Climate negotiations have increasingly resonated with global governance and world power relations. However, media studies of climate change have paid relatively less attention to media frames of the problem solving. This study addresses this issue by examining the media coverage of COP21 from three countries that have considerable influence on climate politics: the United Kingdom, the United States, and China. By applying an inductive frame analysis, the study identified 10 media frames embedded in the discussions on climate negotiations. A deductive analysis further assessed the prevalence of these frames. The findings suggest that the frames were significantly influenced by the values of the established and emerging powers in the international policy area. The British and American media upheld the underlying norms that have long underpinned the existing Western-led order, while Chinese media coverage manifested a rising power in need of world recognition.

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Although numerous studies have examined the Chinese public’s attitudes towards climate change, few have shed light on how sociopolitical factors related to the policy and the state have shaped such attitudes. This constituted our research goal. Against the background of China’s Dual Carbon Goals, a national survey (n = 1469) was conducted to investigate the relationships between climate attitudes and climate benefit perception, institutional trust, policy familiarity, nationalism, and environmental values. Findings showed that respondents shared a high score of nationalism and a high level of trust in Chinese institutions. Their national benefit perception of climate action, nationalism, and trust in national institutions were strong determinants of their attitudes towards climate change. The findings suggested that for many Chinese, a lower-carbon future will be accompanied by a coming stronger nation, which is a key driver for people to adopt positive attitudes towards addressing climate change. As such, the current study revealed an alternative landscape of the determinants underlying people’s attitudes towards climate change. To our knowledge, this is the first scholarly effort in China to empirically demonstrate the predictive role of nationalistic value in shaping climate attitudes and is one of the earliest efforts in climate communication to test the impact of the policy on such attitudes.

While ideologies consistently influence public opinions on climate change in Western democracies, whether they affect the Chinese public’s climate attitudes is unknown. By applying a well-established measure of Chinese ideology, this study conducted a nationwide survey (n = 1469) on the relationships between climate attitudes and ideologies, conspiracy beliefs, and science literacy. It is the first study to empirically investigate the impact of ideological tendencies, conspiracy beliefs, and conspiratorial thinking in shaping people’s climate attitudes. Among a series of novel findings, ideology was found to be a crucial factor in Chinese attitudes toward climate change, and economic ideology, in particular, was most strongly related to climate attitude. Moreover, somewhat counterintuitively, we found a positive link between respondents’ conspiratorial thinking and their climate awareness, as well as the failure of the moderation role of science literacy on ideological factors that influence climate attitude. All these findings suggest a mechanism behind the Chinese public’s perception of climate change, primarily working on the individual–state relationship.