What’s the Beef with the Media: The Effects of Social and Traditional Media on Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization on the Issue of Livestock Production and Climate Change

Abstract

As the world population approaches 9.7 billion people by 2050, we face the immense challenge of meeting increase resource demand while trying to mitigate climate change. Food demand is expected to rise by more than 50% with animal-based food demand being the majority of this increase. At the same time, the agricultural sector, especially livestock production, accounts for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. To meet this growing food demand while keeping climate warming below 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, something must give. Curbing meat consumption in overconsuming regions can drastically mitigate the projected greenhouse gas emissions around the world. Given the potential savings of the strategy, we must figure out how to induce such behavior change. Such a task seems daunting given the increased polarization in the US on the issues of climate change. Republicans and Democrats cannot agree on the facts or science. Many blame the media for this polarization, as it depicts a two-sided climate change debate when in reality, there is vast scientific consensus that human-induced climate change is occurring. Simultaneously, people point fingers at social media for increasing polarization as more people now use the platforms as a news source. People who consume news and other information on social media report a large amount of concern about the accuracy of such information. Bringing together these two bodies of research, I seek to understand how perceptions of social and traditional media are driving polarization on the issue of livestock production and meat consumption to mitigate climate change. I utilize the well-established biased assimilation and attitude polarization paradigm to test my research question. The range of topics it has tested, mediums utilized to present information, and the ability to compare between groups make this model the ideal methodology through which to examine the differences in social and traditional media. Participants are exposed to either two articles or two Twitter feeds that present both attitude-congruent and incongruent information about the impacts of livestock production on climate change and whether people should eat less meat. Participants report how credible and convincing they find each article or Twitter feed to be and how much their existing beliefs and attitudes about the topic change after reading this information. I find the expected patterns of biased assimilation and attitude polarization: participants rate attitude-congruent information as more credible and convincing than attitude-incongruent information and ultimately become more polarized on the issue of livestock production. When examining differences between media types, believers and non-believers of climate change rate congruent information equally between media types. However, believers find incongruent information to be more convincing on social media than in traditional media. The opposite is true for non-believers who find incongruent information to be more credible in traditional media. This means there is no difference in polarization between the two types of media, but those exposed to information on social media appear to have less belief in the impacts of livestock production on climate change than those consuming information in traditional media. This research helps to inform us that to effectively communicate the impacts of livestock production and necessity for decreasing meat consumption, information and arguments rooted in the science and impacts on climate change are not persuasive, especially not when presented on social media. Instead, future research should seek to understand how more persuasive messaging techniques can be utilized on social media to combat the decreased perceptions of credibility and convincingness of information on these platforms. This can then inform various organizations dedicated to the cause of mitigating climate impacts from food demand on how to best communicate this message.