Lit Review: Media Influence on Public Perception of Climate Change

Lit Review: Media Influence on Public Perception of Climate Change

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Political Science and International Affairs, University of BBBB BBBBBBBB

April 27th, 2026

Abstract

This literature review synthesizes findings from communication studies, political science, psychology, and environmental sociology to examine how corporate media shapes public opinion on climate change. It argues that public skepticism is not the result of an information deficit but a product of interacting forces: strategic corporate framing, professional journalistic norms, psychological mechanisms of identity-protective cognition, structural constraints of media ownership, etc. The review first briefly establishes the theoretical foundations of framing and its application to climate communication. It then analyzes how journalistic norms, particularly balance and impartiality, have historically distorted coverage. It the examines how political identity moderates media effects and how emerging research on efficacy beliefs and unconventional messengers offers pathways for more effective engagement.

Keywords: Climate change, media framing, public opinion, political identity, journalistic norms, efficacy

Introduction

Majorities recognize climate change as a serious threat, yet this concern has not translated into commensurate political action in many countries. In the United States particularly, climate change remains a deeply polarizing issue, with beliefs about a scientific fact serving as markers of cultural and political identity. Understanding this gap between scientific consensus and public polarization requires close examination of the information environments citizens navigate daily. Climate change opinion is the byproduct of many forces: personal experience with extreme weather, educational attainment, peer influence, and broader political and economic structures. However, the most consequential force by far is in media cues, and specifically, the types of information disseminated by corporate media. Media organizations select and frame climate change in ways that systematically shape what problems are recognized, who is held responsible, and what solutions are considered feasible.

This review proceeds in three sections. Section one explains climate skepticism and provides definitions regarding major theories for why citizens doubt climate change's existence, human causation, urgency, etc. It distinguishes between overt denial and more subtle "discourses of delay." Section two examines corporate media's role, tracing how journalistic norms, economic pressures, and ownership concentration have shaped coverage patterns in the American context. Section three analyzes the psychological mechanisms in framing effects, motivated reasoning, and efficacy beliefs that mediate between media messages and public opinion, and explains how media incentives interact with audience identities to produce polarization.

Section 1: Understanding Climate Skepticism -– Definitions and Theoretical Foundations

 Researchers have identified multiple forms of climate skepticism ranging from outright denial of climate science to more diffuse expressions that delay action without explicitly rejecting scientific findings. Early work focused on "trend denial" (the earth is not warming), "attribution denial" (humans are not the primary cause), and "impact denial" (warming will not have serious negative consequences). However, as belief in anthropogenic climate change has become more common, particularly outside the Anglosphere, scholars have documented a shift toward more subtle forms of contestation.

Contemporary research distinguishes between epistemic skepticism (disbelief in the scientific consensus), impact skepticism (doubt about the scale or immediacy of effects), and policy skepticism (opposition to proposed solutions on economic or feasibility grounds). This last category is especially important because it allows actors to accept climate science while opposing meaningful action. "Discourses of delay" promote incrementalism, appeal to economic costs, invoke technological optimism, or question policy effectiveness without ever denying that the climate is changing. These frames can be mainstreamed in policy and media without explicitly challenging scientific authority which blurs the line between legitimate policy disagreement and obstruction.

A substantial body of research documents the existence of a climate change countermovement (CCCM) which is a coalition led by fossil fuel corporations, far-right think tanks, industry-funded advocacy groups, etc. that has actively cultivated doubt for over three decades. Comprehensive computational analysis of ExxonMobil's climate communications from 1977 to 2014 shows systematic discrepancies between internal acknowledgments of anthropogenic warming and public advertorials emphasizing "risk" and consumer "demand." This "Fossil Fuel Savior" frame used strategic ambiguity to acknowledge climate change while implying uncertainty about its severity or causes, and individualized responsibility by shifting blame onto consumers, (Supran and Oreskes, 2021)

More recent research extends this analysis to the contemporary media environment, where researchers identify three primary channels through which climate obstruction operates: news coverage and journalistic practices (particularly so-called "balanced" reporting), industry-funded public relations campaigns, and social media discourses and structures. The CCCM does not rely on crude denial alone. Instead, it segments audiences and micro-targets specific demographics in older men, rural communities, far right social media users, etc. with tailored messages that exaggerate scientific uncertainty or frame climate action as an elitist project, (Aronczyk, Boykoff, Coan, Lahsen, Morris, and Russill, 2025)

While malicious actors play a crucial role in manufacturing doubt, focusing solely on them risks neglecting deeper ideological and structural factors. Denial narratives documented in 108 books rejecting climate science rest on two underlying "meta-themes": anti-environmentalism and attacks on "impact science," (Jacques and Dunlap, 2025). 

