When Fiction Reflects Fiction: Contrarian Views of Climate Change in Popular Entertainment TV & Films

Francisco Gonzalez , Chico Camargo 

Climate contrarian discourse permeates a wide range of media outlets, including popular entertainment television shows and films. This study identifies and quantifies the frequency of these views within a large global corpus of entertainment scripts derived from film and television subtitles (N = 223,782). Additionally, drawing on a discourse studies perspective, we evaluate the performance of a Large Language Model (LLM) designed to detect and classify climate contrarian claims. Our findings reveal that climate change is occasionally referenced in entertainment films and TV shows, and contrarian views are a minority; most mentions contain a pro-climate orientation, followed by incidental references that remain ambiguous regarding a clear view, reflecting a growing willingness to engage with the topic. In general, pro-climate views significantly outweigh contrarian views, which are rarely isolated; they mostly appear alongside pro-climate claims, are disqualified, mocked, or sarcastically expressed. This research contributes to understanding the presence and discursive nature of climate change views in mainstream entertainment media and begins to examine how entertainment content reflects possible beliefs and attitudes. We encourage further research into how entertainment media creatives perceive and decide whether to include these representations, as well as their motivations and the potential implications of the visibility of climate-related themes in popular culture.