Press Freedom Shapes the Link Between Mainstream and Social Media Use for News and Climate Change Beliefs: Evidence from 30 Countries

Several studies have examined the relationship between individuals’ information behavior and their beliefs about climate change. A recent meta-analysis found that, overall, using social media and other user-generated online sources for news is more strongly associated with science-consistent climate views than using mainstream media. We argue that these associations are context-dependent, because national factors like press freedom shape the quality of mainstream climate journalism. Using survey data from 23,500 respondents in 30 countries, we estimated within-country associations between the frequency of mainstream and social media use for news and four outcomes: belief in the existence of climate change, belief in its anthropogenic nature, belief in its negative consequences, and climate change knowledge. Cross-national analyses show that mainstream media use is more positively associated with science-consistent beliefs and knowledge in countries with greater press freedom, whereas the associations for social media use are more positive in countries with less press freedom.