Climate Conversation Barometer
Measuring Citizens' Attitudes to Climate Change
Michael Urquhart
Michael specialises in partnering with organisations from across government and civil society, who value a research-led approach to digital media consultancy. With topics spanning from information manipulation to trust in institutions, his research is driven by a deep understanding of how the media shapes citizen perceptions of the world around them.
RESEARCH PROBLEM
Popular discourse around climate change swings like a pendulum between optimism and pessimism - how did this dynamic unfold during COP26 and what lessons can be drawn for effective strategic communications?
RESEARCH PLAN
A daily tracker that quantified the reaction of citizens to the climate change debate online pre, during and post COP26 and scored the results on a scale from DOOM (‘we’re giving up’) to HOPE (‘we can save the future’). In addition to this real-time data, we also unpicked trends in doom and hope language across six countries and delivered weekly strategic insight briefings. Advanced language analytics was applied to the data, to measure the presence of emotional language and provide insight into how citizen’s attitudes towards climate changed throughout COP26
RESEARCH PATHWAY
By combining a real-time tracker with weekly insight briefings and focusing the analysis on emotions (doom versus hope), rather than sentiment (positive versus negative), this service helped communications professionals understand the types and formats of information needed to deliver the right message at the right time.
