Reaching Across the Aisle: The Power of Engaging Media and Considerations for Climate Change Media Research and Practice

Abstract:

Narratives are culturally understood to be powerful tools of communication. There is also significant research, in fields from medical decision making, persuasion and entertainment education, that shows empirical support for the persuasive effects of narrative forms of communication. In this presentation we will draw on two sets of results from an evaluation of a climate change documentary television series to describe the stimulation and impact of narrative engagement in climate change communication. We evaluated, through two experiments (lab N = 624; online N = 1391), short-term effects of narrative transportation on efficacy beliefs and risk perceptions after exposure to a climate change documentary. We found narrative transportation to be a significant predictor of climate-related efficacy beliefs and risk perceptions (p<.001). We also report a significant interaction between transportation and political affiliation for both efficacy beliefs and risk perceptions (p<.01). These results improve our empirical understanding of the importance and impact of narrative persuasion in climate change communications and indicate that engaging climate change documentary film or television may present opportunities to bridge gaps between political affiliations and limit the effects of polarization on some climate change attitudes and beliefs. Further, in-depth interviews (N=73) demonstrated that imagery is critical to generating engagement through novel demonstration of climate change concepts and impact on emotion, while local connections, familiarity, and strong, identifiable characters create and maintain engagement. Fear-inducing imagery and some celebrity imagery were main causes of disengagement and counterarguing. We suggest future directions for climate change media research and important considerations for practice.