Introduction

Recent decades have been characterized by an increase in extreme events due to climate change (CC) (e.g., Seneviratne et al., 2023). Climate-related hazards have had a significant impact on people’s lives, causing loss and damage to human settlements and the environment. Changes in the spatial and temporal distributions of precipitation increase the frequency of natural hazards such as floods and landslides, thereby increasing the risk to exposed populations (AghaKouchak et al. 2020). Therefore, the need to improve the awareness of the populations at risk has also increased to improve their ability to cope with natural hazards, i.e., their climate change adaptation (CCA) and resilience. The improvement of population resilience comes through effective communication and needs to be participatory (Henriksen et al. 2018; Thomas et al. 2021). The communication must also address the pervasive and increasing skepticism among laypeople (Smith and Mayer, 2019), which can be shaped by different sources of information (Sarathchandra and Haltinner, 2023). This skepticism is increasing despite scientists being more cautious than alarmists in their interpretation of CC consequences (Brysse et al. 2013), and there is a wide consensus among scholars about the CC phenomenon (Myers et al. 2015). Scientists explain this skepticism by considering a) psychological reasons—the burden of potential consequences is unbearable (Marder 2023); b) political reasons (Jylhä et al. 2020); and c) distrust in science (Bugden, 2022; Kovaka, 2021). Thus, a strong need exists “for new pathways of effective communication” (Das, 2020). Consequently, identifying better communication strategies for discussing CC and its effects remains one of the most important challenges.

In recent years, technological innovations have profoundly changed modes of communication, influencing many fields, particularly scientific ones (Faehnrich, 2021). In this context, the pervasive adoption of information technology has led learning platforms (LPs) to become one of the most powerful tools for targeted communication and education.

Additionally, LPs have emerged as a virtual place to share knowledge and experiences across various fields, comprising the improvement of CCA. Therefore, LPs could represent an excellent virtual environment in which it is possible to integrate all the technological tools for better digital communication aimed at the CCA. Many authors have underlined the need to use digital tools for better education aimed at CCA (see, e.g., Carrillo-Nieves et al. 2024; Hajj-Hassan et al. 2024; Zhao et al. 2023). In addition, several studies have focused on what elements are important for LPs devoted to formal education in fields other than CCA (see, e.g., Dong et al. 2024).

On the other hand, there is also a strong need for climate change education that is not limited to formal education and provides nonformal and informal learning opportunities, which can be considered vital tools, as stated in the last UNESCO report about education and climate change (GEM Report UNESCO, 2024). Nevertheless, in this specific field, an analysis of the elements that would make a LP for the CCA truly effective is still lacking.

This paper aims to address this gap by answering the following research questions:

  • Do the existing LPs in the field of CCA consist of all the elements considered by the scientific literature to be the best tools for effective communication?

  • What should be the general characteristics of an effective LP in the CCA field?

The study proposes an approach useful for performing an assessment of the existing LPs for CCA on the basis of what the scientific literature considers the best tools for effective scientific internet communication. The approach can be used to highlight the mandatory elements for an effective LP devoted to the CCA, representing a good basis both to improve the existing digital communication for the CCA and to promote more effective new communication.

The paper first discusses the literature review, which helps to identify the most important tools for effective communication for the CCA; then, it explains the study design used for identifying and analyzing existing LPs for the CCA; and finally, it highlights the results. In the Discussion, the findings suggest the main aspects of an ideal LP for CCA; finally, in the Conclusions, the results obtained are summarized, highlighting the limitations of the study and the forthcoming perspectives.

The paper is realized as a part of Next Generation EU-Italian NRRP Project “Tech4You-Technologies for climate change adaptation and quality of life improvement”.

Literature review

Importance of communication for the CCA

Owing to the increasing risks related to natural hazards from CC (AghaKouchak et al. 2020), there is an urgent need for actions devoted to CCA (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC 2023). At the international level, adaptation and mitigation, aimed at decreasing the effects of CC, are considered strictly interconnected, such as by reducing the vulnerability of environmental and socioeconomic systems and present and future damage (Huang-Lachmann and Guenther, 2020). From this perspective, shared knowledge is a mandatory nonstructural strategy: it can enhance coping and adaptive capacities, which ultimately strengthen resilience to climate-related extreme events (Lindsay, 2018).

