Press freedom shapes the link between mainstream and social media use for news and climate change understanding: evidence from 30 countries

A recent meta-analysis examining the relationship between individuals’ information behaviour and their views about climate change found that, on average, using social media and other user-generated online sources was more strongly associated with science-consistent climate beliefs than using mainstream media. The present study, however, investigates whether these associations vary across countries depending on the level of press freedom, as mainstream journalism is better able to foreground scientific expertise and challenge misleading climate claims when operating freely, whereas social media may provide a partial alternative to constrained domestic mainstream coverage. Accordingly, mainstream media use was hypothesised to be more positively associated with science-consistent climate beliefs and knowledge in countries with greater press freedom than in those with lower press freedom, while the opposite pattern was expected for social media use for news. The analysis draws on a survey of 23,500 respondents in 30 countries. Within each country, survey-weighted models estimated associations between mainstream and social media use for news and four outcomes: belief in the existence of climate change, belief in its anthropogenic nature, belief in its negative consequences, and climate change knowledge, adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics. Overall, mainstream media use was more often positively associated with science-consistent beliefs and knowledge than social media use. Cross-national analyses then tested whether these country-specific associations varied with press freedom, controlling for socioeconomic development. For each outcome, the association with mainstream media use was more positive in countries with greater press freedom than in those with lower press freedom, whereas the association with social media use for news showed the opposite cross-national pattern. These findings suggest that mainstream media generally contribute more to public understanding of climate change than social media, especially where press freedom is greater, while social media may play a partial compensatory role where domestic journalism is constrained.