Climate change is undeniably a polarizing issue in the contemporary worldwide political climate. The term “climate change” refers to a human caused rise of carbon emissions, leading to rising temperatures, melting oceans, and wacky weather. It has prompted a debate over how to combat it (if at all) which has devolved into climate skepticism moving toward outright denial and climate activism moving toward Mayan apocalypse prophecies. Mass media effects have killed healthy discussion of the topic by excommunicating skeptics through a lack of coverage, an abundance of successful framing tactics, and two competing spirals of silence. Communicators on both sides of the argument must increase the volume of reporting and work to reverse the spirals by inviting each other back into an open dialect on the issue.
The level of buzz around climate change can be linked to agenda setting, defined as the correlation between the amount of coverage a topic gets and the perceived importance of a topic by consumers. The more talking heads on television or Pulitzer prize winning journalists talk about climate change, the more important the audience will perceive climate change will be. Conversely, the lack of agenda setting also has an effect of audience perceptions of importance. In January 2019, Pew Research conducted a poll of the American public’s top priorities for the year 2019 – “climate change” was only ranked 17th (2019). This low number suggest a lack of public interest in climate change and thus a lack of agenda setting, confirmed in an Arkush and Greco report on media coverage of climate change that states, “only 56% of Americans say they hear about climate change in the media at least once a month” (2018). The lack of media reporting fits the theory of agenda setting well, since a lack of agenda setting is correlated with a decrease in the American public’s urgency over climate change.
Just as it is important to have climate change in the public discourse, the way it is presented is equally important. The way that a topic is worded, displayed, or otherwise presented can drastically change how people react to it. This effect is called framing. The term “climate change” itself is an example of a use of framing. In a memo encouraging Republicans to shift the environmental debate, political strategist Frank Luntz wrote, “It is time for us to start thinking about ‘climate change’ instead of global warming and ‘conservation’ instead of preservation. ‘Climate change’ is less frightening than global warming” (1997). Luntz has also explained the importance of framing an opponent. In an interview, he answered a question about the effectiveness of his opponents by framing them, saying, “…the environmental community hasn’t figured out how to communicate effectively…people think environmentalists tend toward the extreme position – they’re considered uncompromising, unyielding, very political” (Little 2007). Luntz’s effectiveness proves his point and demonstrates his fit within the framing theory. His work swung the usage of the term “climate change” among Republicans and even managed to shift framing of the climate change activists themselves.
After many years of climate change coverage, two spirals of silence have formed around the topic. The spiral of silence is a theory coined by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann based around the human desire to avoid isolation. Humans will perceive a popular opinion as a majority opinion and will subconsciously silence their own contrary opinions to conform to the popular one. This causes more people to perceive the original opinion as popular due to a lack of dissent. In the case of climate change, silenced skeptics have left the public discourse altogether to form their own separate spiral in the opposite direction. Contemporary headlines best show the current effect of the spiral. “Arrest Climate-Change Deniers” (Weinstein, 2014), “Climate Change: The Greatest-Ever Conspiracy Against the Taxpayer” (Delingpole, 2016), “Matt Drudge suggests government is ‘lying’ about Hurricane Matthew” (Flores, 2016) and “Many Americans think that climate deniers ‘get what they deserve’ when disaster strikes” (Motta, 2019) are all headlines from both skeptic and mainstream sources – the last is from the Washington Post, the newspaper with the largest science section in the United States – demonstrating how far the spiral has gone. The stark differences in the headlines show a mainstream group that has silenced the climate denier outgroup and the outgroup using their own spiral to create an echo-chamber. While the example of the headlines does not directly fit the theory of the spiral of silence, they demonstrate the danger of the spiral. If a group with strong opinions is pushed from the public discourse, they will not remain silent but will instead separate and form their own majority group with a conflicting spiral of silence.
My audience is the rank-and-file reporters and media figures on both sides of the climate change debate, responsible for the current division. To all the members of this audience, I suggest that the agenda should be set more aggressively. I charge all my audience to embrace controversy and press the issue. Climate change must be brought back into the public forum where common ground can be found. To the climate activists, I suggest that you should not silence the skeptics as it will only push them away. In the previously mentioned Luntz interview, he commented, “The problem the environmental community has is they don’t listen to their opponents. If they listened, they would have realized very early on that they would find common ground with other allies” (Little, 2007). Climate activists should work to find that common ground. Maybe skeptics will never agree to the Green New Deal, but they might agree to incentives to recycle or to allow gas stations to serve electric cars. To climate skeptics, I suggest that you refuse to be silenced. It is a First Amendment right to speak, so assert it! If we have a conversation about climate change, all voices need to be present – otherwise, spirals of silence will continue.