Elite cues, media coverage, and public concern: an integrated path analysis of public opinion on climate change, 2001–2013

Carmichael, Jason T.; Brulle, Robert J.

doi:10.1080/09644016.2016.1263433

Cited by 276 publications

(182 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…This might help explain why highly educated and politically attentive Republicans are most skeptical about climate change, even when controlling for ideology -they are most attuned the elite debate in the media. Our findings further bolster an emerging literature on the role of elite cues in climate change polarization (Carmichael & Brulle, 2017;Guber, 2013;Mildenberger & Leiserowitz, 2017;Tesler, 2017) and highlight the need for future scholars to focus more attention on elite cues and partisan-driven motivated reasoning.…”

supporting

confidence: 61%

“…First, the gap between Republicans and Democrats on concern over climate change is highest among those with knowledge of the issue and those that are politically attentive -in other words, those most attuned to elite debate (Guber, 2013;Tesler, 2017). Second, recent work has also shown that climate skepticism is correlated with the position of respondents' local representatives (Mildenberger & Leiserowitz, 2017), while concern about global warming ebbs and flows with policy action, such as congressional roll call votes and committee hearings (Carmichael & Brulle, 2017). Finally, Tesler (2017) shows with an experimental manipulation that Republican attitudes to climate science would soften if their elites changed course, but that this did not apply in the case of attitudes towards evolution.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Party Elites or Manufactured Doubt? The Informational Context of Climate Change Polarization

Merkley¹,

Stecuła²

2018

Preprint

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Americans polarized on climate change despite decreasing uncertainty in climate science. Explanations focused on organized climate skeptics and ideologically driven motivated reasoning are likely insufficient. Instead, Americans may have formed their attitudes by using party elite cues. We conduct analyses on over 8,000 print, broadcast, and cable news stories. We find that coverage became increasingly partisan as climate change rose in salience, but climate skeptics received scant attention. Democratic messages were more voluminous and consistently pro–climate science, while Republican messages have been scarcer and ambiguous until recently. This suggests Republican voters took cues from Democratic elites to reject climate science.

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confidence: 61%

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confidence: 99%

Party Elites or Manufactured Doubt? The Informational Context of Climate Change Polarization

Merkley¹,

Stecuła²

2018

Preprint

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“…Several recent studies point to an association between elevated temperatures [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] or extreme weather events [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] with greater climate change concern, belief that human-caused climate change is happening, or support for climate policies. Other studies, however, do not support such a relationship [28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Prior beliefs and personal experience may also condition weather perceptions [35][36][37][38][39].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

How will climate change shape climate opinion?

Howe

Marlon

Mildenberger

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

176

129

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As climate change intensifies, global publics will experience more unusual weather and extreme weather events. How will individual experiences with these weather trends shape climate change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors? In this article, we review 73 papers that have studied the relationship between climate change experiences and public opinion. Overall, we find mixed evidence that weather shapes climate opinions. Although there is some support for a weak effect of local temperature and extreme weather events on climate opinion, the heterogeneity of independent variables, dependent variables, study populations, and research designs complicate systematic comparison. To advance research on this critical topic, we suggest that future studies pay careful attention to differences between self-reported and objective weather data, causal identification, and the presence of spatial autocorrelation in weather and climate data. Refining research designs and methods in future studies will help us understand the discrepancies in results, and allow better detection of effects, which have important practical implications for climate communication. As the global population increasingly experiences weather conditions outside the range of historical experience, researchers, communicators, and policymakers need to understand how these experiences shape-and are shaped by-public opinions and behaviors.

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“…For instance, influenced by the backing of the Koch brothers and other interests who deny climate change, the Tea Party included climate change denial in its platform (Dunlap, McCright, and Yarosh, ). In fact, scholars have found that political groups and elites are so influential that their ideological message outperforms other factors that impact concern, including weather extremes, scientific information, and economic factors (Carmichael and Brulle, ). The denial ideology promoted by these individuals and groups is typically disseminated through partisan media outlets.…”

Section: The Denial Countermovementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Sociodemographic Predictors of Climate Change Concern, 1994–2016

Driscoll

2019

Social Science Quarterly

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Objective In this research note, I examine whether the growing influence of political orientation on climate change concern has resulted in the declining influence of the sociodemographic variables that have historically predicted such views. Methods Utilizing evidence from the 1994, 2000, 2010, and 2016 General Social Surveys, I conduct ordered logit regressions, Wald significance tests, and partition the pseudo‐R2 across years to ensure consistency of findings. Results A comparison across three decades reveals that while climate change concern was once grounded in sociodemographic predictors such as age, education, income, sex, race, or size of residential area, the explanatory power of those predictors has declined over time. Climate change concern is now better explained by political orientation variables; once modest in influence, only to rise in prominence over time. Conclusion These findings are connected to political polarization and the “denial countermovement” and their impact on the American public. This article is the first to explicitly and systematically track the decline of sociodemographic predictors of climate change concern over time.

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Elite cues, media coverage, and public concern: an integrated path analysis of public opinion on climate change, 2001–2013

Cited by 276 publications

References 62 publications

Party Elites or Manufactured Doubt? The Informational Context of Climate Change Polarization

Party Elites or Manufactured Doubt? The Informational Context of Climate Change Polarization

How will climate change shape climate opinion?

Assessing Sociodemographic Predictors of Climate Change Concern, 1994–2016

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