Knowledge Scale-wise Climate Change Awareness: An Analysis of Professional Characteristics of Journalists in Kerala

Undoubtedly, climate change as one of the most serious threats to humankind in the 21st century. This study primarily assumed climate change is largely as an anthropogenic origin and tried using an interdisciplinary lens by taken its association with journalistic narrative in the regional media landscape of Kerala. Journalistic news narratives and interpretations play a pivotal role in the public understanding of climate change. To measure journalistic knowledge scale-wise climate change awareness, study uniquely designed a conceptual model which incorporated four knowledge scales as casual & basic

knowledge, effect knowledge, action-related knowledge and agreement/event knowledge (knowledge scales proposed by Tobler, Visschers & Siegrist, 2012). Each of these knowledge scales corresponded to respective four factors and 17 items. In light of this a survey instrument was developed and conducted it among 518 journalists in Kerala. Journalistic professional characteristics considered for the study were region, type of media, field of work, experience, media education, job designation, climate change news reporting and media awards. Study results showed a few professional variables had significant association with discussed knowledge scales and majority of the journalists (N= 325, 62.7%) had a moderate level of climate change awareness in corresponding to each climate change knowledge scales discussed.

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