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What impact do visual representations of climate protesters in the media have on audiences? A new study has addressed this in light of the recent media trend towards depicting more young and female protesters in news stories.
By comparing audience responses to 10 different images (photo-edited to make comparisons in the study), the researchers found that images showing climate protestors and the police together, as well as images of younger protestors, tended to lead to more negative emotional responses amongst audiences. This included feelings of guilt and shame about climate impacts affecting future generations.
The content of the protest images did not deeply influence audiences’ broader climate attitudes and behaviours after viewing them. But the researchers did find that feelings towards protest images were influenced by a range of factors, such as the audiences’ gender, and suggest that the viewers’ worldview may play a role too.
New research has revealed that politicians visibly ‘leading by example’ can substantially increase the willingness of members of the UK public to adopt further low-carbon lifestyle changes.
The study looked at over a thousand people’s responses to the examples of ‘high-profile individuals’ in a nationally representative survey. It found that the vast majority (86%) wanted to see politicians, celebrities and business leaders setting a good example in terms of their climate actions. Citizens were also more willing to adopt low-carbon actions, such as flying less, eating less meat, or driving an electric car if they saw leaders doing the same. At the same time, people’s overall approval of leaders who were setting a strong example improved.
Despite this, further investigation showed that politicians may currently be reluctant to publicise their personal climate-friendly actions due to fear of criticism for virtue signaling, or hypocrisy.
Together the work suggests that rather than pulling off ‘green stunts’, politicians’ consistency of action over time is crucial, and it can also be beneficial if they acknowledge that some changes may be too difficult or costly for everyone to make (such as buying an electric car or installing a heat pump).
What’s in a name? The question of what the best – most persuasive, or least polarising – term for climate change is, has a long history.
On the one hand, small tweaks to individual words or short phrases are unlikely to be driving big differences in perceptions one way or another. People’s values, worldviews, political ideology and increasingly the perceived fairness of different climate policies, are what drives public engagement.
But whether its the editorial choices made by leading international newspapers, to the framing of campaigns that drive media coverage of climate activism, linguistic choices do carry some weight. Previous research has argued that some terms (e.g. ‘global warming’) are more emotive; campaigners have criticised ‘climate change’ as a term for lacking urgency.
In a new open-access paper, researchers tested a wide range of different terms, including ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’, ‘climate crisis’, climate emergency’ and ‘climate justice’, in a survey of over 5000 US residents and concluded:
Overall, “climate change” and “global warming” were rated as most familiar and most concerning, and “climate justice” the least, with ratings for “climate crisis” and “climate emergency” falling in between.
Moreover, we find no evidence for “climate crisis” or “climate emergency” eliciting more perceived urgency than “climate change” or “global warming.”
We therefore recommend sticking with familiar terms, conclude that changing terminology is likely not the key solution for promoting climate action, and suggest alternative communication strategies.
The ‘alternative communication strategies’ might include identifying tangible ways in which audiences with different moral and political values could benefit from specific climate policies, or ensuring communities impacted by new energy infrastructure, or changes to urban travel systems, feel adequately consulted.
Confirming previous research around the general lack of familiarity with the term ‘climate justice’, the paper also noted that willingness to support climate-friendly policies and eat less red meat were lowest for ‘climate justice’ (which was the least familiar term tested).
This isn’t an argument for downplaying the importance of the issues the term refers to, which are central to both international climate governance and the implementation of specific in-country policies. But it does underscore the lack of recognition of the phrase among many public audiences, a finding which has also been observed in UK research.
Researchers at the centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST) have found widespread public support for low-carbon lifestyles. In workshops, people explored visions of an ideal 1.5°C future:
However, common ‘narratives of delay’ also punctuated these positive visions, stemming from what the authors identified as three emotional defense mechanisms:
1) Overconfidence in current actions (thinking that small changes have more impact than they actually do)
2) Defensiveness over radical change (despite many lifestyle changes requiring only moderate adjustments for many)
3) Dejection at the scale of the challenge (with fatalism acting as a demotivator for making lifestyle changes)
The paper concludes that:
“Rethinking strategies for public engagement with climate action will be an essential step towards creating a positive, ambitious, fair, sustainable vision of the future that is desperately needed as part of a people-centred approach to tackling climate change”
Surveys are clear that the British public supports the country’s net zero targets.
