Essay by Eric Worrall
UT School of Journalism Professor Renita Coleman is lead author of a study which suggest journalists who want to engage climate skeptics should replace the term “Global Warming” with “Weather”.
Want to reach sceptics? Researchers suggest leaving the term ‘climate change’ out of some news coverage
By Denise-Marie Ordway Thursday June 23, 2022
If newsrooms want climate science sceptics to read and share news about climate change, researcher Renita Coleman recommends they do this: Leave the terms ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ out of their coverage.
“Research seems to indicate those are trigger words for sceptics,” says Coleman, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “This is what we found would trigger them to stop reading and instantly become hostile, [believing] ‘Oh, that story is biased or that media organisation is biased.’”
Coleman is the lead author of a new paper that investigates strategies to help journalists reach people who distrust science. She and her colleagues conducted an experiment that indicates small changes in how journalists cover climate change have the potential to elicit substantial changes in the way sceptics engage with the news.
In the experiment, after reading a news story that incorporated the three changes below, sceptics said they would likely seek out and share more news about climate change. They also said they would likely take steps to help mitigate its damage.
…
Read more: https://www.themandarin.com.au/193130-want-to-reach-sceptics-researchers-suggest-leaving-the-term-climate-change-out-of-some-news-coverage/
The abstract of the study;
Reaching Science Skeptics: How Adaptive Framing of Climate Change Leads to Positive Responses Via Persuasion Knowledge and Perceived Behavioral Control
Renita Coleman, Esther Thorson, Cinthia Jimenez, Kami Vinton
First Published May 19, 2022 Research Article
Abstract
This study extends framing theory by identifying two causal mechanisms and one contingent condition for a new type of frame to be used with issues where people dispute scientific claims. This new “adaptive frame” focuses on adapting to climate change impacts without cueing deeply held beliefs by discussing causes. An experiment shows this frame works by reducing persuasion knowledge and increasing perceived behavioral control, resulting in science skeptics being significantly more likely to intend to take action, engage with the news, and agree with the story’s perspective. This effect is moderated by science skepticism, with adaptive frames working significantly better on the very people the news media are not reaching. We contribute to theory with an understanding of how a frame that eliminates references to deep-seated beliefs is more effective than the existing frames of conflict, attribution of responsibility, and possibly others.
Read more (Paywalled): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00936502221084925
Of course, leaving out trigger words like “climate change” and “global warming” might lead to less engagement by climate alarmists. So maybe journalists need to publish two different versions of the same story? Or can they aim to engage different audiences on different weeks?
Here’s a radical thought – perhaps journalists could ease back on the trigger words and other attempts to manipulate the emotions of their audience, and try just presenting the facts.
Just present the facts, you are so funny Eric.
The last news magazine I subscribed to was U.S. News and World Report. When I started subscribing to news magazines in the mid 70s, I also got Time and Newsweek. Within a year I did not renew Time and Newsweek because of their leftward slant. US News pretty much gave you information to let you decide.
Within 5 years, sometime in the early 80s, I ended US News also because they became more and more left leaning, giving opinions, not facts.
In the timeframe of which you refer,Time magazine ran a cover, depicting a runaway glacier with a nail biting report on the coming ice age. I wish I had kept it to show to all my alarmist acquaintances. Oh how soon we forget. Now everywhere i turn a meteor or a sunburst is going to destroy earth or our infrastructure. Chicken Littles everyway and ne’er a bite to eat. Time to fry them up in a pan.
Yeah, my first thought too – if they just present the facts they’ll be presenting the skeptic side!
Same here re Time Magazine. In the mid-1970s, I canceled my subscription. I was very young back then, a fun girl with brains to match, and I questioned much of their stories. Same with my New York Times subscription.
“Bad Storms Caused by Weather”
“Wildfires Caused by Weather”
When I see headlines like that, I think climate change or global warming anyway. She’s late to the party.
Don’t sweat it, it’s just Orwellian newspeak in action.
But the problem is, they are not “caused” by weather!
