Topic of climate change in communication and media research : the past, the presence, and the future

Abstract

Abrupt increase in number of scientific publications on climate change (CC) communication makes it difficult to track development of this research area. Aiming to map the main directions of the CC communication research this paper reviews literature in particular discussing a set of sampled peer-reviewed articles dealing with CC communication issues and aiming to sketch the pats, the presence, and the future of the research area. First of all, this paper identifies and discusses the main contributors of the research area (e.g., scientific journals and authors involved). Second of all, it questions approaches taken and discussed in sampled studies. Paper concludes in suggesting that CC communication is a quickly developing and expanding area with strong roots in research fields of risk management, scientific communication, and environmental politics. Recently studies dealing with CC communication issues are often recognized as rather independent research area represented by a group of well-known scholars and scholarly journals carrying necessary discussions of the field and uniting the discourse. The past and the present research on CC communication is questioning issues mainly related to media coverage and public understanding – those are the essential approaches in communication sciences. The future of CC communication research is expected to eliminate existing deficit of studies related on how new media and new communication technologies are changing and influencing CC communication processes.