Climate & Sustainability
Climate Storytelling: Tracking the Evidence and Trends for Why it Matters
Historically, films, TV shows, and literature have influenced social attitudes and behaviors. Shows like “Roots” in the 1970s brought the history of slavery and African American identity into mainstream consciousness, sparking educational initiatives and spurring social change. More recently, “Will & Grace” and “Modern Family” helped foster mainstream acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community. Despite evolving methods and mediums, entertainment remains a powerful force for raising public awareness and shifting cultural norms.
The Challenge
While entertainment media has represented other social issues, climate representation is less established. Studio executives and content creators may be reluctant to wade into climate-inclusive narratives, in case they’re perceived as preachy, doom-filled, or political, turning off viewers who seek to be entertained.
The good news is: there’s evidence that climate-inclusive stories can be (and have been) just as entertaining, impactful, and commercially successful as stories that don’t touch the subject. If all of that evidence could be viewed in one place, analyzed, and bolstered with new research to fill the gaps, would Hollywood be encouraged to tell more climate stories?
The Partnership
PX is partnering with the Sustainable Entertainment Alliance (S.E.A.), a consortium of the world’s leading film, television, and streaming companies, and the USC Norman Lear Center Media Impact Project (MIP) to explore the opportunities around climate storytelling by tracking evidence and trends in climate storytelling, audience demand, sustainability business levers, and the social and economic impacts of climate-related narratives.
The Sustainable Entertainment Alliance seeks to transform the entertainment business into a more sustainable industry, both onscreen and off. By supporting efforts to better reflect global realities, including climate change and sustainable solutions, we can enable the industry to meet audience demand for stories that reckon with our changing climate.
The Approach
This project seeks to establish a knowledge base for evidence and trends of the climate crisis in recent scripted TV and film.
“We know that stories about climate can inform the way audiences feel, understand, and act in the face of our climate reality. This living database will be a resource for those interested in trends connected to climate- and sustainability-related storytelling in the media and the social and business ramifications of those stories.” – Ksenia Korobkova, Media Researcher, USC Norman Lear Center Media Impact Project
The goal for this 6-month pilot project is to build a novel tool: a living, searchable annotated database. The database will compile recent literature that might be used to track social and commercial analyses, identify research gaps, and ultimately examine the business implications of accurately depicting climate and sustainability stories on screen.
The USC team will search the public domain and academic journals to put together a database of current literature related to climate stories in entertainment, organized by five topic clusters:
The team will annotate 250 sources from the last 3-5 years, with a focus on North America and Europe emphasizing entertainment screen media.
Later phases of research could explore the gaps in the existing literature to develop research priorities to strengthen the evidence base for why climate storytelling is an important and economic choice.
“As we delve deeper into the existing body of research, we can better align with audience demand for stories that authentically address climate change and sustainability. This data-driven approach ensures we can effectively support creative teams who wish to meet the audience demand for content that reflects their interests and concerns.” – Sam Read, Executive Director, Sustainable Entertainment Alliance
In the News
