Grønne NGO'ers klimakommunikation på Facebook: Et studie i danske klima- og miljøorganisationers framing af klima- og miljøemner i opslag på Facebook

Sammanfattning

Environmental non governmental organizations play an influential role as developers of policy regarding climate change, communicators of climate change and environmental science as well as opinion makers among the population. This happens to a great extent on the social media Facebook. How NGOs frame climate change and environmental issues on Facebook is therefore important to investigate and this subject constitutes at the same time a scientific field that has not yet been studied. Both quantitative and qualitative research of 125 selected Facebook posts by the five largest climate change and environmental NGOs in Denmark was conducted to investigate how these types of NGOs frame their communication of climate change on Facebook. Theory on barriers and potentials for effective communication regarding climate change from the Norwegian psychologist Per Espen Stoknes was used to further analyse the results and put them in a wider context. This study finds that the NGOs way of framing climate communication, in nearly half of the studied cases, are resulting in psychological barriers identified by Per Espen Stoknes. In spite of the fact that the recipients are considered a resourceful part of the population, the NGOs way of framing prevents the recipients from taking action on the information given to them. To prevent these psychological barriers the NGOs can give the recipients concrete opportunities for taking action when they communicate challenges regarding climate change. The study do however also show that this much more effective way of climate communicating only occurs in 40 percent of the Facebook posts. This study gives communicators of climate change an insight to what type of frames they can apply to make their communication more effective and contribute to motivating the recipients to a more climate friendly behavior and a more active participation in the fight against climate change.