Bad storms ARE weather. Wildfires ARE bad forest management.
The problem is that the words “climate Change” and “Global Warming” as used in the media don’t mean ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ as it has historically been. they mean “Catastrophic Anthroponotic Global Warming”. Their use in the media triggers knowledgeable ‘skeptics’ because they are intended to hide the agenda of an activist press.
Liberal Professor Renita Coleman’s first essay was probably “how to deceive idiots for fun and profit”, aiming to fool those idiot scientists. How about simply presenting facts, complex as they may be, and let the audience sort it out as best they can.
We’re different here at WUWT because we want to think for ourselves. Most of the masses want to be spoon-fed and have somebody else do the thinking for them. That’s why we’re in the mess we’re in globally.
More likely…How to deceive people for fun and prophet
I think Al Gore published that already…
Algore is the Profit of Doom.
“How about simply presenting facts…” Because she wouldn’t know a fact if it bit her in the butt.
Exactly. They continually mistake “hypothetical bullshit” for facts, and have deluded themselves into believing their own hype.
Let me get this straight. Alarmists have changed news reports about weather to climate change or global warming in an attempt to push their ideological narrative down the throats of the gullible and easily led for decades. Now they needed a frickin’ study to be done, at some expense no doubt, to tell them that they need to change those words back again to weather if they want people to believe them? Are these idiots really that blinkered and stupid that they need to be led by the nose and spoonfed what to write? Actually, given the behaviour of the various alarmists that turn up on WUWT, I don’t need to answer that question.
Yes, they are that blinkered and stupid. In case you haven’t noticed progressives like to have things both, (or multiple), ways, and have great difficulty accepting the contradictions in their own statements.
Orwell called it double think.
Now we have:
Bad weather is climate change
Good weather is just weather
Anything bad in the world somehow
links to climate change,
from cancer to warts.
It took the leftists decades to learn that !
Or: Weather is not climate! Unless it’s a bad weather.
Academics only have words to work with. They don’t actually do anything real. So they like to believe that just changing words is powerful.
The only thing that Mao did in China that I thought made some sense is he forced academics to go out and work on the farms.
People who say’carbon’. (nasty black stuff) instead of ‘carbon dioxide’. (beneficial trace gas) are lazy, or have an agenda, or are lying.
Or they are just ignorant enough to not have a good idea of the subject. I knew one woman, who did not follow the subject except casually, who sincerely thought the greens were referring to soot.
I will gladly take away carbon from wealthy folk at no charge – provided it’s in the form of diamond.
You’d have to apply extreme pressure to their carbon footprint, but it just might work!
No pressure, no diamonds! 😁
It has been shown that male carbon subjected to extreme female heat and pressure can produce a diamond. Ask any married man.
That is too good, you get today’s WUWT Truth Award.
Or plain stupid. A “highly educated” young woman I know sincerely and passionately believes ICE vehicles emit pure carbon dioxide. Which is stupid enough, but she doubled down with further equating carbon dioxide with carbon monoxide. She was in tears of frustration defending her ignorant beliefs.
Yes, just like using “ocean ACIDIFICATION” instead of saying “reduction in alkalinity”
“Yes, just like using “ocean ACIDIFICATION” instead of saying “almost immeasurable reduction in alkalinity””
Fixed!
Almost? You should Read what they did. Hint, they didn’t average millions of pH meter readings.
I don’t think it would have been useful if they did. Global average ocean PH is about as useful as global average temp.
The probes are not good enough to measure pH changes of sea water that small. They modelled from temperature and salinity readings.
Or ” minuscule reduction in pH.”
Or, if you talk about the real stuff instead of the logarithm of its concentration, an even more minuscule reduction of acidity (or hydrogen ion concentration).
Not to mention that sea water is essentially an infinitely buffered alkaline solution anyway.
“Buffer” is a very non-green concept, very difficult to understand by alarmists.
The funny think is that a buffer which restores a system to stasis is the ultimate green concept.
An ultimate green concept is complete fiction. All of them ‘know’ what the answer should be.
