Session 25

Researching Climate Change Communication: Methodological Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Era

Over the years, communication scholars have used multiple methods to research and analyse climate change discourses. In the advent of new media technologies, climate change communication and discourses have spanned from the traditional modes of communication such as the radio, print and television to emerging platforms including the social media. This has transformed the ways audiences encode and interpret issues revolving around climate change. In addition, the emergence of social media technologies allows researchers to analyse data on the dynamics of climate change debates with unprecedented breadth and scale. These platforms have expanded the research areas for studying changing patterns in interpersonal and institutional communication on climate change. At the same time this development has brought new methodological challenges and opportunities for studying content, context and climate change representations.

This session is aimed at stimulating innovative investigations into the conceptual and methodological challenges and or opportunities of climate change communication research in the emergent new media digital technologies and directions for future researchers from an African perspective. Key words: climate change; communication; research; digital research. Africa type of papers for the session should be around but not limited to: comparing methods for analysing climate change discourses; methods for analysing the spatial dimension of land use in African social-political environments; epistemological challenges and ethical dilemmas in researching climate change communication in the digital era; climate change in the press, visual/textual analyses; semiotics and climate change communication; media framing, agenda-setting and climate change; qualitative/quantitative studies of climate change perception among African communities; media portrayal of climate change: longitudinal or case studies; social media use and climate change protests; climate change engagement in the digital era; corpus studies on climate change communication; meta-discourses on climate change communication; new media climate change discourses.

 

ABSTRACTS

 

1.Researching Climate Change Communication: Methodological Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Era

Anthony M. Gunde  (University of Malawi, Malawi)

Victor Chikaipa  (University of Malawi, Malawi)

Jimmy Kainja  (University of Malawi, Malawi)

Over the years, communication scholars have used multiple methods to research and analyse climate change discourses. In the advent of new media technologies, climate change communication and discourses have spanned from the traditional modes of communication such as the radio, print and television to emerging platforms including the social media. This has transformed the ways audiences encode and interpret issues revolving around climate change. In addition, the emergence of social media technologies allows researchers to analyse data on the dynamics of climate change debates with unprecedented breadth and scale. These platforms have expanded the research areas for studying changing patterns in interpersonal and institutional communication on climate change. At the same time this development has brought new methodological challenges and opportunities for studying content, context and climate change representations. This session is aimed at stimulating innovative investigations into the conceptual and methodological challenges and or opportunities of climate change communication research in the emergent new media digital technologies and directions for future researchers from an African perspective. Key words: climate change; communication; research; digital research. Africa type of papers for the session should be around but not limited to: comparing methods for analysing climate change discourses; methods for analysing the spatial dimension of land use in African social-political environments; epistemological challenges and ethical dilemmas in researching climate change communication in the digital era; climate change in the press, visual/textual analyses; semiotics and climate change communication; media framing, agenda-setting and climate change; qualitative/quantitative studies of climate change perception among African communities; media portrayal of climate change: longitudinal or case studies; social media use and climate change protests; climate change engagement in the digital era; corpus studies on climate change communication; meta-discourses on climate change communication; new media climate change discourses.

 

2.Climate change communication and activism: challenges in conducting ethnographical research during the covid-19 pandemic

Antonio Nucci  (Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland)

Matthew Hibberd  (Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland)

The aim of this paper is to present key methodological challenges and potential solutions undertaking ethnographical research into climate change activism during the Covid-19-related lockdown in Switzerland. The main original aim of the research, utilizing video-reflexive ethnographic methods, sought to understand ways in which climate activism groups communicated both online and offline to convey their messages to internal members and to wider national or local publics. This methodology would have allowed the researcher to observe, film and see first-hand the inner workings of the activist communication machine such as image and word selection, coordination with other national or international groups, verbal and non-verbal communication during face-to-face protests and activist training sessions. The main aim was to share video data with activists in order for them to evaluate their communication strategies. On March 16, 2020, however, the Swiss confederation, like many other nations, banned all demonstrations and gatherings in an effort to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus. As a result, activist groups saw their main sources of media attention via face-to-face demonstrations and events disappear overnight as well as the opportunity to meet together for planning and organizational purposes. This presented the need to integrate and strengthen new forms of online communication, raising a number of privacy and displacement concerns. For the researchers, this lockdown raised key methodological challenges. How could we proceed with ethnographic methods when the possibility of observing activists face- to-face was no longer possible? What were the potential options of adapting or changing methodological strategies? Through an analysis of the literature related to ethnographies, qualitative interviews, and focus groups, this paper will seek to raise key challenges and solutions to conducting ethnographic research at a time of a global pandemic.

