Resource Type: Research & Articles

Maps, moving pictures, and photos have been shown to have powerful impacts on public opinion, even though public opinion on climate change is polarized along party lines in the U.S. Studies have found that images have a greater impact if they portray the local effects of sea-level rise and climate change on audiences in specific places (e.g., Boston, Miami), as opposed to its effects on exotic animals or locations such as polar bears at the North Pole. People surveyed report increased beliefs that climate change will cause negative results, concern for coastal communities and even belief that global warming is occurring. However, other studies have found that showing people images or maps of negative climate impacts on their own property or neighborhood may backfire, resulting in less concern, possibly because people defensively believe they made good individual decisions to purchase their property in the past. Realtor organizations have begun utilizing flood risk information in home listings, but the effects of this on homebuyer behavior are yet unknown.

In reporting about climate change, media should reduce blame, anxiety, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness in their coverage. In this resource, young people (aged 16-25) said that those kinds of tactics make them feel less agency when they consume digital media coverage of climate. These young people generally experienced a four-stage process when consuming climate coverage on social media or digital newspaper media: observing, feeling emotionally effected, critically thinking about the content, and finally (sometimes) feeling motivated to engage in activism. 95% of these young people said they think they have the personal skills to cope with climate reporting on social media. Most also said that climate coverage tends to increase their climate anxiety but not any overall mental health difficulties.

Youth in Australia who are most worried about climate change are also most engaged with news and politics. Those most worried about climate also experience the most depression. This resource studied Australian youth from ages 10 to 19. Consistently, the youth who experience most worry about climate also follow the news most and also report more depressive symptoms. However, those who developed more climate worry as they aged did not experience more depressive symptoms than those who were moderately worried about climate, on average. Further, higher levels of these Australian youth experienced some level of worry (moderate, 25%, or increasing, 24%) than those experiencing low (17%) or decreasing (13%) levels of worry. 13% experienced persistently high levels of worry.

Place-based civic science (PBCS) can be a powerful tool to empower youth to act on environmental issues. This resource found that PBCS, as a method, resulted in youth feeling that they belong to a group larger than themselves and gained a sense of hope from working with others toward shared goals. PBCS is a teaching and organizing tool where young people partner on teams with older environmentalists, the teams study and act together to mitigate an environmental problem, and then present their efforts in a public venue. The youth involved in these PBCS teams were majority youth of color. This resource argues that PBCS can mitigate the stress and anxiety that young people can feel when learning about environmental issues without also being presented with ways to influence those issues.