Media Campaigns on Climate Change By IPCC
International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an important body within the United Nations, mandated with the responsibility of creating awareness, and setting objectives relating to the importance of environmental preservations (Mendelsohn, 2016). In fact, it delves into evaluating how natural, political and economic impacts on climate and the possible solutions that may be deemed necessary to respond to such impacts (Lorenzoni & Whitmarsh, 2014). Additionally, IPCC intends to shape and influence government policies on climate change. So, how does IPCC intend to go about this? How do they intend to pass the message across?
Conversely, IPCC has embarked on a series of mainstream media campaigns. The latest being the cover by Daily Mail and The Daily Express (Chen, 2014). The two media outlets presented the IPCC Assessment Report part 5, which was released on 31st March. In this regard, the report was a critic, which harbored the recent facts on knowledge about issues concerning climate change (Holmberg & Hellsten, 2016). Popular media personalities, Ben Spencer and Owen Bennett of the Daily Mail and Daily Express respectively, debated on the report analyzing, the facts contained in the report and revealed the importance of applying the plans (Holmberg & Hellsten, 2016). More so, the report was meant to shape various government policies on issues of climate change (Chen, 2014).
Notably, the IPCC utilized Social media platforms to pass the message on climate change. Particularly, Twitter campaigns were massive with the hashtags, “#telltheclimatetruth, #debateisover, and #thedebateisover”. Seemingly, data from Twitter reveals that over 11,800 tweets were connected to the campaign and the climate change debate (Holmberg & Hellsten, 2016). The campaign encouraged an expansive debate on the report, furthermore, it acted as an avenue to capture the attention of major newsrooms (Holmberg & Hellsten, 2016). Actually, the debate on Twitter presented an opportunity for scientist to address key areas through having a one-on-one conversation. Seemingly, it allowed opponents of climate change, to voice their views and present facts from their own perspective (Watts, 2019).
You seem to have nailed the case study for your paper here. You have outlined the role of the IPCC on the scale of global climate change solutions, and have presented a series of debates and corresponding social media campaigns that sought to proe their effectiveness surrounding the issue. However, you haven’t exactly introduce what you are planning to do in this paper. Are you looking to critique the IPCC? Are you using this case study to prove a larger point? Are you analysing the effectiveness of social media campaigns? Or debates between reliable journalistic sources? You’ve described the nature of your case study, but have not outlined any theoretical frameworks that you intend to use to support your argument. And you don’t really have a thesis statement here, just some general questions at the beginning of the proposal. Still some work to do here.
Thesis statement: 0.5/2
Outline of argument: 1/2
Relevance: 1/2
Total: 2.5/5
References
Chen, l. (2014). Evidence of Arctic and Antarctic changes and their regulation of Global Climate Change (further findings since the fourth IPCC assessment report released). Chinese journal of polar research, 25(1), 1-6. Doi: 10.3724/sp.j.1084.2013.00001
Cheng takes a keen look at the effects of climate change in regards to the effects on the Arctic and Antarctic. He recommends that unless the 5th Assessment Report by IPCC is not implemented, then adverse consequences will befall these two continents.
Holmberg, K., & Hellsten, I. (2016). Twitter Campaigns Around the Fifth IPCC Report. SAGE Open, 6(3), 215824401665911. Doi: 10.1177/2158244016659117.
In this journal, Holmberg and Hellstem, analyses the impact of social media, specifically on the campaign on climate change. They try to illustrate how Twitter has played a key role in pushing different hashtags in support of IPCC campaigns and positive response from people.
Lorenzoni, I., & Whitmarsh, L. (2014). Climate change and perceptions, behaviors, and communication research after the IPCC 5th Assessment Report – a WIREs Editorial. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 5(6), 703-708. Doi: 10.1002/wcc.319
Report by Lorenzoni and Whitmarsh highlights the behavioral impact created as a result of the debates on climate change, posed by IPCC. They show how different quarters react to the issue differently, noting that there are proponents and opponents.
Mendelsohn, R. (2016). Introduction to the special issue on the IPCC 5th Assessment Report: an Economic Evaluation. Climate Change Economics, 07(01), 1602001. Doi: 10.1142/s2010007816020012
Mendelsohn looks at the economic impacts as a result of climate change. He argues not unless the report by IPCC is implemented, people will be affected economically. Notably, he insists that a lot of resources will be diverted to climate preservation if we don’t address the issue right away.
Watts, J. (2019). We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report
Watts concerns himself with the adverse effects of climate change. In fact, the report gives an ultimatum of a specific period, on which if action is not taken, adverse consequences will be experienced.