Speaking of the weather: Cross-media communication and climate change

TY - JOUR

T1 - Speaking of the weather

T2 - Cross-media communication and climate change

AU - Jensen, Klaus Bruhn

PY - 2017/8/1

Y1 - 2017/8/1

N2 - Climate change raises the stakes of human communication to the existential level of the species and the planet. This article presents an empirical study of how users make sense of climate change as they traverse the contemporary digital media environment. Departing from a baseline survey and drawing on the tradition of reception analysis, focus groups of different ages and with various political and religious affiliations identified distinctive themes, narratives, and arguments regarding the natural environment as represented and received across different media. Climate change appears out of scale - incommensurable not only with established media formats and genres but also with common frames of human cognition and communication. In conclusion, the article addresses climate change from the perspective of human rights and social justice, under the recent heading of climate justice.

AB - Climate change raises the stakes of human communication to the existential level of the species and the planet. This article presents an empirical study of how users make sense of climate change as they traverse the contemporary digital media environment. Departing from a baseline survey and drawing on the tradition of reception analysis, focus groups of different ages and with various political and religious affiliations identified distinctive themes, narratives, and arguments regarding the natural environment as represented and received across different media. Climate change appears out of scale - incommensurable not only with established media formats and genres but also with common frames of human cognition and communication. In conclusion, the article addresses climate change from the perspective of human rights and social justice, under the recent heading of climate justice.

U2 - 10.1177/1354856517700379

DO - 10.1177/1354856517700379

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1354-8565

VL - 23

SP - 439

EP - 454

JO - Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies

JF - Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies

IS - 4

ER -