Down to Earth

The annual UN climate summits are public events under intense media scrutiny. We investigate how the German population received information about the climate summits in Paris (2015), Katowice (2018), Madrid (2019) and Glasgow (2021), how media coverage was perceived and how this perception is related to knowledge about and attitudes towards climate policy.

In the first phase of the project (2015-2017), we used a three-wave quantitative online panel survey to investigate whether changes in people's attitudes, knowledge and media use on climate policy could be identified in the context of the climate summit, and how these changes could be explained. We ensured the survey was representative in terms of key demographic characteristics. The questionnaire is available here. In addition, we used a combination of digital media diaries and interviews in focus groups  to qualitatively explore media appropriation of the topic of climate policy in the city (Hamburg) versus the countryside (Otterndorf/Lower Saxony).

In the second project stage (2018-2020), we repeated the quantitative online survey on the 2018 and 2019 climate summits to measure possible long-term changes and analyze differences in the reception of the three climate summits.

In the third project stage (2021-2022), we repeated the online survey in 2021, to measure further changes. In addition, an attempt was made to conduct another panel survey with the participants from 2015, in order to be able to reconstruct changes at the individual level.

Project management: Michael Brüggemann

Collaboration Phase 1: Fenja De Silva-Schmidt and Imke Hoppe (Universität Hamburg; media diary/focus groups); Josephine Schmitt (University of Cologne) and Dorothee Arlt (University of Bern; standardised survey); Coordination: Fenja De Silva-Schmidt

Collaboration Phase 2: Daniela Mahl, Lars Guenther, Fenja De Silva-Schmidt (coordination) (all Universität Hamburg)

Collaboration Phase 3: Anne Reif (Technical University of Braunschweig), Lars Guenter (Universität  Hamburg)