Along with their infinite immutable interchangeable responses using circular logic towards anyone who disagrees.
When you describe one portion of that buffer is tens of thousands of cubic miles of limestone deposits, their eyes glaze over. That mankind is raping Earth’s natural wonders.
Except, for alarmist truly gullibles, they start whining about how Earth’s limestone quarries are running out of stone…
After all, many of them learned that their kitchen and bathroom counters cost more that $100 per square foot. That a color/pattern they especially liked was over $500 a square foot.
‘That mankind is raping Earth’s natural wonders’, that is exactly the type of pseudo aphorism that zealous writers use to infer guilt to humans.
That one, as a layman, I can just about forgive. On a seamless scale of 1-14, in non-scientific parlance what is less alkaline is more acidic.
The problem arises when the climate crooks abuse language to plant incorrect ideas into ignorant people’s heads. I’m sure there is a circle of hell reserved for them!
I like it when people say “carbon” or anything that identifies them as a climate alarmist. Because then I make up a climate factoid on the spot, and tell them something like:
“Scientists say runaway global warming
will begin in 17.4 years”. And they believe it.
I’ve been doing this for over a decade,
Cheap entertainment.
If they are from Florida:
“Scientists say Miami will be underwater
from sea level rise by 2051.”
Got to start with “Scientists say”.
’carbon’. (nasty black stuff)
Well, a form of carbon is a girl’s best friend…
How do academics get money to do this nonsense? As soon as anyone uses research based on what people “say they will do”, you know it’s rubbish.
There’s very little relationship between how people say they’ll behave and how they actually do.
Add “weather” to the list of AGW pseudonyms? Sure, why not, everything else hasn’t received the attention they demand and everyone talks about weather. Maybe this time it will catch on but wouldn’t that defeat their narrative? Stay tuned for a new definition of ‘weather’.
Weather is non-binary. We do not ask if weather was randomly assigned as hot or cold when it took place. It is our current perception of past weather that matters and only climaphobes oppose or question this approach.
Weather is warming. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Interesting. I remember when the Global Warming crowd changed their name to Climate Change. At my next speech in NYC, I stated that Climate Change was simply a new word for Wealth Redistribution. Nobody could dispute climate change as it has always happened, so they did not have to prove anything and it could not be changed. Now they have sunk to inflaming the weather. Here we go again…..
And here, all along, I was taught that “weather” was a local phenomena whereas “global warming” was, well, global.
I guess it’s back to the drawing boards.
Gordon, if weather is happening locally over the entire planet, scientologists can homogenize it into “global” weather using folks with math PhDs. However, one must take care to prioritize weather over populated areas when weighting one’s calculations on a global scale. If not done properly, the global weather will look quite uninteresting. 😉
“Global weather” is like “average phone number”; you can do the math, but the results are not very useful.
That’s a keeper, hiskorr! Thanks!
The “average person” has one testicle and one ovary. I think that describe Griff.
Obviously, because “climate change” has been ongoing for billions of years, often much more dramatically than the last 150 years of hugely beneficial “global warming” from the coldest and deadliest point of the Holocene.
“This new “adaptive frame” focuses on adapting to climate change impacts without cueing deeply held beliefs by discussing causes.”
Really, adaptation to record food production, longevity and quality of life and record low levels of poverty? The only threats to these fossil fuel powered gains are these leftist zealots and their nonsensical assault on foundation of all life- the marvelous carbon molecule.
Well then. If they’re going to talk about adapting, then there’s no need for all the “net zero” garbage, or “renewables”, or any of that useless crap. Adaptation is what we do best.
Now, what exactly do we need to adapt to? A couple millimeters per year sea level rise? Easy.
“If newsrooms want climate science sceptics to read and share news about climate change”
They understand nothing
It might help if those “news” outlets allowed comments AND uncensored comments…
Coleman is the lead author of a new paper that investigates strategies to help journalists reach people who distrust science.
‘Distrust science’??? It’s the mob consensus of journalists that we distrust.
