Broadening Exposure to Climate Change News? How Framing and Political Orientation Interact to Influence Selective Exposure

Two online news browsing experiments were conducted with national samples of U.S. adults to test the effects of six different climate change frames on selective exposure to climate change news; the frames emphasized the implications of climate change for either public health, the economy, national security, the environment, morality, or political conflict. Effects were compared between liberal-Democrats, moderate-Independents, and conservative-Republicans. In Study 1, participants could select only from articles about climate change. In Study 2, climate change news competed for attention with other news topics. Results show that a public health frame increased exposure to climate change news relative to other frames; however, these increases were confined to liberal-Democrats and, in Study 1, also moderate-Independents. Conservative-Republicans’ exposure to climate news was unaffected by framing. Overall, the findings suggest framing plays only a limited role in driving exposure to climate change news.