Amanda L. Molder

University of Wisconsin–Madison | UW · Department of Life Sciences Communication

The increasing intensity of wildfires and hurricanes signal the reality of climate change, drawing media coverage that could capture the attention of policymakers. In a computational content analysis of 8906 news articles from four national newspapers, we compare coverage of wildfires and hurricanes in the U.S. from 2016 to 2021 examining volume an...

Background The practice of viewing animals in captivity is losing popularity among tourists, who would rather observe wildlife in their natural environments. A laudable sustainability goal is to provide enjoyable viewing possibilities while also protecting wildlife. Focus of the Article This study tested a social marketing campaign that promoted r...

Twitter enables an online public sphere for social movement actors, news organizations, and others to frame climate change and the climate movement. In this paper, we analyze five million English tweets posted from 2018 to 2021 demonstrating how peaks in Twitter activity relate to key events and how the framing of the climate strike discourse has e...

Climate change is a critical global problem that requires immediate action to mitigate its effects. In recent years, youth climate activists have mobilized worldwide protests to demand action, using social media platforms to communicate and broadcast their message. This study examines Greta Thunberg's rise to global prominence through an analysis o...

Background and aims: Before COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and many other organizations published many images of its pathogen (namely SARS-CoV-2) to raise public awareness of the disease. Despite their scientific...

Infographics of modest complexity are commonly used to convey knowledge to non-experts. However, little is known regarding how the use of infographics may convince the public and lead to massive behavioral changes in response to an acute cause. In March 2020, scientists and journalists revamped a scholarly published graph into the “flatten the curv...

Due to the growing concern of the global climate change crisis and young adults responding to this crisis in large numbers by engaging in public-sphere environmental actions, this study seeks to more deeply understand motivations and barriers of this young population to engage in environmental action. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) fram...