After the Flood - Climate communication in flood reporting and its impact on support for climate protection and adaptation measures

After extreme weather events such as the flood of the century in Lower Austria in 2024, there is often a need for discussions among the local population to come to terms with the situation with its implications and discuss preventive measures. The extreme weather event, which was intensified by climate change, highlighted the increasing need for climate protection and adaptation measures for a resilient society (CCCA 2025). When selecting suitable climate measures, negative side effects - conflicts with other social goals - may become apparent. These conflicting goals or trade-offs can represent a barrier to public acceptance of climate-relevant measures. Positive side effects - co-benefits that are included in climate measures - can in turn be a lever for their acceptance. The project “Behind us the flood” therefore investigates which of these two complementary effects of climate measures were discussed at the time of the flood, and how they affect the acceptance of climate-relevant measures. AI-supported media analysis and a focus group with persons living in flood areas are used to gain insights into the social discussions on climate measures after the flood. These are examined in qualitative content analyses to determine which conflicting goals and co-benefits of climate measures are reflected in the discussions following the 2024 floods in Lower Austria. Based on the results of the qualitative content analysis, we examine exemplary communication messages about the different conflicting goals and co-benefits associated with climate measures to the population after extreme weather events and their effect on the willingness to support climate measures in a quantitative experiment. The aim is to use real disasters as a case study to generate new findings on increasing the acceptance of climate-relevant measures by addressing co-benefits and conflicting goals or trade-offs for climate communication research and practice.