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The Ecological Impacts of the Decline of Local Media: Climate Action, Perceptions of Climate Tractability, and Media Consumption in Scotland
Boyd-Madsen, Louis ; Neag, Annamária (advisor) ; Turková, Kateřina (referee)
The climate crisis is widely seen to necessitate global action from citizens across the spectrums of power in society. Previous research has highlighted how community integration, collectivist values, social trust, and knowledge of local routes to action are all seen as enabling factors in encouraging civic engagement with 'larger-than-self' problems like climate change. These factors have also been tied to the presence and quality of localised media. Focused on the country of Scotland, this thesis sought to understand how the quality and localisation of consumed climate journalism affects readers' climate beliefs, climate actions, and cultural orientation. Through a survey (n=104) gathering data on Scottish respondents' values, climate beliefs, climate actions, and media consumption - and a quantitative narrative analysis of the climate narratives present in the outlets respondents described themselves reading (n=227 articles) - this thesis suggests that the quality of climate journalism consumed does correlate with greater climate action, but that it is local climate media that more greatly facilitates civic action. The findings of this thesis could add to the discourse surrounding the media industry's response to the decline of local media outlets, and the climate movements solutions to the...
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