When surveys focus on specific policies (like low traffic neighbourhoods, for example), then a range of wider considerations come into play, and unsurprisingly, support for individual policies like this tends to be lower than support for net zero overall. Although, as Climate Barometer tracker data underscores, even this policy (presented as divisive in media commentary) has more support than opposition.
And this trend – of most net zero policies having greater support than opposition – is reflected in a new Ipsos survey.
In nationally representative polling from April 2024, just before the General Election was called, Ipsos reported that:
Support is highest for giving people more assistance to increase the energy efficiency of their homes (76%); frequent flyer levies (62%); and changing product pricing to reflect how environmentally friendly products are (56%).
The least popular policy tested (an exception to the rule of support outweighing opposition) was electric vehicle subsidies (39% support, 41% oppose).
However, while most net zero policies continue to enjoy majority support among Britons, Ipsos report that this support has fallen over the past two years:
Support for ensuring access to sustainable pension funds and increasing vegetarian/vegan options in food provisioning have both fallen by 8 points since 2022, support for creating low traffic neighbourhoods is down 7 points, and support for higher taxes on red meat and dairy products and electric vehicle subsidies are both down 6 ppts.
Labour and Lib Dem 2019 voters support all policies, while past Conservative voters only support a few: frequent flyer levies, changing product pricing, ensuring access to sustainable pensions, and enabling people to make energy efficiency improvements to their home.
The polling also suggested a softening of the intensity with which people report feeling worried about climate change (likely a reflection of the difficulty of maintaining a strong sense of worry about an issue that can’t be resolved in the short term), although Ipsos reported that overall levels of concern remained very high,
Climate Outreach worked with researchers from the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST) and the environmental charity Hubbub to test food and diet-related messages, with residents in Manchester who were ‘climate concerned’ but are not typically involved or represented in climate conversations (broadly representative of ‘Loyal Nationals’), testing ideas and messages about reducing meat and dairy over a 6 month period.
In surveys, only 27% of people say they have no plans to/don’t want to reduce the amount of meat they eat. But while there is potential to reduce the amount of meat and dairy in people’s diets, the research found that:
Drawing on polling by More in Common of more than 12,000 people and focus groups in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands, Europe Talks Flying digs into attitudes towards aviation and climate change, often considered one of the trickiest topics in terms of bringing about behaviour change.
Overall, the picture is one of risk and opportunity.
The risk comes from badly designed campaigns (most people like flying and the idea of ‘flight shame’, prominent as it may be in climate circles, is something that only a minority of the wider population feels or agrees with).
The opportunity lies in the broad-based support for heavily taxing or even banning private jets, and investing in faster, more affordable train journeys. This would build a platform for introducing policies like a ‘frequent flyer levy‘, which is generally popular and seen as fair (although some of the groups least likely to be impacted by this are the most wary of it).
Crucially (as with carbon footprints in general), it is disposable income rather than concern about climate change that determines the amount people fly.
Focusing on the findings relating to the UK specifically:
In an open access paper published in the journal Nature Communications, a large sample of the German public (more than 24,000 people) was surveyed before and just after major climate protests/civil disobedience took place.
Following what the authors describe as ‘confrontational’ protest acts, levels of reported concern about climate change rose by just over 1% (not a huge number, but a meaningful uptick nonetheless with a sample of this size and given the high level of pre-existing concern in Germany).
Interestingly, there was no sign of political polarisation either. And although the political context in Germany differs in a range of ways to the UK, the study offers direct evidence that significant protests do ‘cut through’ in terms of national public opinion. This is not always easy to demonstrate without his form of ‘before and after’ study design.
