Public Communication of Climate and Justice: A Scoping Review

Abstract

The intersection of public communication, climate change, and justice constitutes a nascent but growing interdisciplinary field of vital importance as climate change, driven largely by consumption patterns in high‐income counties, disproportionately affects communities with limited adaptive capacity, raising profound justice concerns. This scoping review delves into the emerging domain of public communication regarding climate and justice and seeks to provide a comprehensive overview that may help guide future research. It maps the landscape of existing peer‐reviewed journal scholarship, identifying trends and gaps across disciplines such as communication, energy politics, and urban planning. Following a birds‐eye quantitative analysis of English peer‐reviewed journal articles in the field (N = 250 studies), six thematic areas are scrutinized in‐depth: (1) activism and protest, (2) journalism and news media, (3) international negotiations, national policy, and local engagement, (4) art and cultural production, (5) climate obstruction and delay, and (6) communication effects on attitudes and behaviors. The review reveals, inter alia, a predominance of research originating from, and case studies focused on high‐income countries, a strong reliance on qualitative methods, and a tendency to conceive of justice in terms of distributive rather than procedural or representational questions. In the authors' view, the review indicates a need for comparative research, quantitative studies, and a broader inclusion of perspectives from regions disproportionately affected by climate change—particularly from low‐ and middle‐income countries. The authors call for a concerted effort to bridge the gap between activism and communication by emphasizing the critical role of justice‐oriented communication in fostering a fair and rapid transition to a sustainable future.