Clara Vandeweerdt

What do you research?

I do research about how public opinion about climate change is shaped and changed. How someone's opinion about climate change is influenced by their social identities, like race or allegiance with a political party. Whether disruptive climate action can change people's attitudes, for better or worse. Whether people who advocate for climate action in the media tend to have a specific demographic profile, and whether that matters. I am also part of a big international project where we measure concern about climate change as accurately as possible, over time and within countries and regions (e.g. provinces). I tend to use experiments and big datasets, like polls or media content.

Why is it so important?

Because many of the technological solutions to climate change are known, and the challenges lie in implementing them. For governments and companies to be willing to choose sometimes costly climate solutions, citizens and consumers must be on board. Solid climate policy requires support from people with many different backgrounds. Ultimately, my research can inform NGO's, politicians and movements about what communication strategies about climate change are most effective. For example, they can help climate movement choose between more or less disruptive protest strategies or help them decide who to put forward as spokespeople.

A project you are proud of?

A project (with one research paper finished and another on the way) about the effect of disruptive climate protest on public attitudes. I research this by doing what is called a survey experiment. Participants fill out survey questions about climate change, but first, a randomly selected part of them get to read a real newspaper article about a disruptive protest. I find that the media content increases the so-called salience of climate change: 10-15% extra people mention the climate in an open question about the most important problems facing their country today. At the same time, I see a small backlash effect: some respondents decrease their support for the policy promoted by the protest.

Updated September 2024