Facebook has recently expanded its Climate Science Center as it looks to improve its efforts with regards to combating the spread of climate change misinformation on its platforms. Facebook has also recently partnered up with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, coming up with a new study to get a better sense of people’s attitudes towards climate change by region and how proactive they are towards its impacts.

The study takes from a sample of 75,000 Facebook users across the globe and specifically looks at how the views of men and women differ on the various elements of climate change. The study provides some interesting perspectives on the perceived causality and results of rising global temperatures.

Facebook explains:

“We found that a majority of people in about half of the countries and territories surveyed said they knew at least a moderate amount about climate change, led by Australia and Germany. However, in some countries, there were significant numbers of people who had little to no knowledge of climate change. This includes more than a quarter of people in Nigeria who reported that they had “never heard of it,” as well as substantial portions of people in Malaysia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam.”

There are a lot of insights to be derived from this. Among such insights are broader attitudes and understanding of the issue, not to mention what localized actions are being undertaken in order to address these issues. This also does not mean to say that regions in the lower portions of the chart simply choose to ignore the climate crisis, but rather that crucial information is not able to reach these communities.

The study also wishes to highlight several engendered attitudes between men and women regarding climate change. One result explains:

“While there is lower reported knowledge of climate change in less industrialized countries, there are larger gaps between genders in industrial countries such as the U.K., Canada, and the United States. We see significantly more men saying they know at least a moderate amount about climate change in these countries, highlighting the need to raise public awareness on the issue in both developed and developing countries.”

Among interesting observations, more men, although data is ‘self-reported’, say that “they know more about the crisis. In Contrast, the women, on average, were more ‘worried’ than the men, at least with respect to the issue.

The Wrap

The main gist here revolves around how men and women respond to societal issues. What Facebook wishes to underline is that those who do get some information on climate change from the platform, whether legitimate or not, do say something about its influence when it comes to decision making. There are a lot of important points brought up within the study, but perhaps none overshadow climate change as being the key issue of our time. That in itself should serve as a crucial indicator because future efforts will no doubt have entire industries giving more focus on their personal efforts to combat climate change.

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Sources

https://bit.ly/3H1p2Zo