Making Sense of Climate Change: How Story Frames Shape Cognition

TLDR

Prior research has shown that framing news as a story shapes how people organize concepts and information. This study extends that work by examining how story framing influences cognition of climate change. The authors conducted online experiments with over 2,000 respondents, asking them to organize concepts from three culturally nuanced climate‑change stories or a list. Cluster analysis shows that culturally congruent stories lead respondents to organize concepts in ways that mirror the story structure.

Abstract

In 2006, A dam J . B erinsky and D onald R . K inder published findings in the Journal of Politics that demonstrated that framing news as a story influences how individuals cognitively organize concepts and information. The study presented here moves forward in this tradition. This research combines samples obtained in the springs of 2009 and 2010 while conducting online experiments. In these experiments, slightly over 2,000 respondents are asked to organize concepts presented in one of three culturally nuanced stories about climate change or where information is presented as a list. Hierarchical cluster analysis indicates that when respondents are exposed to culturally congruent stories, respondent organizational patterns are more likely to mirror the story. We discuss the implications of these findings.