Sense-Making of COP 21 among Rural and City Residents: The Role of Space in Media Reception

Hoppe, Imke; De Silva-Schmidt, Fenja; Brüggemann, Michael; Arlt, Dorothee (2020). Sense-Making of COP 21 among Rural and City Residents: The Role of Space in Media Reception. In: Brüggemann, Michael; Rödder, Simone (eds.) Global Warming in Local Discourses: How Communities around the World Make Sense of Climate Change (pp. 121-159). Cambridge: Open Book Publishers

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This chapter explores the role of space in making sense of climate change. The study compares how the United Nations’ summit resulting in the Paris Agreement in 2015 was received in an urban (Hamburg) and a rural setting (Otterndorf), both located in Northern Germany. In each setting, two focus group interviews were held (n = 15), one with long-term inhabitants and one with newly relocated citizens. Media coverage was criticized as depicting climate change as overly complex and distant. Use of the local newspaper was more frequent in the rural setting, but its reporting was seen as failing to provide a local angle to the climate summit. Space plays an important role: people in the rural setting—with the rising tides of the North Sea behind the dikes—felt more personally concerned by climate change. Furthermore, long-term inhabitants drew much stronger links between climate change and their region. The duration of stay in a certain setting thus turns out to moderate the influence of space on interpretations of climate change.

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