Climate Change in the Media: An Overwhelming Pessimism that Hinders Action and Hope

Krishant Putrevu

If you find yourself on social media as often as people my age have, you might find yourself constantly coming across the term “doom scrolling”. We scroll and scroll through pessimistic pieces of media that do nothing but feed a downward spiral into hopelessness. “Doom Scrolling” encapsulates that spiral, being defined as a constant scrolling through articles and media that hold bleak futures for the human race. Posts whizz past us painting a landscape of wars, poverty, disease, for posterity but none of these things are necessarily set in stone. The interesting thing to note is that with the many volatile events going on in the world today, much of the news that conveys objective information ultimately comes to bleak conclusions. Physical oceanographer Professor Phil Orton  brings to my attention the absolute prevalence of this pessimistic outlook on the way we report on climate change as a whole. And that gets me thinking: how does the overly pessimistic view of current climate change reporting affect the way we address the issue as a whole? And how do we climb out of the so-called “pit of despair” that we’ve dug ourselves into with our current reporting trends?

A series of studies conducted within the Humanities and Social Science Communications Journal hint at possible answers to my first question. At Arhaus University in Denmark, social scientists describe that through experiments and surveys, it was discovered that negatively charged reporting actually affected perceptions of the risks climate change posed to a larger degree than positive reporting, regardless of the objective information present in both types of articles presented in the experiments. This structure of the information being presented establishes a sort of fatalism regarding climate change which leads to a resignation where people believe that nothing can be done to curb the effects that they’re reading about. Pessimism is nothing if not infectious. This highlights another issue with modern climate change reporting where, in the words of Professor Orton, it has the tendency to focus on outputting news that is the most attention-grabbing even without all of the proper information from climate experts. An example that he presents is the reporting by local politicians and leaders in the direct aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Experts had determined a miniscule correlation between climate change and the massive flooding and damages that accompanied the historic storm. But local leaders had been extremely quick to attribute the blame on climate change, even without complete expert information. This overall change in the way we address climate change is tied back to our perceptions which, whether we like it or not, are dictated by what we are presented by the media. 

Now given this spiral and its obvious profound effect, is there something we can do about it? Luckily, the most effective answer according to The Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics is the simplest one: hope. Literary analyses performed in the journal describe that pieces, even with information structured in a negative manner, given even a semblance of a hopeful outlook towards the future can eliminate the basis of constant negativity and fatalism that current reporting has been so quick to establish is exchange for attention and emotionally-charged pieces. It may sound cliche, but it turns out it’s true with a study described in Global Environmental Change analyzing media depictions of climate change in over 45 countries and concluding that despite there being a general global consensus, climate change in the media continues to be extremely localized, contributing to current status of climate change depictions. In the end, it's important for us to find even a little bit of hope in the face of overwhelming negativity. If we can do that and come together, maybe we might just have a shot at turning the tide.




















Sources

“Pessimism and Optimism in the Debate on Climate Change: A Critical Analysis”, Anders, Nordgren. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, vol. 34, no. 22, 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10806-021-09865-0. 

“Optimistic vs. Pessimistic Endings in Climate Change Appeals”, Morris, B.S., Chrysochou, P., Karg, S.T. Humanit Soc Sci Commun, vol. 7, no. 82, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00574-z. 

“Nationalizing a Global Phenomenon: A Study of How the Press in 45 Countries and Territories portrays Climate Change”, Vu HT, Liu Y, Tran DV. Glob Environ Change, vol. 58, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.101942.  

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