Inspiring action : how do video messages affect audiences' intentions to take actions on climate change?
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[EMBARGOED UNTIL 05/01/2026] In the past decade, climate and environmental news coverage faced many challenges, including the politicization of news content, information avoidance, and declining trust. As climate change continues to represent a critical challenge for countries worldwide, video news remains an important platform to sound the alarm of various future threats, especially for young people. Decades of scholarly research have demonstrated the role that message frames and psychological distances play in selecting and emphasizing particular aspects of scientific issues. Current media coverage of climate change has infused more emotional appeal into its delivery of climate or environment information by employing message frames, meriting additional study. While considerable past scholarship on climate and environmental message framing has focused on text-based messages, with comparatively less examination on non-text-based formats, such as videos. Accordingly, exploring how climate message framing and psychological distances in video news can facilitate public intentions to act has become essential for both science journalists and science communication scholars, and could benefit climate change communicators and movements. To explore the psychological effect of environmental message frames on audiences, we employ a survey of U.S. young adults (N=574) with an embedded 2x2 experiment. The experiment investigates the effect of two message frames (apocalyptic and solution frame) and two construal levels (low and high) using short message videos on the environmental effects of overconsumption. Using ANOVA analyses, I examined how the two message frames and construal levels to understand how they affect participants' views of climate change, Specifically, their attitude to video news, online engagement, attitude to reduce overconsumption, risk perception to overconsumption, self-efficacy advocating with peers, and political behaviors. I discussed insights into the ongoing debate about how short science-focused videos on social media or news can be an effective approach to communicate the urgency of climate change and engage the public in meaningful collective actions.
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M.A.