2026 Undergraduate Research Showcase

Environmental Journalism: Audience Engagement

Document Type

Student Presentation

Presentation Date

4-24-2026

Faculty Sponsor

Dr. Kyle Boggs

Abstract

Despite the ever-threatening presence of global environmental change, environmental journalism efforts aimed at mainstream audiences remain lackluster and inconsistent. Often, environmental journalism outlets name broad issues without providing applicable solutions that the general public can adopt in everyday behavior. By developing a more thorough understanding of what sparks environmental inspiration within the general public, as well as learning what efforts people are willing to make, we can improve how we use communication tools in the environmental sphere. My research asks, “how can environmental journalism be made more effective in providing applicable solutions to inspire behavior change?” To explore my research question, I will facilitate a short survey to students on campus to understand students’ consumption of environmental media and its effectiveness. After analyzing the data, I will schedule interviews by reaching out to survey respondents to explore the data in more detail. I predict that the results gathered from my survey will show that most students outside of the environmental field do not interact with environmental media frequently. I anticipate that when they do interact with environmental media, it does not have long-lasting impacts that influence them to change their behaviors. To further analyze data, I will conduct in-depth interviews to collect information from a diverse range of student respondents to my survey. I will focus my interviews on what does or does not make environmental communication effective to interviewees so I can use this information to explore potential solutions.

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