For this climate content analysis assignment, the digital climate communication that I have chosen to analyze is an article that was published in The Guardian titled; Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says: A relatively small number of fossil fuel producers and their investors could hold the key to tackling climate change. It is important to note that this article was published on July 10, 2017. For an article that is over four years old, it is still referred to and talked about relatively often, which is partly why I chose to analyze it for this assignment.
The Guardian is an open source online newspaper that encourages donations from readers but is open to everyone free of charge. The default setting for The Guardian is ‘international edition’; however, there are also options to filter ‘UK edition’, ‘US edition’, and ‘Australia edition’.
The audience for this piece is technically international; however, it is important to note that the article is published in English. Due to the UK, US, and Australia edition options on The Guardian, it is assumed that there may be higher levels of engagement from those countries. The author, Tess Riley is the deputy editor of Guardian Sustainable Business. The article can be found under the ‘Climate Crisis’ category.
Due to the nature of the broad variety of topics published in The Guardian, it is also assumed that this article would be consumed by people who are interested in a variety of topics- not just climate action. The title of the article explicitly calls out companies and investors and the article itself lists 100 companies by name, so it is also assumed that anyone involved in these companies would be consuming the article.
There are many techniques for effectively communicating climate change. This piece will focus on three of those techniques including; identifying and understanding audience, the ecological model, and localizing the issue.
- Identify and understand your audience
- Communicating climate change: A practitioner’s guide- Insights from Africa, Asia, and Latin America from the Climate & Development Knowledge Network by Dupar states the importance of starting from a place where information is relevant to the audience’s knowledge and values. Audiences will be mobilized to contribute when they feel as though the framing of an issue is relevant to them.
- The ecological model
- An ecological model of climate marketing: A conceptual framework for understanding climate science related attitude and behaviour change by Jaigris Hodsen describes the ecological model as bidirectional. Within the four levels; individual, relational, community, and society, the individual interacts with all broader levels. The ecological model uses currency, personalization, community and trust in relation to climate communication. Currency refers to both the timing of the message and where the message is coming from. Personalization refers to framing the message in a way that is relevant to the audience, ensuring that they feel empowered and avoiding fear-based messaging. Community refers to the concept that humans look to others within their own community for social norms. In the case of climate communication, Hodsen recommends framing the desired outcome or action as a social norm within said community. Lastly, trust refers to the source that the information is coming from and whether that source is trusted or not.
- Localize the issue
- In the article Conveying the Human Implications of Climate Change: A Climate Change Communication Primer for Public Health Professionals by Maibach, Nisbet, and Weathers, they highlight the importance of making climate change a more concrete, localized concern, rather than a global and abstract concern. In this case, climate change is framed as a public health concern, making it more localized within each distinct community.
The strengths of this piece lie in trust for the platform that it is being communicated through. As mentioned above, The Guardian has maintained a committed following, especially those that get most of their news through this platform. There is presumably a level of trust in the organizations that are referred to and cited in the report including The Carbon Majors Report, The Climate Accountability Institute, Sierra Club, and most notably, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
As mentioned above, this article is still referred to quite readily for an article that is four years old. In terms of climate change communication techniques with the audience being the general public, climate change is framed as an issue for the 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, not mentioning the roll that the general public plays in consuming products from those same companies. Of course, it is important to hold companies and investors accountable; however, for a public facing article such as this, it does not make the audience feel like it is an issue that is relevant to them (Dupar, 2019).
The ecological model is centered around ensuring that the individual, in this case, the general public interacting with the article, is able to interact bidirectionally with the relational level, community level, and societal level. This article could try to adopt an ecological model, rather than isolate companies and investors (societal level) without bidirectional interaction to other levels. Another important component of the ecological model, specifically within personalization, encourages avoiding fear-based messaging (Hodsen, 2019). Fear-based messaging is not avoided in statements such as “If fossil fuels continue to be extracted at the same rate over the next 28 years as they were between 1988 and 2017, says the report, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 4C by the end of the century. This is likely to have catastrophic consequences including substantial species extinction and global food scarcity risks” (Riley, 2017).
Lastly, looking at the climate communication technique of localizing the issue, the title of the article refers to “the world’s greenhouse gas emissions” and explores global emissions throughout. As mentioned earlier, of course it is important to look at emissions on a global scale; however, this does not give an opportunity to ‘localize the issue’ (Maibach, 2011).
It is no surprise that this article is still a topic of conversation after four years, as Shandell Houlden states “Content that elicits strong emotions in its readers is more likely to spread rapidly than unemotional content. This is especially true for negative emotions such as fear and anger” (Houlden 2021). The title and the article itself are both considered emotional content. For a public facing article, it is trusted by the audience due to the source of information (The Guardian). It could be improved upon by implementing some of the climate change communication strategies such as; identifying and understanding the audience, considering the ecological model, and localizing the issue.
References
Dupar, M., with McNamara, L. & Pacha, M. (2019). Communicating climate change: A practitioner’s guide. Cape Town: Climate and Development Knowledge Network. https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/Communicating%20climate%20change_Insights%20from%20CDKNs%20experience.pdf
Hodson, J. (2019). An ecological model of climate marketing: A conceptual framework for understanding climate science related attitude and behavior change. Cogent Social Sciences, 5(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2019.1625101
Houlden, S. (2021). Week 4 Readings- Disinformation (Video). Royal Roads University (Moodle). Retrieved from https://moodle.royalroads.ca/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=809116
Maibach, E., Nisbet, M., & Weathers, M. (2011). Conveying the human implications of climate change: A climate change communication primer for public health professionals. George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Climate-Communication-Primer-for-Public-Health-Professionals-1.pdf
Moser, S .C. (2016). Reflections on climate change communication research and practice in the second decade of the 21st century: What more is there to say? WIREs Climate Change May/June, 345-369. Doi: doi-org.ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/10.1002/wcc.403
Riley, T. (2017, July 10). Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says. The Guardian. Retrieved October 8, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change.