About the project
The climate crisis is one of the greatest challenges we face in today's society. Psychological research shows that emotions play an important role in how we respond to the situation. In this project, we aim to critically examine how climate emotion concepts (e.g. "climate anxiety", "eco-grief") are understood and taken up among young people and in the public debate, and what societal effects such understandings can have.
Goal
The goal of the project is to increase understanding of how emotions about climate change are formed and expressed among young people, and how this is used in the debate about society's response to the climate crisis. We examine how emotions are portrayed and negotiated in the public debate. Inspired by discourse and affective theory, we look at how climate emotions are linguistically framed within the Nordic cultural context. We are interested in how prevailing expectations and norms affect the way young people experience and talk about climate change.
Method and Ethics
The project uses qualitative research methods, such as focus group interviews, analysis of Instagram and Tik Tok posts and comments, as well as news articles, to explore how young people express and negotiate emotional engagement with climate change. We collect data anonymously from social media. The project has been evaluated by SIKT and the Internal Ethics Committee at the Department of Psychology, UiO.