Communication plays a pivotal role and can be considered a powerful tool to enhance CCA, “leading to adapting behaviors that increase populations’ resilience” (Maibach et al. 2023). Since communication is not merely an act to inform citizens, it also involves assessing whether citizens have understood the content of communication itself (Salvati et al. 2016). Given the complexity of the diffusion of new communication channels, it is crucial to identify the best way to engage citizens, select the most suitable communication strategies and involve stakeholders from different societal areas, including civil society, academia, policymakers, and industry (Oliveira and Carvalho, 2023; Magalhães et al., 2022; Carayannis and Campbell, 2010).

Ballantyne (2016) underlines the importance of exploring various communication contexts, since CC is often perceived as distant in space and time, which leads to a lack of engagement in this field. He also highlights that CC communication clusters around five main perspectives: a) public understanding of CC, b) mass media, c) strategic communication, d) communication effects, and e) conceptual articles.

Tools for CCA communication and learning platforms

Virtual environments facilitate the integration of all the aspects discussed in the preceding paragraph, leading to the diffusion of LPs. LPs are places where educational resources, multimedia materials, and communication tools coexist (Piotrowski, 2010). In addition, they are powerful tools for encouraging the participation of multiple stakeholders. Certainly, when too many participants are involved, conflicts can arise, for example, in the case of CC skeptics. However, these conflicts can be useful because they can foster increased dialog (Yuen et al. 2013). Nevertheless, despite the general agreement about the importance of a participatory approach for LPs’ creation, such an approach is still far from dominant (Giardullo et al. 2023). This multifaceted participation can be achieved by engaging a large number of individuals from diverse backgrounds (Luís et al. 2022). The feedback received from the participants to the Newsera project (Luís et al. 2022) underlined the existing barriers of communication (especially digital) and the lack of engagement, requiring, concurrently, a more substantial use of the technological tools currently available. Luís et al. (2022) emphasize the necessity of using numerous tools for communication to facilitate the engagement of final users. Aydoğan et al. (2022) reported that the use of mobile apps and social media can facilitate access to LPs. With respect to social media, Kaushal et al. (2022) highlighted its importance as a source of unstructured data for a better understanding of the perception of CC. Moreover, these channels can be important for a type of communication that uses less conventional modalities, such as images, which are found to be more engaging than text-only procedures (Levi et al. 2024; Mooseder et al. 2023). In relation to the different uses of images, memes are powerfully emerging. Ross and Rivers (2019) highlighted that memes represent a powerful form of participation on social media. Conversely, Johann et al. (2023) argue that research concerning this specific aspect is lacking, although memes are now a popular practice. Villamor and Badmos (2016) emphasize the role of gamification in effective communication, highlighting that games encourage “sharing of views, knowledge and perceptions of climate-related issues” among players. Their work in West Africa, which used a game concerning rainfall-related issues, emphasized that the involved farmers preferred to make decisions only after receiving relevant information. Additionally, the majority of players indicated that the game was reasonably similar to reality. Furthermore, Sillanpää et al. (2024) reported that the use of gamification reduces the psychological distance from CC.

On the basis of the preceding discussion, it can be concluded that the construction of effective communication for CCA, which incorporates all available tools, remains a significant challenge, particularly in the context of risk communication.

From the literature discussed thus far, the elements to be addressed for good communication for CCA are i) facing skepticism and its various causes; ii) reaching different stakeholders, particularly schools, through effective customization; iii) employing different strategies, including various tools; iv) exploring multiple communication channels; and v) promoting participatory engagement.

Given the significance of the objective in question, understanding the essential elements a LP must include to be deemed effective for the CCA is critical. This aspect, even if it is considered essential for formal education in fields other than the CCA (see, e.g., Dong et al. 2024), has not been addressed thus far for LPs specifically devoted to the CCA. This work aims to fill this gap and proposes a foundation for future improvements on the basis of the insights gained.

