Climate change, cultural cognition, and media effects: Worldviews drive news selectivity, biased processing, and polarized attitudes

Abstract

According to cultural cognition theory, individuals hold opinions about politically contested issues like climate change that are consistent with their “cultural way of life,” conforming their opinions to how they think society should be organized and to what they perceive are the attitudes of their cultural peers. Yet despite dozens of cultural cognition studies, none have directly examined the role of the news media in facilitating these differential interpretations. To address this gap, drawing on a national survey of US adults administered in 2015, we statistically modeled the cultural cognition process in relation to news choices and media effects on public attitudes about climate change. Individuals possessing strongly held cultural worldviews, our findings show, not only choose news outlets where they expect to find culturally congruent arguments about climate change, but they also selectively process the arguments they encounter. Overall, our study demonstrates the substantial role that cultural cognition in combination with news media choices play in contributing to opinion polarization on climate change and other politicized science topics.

Dogmatism manifests in lowered information search under uncertainty

“…In everyday situations, both motivational influences and failures in uncertainty-guided information search can lead to biased or inaccurate beliefs, albeit via distinct mechanisms. For example, a person who does not believe in climate change is likely to show a preference for media that refutes its occurrence (19), reinforcing preexisting beliefs. Alternatively, people with doubts about the science of global warming (20) might fail to act on this uncertainty, and as a consequence not seek out further, potentially corrective evidence.…”

Communication and Knowledge Transfer on Climate Change in the Philippines

“…A huge body of literature explores how climate change coverage is used, perceived, interpreted, and negotiated (Nisbet 2018). Empirical studies have been conducted in different countries-with a clear bias towards European and US audiences-but the relevance of spatial factors for mediated communication about climate change has not been systematically addressed by communication scholars.…”

“…Media play a central role in bringing climate change to people's homes-via TV, newspaper, radio, or social networks. This role should be explored in order to better understand climate-related attitudes (Newman, Nisbet, and Nisbet 2018;Taddicken 2013;Brulle, Carmichael, and Jenkins 2012;Arlt, Hoppe, and Wolling 2011).…”

Comparative and international education research in a post‐truth era

“…Recent studies have shown that public attitudes of Americans toward scientific facts are now shaped by individuals' worldviews and exposure to right-or left-leaning media (Newman, Nisbet, & Nisbet, 2018) as well as their partisanship and religiosity (Pasek, 2018). US conservatives in particular are distrustful of social scientists who they believe carry out a liberal agenda (Cofnas, Carl, & Woodley of Meine, 2017).…”