Archie, A. (2022, June 24). Factual Climate Change Reporting Can Influence Americans Positively, but Not for Long. NPR, NPR. Retrieved August 21, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1107239912/climate-change-science-environment-global-warming-study-report.
The problem of receiving enough support to take action on climate change seems to be held within the role of the news media. A recent study was performed by Thomas Wood, Brendan Nyhan, and Ethan Porter, professors at The Ohio State University, Dartmouth College, and George Washington University. This study proved that the public will often show support when given factual articles about climate change, however, that information is almost never retained as the amounts of consumer-based articles overpower the factual articles.
I find this information very relevant to climate change as we need the support of the public in order to make a change to the current standard of living. In order to make a difference, people cannot be easily fooled into arguing for the wrong position when it comes to scientific facts about our environment and climate change. The article helped me realize that climate change is an issue that needs to be addressed on all fronts. While the government attempts to enforce the decrease of greenhouse gas emissions, the news media also needs to be held accountable for making sure the public unites rather than argues about the actuality of our current, fragile state within our environment.
Social media can be a great impact on influencing people to look over our communities and to help create impacts for climate change, help everyone know about it and keep everyone aware of the problem.
Thank you for your comment! I am so glad you agree that the media’s influence drastically changes people’s viewpoints on subjects such as Climate Change. This impact diminishes the movement for some positive change for our environment.