Study design

The study was conducted following a procedure that consists of three steps (Fig. 1). The first step concerned the data collection of i) the existing LPs regarding CCA through a web search engine and ii) the articles focusing on internet communication about CCA in general and specifically using LPs through a literature search database. The LP data collection aimed at drawing a list to be used as a starting point for subsequent analysis; on the other hand, the data collection of articles aimed at identifying the elements that are widely recognized by scientists as useful and necessary for effective internet communication in the CCA field.

Fig. 1: Flowchart of the proposed study design.
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The first step concerned the data collection, the second step entailed the analysis of the selected articles and the assessment of the selected indicators, and the third step involved the construction of the LP ranking.

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After that, both the list of LPs and the articles were filtered according to the requirements for eligibility. The second step entailed i) the analysis of the articles selected in the preceding step, with the objective of identifying what tools can represent indicators for optimal internet communication in the CCA field, and ii) the assessment of the importance and relative weights of the selected indicators by a panel of European academic experts. Finally, the third step involved i) the construction of a LPs ranking achieved by evaluating both the presence and absence of the chosen indicators for each selected LP and ii) the assignment of the average relative weight provided by the panel of experts to all the indicators found on LPs.

Step 1

The data collection concerning existing LPs addressing CCA was performed from August to September 2023 through Google Chrome©, since it is one of the most utilized search engines by laypeople who represent the common final users of LPs. The internet search used the following keyword phrases: “International climate change learning platform”, “European climate change learning platform” and “Italian climate change learning platform”. The internet search was limited to the first ten pages, as determined by the tool’s algorithm. The list of 73 platforms provided by the internet search was subsequently filtered, assuming that an effective LP for CCA should incorporate both formal and nonformal or informal education tools (GEM Report UNESCO, 2024). This led to the classification of the LPs into three categories: LPs, non-LPs, and course platforms. The first category includes LPs that exhibit the expected characteristics of a platform that provides more than one type of both noneducational and educational content (39 platforms). The second category includes platforms that exhibit only one typology of noneducational content (24 platforms). Finally, the last category contains platforms that exhibit only courses (10 platforms).

By using the same keyword sentences, a bibliographic search was performed using one of the most popular archives for scientific bibliography (Clarivate Web of Science© All Databases). This search selected publications that focused on internet communication about CCA, both in general and specifically using LPs, and was limited to a ten-year time span ending on 31 August 2023 to consider only recent literature.

A list of 292 articles was generated from the keyword sentences: 202 papers from the “International climate change learning platform”; 82 from the “European climate change learning platform”; and 8 from the “Italian climate change learning platform”. Duplicates, short conference proceedings, and papers on highly specific topics (e.g., energy management connected with CC) were excluded from this list, along with papers addressing the general principles of communication, as this topic is not within the scope of this study. This process yielded a list of 34 research papers.

Step 2

The selection of elements that should be present in a good LP for the CCA was made possible by the analysis of the 34 research publications from Step 1. These publications consider various existing internet approaches and the possibility of proactively involving end users. The selected elements were used in the present study as indicators to assess the LPs provided by Step 1.

For this evaluation, it is also important to determine the significance that each indicator should have for an effective LP. To mitigate the potential for subjectivity in this judgment, the indicators were weighted by a panel of ten European academic experts in the field of CCA, disaster risk reduction, and related communication strategies, following a Delphi approach (Okoli and Pawlowski, 2004). All the experts were asked to suggest a relative weight for each indicator on the basis of their perception of the importance of such an indicator in improving the effectiveness of a LP.

Step 3

Of the 73 platforms selected in Step 1, only the 39 that presented both noneducational and educational content were evaluated via the indicators provided by the analysis of scientific literature.

The evaluation followed a procedure that a) verified the presence/absence of the 13 indicators in every LP and b) assigned to each indicator the average relative weight provided by the expert panel.

This procedure allowed the construction of a LP ranking, which provided information about their adherence to the characteristics of good internet communication on CCA on the basis of the use of tools suggested by the scientific literature.

