version_ | 1797747693596966912 |
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| author | Kris De Meyer Emily Coren Mark McCaffrey Cheryl Slean |
| author_facet | Kris De Meyer Emily Coren Mark McCaffrey Cheryl Slean |
| author_sort | Kris De Meyer |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | By some counts, up to 98% of environmental news stories are negative in nature. Implicit in this number is the conventional wisdom among many communicators that increasing people’s understanding, awareness, concern or even fear of climate change are necessary precursors for action and behavior change. In this article we review scientific theories of mind and brain that explain why this conventional view is flawed. In real life, the relationship between beliefs and behavior often goes in the opposite direction: our actions change our beliefs, awareness and concerns through a process of self-justification and self-persuasion. As one action leads to another, this process of self-persuasion can go hand in hand with a deepening engagement and the development of agency—knowing how to act. One important source of agency is learning from the actions of others. We therefore propose an approach to climate communication and storytelling that builds people’s agency for climate action by providing a wide variety of stories of people taking positive action on climate change. Applied at scale, this will shift the conceptualization of climate change from ‘issue-based’ to ‘action-based’. It will also expand the current dominant meanings of ‘climate action’ (i.e. ‘consumer action’ and ‘activism’) to incorporate all relevant practices people engage in as members of a community, as professionals and as citizens. We close by proposing a systematic approach to get more reference material for action-based stories from science, technology and society to the communities of storytellers—learning from health communication and technologies developed for COVID-19. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T15:54:21Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-eaede429e2d44040af567862795005ca |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1748-9326 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T15:54:21Z |
| publishDate | 2020-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Environmental Research Letters |
| spelling | doaj.art-eaede429e2d44040af567862795005ca2023-08-09T15:00:07ZengIOP PublishingEnvironmental Research Letters1748-93262020-01-0116101500210.1088/1748-9326/abcd5aTransforming the stories we tell about climate change: from ‘issue’ to ‘action’Kris De Meyer0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4351-8937Emily Coren1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1982-6809Mark McCaffrey2https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6724-1368Cheryl Slean3Geography, King’s College London , London WC2B 4BG, United Kingdom; Earth Sciences, University College London , London WC1E 6BS, United KingdomPsych/General Psychiatry and Psychology (Adult), Stanford University , Stanford, California CA 94305, USAECOS, UN Climate Change Community for Education, Communication and Outreach Stakeholders , Kisbágyon 3046, HungaryCommunications, Natural Resources Defense Council , New York, NY 10011-4211, USABy some counts, up to 98% of environmental news stories are negative in nature. Implicit in this number is the conventional wisdom among many communicators that increasing people’s understanding, awareness, concern or even fear of climate change are necessary precursors for action and behavior change. In this article we review scientific theories of mind and brain that explain why this conventional view is flawed. In real life, the relationship between beliefs and behavior often goes in the opposite direction: our actions change our beliefs, awareness and concerns through a process of self-justification and self-persuasion. As one action leads to another, this process of self-persuasion can go hand in hand with a deepening engagement and the development of agency—knowing how to act. One important source of agency is learning from the actions of others. We therefore propose an approach to climate communication and storytelling that builds people’s agency for climate action by providing a wide variety of stories of people taking positive action on climate change. Applied at scale, this will shift the conceptualization of climate change from ‘issue-based’ to ‘action-based’. It will also expand the current dominant meanings of ‘climate action’ (i.e. ‘consumer action’ and ‘activism’) to incorporate all relevant practices people engage in as members of a community, as professionals and as citizens. We close by proposing a systematic approach to get more reference material for action-based stories from science, technology and society to the communities of storytellers—learning from health communication and technologies developed for COVID-19.https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abcd5aclimate communicationenvironmental educationstorytellingpublic engagementoutreachsocial psychology |
| spellingShingle | Kris De Meyer Emily Coren Mark McCaffrey Cheryl Slean Transforming the stories we tell about climate change: from ‘issue’ to ‘action’ Environmental Research Letters climate communication environmental education storytelling public engagement outreach social psychology |
| title | Transforming the stories we tell about climate change: from ‘issue’ to ‘action’ |
| title_full | Transforming the stories we tell about climate change: from ‘issue’ to ‘action’ |
| title_fullStr | Transforming the stories we tell about climate change: from ‘issue’ to ‘action’ |
| title_full_unstemmed | Transforming the stories we tell about climate change: from ‘issue’ to ‘action’ |
| title_short | Transforming the stories we tell about climate change: from ‘issue’ to ‘action’ |
| title_sort | transforming the stories we tell about climate change from issue to action |
| topic | climate communication environmental education storytelling public engagement outreach social psychology |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abcd5a |
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