Debunking 3 common myths about reader engagement in environmental reporting
In a digital age, social media distracts readers by taking their attention away from climate and environmental news, Justin Worland pointed out at the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists Conference in Tempe.
In the jumble of viral videos and status updates, climate reporting does not show up on people's feeds, the panelists said. Myths about polarization, optimism vs pessimism and framing have convinced journalists that they can't better engage readers.
Worland, a senior correspondent for TIME magazine, recalled visiting a college to speak to a class. Afterwards, a student approached him and told him his writing was too long. Since then, he's been interested in how to keep the reader's attention for longer.
According to Kirsten Reddy, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center, attention to news in the U.S has declined from 27% to 19% in adults ages 18-29.
'We have 27 seconds now as opposed to 1200 words and so the choice we make in words and ratings matters a huge amount in the world,' said John Marshall, founder and CEO of Potential Energy Coalition, a marketing firm with a goal of educating people on climate change.
Marshall identified the three myths on why readers are not engaged with climate change stories.
Potential Energy Coalition has tested 1200 climate change ads and barely saw backlash, Marshall said.
'You always see backlash with things like gun control or abortion,' Marshall said.
His marketing firm asked a portion of people a set of controversial questions and found a high number of individuals believe some of the rhetoric floating around the media.
Except when it comes to climate change. More people were more interested in supporting climate solutions, Marshall said.
'The issue is not that there's this fervent opposition out there,' he said. 'The issue is nobody is getting the information.'
Environmental journalists: face challenges in retaliatory Trump era
'We owe people the truth,' Marshall said.
People are more engaged and pay attention when journalists talk about the truth, he said.
While we can't create panic, when there is a justifiable reason to worry, pointing out the real human consequences works.
His marketing firm found in a focus group that clearly stating bad news gets people's attention, but the writers are worried that too much bad news will drive readers away.
Framing is a choice. In climate reporting, the words written can create a narrative. This frame can be reinforced and create damaging viewpoints that affect the environment.
An example Marshall makes of framing in action involves the gas industry. Natural gas ranks at 72% in popularity, while methane gas is 27% in popularity. Natural gas and methane gas are the same, he said.
'You actually made that choice, and in 20 seconds the consequences of that is now everybody thinks natural gas is clean.'
There are subconscious choices people make as writers and the best way to combat this is to take a step back and ask, 'what are the frames that are actually persuasive?' Marshall said.
'It's a narrative war and if we lean into frames and phrases, that causes us to lose the narrative war.'
Marshall is a marketer; however, thinking about framing does not have to border activism, it's thinking about word choice in way that readers can absorb, Worland said.
'It's thinking about how people understand a clear communicator,' he said.
Arilynn Hyatt a junior studying journalism at the University of Arizona and is part of a student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic.
Coverage of the Society of Environmental Journalists conference is supported by Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism, the University of Arizona, the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust and the Arizona Media Association.
These stories are published open-source for other news outlets and organizations to share and republish, with credit and links to azcentral.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: The truth of capturing reader engagement in environmental reporting
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Juneteenth festival organizer accuses city of slow walking permit application
After three court hearings and two deadlines set by a judge, the City of Pittsburgh still has not issued the final permit to the long-time organizer of one of the largest Juneteenth celebrations in the country. At a status conference before the judge today, Organizer B. Marshall learned that the city had approved phase two of his application. They approved phase one on Tuesday morning, just hours before another status conference. After telling the judge Wednesday afternoon that phase two had finally been approved, the city attorney said that the application was now under review by the special events committee, which includes representatives from Police, Fire, Emergency Management, Public Works, and Permits, Licenses and Inspections. When asked by the judge how long that process would take, the city attorney said it may go until next Wednesday, the day before the Juneteenth celebration is scheduled to open at Mellon Park in East Liberty. The judge scoffed at that and ordered the city to provide an email update on the process by 4 p.m. Wednesday. Marshall praised the judge for appearing to expedite the process. 'We're appreciative of the judge today because he's seen today, apparently they want to continue to slow walk this process,' Marshall said. Marshall was calm after the hearing but expressed frustration with the process, which the city said now includes a review of the permit by police, fire and other city departments. The city attorney said that was standard procedure, but Marshall, who is organizing his 12th annual Juneteenth celebration, said he was unaware of this additional step in the review process. The city attorney also said in court that there are some outstanding questions about fire safety concerning some vendors and public works needs more information about the size of the stage. 'I can tell you this, B has done everything in his power to respond immediately,' said Marshall's attorney, Phil DiLucente, who filed a petition in court last month to force the city to act on the permit. Marshall had submitted his initial permit application in February. In court earlier this week, the city said they couldn't approve the application because Marshall had requested the closing of Penn Ave, which is a state-run road. Marshall said he withdrew that request in April. Last weekend, Marshall filed an updated permit application to reflect the change. The city received the updated application and approved phase one of his application just hours before the hearing on Monday. Marshall believes the city is intentionally delaying the permit process because of his ongoing feud with Mayor Ed Gainey over funding. Gainey pulled Marshall's funding last year and the city awarded the contract to a friend of the Mayor's wife. After public outcry, city council reinstated Marshall's $125,000 funding. Marshall did not receive any city funding this year. In court Wednesday afternoon, the judge acknowledged that progress had been made, but he was clearly troubled that the festival is scheduled to start next Thursday and the permit is still in limbo. 'He wants an update, a status report. We commend the judge and we believe now Juneteenth will now without question kick off on time,' DiLucente said. 11 Investigates is still waiting to find out what transpired between today's noon hearing and the 4 p.m. deadline imposed by the judge. Marshall said he's confident the four-day festival, which he expects will bring 65,000 people to the city, will go on as planned. The celebration was held at Point State Park and Market Square last year but those venues are both undergoing renovations. Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
