Medias and environmental technosolutionism (Study 2)

Ecological collapse is now widely recognized by climate scientists as a global and urgent issue. In this context, a growing proportion of the population believes that technology, and more recently artificial intelligence (AI), could be a key solution to climate and environmental challenges (IPSOS, 2022). AI is already integrated into certain climate policies, such as the European Green Deal (Gailhofer et al., 2021). This confidence is part of another, increasingly intensive use of digital technologies (Grinin et al., 2022): information. Indeed, the communication and information channels that people use are now the internet, social media, and AI systems rather than traditional media (Carman et al., 2025; Hancock et al., 2020; Ibrahim et al., 2023). This development raises questions, because technologies and their media environments, whether “new” or “traditional,” are not neutral (Daminov, 2024; Swbodoa & Lauwaert, 2025) and, like any means of communication, they influence beliefs and attitudes (Kim et al., 2017). These influences are expressed in two complementary ways, one related to the media itself (i.e., form) and the other related to its content. For McLuhan (1964), the form of the media has a cognitive and structural impact on individuals and society. From this perspective, new information technologies and the resulting explosion in media offerings (the Internet, social networks, podcasts, etc.) have fragmented and individualized information systems. Here, information is becoming increasingly accessible, interactive, and personalized. In this sense, it may be reasonable to think that the media use of these new technologies promotes beliefs that are more individualistic (personalization and fragmentation of information channels) than collectivist and focused on the effectiveness of technological solutions. Media content also plays a key role in influencing public opinion. According to agenda-setting theory (Shaw et al., 1999), the media select topics and issues, frame them, and convey values, which helps shape what people perceive as relevant or desirable. Media exposure can, for example, influence political attitudes, although the results remain inconsistent across studies (Nadeau & Giasson, 2003; Daminov, 2024). Furthermore, the individualization and personalization of new information technologies would allow people to choose the content to which they want to be exposed (Shaw et al., 1999). In this sense, the content selected here could reinforce or even polarize beliefs and attitudes. The influence of these technologies raises questions about the impact of their use on adherence to technosolutionist beliefs. For Nagpal et al. (2024), “technosolutionism represents the extent to which an individual believes that technology is in a unique position to solve organizational as well as larger societal problems (Johnston, 2018).” (p. 3). Their work shows that technosolutionist attitudes predict a preference for AI solutions in an organizational context. Looking at a broader social context, Morozov (2023) shows that technosolutionism ignores the structural, political, and economic causes of social and environmental problems, reducing them to mere obstacles that can be solved by technical innovations. According to this researcher, technosolutionism can thus be likened to “digital neoliberalism,” which values efficiency and individual adaptation at the expense of structural and collective change. This conceptualization of technosolutionism provides a better understanding of why and how technosolutionist beliefs should be associated with lower environmental values. Indeed, a ubiquitous strategy for reducing climate action and support for it is the depoliticization of environmental issues, which consists of delaying or denigrating collective and political action by presenting it as unnecessary or irresponsible (Comby, 2019). This neoliberal way of framing ecological issues has become ubiquitous in most circles (Reuter & Frick, 2024). This depoliticization takes several forms, including individualizing collective problems, but also postponing difficult decisions under the guise of upcoming technological breakthroughs that will enable a supposed ecological transition (Fressoz, 2022). Thus, in the ecological domain, environmental technosolutionism is characterized by the belief that ecological collapse can be resolved primarily through technological innovations, to the detriment of structural approaches. Although sometimes cited as an obstacle to environmental actions and attitudes (Gifford, 2011), this concept is, to our knowledge, largely understudied in social psychology, even though there is every reason to believe that it should be associated with weaker environmental attitudes. Based on data from the European Social Survey, the objective of this study is to examine whether the use of new technologies (the Internet, social networks) is linked to environmental technosolutionism. Furthermore, as we have seen, environmental technosolutionism is a particular form of neoliberal attitude, so we expect it to correlate with other neoliberal values and attitudes, such as low support for government intervention, the desire to be rich and autonomous, and low support for equality. Finally, given that our study is correlational, it should be noted that the causality between attitudes and media remains debated: do the media influence attitudes, or do pre-existing attitudes guide the choice of media and content? (see, for example, Hoewe & Peacock, 2020, on political attitudes). In concrete terms, while we can accept that the use of new technologies leads to technosolutionist beliefs, the reverse is also possible. These links must, of course, be considered in light of other factors such as the specific characteristics of the media and the individual characteristics of the audience (age, gender, digital skills, etc.).​​ Main goals: Identifying correlation between media use and technosolutionism Identifying correlation between technosolutionism and social values Using European Social Survey (Round 5_edition 3.6) and multilevel correlations this study aims to investigate how media use and in particular internet use is linked to environmental technosolutionism. Furthermore, we will explore how environmental technosolutionism is linked to low importance given to the environment. Finaly, we aim to investigate how this environmental technosolutionism is linked to contextual social values, such as neoliberalism. We will thus test correlations between environmental technosolutionism and proxies of neoliberalism, namely: (non) support for government implication, importance to be rich, importance of own will and opposition to equality.