Instead of the skepticism which all scientists direct against unproven new hypotheses (that’s called the scientific method), she apparently hopes for unanimous consent to all the unproven new ‘news’ stories which authoritatively assure us that the world will shortly end, and humanity with it, unless we meekly comply with the latest activist diktats to stop driving cars and eating meat and relying on electricity generated by fossil fuels.
The journalism professor has no idea of what science is. Not agreeing with Richard Feynman’s dictum “science is the belief in the ignorance of experts” would be the mark of a demagogue or other preacher.
People disagree with Fauci or Mann not out of mistrust of science, but the track record of those individuals.
Beat me too it. It is not the science I distrust, it is the clueless “journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin.”
For any journalist who will lower himself to it, climate doom is the “road to riches”, but only if you present a new angle on it. This explains the extremes to which these folks go regularly now.
A study from Reuters, which, of course, has pledged to perpetuate climageddon propaganda.
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022
An interesting, and very long, read. The relevant part: people trust the media less and less these days. And in the US, a world-wide low of 26% trust the media. The more balkanized the media in a country, the lower the level of trust.
For the most part, this is a reasonably written piece. But when it comes to climate, the authors wear their religion with pride. An irony in this case. If I were to question the existence of a god, would I go to a church to ask if one existed?
The media has positioned itself in the same place – if one is questioning whether CO2 emissions and cow burps will cause the destruction of the Earth, how can one look to mainstream media to ask those questions? They’re busy hooking up with the Zuckerbergs and Bezoses out there to deny publication of any questioning material.
Obviously, this study is part of the clown show. Might as well write in the church circular whether more people will read about Christianity if Jesus is referred to by his middle name only (kinda like Truman in that it’s just a letter rather than a name).
One of the talking heads over at CNN declared over this weekend that the time has come for the media to stop treating Republicans and Democrats evenly. According to him they need to start openly taking the side of Democrats in order to save democracy.
The CNN talking head is completely clueless. Republicans and Democrats have never been treated equally by the Media.
Not since the Vietnam war, anyway. After that, it was all leftwing ideology, all the time from the Media. Anyone who thinks differently was living on a different planet.
When even the Simpsons treat Republicans and Democrats differently you know the bias has become deeply entrenched.
The narrative of All the President’s Men has always been Woodward and Bernstein bravely following leads, determined to satisfy Ben Bradlee’s stringent requirements so that they’d get a great story.
As these reporters continually befoul themselves in public these days, I’m certain a more accurate narrative would be that Woodward and Bernstein would happily have printed any anonymous Twitter post as fact, but those nasty editors wouldn’t let them.
Somehow, against all odds, they stumbled upon a real story in the Watergate break-in. If not for the heroic efforts of the real journalist in the editor’s office, it would have been lost in the sea of Twitter rants and raves against Republicans they otherwise would have enjoyed printing on a daily basis.
We all knew Walter Cronkite was a lefty, but we also knew he was a serious journalist who understood that his credibility was more important than taking a political shot. Dan Rather did not understand this, and his place in the clown hall of fame is secure.
Vietnam was bad enough to shape politics for a generation. After the Bay of Pigs disaster from Kennedy and Johnson’s ugly racism, it’s a miracle the Democratic Party still exists. But somehow the media these days makes it seem like the Republicans were to blame for all of that, when in fact, Kennedy and Johnson helped usher in what would have been 24 uninterrupted years of Republicans in the Oval Office if not for Nixon’s dishonesty.
If I am not mistaken Ben Bradley said he didnt believe much of Woody”s and Bernie’s reporting and most of what people believe today was made up for the book and movie.
There was plenty of evidence of much worse corruption during the Johnson administration. The media had no interest in pursuing those stories.
Start?
They actually believe that up till now, they have been bending over backwards to give fair coverage to Republicans.
Or maybe journalism professors and journalism majors should be required to take, and pass, a hard science course with lab and a statistics course.
