‘Perception inertia’ mars consumption of climate information – Newspaper

• Reuters Institute survey reveals public ‘increasingly out of step with changing reality’
• In Pakistan, 61pc of participants exposed to floods, 54pc to heatwaves

ISLAMABAD: Even as extreme climate events become norm, public engagement with climate information has remained stagnant over the past three years despite the urgency of the crisis, with almost half of the respondents perceiving climate change as a distant threat.

A recent survey by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, the ‘Climate Change and News Audiences Report 2024’, refers to ‘climate perception inertia’ to explain the consumption of climate information across four continents. This inertia refers to a stagnation in public views on, attitudes to, and engagement with climate issues and information over time.

The report uses data collected from eight countries, including Pakistan, India, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, the US, and the UK, to explore how people get news about climate change.

According to the study, the attitude and behaviours of the masses are becoming “increasingly out of step with the changing reality” in light of its data on climate change news that has changed little from 2022.

In 2024, 50 per cent of the respondents across the eight countries said they “saw, read, or heard any news or information about climate change in the last week”. The figure is slightly lower than the 55pc figure in 2023, but it is in line with the 2022 figure of 51pc, it said. In Pakistan, climate news consumption dropped from 56pc in 2022 to 46pc in 2023 but rebounded to 54pc in 2024. In 2022, the interest in climate coverage was higher because of the super floods which submerged large swathes of Pakistan.

This disinterest persists even though two-thirds of the respondents believe extreme climate events are increasing. In Pakistan, 61pc participants said they were exposed to floods while 54pc had experienced heatwaves. Similarly, Pakistan is among countries with a high level of concern with 89pc, consistently exceeding the average across all three years (2022-24) alongside Brazil and India. While within the country, the 25–34 age group has the highest levels of worry, exceeding 85pc across all three years.

Despite having a high level of climate concern, people in Pakistan perceive climate change as a distant threat. This ‘psychological distance’—an extent to which people see “climate impacts as immediate versus distant”—acts as a barrier to climate action by making climate events happening in the future. According to the study, 40 per cent think that extreme climate change is affecting the country at present. This decline from 48 per cent in 2023 to 40pc in 2024 is “surprising” despite an increase in climate disasters, which the study attributes to ‘psychological distance’.

One of the study’s authors, Dr Waqas Ejaz, said there were several extreme events in 2022 and 2023, but despite the substantial sense of urgency, there was no uptick in climate-related information and news consumption.

According to him, in many contexts and countries, the coverage of climate change in mainstream media is shallow and this “episodic coverage” is not unique to Pakistan, he said in response to a question about perception inertia.

With the media one of the major sources of information trusted by almost 50pc respondents, the onus is on the media to make climate change a ‘household topic’, he added.

Media usage

According to the survey, the news media is one of the major sources of climate information, with videos emerging as the preferred format. This number has hardly changed since 2022. In Pakistan, 25pc respondents use television and 29pc use websites for climate information besides 10pc respondents who rely on newspapers for climate information. With 55pc respondents preferred videos (including TV) to text, with 39pc. Around 31pc use social media for information about climate change, compared to 19pc of respondents on average across eight countries.

In 2022, 70pc respondents in Pakistan listed media as the most trusted source, and in 2024, 69pc said the same. However, not every story is a climate story as people are most interested in climate news that intersects with local news (52pc) and weather (54pc).

In Pakistan, 57pc respondents are interested in climate news that overlaps with weather, followed by local news (56pc). The survey said that the media is seen more critically by the people, indicating it needed to do more to disseminate climate information.

Speaking to Dawn, Dr Ejaz said there is a stagnation in climate coverage and the people might have hit the plateau on climate stories. According to him, the coverage of climate change in mainstream media is shallow and this “episodic coverage” is not unique to Pakistan.

“The onus is on media to transition from episodic coverage of climate news to holistic coverage indicating the root causes of the issue, possible ways to mitigate, and policy actions being taken to tackle climate change.”

But in Pakistan, it usually gains traction in Nov-Feb due to smog and in summer due to monsoon-induced floods, but seldom explaining the underlying causes and solutions, he added.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2025