Resource Library

Consider the range of motivations that bring people to climate protests when designing events and outreach. Interviews with 64 attendees at the September, 2019 climate strikes in Europe and North America revealed a great deal of variation in their knowledge levels, emotions and motivations. A surprising number were not very knowledgeable about climate change, only half had been involved in previous climate protests before, and a substantial minority were motivated by a general sense of solidarity and desire to be part of a protest movement, and not necessarily specific concern about climate. Among a diversity of emotions regarding climate change, fear and hope were the most common. The authors therefore developed a typology of climate protestors: Frontline, Responsible, Latent, Disengaged, Opportunistic, Parallel, and Sceptical.
 

This report is an analysis of public opinion about climate change among the regular U.S. audience (American adults who frequently watch, read, or listen to the content) of each of six major U.S. news sources: CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, the Weather Channel, and the national nightly network news (on CBS, ABC, or NBC). It finds that large majorities in most news audiences are interested in news stories about a wide range of global warming topics, but that majorities in all news audiences feel they are not very well informed about global warming. Additional findings can be seen in the Executive Summary and throughout the report.

From June 2018-May 2019, PennEnvironment conducted a test on how personal phone contact (when layered on top of email and SMS contact) affects volunteer recruitment rates with the goal of maximizing staff time efficiency. In particular, they were interested in finding their organization’s break-even point in which their traditional model of personal phone contacts (which is effective, though time-consuming) is matched by digital-only contact (which yields participation, though at lower rates). With a subject pool of 37794 individuals drawn from inactive past supporters and newly recruited volunteers, which were then randomly selected into one of the two experimental groups, PennEnvironment found that the base rate for volunteer sign-ups from electronic contact was 0.002 shifts per contact sent. Layering in phone contact increased this rate to 0.3 additional shifts per call.

Training covering the elements of a strategic communications plan. Attendees will have more confidence in evaluating messages, messengers, and tactics in a communications plan.