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Solutions journalism is intended to support responses to complex threats. However, it is unclear what it means for reporting to inspire or empower audiences within specific contexts such as climate change. Moreover, climate change can pose unique communication challenges to practitioners due to high levels of complexity and uncertainty. This study uses in-depth interviews with 25 environmental journalists to investigate goals and challenges of climate solutions journalism. Overall, interviewees aimed for solutions coverage to improve audiences’ understanding of the problem of climate change while inspiring hope that expansive change could be achieved and that individual action has a meaningful role to play. In terms of encouraging action, journalists sought to support audience agency and offer pathways for involvement in climate solutions. However, the complexity of climate solutions presented challenges identifying and evaluating high-impact solutions. This difficulty was magnified by industry weaknesses and a lack of access to trustworthy resources. Theoretically, climate solutions coverage appears to take an active role supporting solutions, but journalists place high priority on equipping audiences to think critically about responses to climate change. Meanwhile, there are plentiful opportunities for universities, research organizations, and academic publications to help alleviate barriers to quality climate solutions coverage.
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Using dialogue to engage agricultural audiences in cooperative learning about climate change
Dialogue with stakeholders has been recognized as an effective educational strategy for addressing complex topics such as climate change. We report here on the Carbon, Energy, and Climate fishbowl discussion series developed by Michigan State University Extension to assist the state's agricultural community in understanding and adapting to the changing climate. Facilitated dialogue reduced barriers to communication and promoted cooperative learning for target audiences and the project team, generating useful information on the current status of climate change adaptation within Michigan's agriculture sector and revealing needs to be addressed by future Extension programming. Using a dialogue-based approach such as the one we describe can highlight challenges and opportunities Extension faces in addressing various complex issues with diverse audiences.
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- PAR ID:
- 10074822
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of extension
- Volume:
- 56
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1077-5315
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- # 2FEA2
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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