Through its unique capacity for narrative transportation and its ability to create strong parasocial bonds with familiar and loved characters, mass media entertainment provides new and exciting ways to support and expand the landscape of climate education. Savvy representations of climate change and climate solutions in mass media can deliver informal climate education with the ability to reach diverse and potentially disengaged audiences at scale.

Creative professionals in the entertainment industry are already including climate themes and sustainability in content across genres and formats. In parallel, there is a growing ecosystem of environmental non-profits, research institutions, and industry-affiliated groups that provides support to this effort. Integrating these entertainment-based efforts into existing programs of climate education, communication, and outreach could both increase the breadth of audiences for these programs, while also improving their ability to empower individuals and communities to address climate change.

This poster: (i) provides a landscape analysis of key stakeholders and initiatives supporting the development, production, and distribution of climate-relevant programming within mass media entertainment; (ii) through case studies, explores how research can inform the use of entertainment to inspire climate action at scale; (iii) highlights specific examples of climate representation in popular entertainment; and, (iv) identifies empirically-grounded recommendations for narrative framing.