This paper reviews a range of approaches to political communication in the light of the challenges of climate denial.
Research by Kari Norgaard (2011) on the role played by emotion in shaping attitudes to climate change raises major questions for how we go about climate communication.
Fragmented bodies of literature about political communication variously emphasise the roles of psychological factors, marketing, frames, values and symbolic politics.
The literature of these fields provides useful frameworks for examining social movement communication, however the challenges posed by Norgaard call for new thinking about how social movements can communicate effectively in response to climate change.
Download Communicating “inconvenient truths”: climate denial, emotion and political communication.
Originally published as McArthur, Don. (2013). Communicating “inconvenient truths”: emotion and political communication. Simulation, 16(2), 251-275.
Symbolic Politics 