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Climate Engagement in a Digital Age: Exploring the Drivers of Participation in Climate Discourse Online in the Context of COP21

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journal contribution
posted on 2017-11-10, 11:39 authored by Dorothee Arlt, Imke Hoppe, Josephine B. Schmitt, Fenja De Silva-Schmidt, Michael Brüggemann

Various scholars underscore the importance of public engagement with climate change to successfully respond to the challenges of global warming. However, although online media provide various new opportunities to actively engage in climate discourse so far very little is known about the drivers of this form of engagement. Against this background, this study tested a theoretical model on the effects of media and interpersonal communication on participation in climate discourse online using data from a representative online survey of German citizens (n = 1392) carried out while COP21. Overall, the results show that receiving information on climate change from social media (social networks, Twitter, blogs), active information seeking online and interpersonal conversations about COP21 strongly encourage participation in climate discourse online. Moreover, results provide relevant insights on the role of interest in climate politics, personal issue relevance and climate scepticism as preconditions of communication effects.

Funding

This paper presents findings from the research project “Down to Earth” which is part of the German Research Foundation‘s cluster of Excellence “Integrated Climate System Analysis and Prediction” (CliSAP), University of Hamburg. For further information on the project, please see: http://www.climatematters.hamburg/down-to-earth/.

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