 

3.Theorizing conspiracy theories: A call for critical eclecticism

Joschka Philipps  (Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Bayreuth, Germany)

This paper reflects on conspiracy theories to address a contemporary dilemma of social science methodology. As our alleged post-truth era (Angermuller 2018; Flood 2016) coincides with an ongoing movement to decolonize the university (Mignolo and Walsh 2018; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013; Nyamnjoh 2019), two contradictory methodological and epistemological frameworks seem to rival with one another. On the one hand, further emancipation from Western universalism appears to necessitate a constructivist epistemology showcasing positionality and the relativity (or relationality) of truth claims. On the other hand, a scientific stance against fake news, climate change denialism and populism seem to call for an epistemological framework, or a return thereto, that allows for a distinction between factual truth and falsehood (Arendt 1967; Popper 1962). To address this dilemma beyond a binary opposition, the present paper draws on several years of ethnographic and quantitative survey research (n=607) on conspiracy theorizing, notably in the Republic of Guinea. Focusing on two different sets of conspiracy theories (one related to the 2013-16 Ebola epidemic and the other to the notorious September 2009 massacre), it first seeks to demonstrate how constructivist and ‘positivist’ approaches complement each other by shedding a critical light on the shortcomings of the respective other. Secondly, by comparing European, US-American and African contexts, the paper emphasizes the relativity of what the concept “conspiracy theory” means in different historical and geographical settings (see also Butter and Reinkowski 2014), and traces different ways of how sociological attempts of generalization can deal with such contextuality (see Collins 2005; Diagne 2013). Alongside Comaroff and Comaroff’s Theory from the South (2012: 1), for instance, I argue that conspiracist dynamics in Guinea are not to be seen as an aberration from a Western norm, but as affording “privileged insight into the workings of the world at large” as they circulate in an environment of multiple regimes of truth (cf. Foucault 1980: 131-32). Third and finally, the paper will reflect on three very different methods of producing knowledge about conspiracy theories: textual methods, statistical methods, and photography, based on the ongoing project “Politics of the Unknown” with photographer Aurélien Gillier at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Outlining these methods’ respective qualities in approaching questions of truth, this paper calls for a critical eclecticism that brings into relation radically different methods and epistemologies without subordinating one to the other.

 

4.Print Media Coverage and the Socio-Contextual Representation of Climate Change in Botswana

Gabriel Faimau  (University of Botswana, Botswana)

Nelson Sello  (University of Botswana, Botswana)

Esther Nkhukhu-Orlando  (University of Botswana, Botswana)

Research on climate change in Botswana has generally focused on exploring the extent to which Botswana has been affected by this global challenge. In particular, studies have examined how agricultural development and the tourism industry, two important sectors in Botswana, have been impacted by climate change. While climate change remains a global issue, questions on how the issue is framed and dealt with in various local contexts still require further exploration. Among others, scholars have pointed out that media play a crucial role in framing the climate change discourses and setting a broad agenda relating to local responses to the urgency of climate change challenges. Drawing on data collected from two Botswana print media, Mmegi and Sunday Standard, this chapter critically reviews and analyses various frames of climate change circulated within the Botswana print media sphere. In general, we argue that the Botswana print media representation of climate change has employed the following thematic frames: repackaging of a global issue, metaphoric framing of climate change and representation of local realities. We further suggest that while media representation of climate change has the potential of raising awareness on the issue, the urgency of communicating climate change in Botswana requires a shift from an informative model of communication to a transformative agenda focusing on the translation of global discourses for public consumption on one hand and localisation of various adaptation strategies on the other.