The final ranking resulting from this final phase was derived from the sum of all average relative weights of the indicators found in the LPs.

Results

Table 1 shows the list of LPs derived from the internet search described in the first step of the study design. The LPs were divided into the aforementioned three categories of platforms, in alphabetical order. The first column of the table lists the 39 LPs eligible for the subsequent evaluation. The indicators for the evaluation, provided by the scientific bibliographic search (Step 1), are reported in Table 2, along with the corresponding papers and the provenance of the authors.

Table 1 Subdivision of the 73 platforms provided by internet research into three categories: learning platforms (39), non-learning platforms (24), and course platforms (10).
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Table 2 Indicators for the LP evaluation, with reference literature and provenance of the authors.
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This table shows that customized content is considered a crucial element for effective online communication about CCA since a greater number of authors underline its importance. The findings subsequently suggest the same importance for the engagement of the final users, which has been translated into the indicator “A blog of discussion with free participation”. It comes immediately after the use of alternative ways of communication, such as gamification, underlined as a powerful tool by the authors listed in the table. The content for students and their different levels is then presented, followed by the presence of interrogable maps and educational videos.

Apparently, less emphasis is placed on the availability of downloadable educational/technical content, “how to do” and “what to do” tips and the opportunity to participate in free courses of different durations.

The judgment of the expert panel (Table 3) partially reflects the results obtained from the analysis of the literature, assigning equal importance to customization and student content but giving the lowest score to gamification. Notably, while the experts are all European, the authors that support the use of gamification are mostly from outside Europe. This underscores the necessity of considering the peculiarities of the territory in which the communication operates (Antronico et al. 2023).

Table 3 Indicators for the LP evaluation, with the relative weights assigned by the ten experts. ID: identification of indicators; Exp: experts, identified with a number from 1 to 10 for privacy; Mean: average of the weights assigned by the experts.
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Table 4 presents the list of the 39 chosen LPs, ordered from the highest to the lowest score.

Table 4 Ranking of the 39 learning platforms obtained by summing the average relative weights of the indicators derived from expert judgments. (x): presence of indicators on the learning platform, (−): absence of indicators on the learning platform.
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The ranking of the LPs reveals that only two American LPs include all the indicators.

Most of the analyzed LPs offer customized content and the possibility to watch educational videos or to participate in courses of different durations. When the platform does not directly offer specific courses, it often provides a link to the course platforms in Table 1. This is a notable strength of such platforms.

Nevertheless, the possibility of attending at least short courses on the same platforms that provide other content could be beneficial for the end user.

Few platforms have resources specifically focused on children’s education, and only a minority includes a blog for user participation, although participation and school education are considered highly important in the literature (e.g., Olsson, 2022; Trott and Weinberg, 2020).

Discussion

On the basis of the characteristics previously reported, while numerous internet platforms address CCA, not all of them consist of both technical content and educational content. Moreover, not all LPs provide nonformal and informal learning opportunities, even if these opportunities are considered crucial for addressing climate change (GEM Report UNESCO, 2024). Furthermore, even when exhibiting the characteristics hypothesized to be necessary for a real LP, they often lack some of the tools considered by the literature to be the most needed tools for effective internet communication (see Table 3). Indeed, regarding the first research question, only two of the analyzed LPs appear to comprehend all the communication tools identified through the scientific bibliographic search. For example, many of them do not provide customized content, which is an aspect considered the most important one both by the majority of the experts, who weigh the indicators, and by the results of the scientific bibliographic search. However, many of them also miss the presence of tools such as gamification and interrogable maps, the presence of which is, on the contrary, highly recommended (see, e.g., related references in Table 3).

The results lead to the answer to the second research question addressed by this research, elucidating the essential characteristics of an ideal LP for CCA.

From the findings (see the references in Table 3), the first point to be addressed is a clear customization. For this specific aspect, a single platform for diverse audiences is evidently the optimal solution. However, it is also apparent that the contents cannot be proposed in the same way. Therefore, the crossroads among the different targets should be the first step when accessing the platform. The realization of this point intuitively leads to the necessity of distinctly separating the contents for each target. Such separation is particularly important for content that provides “how to do” and “what to do” tips, which are very different for the various categories of customers.

