After a ton of revision and even more coffee, I'm very happy to publish my @ecioxford MSc research on the climate change communication 'hope vs. fear debate' in Climatic Change https://rdcu.be/cecYi  (open access link) (1/5)

It's a contentious issue - should we scare or inspire the public to care about #climatechange? Against a backdrop of highly mixed results (see our lit review), our findings caution against claims that there is a single best approach when it comes to emotional engagement (2/5)

Important nuances to keep in mind: there are different kinds of hope (e.g., fatalistic hope vs. constructive hope), and fear messages can be completely doomist or balanced with actionable info. Diverse audiences may also respond differently (3/5)

For our experiment, we created hope and fear videos using images from @climatevisuals / @ClimateOutreach. We found that specific video production components such as pacing, music, editing, can play an important role in audience engagement - this merits further research (4/5)

Our paper does not argue whether we should be optimistic or pessimistic about humanity's prospects. Our results simply urge a bit of skepticism when it comes to sweeping judgments that there is a single optimal way to engage the public about this vital & complex issue (5/5)

@oxfordgeography