• Energy Research

Abstract A basic understanding of climate politics is necessary for citizens to assess their government’s policies on mitigating and adapting to climate change. However, research on knowledge about climate change has focused on causes and consequences of climate change rather than climate politics. Even less research has focused on the learning process rather than knowledge. Therefore, this study explores which factors influence learning about climate politics from media use and interpersonal communication. We test a set of factors related to the individual respondent and the type of information sources used. Data from a three-month panel survey conducted in the context of the 2015 UN climate conference in Paris (COP21) is analyzed using hierarchical regression analyses. The strongest explanatory factor is prior knowledge – which, in contrast to the knowledge gap hypothesis, makes learning less likely. The most plausible explanation for this ceiling effect is a lack of background information offered in the most widely used journalistic media. Keywords Knowledge acquisition, Panel survey, media effects, climate change, knowledge gap

A basic understanding of climate politics is necessary for citizens to assess their government’s policies. Media use is supposed to enable learning, while widening knowledge gaps. We analyze whether such a gap opened up in times of intense media coverage during the 2015 climate conference in Paris and explain learning through hierarchical regression analyses, drawing on a 3-month panel survey ( n = 1121) in Germany. We find a diminishing knowledge gap: people with low previous knowledge catch up on the better informed, but overall knowledge remained low and learning was limited. This suggests a ceiling effect: possibly journalistic media did not provide enough new information for the well-informed. Closing knowledge gaps may also be explained by the media system with public television and regional newspapers reaching broad segments of the population. Higher knowledge was predicted less by media use than by education, concern, and being male.

This chapter explores the role of space in making sense of climate change coverage. The role of space is analyzed in the form of (a) (attributed) spatial distance and/or proximity to climate change, (b) personal nature and weather experiences attributed to climate change and (c) social spaces. The study compares how the United Nations’ summit COP 21, which resulted in the Paris Agreement in 2015, has been perceived and interpreted in an urban (Hamburg) and a rural setting (Otterndorf), both located in Northern Germany. In each setting, two focus group interviews were held (n = 15), one with long-term inhabitants and one with newly relocated citizens. This data was complemented by media diaries (including standardized and open questions), in which participants documented their communicative engagement with the climate summit on a daily basis. Media use in both cases is fairly similar, with participants in the rural setting using their local newspaper more intensively. Yet, local newspapers’ quality of reporting the summit was deemed as highly deficient, failing to provide a local angle to the climate summit and to the broader topic of climate change. Media, apparently, have not explained the issue well: climate change and politics are perceived as overly complex and distant. Space plays an important role: people in the rural setting—with the rising tides of the North Sea behind the dikes—felt more personally concerned by climate change than inhabitants of Hamburg. Furthermore, long-term inhabitants drew much stronger links between climate change and their region. The duration of stay in a certain setting thus turns out to be an important moderator of spatial influence on interpretations of climate change.

Ein Basiswissen über Klimapolitik ermöglicht demokratische Teilhabe und Engagement für den Klimaschutz. Bestehende Studien zum Wissen der Deutschen konzentrieren sich jedoch entweder auf Folgen und Ursachen des Klimawandels oder auf andere Politikbereiche. Zudem gibt es wenig Forschung zu den Quellen und dem Prozess des Wissenserwerbs. Daher untersucht die vorliegende Studie, welchen Beitrag Mediennutzung und interpersonelle Kommunikation zum Wissenserwerb über Klimapolitik leisten, und welche anderen Faktoren neben den Informationsquellen das Lernen beeinflussen und erklären. Die Studie wurde im Kontext des UN-Klimagipfels 2015 in Paris durchgeführt und kombiniert eine dreiwellige Panel-Befragung der deutschen Bevölkerung (N = 1121) mit einer qualitativen Tagebuchbefragung (N = 42) und einer qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse der genutzten Medieninhalte der TagebuchschreiberInnen. Es zeigt sich ein eher niedriger Wissensstand; mittelfristig gibt es einen Lerneffekt in Bezug auf besonders aktuelle Aspekte des Themas. Der Wissenserwerb wird durch einen Deckeneffekt limitiert, der zu einem großen Teil aus einer inhaltlich eingeschränkten Berichterstattung resultiert. NEU - Nachhaltigkeits‐, Energie‐ und Umweltkommunikation, vol. 7

A follow-up study to Brüggemann et al. (2017), The appeasement effect of a United Nations climate summit on the German public Abstract Heat waves occurring around the world, outspoken warnings from scientists, international climate ac-tivism, and ensuing political debates on climate protection have ensured that climate change has finally caught the public’s attention. This comparative analysis of public opinion during three UN climate sum-mits illustrates the awakening of public awareness of and an increased willingness to actively engage with climate change, probably as the cumulative effect of this combination of events. Comparing cli-mate change awareness, communicative engagement, knowledge, attitudes, and climate-friendly be-haviour during the 2015 (n = 1,477), 2018 (n = 1,044) and 2019 (n = 1,000) UN climate summits, we find major and consistently positive changes in various forms of active engagement with the issue. These results indicate that the appeasement effect observed in an earlier study during the 2015 Paris summit is over: the German public is now ready to take decisive steps to tackle the climate problem.