ABSTRACT
Climate change and GMOs are both environmental topics but have quite different characteristics and salience in terms of public opinion. Climate change is a pressing concern that could endanger human life on Earth, unless greenhouse emissions are curbed in the next decade. GMOs can also have an impact on daily life (food, medicines, etc.), but this is far more restricted. While there is a broad scientific consensus on climate change, this is not the case with GMOs. And while media coverage of climate change is pervasive and multidimensional (touching upon politics, policymaking, economics, the environment, etc.), GMOs are still seen as a mainly scientific issue in which there have been few recent newsworthy advances. Therefore, these differences can have an impact on how citizens receive science information on these topics and how they form their views on climate change and GMOs. Accordingly, the main objective of this chapter is to explore the perceptions of the citizens participating in the European public consultations on these two topics, in order to understand how science communication can have an impact on general viewpoints and beliefs. As to the other two health-related topics addressed in the public consultations (vaccines and CAM), the participants from the five countries in which they were held expressed similar views. Nonetheless, it is assumed that their responses before the COVID-19 pandemic would be different today and, therefore, the first two (climate change and GMOs) would be more contemporary and burning issues – at least both have been less influenced by the pandemic. Undoubtedly, a further enquiry would have to be performed on vaccines and CAM to check whether the citizenry have since changed their attitude towards science information following the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and misinformation on their lives.
