Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: Stories that Stick: Cultural Narrative and Mass Opinions on Climate Change

DRMS 博士论文研究：持久的故事：关于气候变化的文化叙事和大众观点

• 批准号: 0962589
• 负责人: Hank Jenkins-Smith
• 金额: $ 1.04万
• 依托单位: University of Oklahoma Norman Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-04-01 至 2011-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0962589&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; DRMS; Stories

Climate change is easily identified as one of the most contentious and pressing policy problems facing the United States. While scientific opinions on the reality of climate change show high levels of agreement, a non-trivial component of the public rejects the claims of these scientists. Why? Current social science explanations of this divergence in opinion have tended to focus on either the public's lack of accurate knowledge or media bias that misleads the public. These explanations focus on message structure influence, but fail to account for characteristics internal to the individual that most certainly interact with these message structures. This dissertation addresses this gap in our knowledge.Two theories that account for both individual internal factors and external stimuli in opinion formation and change are merged to create a Cultural Narrative Model (CNM). Specifically, Cultural Theory metrics assess individual cultural predispositions, while narrative provides the message structuring theory. This model is tested using a web-based experimental manipulation of over 2500 nationally representative respondents. Among other findings, the CNM may suggest that narrative structure plays a significant role in helping respondents develop emotional responses to groups, determining how much of a threat climate change is, and, how willing a respondent is to act on the threat of climate change. One broader impact of this project is that the new knowledge should be beneficial to society through its utility to risk communicators.

气候变化很容易被确定为美国面临的最有争议，最紧迫的政策问题之一。尽管对气候变化现实的科学见解表现出很高的一致性，但公众的非平凡组成部分拒绝了这些科学家的主张。为什么？当前对这种分歧的社会科学解释倾向于集中于公众缺乏准确的知识或误导公众的媒体偏见。这些解释集中在消息结构的影响下，但无法说明个人内部最肯定与这些消息结构相互作用的特征。这项论文在我们的知识中解决了这一差距。两种理论可以说明单个内部因素和意见形成和变化中的外部刺激，以创建文化叙事模型（CNM）。具体而言，文化理论指标评估了个体的文化倾向，而叙述则提供了信息结构理论。使用基于Web的2500多名全国代表性受访者的实验操作对该模型进行了测试。除其他发现外，CNM可能表明叙事结构在帮助受访者对群体的情感反应中发挥着重要作用，确定气候变化的威胁是多少，以及，愿意受访者如何对气候变化的威胁采取行动。该项目的一个更广泛的影响是，新知识应通过其风险沟通者的效用对社会有益。