Climate Change Communication: Feeling, Thinking, Acting

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 4
• Convenor: to be confirmed
• Assessment: a portfolio task (50%) and environmental communication activity (50%)

Although many of us now know that the climate is changing rapidly due to human behaviour, and perhaps even understand climate science terms such as ‘tipping points’, ‘eco-sufficiency’ or ‘carbon footprint’, the way the brain, culture and communication work together means that even those who hold such beliefs don’t necessarily change their behaviour in response. In this module we ask why not, and what can we do about it?

Feeling

What motivates some people to act while others feel anger, despair or rage? What makes some people care mainly about themselves while others seek to protect the more-than-human world? You will explore how behaviour is driven as much by emotions and by histories of rewarding and aversive experiences as it is by beliefs. You will also develop an understanding of specific climate change emotions such as eco-anxiety, solastalgia and eco-grief, asking what it is about climate change, its discourse and its communication that induces these feelings in us.

Thinking

You will explore the difference between emotional investment in immediate, personally relevant consequences, and climate change, which often involves scales far beyond the scope of a human’s lifetime and abstract ideas that have seemingly distant ramifications. Here you will reflect on different methods and modes of representing and communicating ideas and feelings about climate change, considering too the differing affective dimensions of digital and analogue media as they have evolved across time.

Acting

You will put your knowledge into practice by exploring the differences and similarities between being a journalist, an advocate, activist or creative writer, all the while considering what makes for effective communication given what climate justice demands. You will also hear first-hand from a range of guest speakers, including climate change journalists, writers, campaigners and activists who will share their ‘real-world' experience of environmental communication, their failures and their successes.

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• understand the relationship between the human and the environment by engaging with the growing evidence emerging from psychosocial studies that emotions shape people’s reactions to the climate crisis in profound and complex ways
• discuss the barriers to climate action, including knowledge, attitudes and emotions, as well as knowledge of structural limitations
• analyse and practise a range of communicative modes and techniques to navigate an affective terrain where climate emotions are often related to resilience, climate action (or lack thereof), health and wellbeing
• show knowledge of the political and affective dimensions of climate action and disinformation (anxiety, anger, sadness, despair) and how to effectively address them, i.e. learning how and why our feelings work towards or against more sustainable futures and are recruited by business, media and politics to further specific agendas
• understand literature, translation and the creative arts as practices of environmental interest, advocacy and care.