Yesterday, we met once agin for our third session of this fourth edition of the Youth Climate LAB on eco-anxiety and resilience in education. In this session, we focused on storytelling and the role of media with the support of Dr. William Finnegan. In this presentation, he highlighted:
- Traditional media and social media are platforms for both for information and entertainment, and the platform individuals used depends on generations. Traditional media are more used by older generations, while social media are more common among younger generations.
- Narratives are repeated as stories to create our identities. For instance, family stories are told in multiple occasions and family reunions as well as stories and experiences with friends.
- However, it is important to highlight which is the source and the scope of that information. Influencers share pieces of information for different reasons compared to journalists. In this perspective, it is crucial to adopt a critical approach to avoid misinformation spreading.
- The report " The new climate denial" explains that - apart from the old denial of climate change where individuals did not recognise the existence and scientific evidence of climate change - there is a new denial spreading, which delays actions fighting climate change. Channels like social media are more prone to spread this type of denial.
- Therefore, we should also focus our attention to media literacy.
- On the flip side, communicating and talking about climate change is also key. The Climate Outreach shares few tips on what to do and what to avoid in these situations, including keep talking about climate change and share positive solutions together with the reality (innovation).
Please listen to the full presentation here:
Following the presentation, we continued the discussion organised in three discussion rounds. Firstly, we addressed the emotional effect that climate news can have on individuals. In this perspective, participants highlighted a wide range of emotions going from powerless, anger, guilt and anxiety to desired to act and sense of responsibility.
We then shifted our attention to actions to take in order to avoid negative emotions, including factcheck sensational news, focus on local positive actions, spend some time in nature or outdoors, try to have an impact on what we can control as individuals (part of a community).
We then collectively worked on an exercise to identify channels where participants could find climate news and the emotions they perceive (hope or anxiety). In this exercise, multiple sources have been highlighted, including social media and traditional media as well as scientific papers, university magazines. However, during the discussion participants also highlighted two key elements:
- In case of social media, climate news will appear according to an algorithm, which is based on what you see the most and your likes. It is possible to control it by looking for more positive news.
- Different individuals see different climate news also because of profiling (education, social status, gender etc), which in turn may also reiterate narratives and evoke different emotions.
Yes, I deeply agree with this idea. We cannot afford to fight back on every single misleading post, because it's way longer to debunk than to create other fake news. Instead, we need to push for more honest and positive content.