Climate Change Conversations Amongst Young Adults: On Conversational Safety and the Search for Consensus in Polarizing Interactions

While much research has focused on the effectiveness of various climate change frames (i.e. cognitive), much less is known about how people co-construct the meaning of climate change in conversations (i.e. interactive). We conducted an interactional framing analysis on focus-group discussions about climate measures to examine how young adults interactively construct the meaning of climate issues, identities and relationships, and the conversational process. Our findings suggest that challenging discussions oftentimes lead to polarizing interactions, yet they also result in attempts to build conversational safety and consensus. These dynamics are defined by (a) the construction of shared truths and experiences; (b) joint fact-finding through constructive contestation; and (c) harmonizing through the active display of positive intent. We conclude that the interplay in the conversations impacts how young adults think about climate change, which provides fertile ground for future research.