“If we don't make the right choice, we bleed”: local media as a resource for climate literacy

Background Climate literacy is necessary to enable people to participate well-informed in climate mitigation and adaptation. It is widely held that the media should assume responsibility in addressing public misconceptions and fostering climate literacy. Methods Based on semi-structured interviews with 75 residents of the Norwegian Arctic, I examined the role of local media in climate literacy. The sample consisted of 8 journalists and editors from local news media and 67 other residents. Results Local media play a significant role in the public's (non)understanding of the links between various local and global events, and between these events and climate change. They publish some statistical data, articles about the weather, extreme events, and other local issues without clearly linking these to climate change and its causes. The journalists fear losing readers and believe that complex issues, such as climate change, are beyond the scope of local media. The interviewed citizens read local newspapers and refer to them in their stories about local events. At the same time, more than half believe that there has been no climate change where they live or that they are unsure whether what they are observing is climate change. Based on the results, I recommend the need for a more holistic understanding of climate literacy to enable local media to include climate-related stories from a broader range of actors with non-technical forms of knowledge, and to highlight voices currently unheard in the climate discourse, such as ordinary citizens and indigenous people.