Researchers are increasingly examining discourses associated with climate change and extreme weather events across different communication channels. However, further research is needed to examine how environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) frame extreme weather events and their relationship to climate change on social media platforms. This is an important topic as these groups play a significant role communicating science and driving environmental action. Here, we examine how Australian climate action NGOs framed the relationship of the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires to climate change on Twitter/X. Analyzing 2,077 bushfire-related tweets from a sample of 102 climate group accounts through manual content analysis, we found that these groups frequently linked bushfires with climate change, representing 59% of their bushfire-related tweets during the period of the fires. Forty-two percent of tweets mentioned climate change without describing how it relates to bushfires; 16% described specifically how climate change influences the frequency and intensity of bushfires; and only 1% suggested inaccurately that climate change causes bushfires to occur. Fifteen percent of tweets discussed risk factors beyond climate change that influence bushfire impacts, such as firefighting, emergency responses, hazard reduction, and community vulnerabilities. Only seven accounts mentioned an extreme event attribution study of the Black Summer fires. Based on these findings, we discuss opportunities and challenges of climate science communication in the extreme weather context, and describe promising directions for future research. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play a significant role communicating climate change and mobilizing climate action. This study explores how Australian climate action NGOs communicated about climate change on Twitter during the 2019-2020 Australian Black Summer bushfires. This is an important topic for research as there are nuances around how climate change relates to extreme weather events. Climate change makes bushfires more frequent and intense, but it does not directly cause bushfires to occur. Additionally, risks from bushfires do not only result from climate change-firefighting, landscape dynamics, emergency communications, evacuation procedures, and other types of responses shape the impacts of these events. The NGOs we examined overall did not inaccurately claim that climate change causes bushfires (only 1% of total tweets). However, only 15% of the tweets mentioned non-climate change factors (such as firefighting) that shape bushfire risks. Fourty-two percent of tweets mentioned climate change but did not explain how it relates to bushfires. Based on these findings, we discuss opportunities, challenges, and ongoing questions around climate science communication in the extreme weather context.

We advance a recent comprehensive model of climate change risk perceptions by investigating the role of media in shaping individuals' health risk perceptions. Results from a national survey in Australia (n = 1023) show that perceived health risks associated with climate change are related but distinct from perceived harm to self and society as measured in previous risk perception studies. Moreover, the full model explains 47% variance in health risks and 74% in perceived harm; While experiential processes (21%) account for about half of the variance in health risks, cognitive factors explain the largest share of variance in perceived harm (32%). Media processes explain a 10% variance in health risks and a 14% variance in perceived harm. News interest and media exposure to extreme weather events are significant to understand public health risks and harm perceptions, even after accounting for several other socio-demographic, cognitive, experiential, and socio-cultural factors. Findings support a conditional media effects model. Media can, directly and indirectly, affect public health risk perceptions by providing vicarious experience opportunities and information that Australians are looking for in the media about climate change.

Recent scholarship suggests that groups who oppose acting on climate change have shifted their emphasis from attacking the credibility of climate science itself to questioning the policies intended to address it, a position often called ‘response skepticism’. As television is the platform most used by audiences around the world to receive climate information, we examine 30 news programmes on 20 channels in Australia, Brazil, Sweden, the UK and USA which included coverage of the 2021 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the Physical Science. Using manual quantitative content analysis, we find that skepticism about the science of climate change is still prevalent in channels that we have classified as ‘right-wing’, but largely absent from channels classified as ‘mainstream’. Forms of response skepticism are particularly common in ‘right-wing’ channels, but also present in some ‘mainstream’ coverage. Two of the most prominent discourses question the perceived economic costs of taking action and the personal sacrifices involved. We explore the implications of our findings for future research and climate communication.

