Swiss study: Media coverage of climate change research is more likely to provoke "denial and avoidance" in readers. It focuses mainly on long-term projections and a narrow range of threats such as melting glaciers or the disappearance of polar bears.
Large-scale threats are known to stir up fear, and when faced with descriptive articles, the public will tend to ignore the problem, according to the researchers. "If the goal of a given research is to have a societal impact, then it seems that we are pressing all the buttons that do not work," said Marie-Elodie Perga.