How We Follow Climate Change: Climate News Use and Attitudes in Eight Countries

Abstract

This report presents results from online survey data collected in August and September 2022 investigating how people access news and information about climate change in Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Pakistan, the UK, and the USA. Our research suggests that a significant proportion of our respondents come across climate change news frequently and mostly through television and online news media. We also found that, despite the heightened concern about climate change among some younger people, fewer engage with the news related to it when compared to older people. Regarding misinformation, more than two-thirds of respondents in our survey expressed concern about false or misleading news on climate change. Furthermore, the results indicate that frequent news consumers find climate change-related news empowering, i.e., providing them accurate information and helping them to know what to do about it, whereas, among less frequent consumers a significantly larger share say that they find such news confusing and irrelevant. We conclude by discussing the findings and offering some policy inputs.