Denialism and the spreading of misinformation have occurred regarding both climate change and COVID-19, delaying uptake of urgent actions. Audience segmentation analysis identifies audience subgroups likely to have similar responses to messaging, and is a valuable tool for effective campaigns encouraging critical behaviors in both contexts. This study compared audience segmentations based on a representative sample of 1054 Australians. One segmentation was based on the 'Global Warming's Six Americas' online SASSY tool. The second segmentation applied the Theory of Planned Behavior and found five distinct COVID-19 vaccine segments. Both studies showed those most concerned and those most skeptical in the climate change segmentation tended to be in more enthusiastic COVID-19 vaccine segments, while those in the center on climate change were more skeptical on COVID-19 vaccines. Differences identified relating to age, gender, and political views may be explained by a combination of the specific nature and histories of these issues. These findings have implications for effective communication on science and health issues across diverse disciplines.

While previous studies provide broad categories of the public who intend to get a COVID-19 vaccine, few systematically segment and help understand and engage with distinct publics to improve COVID-19 vaccine uptake. Using data from a national sample of the Australian public (N = 1054) and using measures primarily based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, a latent class analysis of 16 items was undertaken to identify COVID-19 audience segments for potential future message targeting. We found five different segments of COVID-19 vaccine intentions: vaccine enthusiasts (28%), supporters (26%), socials (20%), hesitant (15%) and sceptics (10%). These five audience segments also differ on demographic variables and their level of trust in mainstream media, scientists and health experts, social media and family and friends. Understanding the COVID-19 vaccine attitudinal and information-seeking characteristics of these sub-publics will help inform appropriate messaging campaigns.

Abstract Denialism and spreading of misinformation have occurred regarding both climate change and COVID-19, delaying uptake of critical actions. Audience segmentation analysis identifies audience subgroups likely to have similar responses to messaging, and is a valuable tool for effective campaigns encouraging critical behaviors in both contexts. This study compared audience segmentations based on a representative sample of 1054 Australians. One segmentation was based on ‘Global Warming’s Six Americas’ online SASSY tool. The second segmentation applied the Theory of Planned Behavior and found five distinct COVID-19 vaccine segments. Results show both those most concerned and those most skeptical in the climate change segmentation continuum tended to be in more enthusiastic COVID-19 vaccine segments, while those in the center on climate change were more skeptical on COVID-19 vaccines. Differences identified relating to age, gender, religion, and political views may be explained by a combination of the specific nature and histories of these issues. These findings have implications for effective communication on science and health issues across diverse disciplines.

Australian media reporting of climate change and renewable energy, along with public perceptions of the science and solutions of climate change, have shifted in ways that have increased pressure on politicians and policy makers. With the promotion of renewable energy central to ending Australia's heavy reliance on fossil fuels, it is critical to understand how this complex intersection of media and politics is evolving with regard to Australia's renewable energy options. Therefore, this paper examines Australian newspaper reporting of a pivotal moment in Australia's renewable energy discourse: the Australian Government's announcement, in March 2017 to expand the seventy-year-old Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme (known as Snowy 2.0), which marked a turning point in conservative energy policy. Qualitative content analysis reveals that, while political discourse delimited newspaper narratives, the sentiment of the framing was most strongly associated with the partisan alignment of the publishing organization. Regional influences also had a minor association with the framing of renewable energy. Through close analysis of this decisive moment in Australian media's political representation of renewable energy, this paper offers insights that can be used to inform media strategies for renewable energy policy in Australia, and to track changes in framing over time.

The Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub (MCCCRH) is Australia’s leading research centre dedicated to improving public understanding of climate change. Utilising what is known as ‘non-persuasive communication,’ MCCCRH delivers simple, short, factual climate messages over longer-time frames, that are repeated often. The approach is large scale, evidence-based and non-partisan and is delivering the information that Australians are seeking to actively bridge deep divisions on climate change. In this paper we present non-persuasive communication in action that is done by translating climate science into simple and engaging formats for two of MCCCRH’s major programs: * ‘Climate Communicators’, which is an innovative national climate education program that produces simple, long-term climate graphics for Australian television weather presenters and currently broadcasts in every state of Australia with more than 500+ broadcasts to date. It broadcasts to metropolitan and rural television audiences and harnesses the existing science communication capacity of weather presenters. * ‘Changing Climates’, which is a climate column in collaboration with Australia’s largest media organisation News Corp Australia that increases the visibility of climate science and scientists and has published 2000+ print and digital columns across 58 mastheads. Most up to date and accurate climate science and data is brokered from the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO and Monash University scientists. Easy-to-process data visualisations are continuously researched with leading science communications specialists to ensure clarity and shared with partners from the most visible and trusted forms of media including television weather presenters and community newspapers. The effectiveness of these strategies is routinely evaluated, ensuring their design and delivery are specifically tailored for maximum impact. Corresponding/presenting author: David Hoffmann, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia; david.hoffmann@monash.edu

