Project: Overcoming Obstacles and Disincentives to Climate Change Mitigation: A cross-cutting approach by human and social sciences
| Acronym | 202CM (Reference Number: JTC-2019_162) |
| Duration | 01/12/2020 - 30/11/2023 |
| Project Topic | The project will develop a practical tool in the form of an open-source toolbox platform, providing recommendations, prototypes and resources to citizens, public decision-takers and nongovernmental organisations on climate change communication strategies. The project will focus on Belgium, France, and Norway. The toolbox will be tested notably in the course of the deployment of “Opt4Climate”, a campaign led in Belgium by the major actors of the climate social movements, with the support of the King Baudouin Foundation. Through analyses of survey discourse and answers, and of social media data, the aim of the project is to contribute, through transformational learning, to an innovative understanding of Europeans’ individual and collective values, beliefs, and interests as regards obstacles versus opportunities to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and thus to climate change mitigation. |
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Project Results (after finalisation) |
WP1 (Lead Belgium) will focus on the coordination of the project as a whole. WP2 (Lead Norway) will look into how people perceive and interpret narratives concerning climate change issues and how social actors construct their positions on climate change by mediating different voices in society. WP3 and WP4 (Lead Belgium) will be based on a semiotic and rhetoric approach of online discourses about climate change, aimed at identifying (1) scepticism, denial, disagreement, and conflict in Reddit argumentations (Cougnon et al., 2019); (2) ideologically charged policies from public decision-takers on Twitter; and (3) the interaction between image and text that facilitates or complicates dialogue, understandings, and calls for action on YouTube and Instagram. In line with WP2, WP5 and WP6 (Lead France) aim to examine how and why individuals can remain indifferent or sceptical to the risks of climate change, as well as what interventions might be carried out to challenge mindsets and motivations. First, social-psychological factors that determine citizen engagement in environmental behaviours will be explored. Second, we will analyse the effects of the climate change risk on citizens’ perceptions, behaviours, and attitudes. |
| Website | visit project website |
| Network | JPI Climate |
| Call | 2019 Call SOLSTICE |
Project partner
| Number | Name | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Université catholique de Louvain | Coordinator | Belgium |
| 2 | University of Bergen | Partner | Norway |
| 3 | Université Clermont Auvergne | Partner | France |