Project Information Literacy Logo. Symbols for network, cellphone, and cloud computing in white against a black, stylized open hand. With Project in large letters over Information Literacy.

Summary

This report, “How information worlds shape our response to climate change,” represents the largest and most comprehensive research effort to date on the technological and social information infrastructures that shape understanding of climate change in the United States. This work examines how divergent information worlds influence Americans’ understanding of the climate crisis while exploring how these complex, personalized webs of information shape their responses to the challenge of living on a warming planet.

In the run-up to a hotly contested national election in which polls predict a close presidential race, climate change has become a political issue that seems to mirror a polarized populace. Yet, surprisingly, we found that Americans are not nearly as divided as many may think when it comes to climate change. As a majority of Americans experience extreme weather and climate events, our findings suggest their understanding of the crisis is shifting away from skepticism toward acceptance and, for many, to a rising sense of urgency about taking collective action to save a planet in peril.

That is one of the findings of a new national study by Project Information Literacy (PIL), an independent nonprofit research institute. PIL details how Americans’ understanding of the climate crisis depends on the information worlds they inhabit. Leveraging our combined domain expertise in information science, information literacy, media literacy, and data science, our report uses empirical data to examine how people of all ages encounter, engage with, and respond to climate change news and information — and how these fit into the information worlds they inhabit when political polarization is exceptionally high in America.

Findings are drawn from a large-scale online survey deployed in the fall of 2023 to a sample of the U.S. general population between the ages of 16 to 85 (N = 4,503), and from a slightly modified version of the same online survey administered in the winter of 2024 to college students ages 18 to 35 years old (N = 1,593) at nine U.S. institutions of higher education.

A computational analysis of the general population survey results is the basis of our map of climate change understanding in the U.S. This map shows how respondents were clustered based on their opinions about climate change. Three prominent groups emerged from all of the participants surveyed1.

  • The Engaged (33%) are convinced that the climate crisis is happening and that it’s their civic duty to stay informed and keep up with climate change news and information, though they are not consumed by the coverage.
  • The Detached (47%) are largely convinced that climate change is real, but are less in agreement about how pressing it is and are not sure what to think, or do, about the planet’s environmental future.
  • The Resistant (9%) don’t believe climate change is happening and do not engage with climate change news and information. They do not trust scientists, journalists, and claims that climate change is real.

Taken together, our map of climate change understanding and engagement mirrors the storied polarization in public opinion about climate change that’s often described in the news and displayed on Capitol Hill. At the same time, our findings suggest that those committed to addressing the climate crisis and those doubtful of it are not as evenly distributed as many may assume.

Mile Markers

Four significant points of interest in our mapping, or as we call them, mile markers, underscore the extent to which survey participants agreed or disagreed with certain opinion questions asked about climate change.

  1. News is fast, but climate change is slow. The vast majority of survey participants felt that news about climate change was too negative since news outlets highlight the latest weather-related disasters and emphasize political disputes over climate solutions. It’s hard for news audiences to cobble together the big picture, leaving many people with a vague sense of impending doom, or as one respondent summed it up, “Climate change is so politicized, people don’t know what to believe.”
  1. Lack of trust undermines climate action. The Engaged had the most trust in climate change information coming from journalists and scientists, while the Resistant were highly distrustful of news and information about climate change. However, the Detached also had doubts about the trustworthiness of climate change information, even when they were concerned about the crisis. Given this ambivalence about institutional forms of expertise characterizes the largest group in our mapping, galvanizing the Detached requires developing alternative routes to trustworthy information through personal connections and shared experiences.  
  1. Most are willing to consider climate change viewpoints different from their own. Though social media was a major conduit for climate change information for all respondents, fewer reported sharing information about climate change in person or online through social media platforms on forums, like Discord. That said, most respondents reported a surprising willingness to discuss climate change with others, even if they don’t agree with them. This may be explained by the fact that more people are living through extreme weather and climate events, uniting the vast majority of us through our shared encounters with the effects of climate change, giving us much to discuss.
  1. A journey from despair to hope is possible. Survey responses revealed a troubling gap in America between awareness of the climate emergency and a sense that taking action can mitigate it. Although a majority of respondents believed individuals can make a difference and said they were motivated to be part of the solution, many felt powerless and less than a third had participated in community efforts to address climate change. Those who conveyed more hopefulness were unusually well-informed, but many others who followed climate change news closely expressed despair. As one put it, “I feel depressed, anxious, and really angry, because this change was preventable.” Yet, there is good news in the findings: Among the Detached, there were signs of a trend toward hope and the possibility of engaging in climate action.

The Rising Generation

Almost all young people in our college sample tilt toward similar opinions held by the Engaged. Their opinions are distinctly different from those of the Resistant and the Detached. Overall, young people in our general population sample, ages 16 to 24, were more concerned about climate change than older respondents.

Whether they are enrolled in college or not, young people have lived with the climate crisis for as long as they can remember, and are more willing to take action even though they feel more anxious about their future than the people across the country that we surveyed. As one student participant said, “It’s very easy to feel hopeless about a situation you don’t directly have control over, but progress always starts from the bottom.”

The Road Ahead

This report concludes by raising a set of questions for stakeholders to consider for encouraging hope and building more collective action around responding to the threats of climate change:

  1. The media has an obligation to unify us in civic action, so how can it bolster its response to climate change?
  1. As extreme weather events become more common, how can the sense of collective unity that emerges from these experiences be sustained to address climate change at the community level?
  1. How can individual concern be transformed into hope — and from there, into action — for building a sustainable future?

As we face an existential climate threat, the information landscape around us has become increasingly diverse, complex, and challenging. Within this landscape, climate understanding is jeopardized by ambivalence, skepticism, anxiety, and distrust. With less agreement about what is true, what can be trusted, and where information has originated, it’s more challenging than ever for the public to engage with and respond to big, complex problems like climate change. 

Our findings can inform the work of position journalists, educators, librarians, activists, scientists, and policy analysts who want to encourage greater climate change engagement among a divided populace. As the public grows increasingly united in concern for the effects of climate change, it’s time to engage those less involved and spark a sense of hope that a shared future is in our hands.

The research for PIL’s Climate Change Report was supported by Marcie Rothman, Founder of the Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies at UCLA, with additional support from the colleges and universities participating in the survey: Arizona State University West Campus, Brandeis University, Central Oregon Community College, Columbus State University, Grinnell College, Indiana University South Bend, Santa Clara University, Tufts University, and the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Affiliate support was provided by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an international organization with more than three million members and online activists, who work to safeguard the earth — its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends.

Project Information Literacy (PIL) is a national nonprofit research institute based in the San Francisco Bay Area that studies what it is like to be a student in the digital age. In a series of 13 groundbreaking scholarly research studies, PIL has investigated how high school students, college students, and recent college graduates utilize information competencies, skills, and strategies for completing course work and solving information problems in their everyday lives.

Report available at https://projectinfolit.org/pubs/climate-study
Project page at: https://projectinfolit.org/publications/climate-study
Title: “How information worlds shape our response to climate change”

Contact: Alison J. Head, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Project Information Literacy
Principal Investigator, Climate Change Study
alison@pilresearch.org.in

  1. Based on a sample of 4,503 survey participants living in the U.S., ages 16 to 85. Totals do not add to 100% due to outliers in the sample, who did not fit into any of these three groupings. ↩︎