Quite true, I unsuccessfully fought against non-major courses, some majors with single course science requirements were most interested in biology, common to put freshman biology off until senior year. When I was first told by a sharp senior education major that it was the first substantial course encountered I got suspicious. Some instructors were part of the problem teaching all freshman/sophomores like they were headed to medical, graduate school or even higher. Dumbed down science courses resulted, not sure about the quantity, somebody in sociology may have or should have checked. I’m not talking about relevance which is a separate applied subject, can’t apply something you can’t understand. Too many examples around.
I noticed that among the author’s papers lots of uses of the words moral, ethical, and such. Of course not fair to judge without more analysis; nevertheless, I found this one–The Ethical Context for Public Journalism: As an Ethical Foundation for Public Journalism, Communitarian Philosophy Provides Principles for Practitioners to Apply to Real-World Problems — https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0196859900024001004
“Public journalism was not viable until now because it lacked a strong, underlying ethical system that communitarianism has provided.” Never heard of “communitarianism ” but it’s in my dictionary just under communism. Author seems like just another advocacy junkie, wonder if she learned about that in a science class?
Journalists don’t have the IQ to do a hard Science or Engineering course.
My father was a journalist and taught journalism in a state college. On the first day of classes each year, he would write “The Jouralist’s Equation” in big letters on the blackboard using nonsense summation and integral symbols surrounding third degree polynomials. He would point to it and mention the meaning would become clear during the study course of his class. He said it weeded out the dropouts quickly and efficiently.
How about all journalists, and anyone aspiring to public office, elective or appointed?
Ms Coleman is a demagogue, see previous story
That would reduce the profession by about 90%. I used to work for a newspaper, often there late at night when the copy editors would proof-read and sometimes lay out pages, cutting wire stories to fit.
One guy kept a calculator by his desk. The most complex mathematics he was asked to use consisted of adding single-digit numbers. Because, in your mind, sometimes 2+2 = 5, or 4, or even 3. It is not for you to know.
I asked him why he needed a calculator. He was a good-natured guy and I wasn’t trying to be a jerk about it. His answer was that he had a general idea, but needed to make sure.
I would sometimes ask if I could add a chart or something graphic in a box to accompany a story. The response from editors was that charts were forbidden because there wasn’t anyone around who could check the math.
Saying “learn to code” to a journalist is considered violence in the Twitterverse. Why? Because learning to code would be about as likely for most journalists as learning to fly by flapping our arms would be to the rest of us. It’s simply not what people who can add 2 and 2 choose as a profession.
There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those who can count and those that can’t!
Professor Coleman should be fired on the spot. Journalists are to provide their readers/listeners with facts and information, in other words to inform. Their job isn’t to convince others to think the way they think. That is propaganda not journalism. If she was to truly do her job she would search out what both sides of an issue have to say and report to her readers what each side said then the reader/listener can make up their own mind. She is a disgrace.
Terms used(abused) as part of the marketing scheme to inspire widespread anti science fear in order to eliminate fossil fuels:
Global Warming = Failed
Climate Change = Failed
Climate Disruption = Failed
Climate Emergency = Failed
Climate Weirding = Failed
Environmental Collapse = Failed
Environmental Destruction = Failed
Climate Crisis = Failed
Extreme Weather = They’re working on that one
Other terms used:
Authentic Science = Denier Term
Empirical Data/Evidence/Observations = Denier Terms
You can add “Study = Wild Ass Guess which will prove Failed”
Yep. “Extreme weather” is a keyword for fake news, based on fake science, just as much as any of the rest.
Can we add ‘Atmospheric River’ and ‘Heat Dome’ to the list to limit usage?
Don’t forget “superstorm” (as in, it wasn’t even a tropical storm when it came ashore, so we needed something ‘scary sounding).
Polar vortex
Naming winter storms
There you go again, being an Empircalist
Global warming is not weather.
Global warming is about the ocean.
Our ocean has 1000 times more heat than our atmosphere.
We are in an Ice Age or ice house global climate because we have a cold ocean.
It is doing to do with a changing sun.
It has nothing to do with trace gases.
