Digital Stormfronts: How Climate Doomscrolling Cultivates Perception and Channels Response to the Climate Crisis Among Generation Z in Karachi

Abstract

This paper explores the case of climate doomscrolling as a constructive digital experience that determines cognitive and behavioral behaviors of Generation Z in Karachi, Pakistan. Theorizing doomscrolling as a digital stormfront, which is a ubiquitous, automated, algorithmically-mediated flow of disastrous information, this study does not rely on a stimulus-response framework but deconstructs the doomscrolling as a force influencing the construction of narratives and the creation of meaning. The study is based on a co-optive theoretical model and integrative approach between the Cultivation Theory and the Theory of Affective Intelligence, which is structured in a sequential explanatory mixed-method. The association between doomscrolling exposure, the main perceptual filters (risk perception, self-efficacy, system blame), and response patterns (threat-based mobilization vs. fatalistic disengagement) will be quantified using a survey (n=350) of Karachi, Climate Generation who experienced all of 2015 Paris Agreement and all of 2022 Pakistan floods—relative to their early years—will use the survey. A follow-up of qualitative exploration concerning the lived experience of negotiating in this digital stormfront will be done through subsequent in-depth interviews (n=25). Our hypothesis, therefore, is that high exposure leads to a Mean World Syndrome about the climate which, when mediated by low self-efficacy and moderated by high institutional distrust, is predictive of fatalism. On the other hand, radical intent is the prediction of high exposure and high system blame. This paper will focus on critically and context-attractive modeling of digital climate thinking among young people in the Global South.