A new study suggests that Americans’ beliefs about climate change become more accurate when they hear about it in the news, and they also become more supportive of government action on the issue. However, these changes are not permanent.

Researchers found that people’s true beliefs about climate change fade quickly and can be hurt by news stories that don’t believe in climate change.

“It is not the case that the American public does not respond to scientifically informed reporting when they are exposed to it,” says Thomas Wood, an associate professor of political science at The Ohio State University.

“But even factually accurate science reporting recedes from people’s frame of reference very quickly.”

The study will appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on June 24, 2022. Together with Brendan Nyhan from Dartmouth College and Ethan Porter from George Washington University, Wood carried out the research for the paper.

The findings revealed that correct science reporting didn’t just influence Democrats; it also persuaded Republicans and others who initially opposed human-caused climate change after reading factual stories.

The experiment featured 2,898 online participants who took part in four waves during the fall of 2020.

They all read real pieces in the popular media in the first wave, which gave information that reflected the scientific consensus on climate change.

During the second and third phases of the experiment, participants were randomly assigned to read either another scientific article, an opinion article that was skeptical of climate science, an article that discussed the partisan debate over climate change, or an article on a completely unrelated subject.

The participants were simply asked their opinions on climate change science and policy perspectives in the fourth wave.

The researchers questioned participants if they believed (correctly) that climate change is occurring and had a human origin after each wave to assess their scientific comprehension. To find out how people felt, researchers asked them if they wanted the government to do something about climate change and if they wanted renewable energy.

Wood said it was important that accurate reporting helped everyone, even Republicans and people who didn’t believe in climate change at first. The fact that it also influenced people’s perspectives is quite promising.

“Not only did science reporting change people’s factual understanding, it also moved their political preferences,” he added.

“It made them think that climate change was a pressing government concern that government should do more about.”

The favorable benefits on people’s opinions, however, were short-lived, according to the findings. Later waves of the investigation saw these effects fade away.

Furthermore, suspicious of the scientific consensus on climate change, opinion stories offset the accuracy gains made by science coverage.

There was no statistically significant change in people’s opinions and attitudes after reading articles about political conflict.

Overall, the findings imply that the media has a significant impact on Americans’ perceptions and views concerning scientific subjects such as climate change.

“It was striking to us how amenable the subjects in our study were to what they read about climate change in our study. But what they learned faded very quickly,” Wood explained.

The study’s findings go counter to the media’s mandate to solely report on breaking news.

“What we found suggests that people need to hear the same accurate messages about climate change again and again. If they only hear it once, it recedes very quickly,” Wood remarked.

“The news media isn’t designed to act that way.”

Image Credit: Getty

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