Exploring the role of media in climate change awareness and adaptation among university students in Islamabad, Pakistan

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the role of media in shaping people’s perceptions of climate change and their subsequent adaptation strategies for coping with it. The study applied the agenda-setting theory to explain how social media has influenced the perceptions of young people about climate change. Uses and gratifications theory was employed to examine the accuracy of information about climate change from media sources. For this purpose, this study collected data from university students through a structured questionnaire with 406 valid responses. This study employed the Heckman econometric model and revealed that media awareness had a positive and significant coefficient (0.129), implying that increased media awareness develops perceptions and can help to mitigate the impact of climate change. Education also had a positive and significant coefficient (0.481), suggesting that higher education can help to improve individuals’ perceptions, resulting in coping strategies taken to mitigate the impact of climate change. The combined effect of social media and education was almost 80 %. Students had a higher degree of agreement that government initiatives to tackle climate change supported their coping strategies. Furthermore, social media significantly influenced the respondents' perceptions, which supported them in combating climate change. The study recommends establishing specialized climate desks in newsrooms and engaging social media influencers for climate advocacy campaigns to foster climate change awareness. Government-funded training for fact-based journalism, and conditional incentivization on advertisement allocation to media, public awareness campaigns, climate education, and collaborative research will counter misinformation, foster informed action, and build country-wide environmental responsibility.