What do you mean 'climate change'? Framings of climate change in citizens' climate assemblies

Abstract: A preliminary technical framing of climate change in the evidence of citizens' climate assemblies (CCAs) might lead to closing down policy options and ignoring other sides of climate change, such as questions of power. A limited range of frames can negatively impact epistemic conditions for deliberation and lead to decreased engagement by participants who do not share the values proposed by the dominant frames. As climate change framing can affect the policy recommendations participants produce, a dominating technical framing may reinforce narrow and incomplete views on climate change and reduce novel and potentially transformative policy ideas. I developed a framework to study climate change framing in CCAs and used it on general climate change and topic-specific (energy) information provided to UK, German and Global CCA participants. Although the three CCAs differed in many aspects, no major differences in the framing of climate change stood out. More differences in framing arose between different speaker types and between the written material of the Global assembly and speaker presentations across assemblies. Also, the framing within the topic group energy was more technical than in the general climate change information. In total, frames regarding human safety, governance issues, fairness between people and countries and technology and energy were used most in the general climate change information. There was little mention of the role of science, communication, economy, personal agency or human-nature relationship. Literature suggests that a technocratic view on climate change dominates the evidence of CCAs. However, my findings do not fully confirm that. Nevertheless, there remained room for improvement in applying a more diverse set of frames and including alternative and potentially transformative views in the three case studies. Future research can use my framework to systematically assess the framing of climate change in the evidence of CCAs.