Climate science is an "impact science" which investigates the negative consequences of industrial production and therefore challenges the political-economic status quo. Denial, from this perspective, represents "anti-reflexivity": a defense of the fossil fuel-dependent economic system against reflexive modernization that would require fundamental restructuring. Fear of successful challenges to the status quo, not merely confusion about scientific facts, motivates AGW denial.

This analysis helps explain why simple information provision often fails to shift beliefs among skeptics. If skepticism functions as a defense of identity and worldview, facts that contradict that worldview will be resisted and not assimilated. Facts must make sense within existing frame systems; otherwise they will be ignored, (Lakoff, 2010). This has implications for climate communication and for understanding how media messages interact with pre-existing audience predispositions.

Section 2: Corporate Media and the Shaping of Climate Discourse

If skepticism serves identity-defensive functions, media coverage can either amplify or attenuate that skepticism depending on how it frames climate change. One of the most extensively documented patterns in climate communication research is the role of journalistic norms, particularly balance and impartiality, in shaping public discourse. Boykoff analyzed 4,887 newspaper articles and 293 television segments and found that balanced reporting (presenting contrarian views as having equal scientific weight to the consensus) appeared in a majority of prestige-press articles during much of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, (Boykoff, 2007). The mechanism operates as follows: journalists facing time constraints and lacking specialized scientific expertise use balance as a "surrogate for validity checks," creating a false equivalence between thousands of climate scientists and a small number of contrarians often affiliated with think tanks rather than peer-reviewed research.

Research distinguishes between objectivity (an epistemological principle concerned with verifiable facts) and impartiality (a democratic principle concerned with fair representation of diverse perspectives), (Mellor, 2024). Using the BBC as a case study, she traces how confusion between these concepts fueled controversies over "false balance." The BBC's statutory requirement for due impartiality has been interpreted by some as requiring equal time for climate skeptics, despite explicit guidelines stating that "minority views should not necessarily be given similar prominence or weight to those with more support or to the prevailing consensus." This confusion between fairness and accuracy has had real political consequences which creates space for governments to delay action and for those responsible to circumvent accountability.

Analysis of climate coverage across Germany, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, shows that the traditional norm of balance has been largely replaced by interpretive journalism in which contrarian voices are quoted but contextualized with dismissive evaluations. Contrarians are mentioned or quoted in approximately one-fifth of articles, but over 69% of these mentions included negative contextualization. 

Two practices are identifiable: "dismissive quotation" (quoting contrarians to debunk them) and "protective omission" (supporting contrarian positions without quoting them directly). Importantly, a single columnist at the Daily Telegraph authored nearly half of all contrarian articles in the UK sample, demonstrating that individual actors can significantly shape national discourse when working within right-leaning media outlets in countries with elite support for climate skepticism, (Brüggemann and Engesser, 2017)

Over the past two decades, the global news industry has undergone significant economic, organizational, and technological restructuring. Successive waves of mergers and buyouts have concentrated ownership, while the digital media revolution has cut deeply into advertising revenue once enjoyed by legacy news organizations. In response, many firms have reduced newsroom staff, with the science and environment beat often the first to be eliminated. Environmental specialists are reassigned or pushed into freelance work, and general assignment reporters lacking expertise take over climate coverage. This economic pressure enhances the power of special interests to influence coverage through public relations and "native advertising"—paid content designed to mimic genuine journalism. Amazeen, Krishna, and Sovacool conducted the first experimental study examining how disclosures and inoculation messages might mitigate the effects of fossil fuel industry native advertising. 

Participants exposed to an actual ExxonMobil native ad ("The Future of Energy") showed increased favorable opinions of the company's sustainability efforts. While disclosure messages helped readers recognize the content as advertising, only inoculation messages—advance warnings about misleading tactics—reduced susceptibility to the ad's claims. 

This research suggests that even as journalism moves away from false balance, new forms of disguised persuasion present ongoing challenges, (Amazeen, Krishna, and Sovacool, 2025).

