More than scientists: How message and messenger attributes influence viewers’ climate change intentions

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0331672 September 10, 2025 5 / 20 more useful. Ashokkumar and Pennebaker [54] found that greater levels of affiliation expressed in online language pre- dicted greater online group identity strength. Faces and Places According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion [55], individuals who are motivated and able to engage in effortful information processing tend to examine the content of potentially persuasive information, whereas, individuals who lack motivation or ability tend to be primarily influenced by peripheral cues that require little cognitive effort to assess. These cues include message characteristics (e.g., imagery) and characteristics of the message source (e.g., messenger). Given the complexity of climate science, and its inherent demands on cognitive processes, lay audiences may place con- siderable weight on peripheral cues when evaluating messages about climate change. Audiences not only make scientific judgements about what to believe, they also make social judgements about who to believe [56]. Climate change communication research has shown that audiences are sensitive to several messenger characteristics, including their credibility, perceived knowledge, expertise, trustworthiness, attractiveness, and similarity with their intended audience [57–61], and that positive messenger evaluations can predict effective persuasion [62]. For example, Anderson et al. [58] assigned participants to watch a video that presented information about weather, climate,

or both weather and climate, and then asked them to evaluate the weathercaster (in terms of their likability, knowledge, personal similarity, and as an advisor or co-worker) and to indicate their risk perceptions of global warming. Compared to participants who viewed the weather-only video, participants who watched a climate video rated global warming as more harmful if they positively evaluated the weathercaster and less harmful if they negatively evaluated the weathercaster. Furthermore, the effect of positive weathercaster evaluations on risk perceptions held regardless of political ideology, and it was strongest among conservatives. Messenger demographics may also influence responses to climate change messages. Male presenters tend to exert greater social influence than women, which may reflect differences in stereotypical gender roles—with males associ- ated with agentic (leadership) behavior, and females associated with communal behavior [63]. However, some evidence suggests that the influence of presenter gender may vary according to audience characteristics. For example, Sugimoto et al. [64] found that YouTube science videos that were presented by men were watched and liked more often than videos presented by women—but no gender differences were found in responses to videos on the TED website. It has also been suggested that older rather than younger presenters are more confident and persuasive. However, Sugimoto et al. [64] found that presenters’ academic age was not associated with popularity of online science videos, and Newman et al. [65]

found that younger video presenters (especially young white males) were viewed as most attractive, and that white males were viewed as most confident and likely to be leaders, but neither age nor gender predicted viewers’ intentions to vote for the presenter in an upcoming election. Another study by Gheorghiu et al. [66] found that perceived scientific quality and entertainment values of TED talks were not influenced by first impressions, gender, attractiveness, ethnic background, or age of the speaker. Viewers’ responses may also be influenced by the visual content of the message. Several studies have used Q-sort methodology to identify categories of images used in climate change news articles [67–71]. These studies have identified two prominent recurring categories: images of impacts on nature (e.g., melting glaciers, droughts, floods) and images of people (reacting to impacts, politicians/leaders, celebrity activists). However neither category reliably produces optimal responses. O’Neill et al. [69] found that images of people tend to undermine viewers’ perceived salience of climate change and their self-efficacy to address it and that, as per previous findings, images of climate impacts tend to promote feelings of salience but undermine self-efficacy [14,68]. Imagery of people and impacts has also been observed in television news [72–74] and online videos [75] about climate change. For example, in their analysis of 78 news stories on Spanish television, León and Erviti [73] found that footage of

ice melting appeared most frequently, followed by climate summits and other international events, animals, protests, and