Constructing climate change: claims and frames in US news coverage of an environmental issue

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Trumbo
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Environmental Issue ◽  
News Story ◽  
Stage Model ◽  
Special Interests ◽  
News Sources ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
The Us ◽  
Issue Attention

An empirical content analysis of a decade of coverage of climate change in five national newspapers in the US is presented. The analysis is based on the perspective, drawn from social problems theory, that the content of news discourse can be understood in terms of claims-making and framing. Climate change is also discussed in terms of Downs' issue-attention cycle, a five-stage model describing the rise and fall of social attention to important issues. Climate change, as a news story, is described as exhibiting three phases that are related to the sources quoted and the frames presented in the news coverage. Results of the analysis show that scientists tend to be associated with frames emphasizing problems and causes, while politicians and special interests tend to be associated with frames emphasizing judgments and remedies. Results also show how scientists declined as news sources as the issue became increasingly politicized.

Media (mis)communication on the science of climate change

1994 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Bell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Greenhouse Effect ◽  
Ozone Depletion ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Environmental Issue ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Scientific Facts

Climate change has been widely reported as a scientific and environmental issue. In six months' news coverage of climate change in New Zealand, reporting of basic scientific facts was overwhelmingly accurate. News sources rated over 80% of stories no worse than slightly inaccurate. However, one story in six contained significant misreporting. Some stories overstated the advance of climate change or confused ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect. Scientific sources rated coverage overall worse than their own individual judgments showed it to be. Examination of ways in which stories came about leads to recommendations on how scientists and journalists can work together to better inform the public about climate change.

The Pope, Politics, and Climate Change: An Experimental Test of the Influence of News about Pope Francis on American Climate Change Attitudes and Intentions

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Gall Myrick ◽  
Suzannah Evans Comfort
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Climate Change Policy ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Policy Support ◽  
News Story ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
Climate Change Attitudes

News coverage of climate change has expanded beyond a focus on science to include stories relating the topic to religion, particularly following Pope Francis’ 2015 call for Catholics to address climate change as a moral responsibility. We tested how effective Pope Francis is as a messenger on the topic of climate change. A 2 (Pope: present or absent in the story) X 2 (news story topic: climate change or poverty) between-subjects experiment (N = 415) revealed that politically Independent participants reported more negative attitudes and lower behavioral intentions when the Pope was featured in a story than when he was not. Also, Catholic Democrats reported stronger climate change policy support when the Pope was featured in a story than when he was not, but Catholic Independents were more supportive when the Pope was not featured, regardless of topic. Results suggest religion and politics intersect to shape responses to climate messengers.

scholarly journals Source Influence on Journalistic Decisions and News Coverage of Climate Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
News Media ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Public Relations Practitioners ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Information Demand ◽  
Nature Of Information

Across many parts of the globe the relationship between journalists and news sources has been transformed by digital technologies, increased reliance on public relations practitioners, and the rise of citizen journalism. With fewer gatekeepers, and the growing influence of digital and social media, identifying whose voices are authoritative in making sense of complex climate science proves an increasing challenge. An increasing array of news sources are vying for their particular perspective to be established including scientists, government, industry, environmental NGOs, individual citizens and, more recently, celebrities. The boundaries between audience, consumer and producer are less defined and the distinction between ‘factual’ and ‘opinion-based’ reporting has become more blurred. All these developments suggest the need for a more complex account of the myriad influences on journalistic decisions. More research needs to examine behind-the-scenes relations between sources and journalists, and the efforts of news sources to frame the issues or seek to silence news media attention. Also although we now know a great deal more about marginalized sources and their communication strategies we know relatively little about those of powerful multinational corporate organizations, governments and lobby groups. The shifting media environment and the networked nature of information demand a major rethinking of early media-centric approaches to examining journalist/source relations as applied to climate change. The metaphors of ‘network’ and field’ capture the diverse linkages across different spheres better than the Hierarchy of Influences model.

scholarly journals Analysis of News Coverage of Haze in China in the Context of Sustainable Development: The Case of China Daily

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingfei He ◽  
Guoliang Zhang ◽  
Lijuan Chen
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
English Language ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Issue Attention ◽  
China Daily

This study examines the role of media in boosting environmental governance and monitoring sustainable development in China and explores the relationship between the Chinese government and media coverage, and helps audiences understand the positions of third world countries on climate governance. It also offers insights into strengthening international cooperation on the governance of air pollution. Drawing on the framing theory and issue-attention cycle literature, this study examines the frames, news sources, and media slants (negative, neutral, positive) that were used in haze coverage, between 2000 and 2018, by China Daily, the primary English-language newspaper in China. The results of a content analysis reveals that news coverage of haze in China Daily exhibits an issue-attention cycle. This study shows that the majority of haze coverage had a neutral slant, mainly adopted frames of define problems and suggest remedies, and cited sources from officials, agencies, specialists and scholars. Additionally, the usage of the science education frame significantly correlated with the citing of specialists and scholars as news sources. The define problems frame significantly correlated with the citing of officials and agencies as news sources.

