More 16 and 17 year-olds believe the media has exaggerated the issue of climate change than recent school leavers and scepticism in this age group has grown in the past two years.
However, four out of five 16- and 17-year-olds in a recent survey do not believe the issue is exaggerated, while most polls show young people generally are overwhelmingly concerned about climate change.
The findings are from a wide-ranging report on Generation Z by research organisation Millennial Future, based on a nationally representative survey of 1018 Australians aged 16-20 conducted in April.
|
|
Maria Tynan, 17, says the media “just make it seem so bad that it
seems completely unbelievable”. Credit: Nikola Kinder
|
|
|
Mission to save Sydney’s rarest eucalyptus species from
extinction
|
This was significantly higher than 16.1 per cent for the Generation Z adults (aged 18 to 20) in the same survey or 17.2 per cent for Millennials (aged 21 to 38) who were asked the same question in a separate survey in January.
Scepticism appears to have increased over time - when the same research was done in 2019 only 16.1 per cent of 16 and 17-year-olds agreed with the statement.
Only 13.4 per cent of young people in metropolitan areas believed the media had exaggerated the issue, compared with 22.1 per cent for young people in the regions. It also skewed male; for young women aged 16 to 20, it was 16.3 per cent, compared with 21.8 per cent for young men.
These reported differences are outside the poll’s margin of error.
Maria Tynan, 17, a student at St Francis De Sales Regional College in Leeton in the Riverina, agrees the media tends to exaggerate the severity of climate change.
“They take scientific information, and then they extrapolate on that and they just make it seem so bad that it seems completely unbelievable,” Maria said.
“This isn’t to downplay the severity of climate change or anything but the media uses it to make people scared, instead of focusing on what can be done about it.”
She said this was counter-productive because it pushed people into either denial or a sense of hopelessness.
Maria, who was a representative in the NSW Youth Parliament two years ago, went through “depression and despair” thinking about the issue of climate change when she was younger. She felt better after she researched the problem and realised we had so many of the solutions already with existing technology, let alone future inventions.
|
|
Hunter coal miners don’t have enough funds for land
rehabilitation
|
Associate Professor David Holmes, the director of the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub, said effective climate communication combined the warnings about the risks with the solutions about how to fix it.
“The message of hope is that by reducing or eliminating the greenhouse emissions that we have today, which is largely a policy area, we can dramatically minimise the dangers that climate change poses to the whole planet,” he said.
Associate Professor Holmes said there had been targeted attempts to seed climate denial among young people and counteract the Greta Thunberg effect. For example, until last year US-based right-wing think-tank the Heartland Institute had funded a young German climate denier Naomi Seibt as an “anti Greta”.
Social researcher Rebecca Huntley, author of How to Talk About Climate Change, who has conducted her own research on climate change attitudes, said the Millennial Future survey was a good sample size, including the breakdown into the two age groups, and the findings could not be dismissed. But she said it also posed further questions.
“It’s not just measuring how people feel about climate change, but how the media reports on it,” Dr Huntley said. “There’s a high level of cynicism about the agenda of the media.”
Report co-author Tom McGillick said the average trust in media was slightly lower for 16-20 year olds than 21-38 year olds, but average trust in media was not falling as steeply as scepticism of climate change was climbing.
“My interpretation is that it’s a little of both, but primarily a growing scepticism of climate change independent of media cynicism,” he said.
|
|
Bailey Linton-Simpkins, who is in year 11, says: “I think what
the media is presenting are the facts.” Credit: James Brickwood
|
“Based on me going to different sources and reading scientific reports, I think what the media is presenting are the facts, and they’re not being alarmist about it,” he said.
|
|
It stores pollution 30 times faster than forest. What is blue
carbon?
|
The Lowy Institute has run questions about attitudes to climate change in its polls for many years and will be releasing a standalone study later this month, though only polling Australians aged 18 and up.
Natasha Kassam, director of the Lowy Institute’s Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Program, said the results consistently showed higher concern about climate change among younger Australians.
Links
- Millennial Future: Australian Millennial Report - Understanding Young Australians
- Millennial Future: Australian Generation Z Report - Understanding Australian Teens And Young Adults
- How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way That Makes a Difference - Rebecca Huntley
- A Newly Released Report By UNDP Confirms That Education Is Key To Addressing Climate Change
- (AU) Passionate Young Voices Demand To Be Heard On Climate Crisis
- (AU) 'A Duty Of Care': Australian Teenagers Take Their Climate Crisis Plea To Court
- A Million Young People Urge Governments To Prioritise Climate Crisis
- Living With The Legacy Of A Climate Emergency: The Women And Girls Determined To Build A Brighter Future
- (AU) 4 Assumptions About Gender That Distort How We Think About Climate Change [And 3 Ways To Do Better]
No comments :
Post a Comment