In this clear customization, special attention should be given to students from various school levels. This final point is nonnegotiable, given that today’s children will become future adults; therefore, a real CCA starts from the education of the youngest (Forsyth et al. 2023). With respect to learning, the explored literature also underlines the necessity of using alternative methods (e.g., gamification, the use of tools such as interrogable maps, short free courses instead of formal education) and the possibility of engaging final users in interexchange. Moreover, the possibility of exchanging ideas and priming discussions among different stakeholders is widely recognized in the literature as a powerful tool for CCA (Luís et al. 2022). Therefore, it is necessary to explore different methods for the implementation of this specific aspect. In this paper, the presence of a blog with free participation has been suggested, although there could be other solutions that are equally interesting.

To these points, we want to add another aspect underlined in the UNESCO report (GEM Report UNESCO, 2024), such as a close link with the most diffuse social media. Finally, given the existence of numerous platforms, we suggest that the ideal LP should include a search engine able not only to search the contents of the platform itself but also of the numerous contents originating from the other platforms, allowing for the filtering of results by using different keywords. In addition, we believe that it is necessary to consider two additional aspects: a) it would be highly beneficial to provide the users the possibility to navigate the platform in their native languages, or at least to provide a translation into the most spoken ones; b) it is necessary to avoid boredom in content and difficulty in platform retrieval because if the content is not understandable or difficult to find, the entire LP structure becomes useless. All these aspects can be briefly summarized in the scheme of Fig. 2.

Fig. 2: Essential characteristics of an ideal LP for the CCA, outlined by this study.
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These include clear customization, distinct content separation, the possibility of searching for content within and outside the platform, the availability of content in multiple languages, the option to use alternative learning methods, the possibility of accessing different courses, the capacity to engage final users in interexchange, the avoidance of boredom in content and difficulty in platform retrieval.

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Conclusions and forthcoming perspectives

Learning platforms (LPs) for climate change adaptation (CCA) are among the most widely used technologies for delivering focused instruction and information. They also serve as virtual spaces for exchanging experiences and knowledge. As part of the Next Generation EU-Italian NRRP Tech4You Project “Tech4You-Technologies for climate change adaptation and quality of life improvement”, we propose an assessment of several existing LPs for CCA, with the aim of evaluating their effectiveness on the basis of the presence/absence of the communication tools considered by the literature to be the most important for effective communication in this field.

A search was conducted on Google Chrome© with specific keywords to identify LPs. Thirteen indicators were selected from the literature in this field to represent the most important tools for effective communication for CCA. The significance of the selected indicators was quantified via the Delphi method on the basis of the opinions of ten European experts. Both the expert weighting and the assessment of the indicators’ presence or absence were utilized for the LP evaluation.

Finally, we propose several key elements that an ideal LP for the CCA should possess. These include clear customization, distinct content separation, the possibility of searching for content within and outside the platform, the availability of content in multiple languages, the option to use alternative learning methods, the possibility of accessing different courses, the capacity to engage final users in interexchange, the avoidance of boredom in content and difficulty in platform retrieval.

In conclusion, our assessment of several existing learning platforms in the field of climate change adaptation (CCA) highlights that an ideal LP should possess the following characteristics: i) high usability; ii) ease of discovery; iii) high level of engagement; and iv) strong educational value.

The performed analysis provided helpful insights, which will be used as a basis for better LP implementation for the Tech4You Project and may be used for possible future improvements in other cases. Nevertheless, it has limitations, which include i) the use of only one typology of search engines for the retrieval of both the existing LPs and scientific literature, which cannot guarantee a complete acquisition of all the possible information; ii) the selection of European experts does not take into account any potential peculiarities in the choice of communication tools across different parts of the world; and iii) the analysis should be completed while taking into account the perspectives of different stakeholders, gaining a deeper understanding of their specific communication tool preferences. Addressing these limitations will be the focus of the forthcoming activities of this work.