The research aims to explore the social construction of attitudes, opinions and readiness for action with respect to climate change. The basic hypothesis is that in facing environmental risks, especially when the consequences could be as much dramatical and global as in the case of climate change, a social organization of denial takes place, based also on emotional dynamics. Therefore, a large gap can be observed between the extreme seriuosness of the problem and the level of awareness and involvement of public opinion and political debate. The purpose of the research is to reduce this gap, starting with a better understanding of the interplay between cognitive, emotional and socio-cultural processes in which the social organization of denial is rooted. In particular, the focus will be on the communication, with reference to both mainstream media and digital networks, in order to find a better way to cope with social denial and to foster a more active engagement. In addition to the usual analysis of social discourse, multimodal analyzes will be set up to show the connection between communication styles and emotional resonances, and communication flows in social networks will be explored through agent-based computational models.
The perception of climate change has traditionally been tackled according to a general model, very common in the social sciences, which connects the awareness of problems and the propensity to action with attitudes, dispositions and choices of individuals (Shove 2010). In this perspective, the main interest is devoted to how and how much informations are diffused, within processes of social influence and with specific attention to the role of the media (Olausson 2009; Sampei, Aoyagi- Usui 2009), and, on the other hand, to the cognitive processing of information, which makes the messages more or less effective in order to support useful behaviors (Bertolotti, Catellani 2014). An interesting interdisciplinary field has thus emerged, devoted to the communication of climate change (Moser, Dilling 2007, Boykoff 2011), aiming to monitor the ways in which the social discourse on the topic is constructed, and to promote the adoption of effective policies, within a public engagement framework (Whitmarsh et al., 2011).
Denial can therefore be interpreted more effectively as an interaction between the cognitive, the emotional and the socio-cultural levels. In this way specific "cognitive traditions" (Zerubavel 2006) are structured, able to guide and organize the selection of information and to foster action, in close connection with socio-political context and social norms. One aspect so far undervalued is the linking of all this with participatory processes: it is widely demonstrated that the effectiveness of environmental policies is strongly conditioned by the level of sharing and awareness of social actors (Coenen 2009); so one important task for the research is to understand how social removal can inhibit participatory processes and, more generally, public engagement (Smith, Pangsapa 2008).
The project poses interesting transdisciplinary questions, in order to understand why levels of concern are diminishing as scientific consensus increases and predictions about the effects of climate change become more austere. Environmental sociologists have been broadly criticized for adopting a realist stance towards climate change; in the project, the analysis of the micro reflections of the climate change as a public issue poses innovative trends through the connection between social inequality and climate change.This new key of analysis is important for the innovation of the socio-psychological research because it can change the practices in direction of a stronger recognition of the dialectical relationship between nature and society. Moreover, the projects outputs can strongly enable researchers to extend the understanding of ways in which every day routines interact with social categories such as class and gender to configure climate change challenge.
To achieve the goal of the research, it will be useful to verify how the denial is integrated into patterns of beliefs, related to incentive systems at both the social and psychological levels. The final objective, in operative terms, will be the evaluation of communicative strategies that allow, through appropriate tools such as suitable metaphorical and narrative structures and with an adequate balancing of scientific information and value references, to overcome resistance, increase awareness and encourage participation.
From the methodological point of view, significant elements of innovation come from the use of a) multimodal analysis of communication and b) simulation model in the study of network communication.
As for a), communications of two relevant contemporary leaders committed to these issues, namely Barak Obama and Papa Francesco, will be observed using specific multimodal grids (Poggi, 2007), taking simoultaneously into account words and body communication. This in-depth analysis will allow to consider how speeches of these leaders could arrive to convey the seriousness of ecological risks encouraging a constructive approach to problems. Moreover, participants will be invited to listen to these same speeches in a controled situation. Videotapes of participants directly observed when listening to these speeches will be classified by two independent judges according to the Facial Atlas (F.A.C.S.) developed by Ekman et al. (1978).
As for b), the use of simulation model, in the study of the social network communication will offers innovative perspectives for understanding and forecasting the evolution of this systemic change, and thus for planning effective policies. However, complexity science has so far adopted individualistic approaches to human behaviours, and insights from socio-constructivist approaches on the importance of shared meanings have hardly been considered in computational models, resulting in flawed predictions of policy effectiveness and limited understanding of these failures.