Communicating climate change in the twenty-first century has never been more pressing. The science is in, the solutions known, but the communication is not nearly adequate to the gravity of the issue, and current emissions pathways are rapidly hurtling towards a climate ever more dangerous for humans and millions of species that are already being affected. Scientists know enough about climate change to advise politicians and policy makers of the scale of the problem and its solutions. The science informs global processes of arriving at climate policy recommendations by groups such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). But for many outside the most vulnerable regions, such as equatorial and small island nations, climate change is seen to be distant in space and time, even in countries with strong public interest journalism and investigative reporting. For them, most of the processes of climate change are not available to the senses, and few understand the nature of climate sensitivity – where just a small change in global average temperature, caused by heat-trapping gases from human activity, can rapidly lead to a climate that is incompatible with human settlement and an unsuitable habitat for nearly all living things. The globalization of consumer culture, and the energy-intensive infrastructure that it requires, has emancipated much of the developed world from the direct compulsion of need. But this has only been made possible by the exploitation of nature through fossil fuel energy sources that have super-charged the industrial forces of production. Or, as climate columnist George Monbiot has put it, today: ‘We inhabit the brief historical interlude between ecological constraint and ecological catastrophe’ (Monbiot 2006, p. 6). As a result of these industrial activities, humans have emitted greenhouse gases in concentrations that are changing the climate at 170 times the natural rate. What once took 8500 years to happen now takes only 50. With industrialization, the world of the Holocene – the 10 000 years of relatively stable climate that allowed human civilization to develop – has abruptly ended. Rather, we now live in the ‘Anthropocene’, where greenhouse emissions are effectively a geo-engineering of the Earth’s atmosphere, adding a dangerous amount of energy into the climate system and committing the Earth to hundreds of years of extreme climate impacts.

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the relationships between the Australian fossil-fuel industry, politicians and the news media as a prerequisite for understanding the limits and opportunities for climate change communication in Australia. The dominance of the fossil-fuel industry in Australian society is deeply entrenched, demonstrated by a largely unchallenged discourse about their necessity in the mainstream media, and the role they play in funding the election campaigns of the two largest political parties. This paper draws on the theoretical tradition of political economy to argue that there is a well-defined fossil-fuel industry–political elite–mainstream media nexus, that shapes the reporting of climate change and the policies set by successive Australian governments. Australia has compelling reasons to undertake urgent and effective action on climate change. Yet, as this chapter argues, it is Australia's exposure to extreme weather events that has ensured a consistently high level of public concern for climate action. Remarkably, public support for strong action on climate change continues to build, including as a defining issue in elections. This is despite a highly concentrated mainstream media that is largely hostile to climate science and emissions reduction initiatives.

As the Facebook of China, RenRen has been a popular networking site in that country for a decade. In more recent times, RenRen, as with other dedicated online social networking sites (SNS), has led many users to integrated apps like WeChat that emphasise a messaging function. Social media demographics in China are rapidly responding to changing urban conditions. RenRen offers its users platforms for social interaction. The maintenance of relationships on RenRen is best explained through the theory of social capital. In many respects any consideration of online social capital cannot be separated from the extraordinary scale of urbanisation in China. The massification of urban dwellers, the disruption to existing neighbourhoods and constant movement of new migrants to the cities as they find jobs and connections, makes online life an option that can often be more anchoring for people. The extent and nature of social media use are closely linked to changes in generational identity in urban areas since 1980s.