Climate Knowledge and Community Ritual: Miami Weathercasters as Climate Change Communicators

Abstract

This paper investigates television weather forecasters’ role in leading discussions about climate change. It focuses on Miami, a city that has become a symbol of climate change’s effects in local, national and international imaginations. Most studies of climate change communication focus on the transmission of information from one group to another, such as from scientists to the lay public, but they do not capture the ways that climate knowledge can become part of everyday community life. This paper uses the case of TV weather reporters, or weathercasters, in Miami to investigate their roles as both participants in and instigators of ‘community ritual’. I combine James Carey’s concepts of communication as transmission and ritual with Candis Callison’s description of climate change vernaculars to show that ritual and community-building are just as important in facilitating the acceptance of talking about climate change as the broadcasting of scientific concepts.