Social Media and Beliefs about Climate Change: A Cross-National Analysis of News Use, Political Ideology, and Trust in Science

This study explores the individual- and country-level factors that influence how getting news from social media relates to people’s beliefs about anthropogenic climate change. Concepts of psychological distance and motivated reasoning are tested using multilevel analysis with survey data in 20 countries (N = 18,785). Results suggest that using social media for news is associated with a decrease in climate skepticism across the sample. However,...