The effects of ownership concentration are particularly visible in national contexts with highly concentrated media systems. Gulliver, Wang, Louis, Fielding, and Colvin analyzed 17,380 Australian media articles, comparing coverage of four types of climate advocacy groups. They found that disruptive groups (e.g., Extinction Rebellion) received the highest levels of conflict language and the lowest levels of achievement language, particularly in News Corp outlets (the Murdoch-owned company with 65% of Australian media circulation). In contrast, "conflict-spanning unconventional advocates" groups like Farmers for Climate Action that speak from social identities not typically associated with environmentalism received the most favorable coverage: lowest conflict language, highest achievement language, and most positive emotional sentiment. However, these groups received substantially less coverage overall (12.9% of articles) compared to established environmental groups (46.6%) and disruptive groups (36.5%). The structural constraints of media ownership thus shape not only how climate change is covered but which voices are amplified at all, (Gulliver, Wang, Louis, Fielding, Colvin, 2025).

The shift from legacy media to digital and social media platforms has transformed the information environment in complex ways. On one hand digital platforms enable the rapid circulation of misinformation and the formation of echo chambers. 

Schmidt, Zollo, Del Vicario, Bessi, Scala, Caldarelli, Stanley, and Quattrociocchi analyzed 376 million users' interactions with 920 English-language news outlets on Facebook over six years. They found that users tend to focus on a limited set of pages, producing sharp community structures. The more active a user, the more they confine their attention to a small number of sources, reinforcing existing worldviews, (Schmidt, Zollo, Del Vicario, Bessi, Scala, Caldarelli, Stanley, and Quattrociocchi, 2017).

On the other hand, digital platforms also provide critical spaces for climate advocacy, public engagement, and the amplification of marginalized voices. The relationship between platform architecture and polarization is neither simple nor deterministic. What is clear is that trust in quality news sources and sustained media exposure are generally linked to lower levels of climate skepticism. The challenge is that the media ecosystem is increasingly fragmented, with citizens able to select information sources that reinforce rather than challenge their existing political identities, (Schmidt, Zollo, Del Vicario, Bessi, Scala, Caldarelli, Stanley, and Quattrociocchi, 2017).

Section 3: Psychological Mechanisms – From Framing to Efficacy

Framing is a central analytical tool for understanding how communication shapes public perception. Entman provides the foundational definition: framing is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, thereby promoting particular problem definitions, causal interpretations, moral evaluations, and treatment recommendations, (Entman, 1993). Frames operate across four locations: the communicator, the text, the receiver, and the culture. Chong and Druckman extend this foundation by distinguishing between frames in communication and frames in thought. They propose an “expectancy-value model” which shows how attitudes represent the weighted sum of evaluative beliefs about an object, with framing operating by altering the salience weights attached to different considerations. An individual's tolerance for a controversial political rally may depend on whether free speech considerations or public safety concerns are made more accessible. This psychological mechanism explains why relatively small changes in issue presentation can produce substantial shifts in public opinion, (Chong and Druckman, 2007).

Applied to climate change framing research has identified several dominant frames with varying effects across audiences. A systematic review of 25 years of climate framing research found that Climate Action and Harmful Impacts frames are most prevalent across sources. The "Science Uncertainty" frame historically used by far right institutions to downplay climate change has declined as scientific consensus has solidified. However, frames emphasizing economic costs or questioning policy feasibility remain influential. 

The "Environment Versus Economy" frame, for example, emphasizes how climate action undermines economic success, reinforcing the ideological divide between left and right, (Guenther et al.,2023).

Emerging research suggests that framing climate change as a health issue may have depolarizing potential. A systematic review by Kotcher, Maibach, and colleagues found that conveying the health relevance of climate change holds significant potential for enhancing public engagement and building support for climate action across diverse audiences. In the United States, health framing appears to engage segments of the population, particularly the far right and the less engaged, who might otherwise dismiss climate messages framed in environmental or economic terms. However, the review also identifies significant gaps: few studies use nationally representative samples, and most focus on Anglophone countries, limiting generalizability, (Guenther et al. 2023; Kotcher, Maibach et al. 2025).

