Kirsty A O'Callaghan

Effective climate change communication is crucial for fostering public understanding, enhancing selfefficacy, and catalysing the behaviour change necessary to address the climate crisis. There is both a perception and scholarly evidence that climate change science is not communicated in ways that always achieve these aims. Both the global scientific consensus on the reality of human activity-induced climate change and the specific mechanisms through which climate change is induced are unevenly communicated or, at least, conveyed in ways that often do not facilitate public engagement nor prompt changes in public opinion or individual behaviour significantly.

Variations in the audience’s knowledge and levels of engagement have been partly explained by examining the impact of socio-economic status, education and literacy levels, and age of audiences, as well as via examining the communication channels chosen to communicate climate science. Communication efficacy is also influenced by the skills, style, tone, and rhetoric of those doing the communicating. The gender of science communicators and climate change communication audiences has received less scholarly attention, and the role of gender in shaping effective climate change communication strategies remains poorly understood. This thesis explores what constitutes effective climate change communication and, specifically, whether communicator gender plays a role in the reach and resonance of climate messages.

This research employs a concurrent mixed methods approach, drawing on in-depth interviews with 29 leading climate change communicators from Australia and New Zealand and a survey-based convenience sample of young people aged 16 to 25 in both countries. This study finds that there is a complex interplay between communicator gender, audience receptivity, and the broader context in which climate messages are delivered that collectively impact perceived efficacy. While gender dynamics clearly have a role in shaping communication strategies, this study finds that the effectiveness of messaging is shaped as much by the overall relationship between the communicator and audience and that the communicator’s gender as an independent variable is not as significant as the study anticipated.