Josephine B. Schmitt

Climate Engagement in a Digital Age: Exploring the Drivers of Participation in Climate Discourse Online in the Context of COP21

ABSTRACT Various scholars underscore the importance of public engagement with climate change to successfully respond to the challenges of global warming. However, although online media provide various new opportunities to actively engage in climate discourse so far very little is known about the drivers of this form of engagement. Against this background, this study tested a theoretical model on the effects of media and interpersonal communication on participation in climate discourse online using data from a representative online survey of German citizens (n = 1392) carried out while COP21. Overall, the results show that receiving information on climate change from social media (social networks, Twitter, blogs), active information seeking online and interpersonal conversations about COP21 strongly encourage participation in climate discourse online. Moreover, results provide relevant insights on the role of interest in climate politics, personal issue relevance and climate scepticism as preconditions of communication effects.

The Effects of Age on the Interplay Between News Exposure, Political Discussion, and Political Knowledge

Using the theory of fluid-crystallized intelligence, we argue that with growing age, political discussion becomes less important as a complement to news exposure in political knowledge building. We applied moderated mediation analyses to the survey data of N = 69,125 German respondents. The data supported the hypothesis that news exposure influences political discussion, which in turn leverages political knowledge. As expected, we showed that news exposure is more strongly associated with political discussion for younger age groups. The results are discussed with regard to how to integrate a psychological lifespan perspective into further research on knowledge acquisition.

Too much information? Predictors of information overload in the context of online news exposure

ABSTRACT As the Internet provides massive amounts of heterogeneous information, people may perceive this medium as challenging. The difficulty to evaluate and select relevant information increases as more and more diverse sources and content are available. Information overload (IO) may be the consequence. The research presented here gives a first comprehensive overview of possible indicators for IO in the context of online news exposure. Based on an online survey (N=419), we found that younger people with less information-seeking self-efficacy were more susceptible to experience IO. Additionally, we identified motivations for media consumption and information retrieval strategies in the Internet that imply IO. With our results, we contribute to a further understanding of IO and provide an important basis for future research needed to face the challenges resulting from the rising media diversity.

Saving Tiger, Orangutan & Co: how subjective knowledge and text complexity influence online information seeking and behavior

ABSTRACT Besides others, subjective knowledge ‒ the feeling of being knowledgeable ‒ as well as the complexity of a communicated content have been shown to have an impact on different behavioral outcomes ‒ also in the field of consumer choices. However, it remains open how both factors influence subsequent outcomes such as information seeking, behavioral intentions, or actual choice behavior ‒ especially related to environmental issues. With a 2 (high/low subjective knowledge) × 2 (high/low complex information) between-subjects design (N = 87), we investigated the effects of subjective knowledge and complexity of an online news text about a specific environmental topic (i.e., palm oil) on behavioral intentions, online information seeking as well as on behavioral choices. Higher subjective knowledge raised the probability to volunteer for an NGO and the duration of time spent on a palm oil-related webpage. Environmental attitudes determined the general likelihood to engage in palm oil-related web search and the number of webpages visited. Text complexity did not influence the target variables.