A substantial body of research demonstrates that political ideology is among the strongest predictors of climate change beliefs, particularly in Anglophone countries. Unsworth and Fielding provide experimental evidence for the causal role of political identity salience. In two studies (N=126 university students, N=646 community members), they manipulated whether participants' political identity was made salient before measuring beliefs about anthropogenic climate change and policy support. Right-wing participants whose political identity was salient reported significantly lower estimates of human contribution to climate change compared to those in the control condition. Left-wing participants showed no significant difference. 

This finding is theoretically important because it demonstrates that the divergence between left and right is not fixed but varies with contextual cues that make identity more or less salient, (Unsworth and Fielding, 2014)

This pattern reflects motivated reasoning: individuals process information in ways that protect valued group identities. When climate change becomes associated with left identity, the far right is motivated to reject climate science as a way of expressing group loyalty. A systematic review of climate attitudes in Europe found belief in climate change ranging from 96% to 98% across countries with political orientation playing a much smaller role than in the United States. 

If political identity affects whether individuals accept climate science, efficacy beliefs affect whether concerned individuals take action. Hart and Feldman propose a three-dimensional model distinguishing internal efficacy (belief in one's ability to understand and act on climate change politically), external efficacy (belief that government responds to citizen demands), and response efficacy (belief that policy actions will be effective). Using a national online survey experiment (N=1,426), they found that positive internal efficacy information increased perceived internal efficacy, and negative external efficacy information lowered perceived external efficacy. Critically, all three types of perceived efficacy independently predicted intentions to engage in political action, including contacting officials, signing petitions, and donating to organizations. Media coverage emphasizing specific steps citizens can take has the greatest potential to increase engagement. (Hart and Feldman, 2016).

Promoting individual action does not appear to reduce support for systemic reforms. Experiments in Iran and Australia (total N=1,236), derived from an "attentional opportunity cost" argument, found that exposure to individual solutions did not diminish support for systemic policies, perceived necessity of structural change, or attribution of responsibility to government. Greater willingness to engage in pro-environmental behaviors was positively associated with support for systemic solutions. Individual and collective action are complementary, not competitive. (Ghasemi, Almasi, Khaki, Fallahi, Solhirad, and Newell, 2025).

If environmentalism has become associated with left-wing identity one strategy for reaching skeptical audiences involves changing the messenger rather than the message. Research on unconventional advocates supports this approach. Groups like Farmers for Climate Action or Doctors for the Environment speak from social identities not typically associated with environmentalism. They may escape the negative stereotypes that attach to traditional environmental groups, allowing them to be framed as credible in-group messengers for conservative audiences. Schmidt and colleagues found that communities of news consumers are less geographically confined than communities formed by news providers liking each other, suggesting that users have a more cosmopolitan perspective than media organizations. This finding points to possibilities for cross-cutting communication that transcends polarized media ecosystems. However the low volume of coverage for unconventional advocates suggests they have not yet achieved comparable media presence to established environmental groups. Whether their potential can be realized at scale remains an open question, (Schmidt et al., 2017).

Conclusion

This review has synthesized evidence demonstrating that climate change communication is shaped by interacting forces at multiple levels: the strategic framing choices of corporate actors, the professional norms and economic pressures shaping journalism, the political identities and efficacy beliefs of audiences, and the structural conditions of media ownership and consumption. 

Framing is not optional. Every communication activates some frames and inhibits others, and the frames that become dominant shape what problems are recognized and what solutions are considered feasible. The politicization of climate change, particularly in Anglophone countries, means that beliefs about a scientific fact have become markers of cultural identity resistant to correction through information alone. While journalistic norms have evolved from simple "he said/she said" reporting toward more interpretive approaches structural constraints including ownership concentration continue to shape coverage patterns. Efficacy beliefs are critical mediators; messages that increase perceived efficacy can enhance political engagement, and promoting individual action does not crowd out support for systemic reform. Alternative messengers who speak from social identities not associated with environmentalism may reach audiences that dismiss traditional environmental groups.

Several gaps in the literature warrant attention. Future research should examine the effectiveness of interventions designed to build conceptual frames for understanding systemic causation, investigate conditions under which cross-partisan messages can succeed, and analyze climate communication in Global South contexts where political dynamics differ substantially from Anglophone countries that have dominated the literature.

References

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Disclaimer: I do not use AI, but I have been told that my nonfiction writing has that tone. All I can do is promise you that this is my writing and my writing alone.