Climate fight or climate coalition? An ethical research on different climate change communication frames and their motivation towards action.

Abstract

2019 was the year of the climate, with more climate communication than ever. I have identified two climate change communication frames that are present in the public discourse, which both want climate change mitigation but have a different perspective on how we will achieve this. One is the blame-frame, with for example Greta Thunberg, and the other is the love-frame, with for example by Charles Eisenstein. The research question of this thesis is: Based on morally relevant evaluation criteria, which climate change communication frame (i.e. a blame frame, love-frame or both) would be preferable for motivating individual action to mitigate climate change (e.g. climate protests)? To research this, firstly both frames are discussed, and two ideal types are created. Secondly, an evaluative framework was made, which set up the morally relevant evaluation criteria, divided into motivational criteria and moral acceptability criteria. Third, the frames were tested against the evaluation framework. I argue that while the love-frame has an advantage over the blame-frame, ideally both frames would adjust some of their characteristics to resemble the other frame more and coexist. However, to make that happen some of the ideals of the love-frame should be incorporated more into society.