It is connected to changes in Earth orbit or what is called the Milankovitch cycles or roughly changes in Earth’s tilt.
The change in Earth’s tilt during year causes season outside the tropics of winter and summer which cause cold conditions and warm conditions and angle of tilt changes over thousands years. And has repeating cycle. And winter and summer are large changes in regional climates.
“It is doing to do with a changing sun”. should be:
It has nothing to do with a changing sun.
Our changing sun [which changes a lot] does affect weather.
And if changing sun effect ocean is sense of warming our cold ocean
with it’s average temperature of about 3.5 C, then the sun affects global climate.
But unlikely to be a large effect upon it, or not significant. And could not be significant
over short periods of less than 100 years.
Or ice house climate does not alter even from large events, such as super volcano or 1 km diameter impactor, though such things can have large effect upon the weather. Or “global weather”
Or our ice house global climate has been on going for 33.9 million years, and we had lots of super volcanos and 1 km impactors occurring on Earth.
We have patterms of interglacial and glaciation periods. Interglacial time periods called global warming.
And what causes global warming is the ocean warming.
All past interglacial period had a warmer ocean during their peak warmer period.
During the peak warm period of Eemian the ocean was 4 C or warmer.And if our ocean become 4 C rather than about 3.5 C, we would have “global warming”.
What is being called global warming is about 1/10th of this global warming or + .05 rather
than .5 C.
And it seems to me, what called global warming is mostly a recovery from the Little Ice Age which was small amount of cooling [lower if ocean temperature] as comparing to long time Earth ocean cools from it’s peak warm period of a interglacial period where ocean is 4 C or warmer.
Or we have been cooling for about 5000 years, with up and down global air temperature but the 5000 year trend is cooling ocean. Or over hundreds of years the ocean warms and cools
by small amount as compared 5000 years trend of ocean cooling.
There is no indication that we will become as warm as we were on Holocene period when Sahara desert was mostly grassland, with forest and rivers. Or ie:
“The greening of the Sahara, associated with the African Humid Period (AHP) between ca. 14,500 and 5,000 y ago, is arguably the largest climate-induced environmental change in the Holocene”
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2024898118
“If newsrooms want climate science sceptics to read and share news about climate change, researcher Renita Coleman recommends they do this: Leave the terms ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ out of their coverage.”
Let’s help them out. “Weather” it self won’t work. No implication of what works such as fossil fuels, nuclear or anything else Man does is causing it.
What other terms that they haven’t already tried in their quest to blame and have an excuse to Control are there?
Geo-gender engineering?
Easy-Bake Ovening?
Weather-Withering of The Planet?
In other words, in order to communicate better, they need to lie more.
Well, we have been pointing out that they conflate weather and climate, Mark. Maybe we should have expected that they would try to make them synonymous, in order to nullify our observations.
From the article: “Coleman is the lead author of a new paper that investigates strategies to help journalists reach people who distrust science. She and her colleagues conducted an experiment that indicates small changes in how journalists cover climate change have the potential to elicit substantial changes in the way sceptics engage with the news.”
I see. This is just more tuning of the climate change propaganda message. They are looking for a more refined method of brainwashing people. This is what propagandists do.
I would suggest they try providing evidence of human-caused climate change to attract and keep the attention of skeptics, but there’s no evidence for them to offer on that count so that method is out. They have to resort to nuanced brainwashing.
One would think that a Professor could find something more interesting or substantive to research. But I suppose this is indicative of the state of things in academia (and journalism) today.
Impulse functions.
The whole point of articles promoting climate change is to promote the fear of climate change. Leaving out the phrase climate change or climate emergency defeats the fraudsters ultimate goal…to convert the masses to their way of thinking. So by all means, keep it up and thanks for the assistance.
Renita Coleman should know from her language studies that the words climate and weather are not synonyms. If they have their own concentric circle, the two circles have only a partial overlap but their meaning lies in that part where they do not overlap. Sorry I do not yet have the skill in portraying this visually. Language is actually important when discussing climate, weather, change and warming because there is much confusion and dissimulation.