Climate Change in Italian Public Opinion, Media, and Parties: State of the Art and Research Agenda

Despite the growing impact of climate change on the social, economic, and political sphere, the Italian context represents a case of peculiar latency of such an issue both in the political arena and in the public debate. Also, Italian social and political research has devoted scarce attention to the issue, so far. Our contribution aims at shedding light on the climate change issue in Italian public opinion, media coverage, and parties’ positions, by reviewing extant research and identifying relevant research questions to be addressed. We furthermore propose future lines of research on the topic, by outlining a research agenda aimed to analyse climate change from an integrated perspective that considers the media system, the political system, and citizens. All in all, this work aims at providing a framework for studying the issue of climate change in Italy from the perspective of social and political research.