Communicating About the Climate Crisis
By: Eleanor Willner-Fraser, Class of 2022
I’ve cared about protecting the environment for almost as long as I can remember. I grew up in an eco-conscious household. We recycled, reused wrapping paper, collected scrap paper and did not eat meat. When I was a child, I remember putting a cup in a dripping sink to emphasize to my parents how much water they were wasting by not fixing the tap. As I grew older, my passion for environmental causes translated to co-leading my high school’s environment club and volunteering with different environmental organizations.
The public relations program at Centennial College has focused on doing PR in a corporate or agency setting. This focus on the business side of PR is understandable. After all, that’s where many students’ interest — and the money — lies. However, I knew from the start that I did not want the agency lifestyle. I see myself working in a non-profit or government, using communications to encourage environmental change.
The public relations function originated in the late 19th-century United States with the push to improve public perception of big business, and so PR has traditionally been bound up with corporate power. We’ve all heard the stereotypes about PR and spin — using manipulative means to influence public opinion. Historically, public relations practitioners did not focus much on the ethics of their work. For example, in the 1920s, the public relations giant Edward Bernays recruited women to smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes in a parade as “torches of freedom,” creating an association between smoking and women’s independence.
Today, with the increased attention to social issues like racial justice and climate change, PR practitioners are expected to be pickier about who we choose to work for and what products or causes we promote. Organizations are also under closer scrutiny. They’re expected to take responsibility for their actions through corporate social responsibility initiatives and to take a stand on pressing global issues.
Climate change as a crisis
According to attribution theory, people look for the cause of a crisis and seek to assign responsibility for it. Organizations can be considered a victim, responsible for the crisis but only by accident or fully responsible. The public’s views about the cause of a crisis determine how the organization should respond. Climate change is tricky since there isn’t one specific organization responsible for it. Rather, all organizations are responsible to a certain extent, although certain organizations have a greater responsibility due to their size and the nature of their operations.
Does climate change count as a crisis? In Theorizing Crisis Communication, Seeger and Sellnow argue that crises “share three general attributes: they are largely unanticipated or violate expectations; they threaten high-priority goals, and they require relatively rapid response to contain or mitigate the harm” (p. 7). Scientists have known about climate change for decades, so we can hardly call the threat unanticipated. However, climate change does threaten high-priority goals like property, health and life; and it requires rapid action on the part of governments, corporations and individuals.
If climate change is a crisis, which stage are we in? Steven Fink divides crises into four stages, based on a disease analogy. I would argue that we’re in the first or second stage. The first stage, prodromal, gets its name from the symptoms that occur before the onset of a disease. If a society interprets the warnings correctly, it may be able to avert a crisis, or at least prepare for it. In the second stage — acute — the crisis has erupted, but there’s still some possibility of controlling it. If you consider climate change, we’re already seeing consequences around the world and warnings of what is to come. However, we still have a chance to slow down the threat and prepare for it.
Communicating about climate change
For a long time, communicators assumed that a lack of knowledge explained the public’s inaction about climate change, in what was known as the information deficit model. However, we’ve gradually realized that communicating the science isn’t enough. There’s a gap between knowledge and action. Part of the problem is that climate change seems distant and abstract — not happening right here or right now. For example, when I’m taking a shower, it’s hard to connect the flow of water from the showerhead to real-world consequences.
Communicators have developed best practices for communicating about climate change. These approaches include knowing your audience and being relevant to their values and concerns, using images and stories, and appealing to emotions — all strategies we’ve discussed in the PR program at Centennial.
A related field, social marketing, uses marketing principles and techniques to influence a target audience to take behaviours that benefit society. The focus is on changing behaviour, not raising awareness, and the competition is the countless behaviours that are detrimental for the well-being of people and the planet.
Framing the climate crisis
According to news framing theory, how a situation is explained or framed affects how audiences perceive and understand it. Journalists may focus their coverage on certain aspects of a story while ignoring others. An episode of CBC Radio’s Ideas program discussed metaphors for climate change, arguing that framing climate change in terms of love may be more powerful than comparing it to a war. Although the war metaphor creates a helpful sense of urgency, it implies an ending — a clear moment of having won — which we may not experience with climate change.
A 2021 study in Science and Environmental Communication examined the influence of framing on environmental behaviour, more specifically the impact of informational messages with a positive versus negative tone. They found that messages with a positive tone were slightly more effective, although any form of reminder makes a difference.
Messaging that focuses on negative emotions like fear, guilt or shame may lead to paralysis. Communicating with a positive, hopeful tone, on the other hand, can be more effective at inspiring behaviour change. Communicators can try highlighting the progress we’ve already made toward sustainability or painting a positive vision of the future.
It can be hard not to feel discouraged about climate change when I observe the inaction on the part of governments, organizations and individuals. As a communicator, I commit to using the skills I have gained in the PR program at Centennial College to inspire environmental behaviour change in my community and workplace. I commit to continuing to learn about the best ways to use written and visual communication to help us achieve a positive future for people and the planet.
References:
Huhn, Jessica. “What Is Social Marketing? (With 7 Stellar Examples).” Business 2 Community, 2
Sept. 2019, https://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/what-is-social-marketing-with-7-stellar-examples-02236451. Accessed 21 March 2022.
Nelson, Katherine M., et al. “Informational Nudges to Encourage Pro-Environmental Behavior:
Examining Differences in Message Framing and Human Interaction.” Frontiers in Communication, vol. 5, 2021, https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2020.610186. Accessed 22 March 2022.
Olano, Maria Virginia. “Communicating the Climate Crisis.” Climate Xchange,
https://climate-xchange.org/communicating-the-climate-crisis/. Accessed 22 March 2022.
Seeger, Matthew W., and Timothy L. Sellnow. Theorizing Crisis Communication. 2nd ed., Wiley
Blackwell, 2021.
“The Ongoing Search for the Perfect Climate Change Metaphor.” Ideas. CBC Radio, 1 April
2021, https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-ongoing-search-for-the-perfect-climate-change-metaphor-1.5972756. Accessed 22 March 2022.