Deepening the concept of  ‘compelling arguments’

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-240
Author(s):  
Hong Tien Vu ◽  
Maxwell McCombs ◽  
Annelise Russell ◽  
Paromita Pain
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Strong Influence ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Environmental Issue ◽  
Public Issue ◽  
Affective Dimensions ◽  
Positive And Negative Emotions

Abstract This study examines the effects of both the substantive and affective dimensions of issue attributes in the news coverage of climate change on the public’s perception of the importance of this environmental issue. Results from our analysis show that the four affective dimensions (e.g., positive and negative emotions, anger, and sadness) of the three attributes (e.g., existence, effects, and solutions) exerted strong influence on public issue priority. This study extends the concept of compelling arguments in agenda setting research by suggesting that compelling arguments effects are not solely dependent on substantive attributes. Their affective dimensions are influential, as well.

scholarly journals Climate Change Communication in Portugal

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Horta ◽  
Anabela Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Green Economy ◽  
Communication Policy ◽  
Climate Change Communication ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Change Communication

In Portugal, global politics tend to dominate climate change communication. Policy-oriented news stories prevail, being very much influenced by international events, dynamics, and actors, especially European ones, whereas national politicians and officials tend to be given less space. Climate change is thus mainly (re)presented as a global issue, distant from local realities, in spite of the vulnerabilities that the country faces. National policy makers tend to adopt a technocratic discourse that comes across as “rational” and fairly optimistic, with little contestation by environmental groups or others. A “green economy” discourse has prevailed in the media, with investment on renewable energy being depicted as the way to both stimulating the economy and addressing climate change. Scientific knowledge tends to be represented as consensual and national scientists tend to avoid dramatization. Although public opinion surveys have shown that the population considers climate change a serious problem and skepticism regarding its anthropogenic causes is low, surveys have also revealed high levels of ignorance and self-evaluated lack of information. In spite of a traditionally weak environmental movement and lack of public engagement, the population has shown a consistent sense of collective responsibility to tackle climate change. The economic and financial crisis up until the mid-2010s considerably affected the already fragile media system and turned political and public attention to economy-related topics. News coverage of climate change, in all its complexity, has been constrained by a lack of specialized reporters and increased dependency on the pro-activity of news sources.

The Historiography of Environmental History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. McNeill
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Industrial Pollution ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses the emergence of environmental history, which developed in the context of the environmental concerns that began in the 1960s with worries about local industrial pollution, but which has since evolved into a full-scale global crisis of climate change. Environmental history is ‘the history of the relationship between human societies and the rest of nature’. It includes three chief areas of inquiry: the study of material environmental history, political and policy-related environmental history, and a form of environmental history which concerns what humans have thought, believed, written, and more rarely, painted, sculpted, sung, or danced that deals with the relationship between society and nature. Since 1980, environmental history has come to flourish in many corners of the world, and scholars everywhere have found models, approaches, and perspectives rather different from those developed for the US context.

scholarly journals Behavioral and Attitudinal Correlates of Trusted Sources of COVID-19 Vaccine Information in the US

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Carl A. Latkin ◽  
Lauren Dayton ◽  
Jacob R. Miller ◽  
Grace Yi ◽  
Afareen Jaleel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Regression Models ◽  
Logistic Regression Models ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Health Systems ◽  
Online Study ◽  
News Sources ◽  
The Us ◽  
Vulnerable People ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Vaccine Information

There is a critical need for the public to have trusted sources of vaccine information. A longitudinal online study assessed trust in COVID-19 vaccine information from 10 sources. A factor analysis for data reduction revealed two factors. The first factor contained politically conservative sources (PCS) of information. The second factor included eight news sources representing mainstream sources (MS). Multivariable logistic regression models were used. Trust in Dr. Fauci was also examined. High trust in MS was associated with intention to encourage family members to get COVID-19 vaccines, altruistic beliefs that more vulnerable people should have vaccine priority, and belief that racial minorities with higher rates of COVID-19 deaths should have priority. High trust in PCS was associated with intention to discourage friends from getting vaccinated. Higher trust in PCS was also associated with participants more likely to disagree that minorities with higher rates of COVID-19 deaths should have priority for a vaccine. High trust in Dr. Fauci as a source of COVID-19 vaccine information was associated with factors similar to high trust in MS. Fair, equitable, and transparent access and distribution are essential to ensure trust in public health systems’ abilities to serve the population.

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