Communicating climate change realities to audiences who feel disconnected from its impacts has been a real struggle for me. This project is my attempt to understand—what kinds of communication can shift how different groups feel, think, and act, and why some messages land while others don’t.

Measuring what works, for whom, and in which contexts
At the center of this work is a simple question: what kinds of climate communication move people—and under what conditions? I assess efficacy across four dimensions that often shape how messages land: geographic context, message framing, climate exposure, and baseline beliefs. The goal is not just to identify “effective” content, but to understand the pathways that lead to engagement, trust, and action readiness.

Building a repeatable way to evaluate communication impact

Rather than relying on intuition alone, this project compares responses to different climate messages and tracks how reactions vary across audience profiles. It focuses on measurable shifts—such as emotional engagement and intention to act—while also paying attention to what shapes interpretation, including trust, resonance, and resistance to messaging. The emphasis is on methods that are practical, transparent, and easy to adapt across formats and communities.

Translating the learning into a framework and toolkit

Beyond the study itself, this work is part of a longer-term effort to create a framework and toolkit that climate communicators can use to evaluate their own effectiveness across campaigns, documentaries, workshops, articles, and other content. Over time, the aim is to support more consistent learning—so teams can compare approaches, recognize patterns, and improve how climate stories are told and received across different communities.

Check out my Growing List of Bibliography for this Project!