Changing Climate, Changing Minds: Applying the Literature on Media Effects, Public Opinion, and the Issue-attention Cycle to Increase Public Understanding of Climate Change

While media coverage and public discourse on climate change have increased significantly in the U.S. in recent years, it is not clear that this communication has gone beyond political elites to inspire action among the mass public. This paper applies knowledge from 30 years of literature on media effects and public opinion to the issue of climate change, examining the role of key communications concepts such framing, priming, agenda-setting, and the issueattention cycle. As the environment achieves prominence for the third time since the 1970s, this paper examines characteristics of information that would increase the accessibility and salience of the climate change issue for the general public.