When Visuals Backfire: How Conspiracy Beliefs and Media Cynicism Shape Climate News Legitimacy

This study investigates how visualization types (static vs. animated maps), climate attitudes, conspiracy beliefs, and media cynicism shape audience perceptions of pro-environmental news legitimacy. Through an online experiment with 423 U.S. adults, we examined the direct and interactive effects of these factors on perceptions of news falsity and manipulative intent. Results revealed that pre-existing climate attitudes, conspiracy beliefs, and media cynicism each significantly predicted both outcome measures. While visualization type alone showed no direct effect on news falsity perceptions and only marginally predicted manipulative intent, it played a crucial moderating role: the interaction between conspiracy beliefs and media cynicism was particularly pronounced in the animated condition, where conspiracy beliefs more strongly predicted perceived falsity among those with high media cynicism. These findings reveal how seemingly neutral visualization choices can amplify the joint effects of audience predispositions in climate communication, offering insights for developing targeted approaches across diverse audience segments.