Theories & Models
Jones & Peterson write that this type of reasoning occurs to support & align with prior beliefs & identities.
What is motivated reasoning?
According to Jones & Peterson, these are the four structural elements of a narrative.
What is setting, plot, characters, and moral?
Marlon et al. argue that environmental communication should focus not on raising concern, but on generating this among those already concerned about it.
What is agency?
What are "alarmed", "concerned", "cautious", "disengaged", "doubtful", and "dismissive"?
1950s psychology research on this found that attitude change & emotional responses are often the consequences of behavior rather than the cause of it.
What is cognitive dissonance?
According to De Meyer et al., these groups have shared concern or passion & become better at handling situations by learning as a community.
What are communities of practice?
According to Marlon et al., this is defined as "a lack of hope, as well as information and ideas about what might promote it".
What is the public "hope gap"?
Of the "Six Americas", this group tends to be the most liberal, egalitarian, educated, & diverse.
What is "alarmed"?
According to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, this model holds that high-involvement audiences will be more receptive to complex messages, while low-involvement audiences will tune these messages out.
What's the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)?
Jones & Peterson state that climate change communication findings are placed into these two general categories.
What are "findings internal to individuals" (specific characteristics of individuals and how they work to shape how people understand/communicate/process information) and "findings external to individuals" (framing)?
According to De Meyer et al., if you're the only one in your community with a unique, helpful skill or solution, you may contribute to this.
What is positive deviance?
Of the "Six Americas", this group is closest to national averages in egalitarianism/individualism, income, & ethnicity.
What is "cautious"?
According to Marlon et al., these two models/theories can't account for the effects of hope & doubt on action.
What's the Extended Parallel Process Model & the Protection Motivation Theory?
According to De Meyer et al., these are two problems caused by an issue-based conceptualization of climate change.
What is limited number of story types/ widespread lack of agency/limited opportunities for citizen engagement?
De Meyer et al. lists these three types of agency.
What is individual agency, proxy agency, and collective agency?
Name a strategy the YPCC recommends for communicating climate change to the "disengaged" group.
- Promoting positive social norms
- Using heuristic/peripheral information processing
- Showing (rather than telling) the problem and solutions
Describe the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) & what this model means for how we communicate about environmental problems.
The EPPM emphasizes the importance of keeping the severity & personal vulnerability of a threat central to the message, while coupling it with information about solutions in a way that engenders both response efficacy & self-efficacy. This allows people to focus on controlling the danger instead of controlling only their fearful emotions.
List three of Jones & Peterson's recommendations for writing climate change stories.
- Use narrative form & content when communicating climate change science
- Identify audience characteristics & articulate the setting of the story (problem, cause, context) in specific, recent, & audience-relevant language
- Using knowledge about audience beliefs & values, choose characters the audience can relate to & will care about. When casting characters, focus on relaying positive emotions associated with motivation & personal control, not negative emotions associated with futility.
- Temporally link narrative components together with specific information about causality, risk, & human agency.
- Clearly identify the point of the story in terms of risks & benefits, emphasizing gains instead of losses, & referencing policy solutions with wide support if relevant.
List & describe Marlon et al.'s two types of hope & two types of doubt.
Constructive hope: seeing others act/believing collective awareness is increasing
False hope: belief that God/nature will solve the problem without human intervention
Constructive doubt: concern that humanity won't address the problem effectively
Fatalistic doubt: beliefs that we can't address the problem even if we wanted to (because it's in the hands of God/nature)
List & describe the YPCC's three types of efficacy.
Response efficacy: the belief that the responses to the threat will be effective in reduing it
Self-efficacy: the belief that one is capable of taking actions
Collective efficacy: the belief that one's group is capable of acting effectively together