More Americans see increased influence from religion in US: Gallup
More Americans said they see an increased influence from religion in the U.S., according to a new Gallup poll. The Wednesday poll found that 34 percent of respondents said they believe 'religion as a whole is increasing its influence on American life,' up 14 points from May 2024. In December, 35 percent said the same about religion, one point higher than the recent Gallup poll. Back in April, President Trump pledged that 'religion is coming back to America' after kicking off his first White House Easter Egg Roll since coming back to office 'We're bringing religion back in America. We're bringing a lot of things back, but religion is coming back to America. That's why you see the kind of numbers that you see, the spirit and the kind of numbers that you see,' the president said in April. In Wednesday's Gallup poll, 59 percent of respondents said they believe religion's influence is dropping, down 2 points from December. Two percent also said religion's influence is the 'same' while 5 percent had 'no opinion.' In February, a Pew Research Center survey found that a decline in the number of Americans who identify as Christian appeared to be slowing down following years of losses. The Gallup poll took place from May 1 to 18, featuring 1,003 people and plus or minus 4 percentage points as a margin of sampling error. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Congrats, Conservative Media: Even Your Fans Don't Always Trust You
The main headline out of Pew Research Center's latest study, 'The Political Gap in Americans' News Sources,' seems pretty self-evident: Democratic or 'leans Democratic' voters and their Republican counterparts gravitate toward different news outlets along that partisan divide. Yes, we live in isolated news silos and echo chambers, nothing to see here, move along. Look a little closer, though, and another trend line reveals that conservatives tend to cast a narrower net in terms of where they get news and information, and broadly speaking trust all sources of media — including those with which they're ideological in tune — less than Democrats. That's a logical byproduct of decades of pounding on the mainstream (sorry, 'lamestream') media and seeking to undermine traditional journalism, dating back to Rush Limbaugh and the early days of Fox News. So pat yourselves on the back, conservative media. You've done your job so well, even your ostensible allies don't always trust you, having been led down a 'Do your own research' path that has shaken their faith in everything, fueled the growth of niche influencers and helped undermine the notion of objective truth. The Pew study does find one source, not surprisingly, which stands head and shoulders above others that conservatives overwhelmingly trust — Fox News, gravitating toward the channel like man's early forebears to the Monolith in '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Even there, though, a full 21% of GOP respondents indicated they didn't trust Fox (versus 58% that do), a higher 'Distrust' number than Democrats harbor for any of the major broadcast networks, PBS, CNN and MSNBC, by margins of two, three and as many as five times that percentage, depending on the outlet. (Notably, PBS fares better in the 'distrust' column, at 4% Democratic and 26% Republican, than any of the commercial networks, which makes the defunding campaign being waged by the GOP labeling it liberal propaganda seem even more unhinged.) Like the top-line title of the study, this observation has the advantage of intuitively making sense. But it also requires a bit of context and history to understand the 'why' behind the data, based on polling conducted in March with nearly 9,500 respondents. 'Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party are much more likely than Republicans and GOP-leaning independents to both use and trust a number of major news sources,' the researchers found. By contrast, Republicans are far more likely 'to distrust than trust all of these sources,' while harboring higher 'trust' ratios for less-seen alternatives like Newsmax and Joe Rogan's podcast. Even then, GOP/lean GOP respondents exhibited a higher level of skepticism relative to Democrats, with the business-friendly Wall Street Journal (23% to 21%) and right-wing website Breitbart (10% to 8%) each exhibiting only slightly higher 'trust' than 'distrust' levels within the smaller samples that cited them as sources of news. Among the 15 most-cited outlets, GOP/lean GOP respondents didn't fall below 21% distrust on any of them (including Fox), while Democrats registered a single-digit distrust factor on a dozen. Again, it's easy enough to trace this back to Limbaugh's enormously influential radio show, which established the template — trust us, and only us — that Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch would successfully bring to television with Fox News' 'Fair and balanced' and 'We Report. You Decide' slogans. More recently, the conservative movement has splintered into a web of Trump-friendly influencers who aren't above questioning even traditional GOP media strongholds, such as the Murdoch-owned WSJ (whose editorial page has briefly departed from bashing Democrats to criticize Trump's tariff policies), New York Post and Fox News. From the QAnon movement to the various conspiracy theories that fill right-wing social media, there's ample evidence that despite Limbaugh and Ailes' goal of balancing what they saw as a playing field tilted toward the Democrats, they inadvertently unleashed an unpredictable monster, fueled by modern technology, which they can't always control. As Pew notes, the latest survey is broadly comparable to one the center conducted in 2019, with some variance in the way the questions were posed as well as the sources that were included. Nevertheless, there are practical implications to the findings, especially when pairing them with a recent analysis by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America, which found an asymmetrical gap between Trump-supporting influencers — many of whom don't self-identify as being primarily political — and left-leaning voices, as Democrats fret, in the wake of their election losses, how to overcome that deficit. Like other recent data, Pew's report doesn't provide those engaged in that soul-searching project with many easy or reassuring answers. Because the bottom line is it's hard to talk to people, much less convince them of anything, when they won't even listen. The post Congrats, Conservative Media: Even Your Fans Don't Always Trust You appeared first on TheWrap.
