Emancipatory Climate Actions by Laurence L. Delina

Author:Laurence L. Delina
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030173722
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Culturing and Framing in Today’s Climate Actions

Many in the climate action movement understand the connection between symbols , frames , and messages (cf. Moser 2010). Psychological stimuli have been duly tapped to hinge many past and present climate action strategies such as by using vocabularies related to shocking events, including even those that are yet to occur (e.g. Wallace-Wells 2017). The assumption for this nihilistic framing rests on the idea that shocking events, especially those that can be personally witnessed, if not experienced, could be used as climate action triggers (Demski et al. 2017; cf. Leiserowitz and Smith 2017; Spence et al. 2011) or, at the very least, attract attention to climate change (Sisco et al. 2017). These messages also involve frames that bank on exogenous experiences , using, for example, extreme weather events that occurred in distant lands and their impacts to people’s lives and livelihoods to spur an audience onto action. Overall, these framings would contain images, languages, and symbols designed to appeal on emotions (cf. Leiserowitz and Smith 2017). Examples include images of an emasculated polar bear stranded on a thin, breaking ice; of submerged coastal cities; of a graph of hockey stick-like, fast-rising emission trends; and vivid descriptions of “uninhabitable Earth:” famine , economic collapse, and a sun that cooks us (Wallace-Wells 2017). This choice of doomsday images and symbols is an attempt to simulate the viewing, reading, or listening audience to reach an emotional “high” in the hope that they will then engage with climate actions (Stern 2012; cf. Roberts 2017). The hope is that these narrations and pictures will result in anger, which could then motivate people to rectify injustices (Thomas et al. 2009; cf. Bain et al. 2012).

An audience’s perception of these frames and messages , however, varies at best (Chapman et al. 2017). Emotionally-charged burden framing may grab some people’s attention and may even mobilize some to adopt climate actions. A focus on spatially and temporally distant events, technical languages, and fear appeals, however, can also backfire and disengage some audiences (Mann et al. 2017; Weber 2010; Moser 2007). An audience may also perceive these messages as a form of manipulation (Lorenzoni et al. 2007; O’Neill and Nicholson-Cole 2009). Despite the noble intention of these messaging tools , they rarely push people to action (Stevenson and Peterson 2015).

Weak reception occurs for myriad reasons, but the behavioral and brain sciences explain that the human moral judgment system is but poorly equipped in identifying future, large-scale , and long-term hazards such as those brought about by climate impacts (Swim et al. 2011). The evolutionary history of the human species simply impedes our capacity to react today on the future ramifications of our historical and present actions (Gifford 2011). Psychological repercussions, such as denial and apathy, also render burden framing of limited value in mobilization (American Psychological Association 2009; Center for Research on Environmental Decisions 2009). Another issue with too much reliance on burden frames is that climate actions could not be guaranteed even the Movement is granted similar pivotal events (e.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.