In another new open access paper on a similar topic, researchers asked US participants in an online experiment to give their views on a range of civil disobedience tactics. They concluded:
Most Americans view climate-related NVCD as appropriate if it is non-violent and targeted towards those companies or entities which are responsible for taking actions to the detriment of the climate. This could be in the form of promoting fossil fuel use, or even accepting fossil fuel financing. Conversely, actions that are violent, or targeted at entities not seen as being responsible for exacerbating climate change are seen as inappropriate targets.
Gradually, the evidence base on how contemporary protest tactics are actually landing with members of the public is building. Studies like these are important for checking assumptions about the way in which people react to protests involving civil disobedience.
Concern levels are likely to temporarily tick upwards when protests capture the media spotlight, even if the elite commentary that gets the most bandwidth is high critical of demonstrations. But the more that protests can do to focus in on ‘valid’ or ‘legitimate’ targets, the higher the chance of bringing the wider public along.
The centre for Climate Change & Social Transformations (CAST) has published a revamped version of its data portal, giving quick access to international surveys of public opinion on a wide range of climate issues from 2020-2023.
The Climate Action dashboard displays trends in people’s intentions to make different lifestyle changes in the UK (alongside international data).
Although there’s wide variation across different behaviours in terms of people’s overall willingness to engage in them (from the 80% of people who try to avoid food waste, to the 11% who say they would follow a vegan diet), one overall trend is clear: there’s no meaningful drop-off between 2020 and 2023 in any of the behaviours.
Some show a spike in 2021, likely linked to the Covid 19 pandemic (e.g. avoiding flying) or the surge in global climate activism that preceded it. But none are lower than the 2020 baseline.
That’s important to bear in mind when there’s discussion of public support for climate action weakening. Data like this show clearly that it isn’t, even if some of the more impactful lifestyle changes people could make (like following a vegan or vegetarian diet) don’t yet have majority support.
In an open access research paper in the journal Nature Climate Change, Charlotte Kukowski and Emma Garnett argue that reducing inequality is not simply a positive ‘co-benefit’ of well-designed climate policies (although in a cost of living crisis, the affordability of green policies is a major consideration for voter support).
Instead the authors argue that many of the behavioural changes necessary to reduce emissions from travel or food consumption are simply not possible where income inequalities remain high. The paper uses an example of rural/urban travel costs and rent prices to illustrate how it may be easier for wealthier citizens to make low carbon travel choices:
While London boasts the cheapest bus fares and the most comprehensive public transport network in the UK, it also ranks highest for house prices and rents. Although rent and property prices can be lower in rural areas than in cities, the deregulation and subsequent privatization of the UK bus network in the 1980s have led to fare increases, a marked decrease in ridership, service fragmentation, increased car ownership and dependence, and transport-associated social exclusion, which disproportionately affect poorer citizens in rural communities
The analysis and recommendations for addressing ‘carbon inequality’ offer a different way of thinking about the challenge of population-scale behaviour changes: many policies are not currently viewed as fair by the public in large part because they aren’t currently equally accessible to people across the income spectrum.
The paper concludes that addressing general inequality, in turn makes behaviour change for net zero more feasible.
In an analysis of the language used to describe climate activists on a range of social media platforms in 2022 and 2023, Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) identified a rise in labels such as “extremists”, “lunatics” or even “terrorists”. The analysis found that allusions to violence on social media appear to be increasing, particularly in comment sections. Key findings included:
This kind of online discourse is troubling. And on social media platforms with large numbers of users, shares can quickly add up, so the views of an angry minority can spread quickly.
Offline, although public attitudes towards disruptive protest groups like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are generally not positive, opinion data shows the UK public evenly split on whether campaigners are ‘out of touch’ with the rest of the country.
So although public opinion isn’t altogether favourable towards protesters, the violent language documented by CAAD is likely to be more ‘out of touch’ with mainstream popular opinion, than the actions of the protesters themselves.
Commentary & Analysis
1st November 2023
Are climate protesters liked? Trusted? Seen as ‘out of touch’?
Comment: Is ‘behaviour change’ a contentious topic or an essential part of net zero?
Understanding the sometimes turbulent relationship between behaviour change, policy making and campaigning on climate change and net zero.