How Grammatical Choice Shapes Media Representations of Climate (Un)certainty

Although mass media continue to play a key role in translating scientific uncertainty for public discourse, communicators of climate science are becoming increasingly aware of their own role in shaping scientific messages in the news. As an example of how future media research can provide relevant feedback to climate communicators, the present study examines the ways in which grammatical and word choices represent and construct uncertainty in news reporting about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Qualifying and hedging language and other “epistemic markers” are analyzed in four newspapers during 2001 and 2007: the New York Times and Wall Street Journal from the USA and El País and El Mundo from Spain. Though the US newspapers contained a higher density of epistemic markers and used more ambiguous grammatical constructs of uncertainty than the Spanish newspapers, all four media sources chose similar words when questioning the certainty around climate change. Moreover, the density of epistemic markers in each newspaper either remained the same or increased with time, despite ever-growing scientific agreement that human activities modify global climate. While the US newspapers increasingly adopted IPCC language to describe climate uncertainties, they also exhibited an emerging tendency to construct uncertainty by highlighting differences between IPCC reports or between scientific predictions and observations. The analysis thus helps identify articulations of uncertainty that will shape future media portrayals of climate science across varying cultural and national contexts.     

Echo Chambers of Denial: Explaining User Comments on Climate Change

Although there is a broad consensus among scientists and journalists about the existence of anthropogenic climate change as a global problem, some segments of the population remain doubtful about the human impact on it. The internet provides citizens with opportunities to publicly voice their doubts and user comment sections of online media are a popular form of user-generated content. This study identifies factors that foster comments that are sceptical or supportive of basic assumptions of anthropogenic climate change, drawing on online news in the US, the UK, Germany, India, and Switzerland. The results show that users adapt to the dominant opinion within the respective media outlet: user comment sections serve as echo chambers rather than as corrective mechanisms. Climate change denial is more visible in user comment sections in countries where the climate change debate reflects the scientific consensus on climate change and user comments create niches of denial.     

Climate Engagement in a Digital Age: Exploring the Drivers of Participation in Climate Discourse Online in the Context of COP21

Various scholars underscore the importance of public engagement with climate change to successfully respond to the challenges of global warming. However, although online media provide various new opportunities to actively engage in climate discourse so far very little is known about the drivers of this form of engagement. Against this background, this study tested a theoretical model on the effects of media and interpersonal communication on participation in climate discourse online using data from a representative online survey of German citizens (n?=?1392) carried out while COP21. Overall, the results show that receiving information on climate change from social media (social networks, Twitter, blogs), active information seeking online and interpersonal conversations about COP21 strongly encourage participation in climate discourse online. Moreover, results provide relevant insights on the role of interest in climate politics, personal issue relevance and climate scepticism as preconditions of communication effects.     

National Discussions,Global Repercussions: Ethics in British Newspaper Coverage of Global Climate Negotiations

There is convincing evidence that the media have been responsible for questionable coverage on climate change, which has been blamed for undermining public consensus on the issue. However, less is known about the way in which the media communicate the key values, or ethical dimension, surrounding the debate over climate change and its global effects. It is generally argued that a strong notion of cosmopolitanism rather than narrow national self-interest will be fundamental to the achievement of a comprehensive international agreement on climate change. The media provide a crucial forum for discussing such challenges. The study examines how climate ethics form part of the debate on climate change in three British national newspapers leading up to, during, and following two key United Nations conferences. Through a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of climate change coverage, this article examines how the values of cosmopolitanism and communitarianism underpin the debate on climate ethics in the respective newspapers. This article argues that the possibility of reaching a fair climate agreement partially depends upon the ability of media to inform citizens of the inherent injustices of climate change and the importance of taking bold action. It is concluded that a more cosmopolitan perspective in the media could be useful in helping sway public opinion in favor of effective climate action.     

Quoting “the Environment”: Touchstones on Earth

Media influence public awareness through agenda setting and framing of news by selecting what is published, how frequently and through what frames. This content analysis compares portrayals of climate change based on political ideology of the media. It examines daily coverage of climate change in Santiago, Chile by the conservative, El Mercurio, newspaper, and the liberal, La Nación. Twenty percent of the 1,628 articles published in 2003, 2005, and 2007 which included the words “cambio climático” (climate change) or “calentamiento global” (global warming) were analyzed for frequency, content, images, and frames. The liberal newspaper published twice as many articles that were twice as long, with four times as many illustrations about climate change. They presented more thematic and diverse frames than the conservative newspaper. Government sources and conflict frames dominated both newspapers, reflecting some similar maturation processes of climate change coverage found in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere.     

Global Journalism in Decision-Making Moments: A Case Study of Canadian and American Television Coverage of the 2009 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen

Climate change is a phenomenon with global causes but local effects, and thus global climate change decision-making moments provide ideal opportunities to examine how local and global discourses work together—or do not—through global journalism. This case study investigates the globally focused vs. culturally bound frames used in television news coverage, in Canada and the USA, of the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Initial quantitative findings that Canadian media used many more culturally bound sources than did American media contradict the past findings and suggest Canadian media engaged less in producing global journalism than did American media. A follow-up qualitative analysis not only found more global framing in the American stories, but also concluded that global sources did not necessarily create global journalism; instead, a global orientation is required.     

The US News Media,Polarization on Climate Change,and Pathways to Effective Communication

The news media are a central source of information about climate change for most people. Through frames, media transmit information that shape how people understand climate change as well as the actions they are ultimately willing to support to address the problem. This article reviews the rise of climate change in the US news media and the emergence of related frames in public discourse. In doing so, it traces the roots of partisan divisions over climate change and highlights the role that events, journalistic practices, technological changes, and individual-level factors such as ideological and partisan identity have played in fostering polarization. The article concludes by identifying the core challenges facing communicators who seek to build consensus for action on climate change and highlights the most viable solutions for achieving success.     

Increasing Local Salience of Climate Change: The Un-tapped Impact of the Media-science Interface

ABSTRACT

The media play a vital role in framing the narrative on climate change, however little work exists to assess the extent to which local media outlets increase public engagement on climate change through interaction and engagement with local academics. As temperatures rise and concerns mount that we have passed the tipping point, local media play a potentially critical role in communicating how climate change exacerbates their impact. Based on a review of extant literature on this topic, and a small pilot email survey, this article argues that scientists could be more active in increasing local salience of climate change by building trusted relationships with local media. Coverage of science in the media could benefit from closer engagement with local scientists as environmental stories often get more coverage in local media (compared to national media) which constitute an important source of knowledge on climate change. This would enable constructive discussions between local media and scientists, better translation of science to publics, increased awareness and interest of science production locally, and ultimately creating a trusted intermediary in the science-public interface.     

Ideologies Overruled? An Explorative Study of the Link Between Ideology and Climate Change Reporting in Dutch and French Newspapers

This article studies the relationship between the ideology of newspapers and their climate change coverage. Previous research has focused on the British press (Carvalho, 2007; Carvalho & Burgess, 2005). Our research broadens this scope to the French and Dutch media. The results show that the ideology of newspapers in the Netherlands is not related to climate change coverage, while in France the ideology of newspapers is related to some key aspects of climate change coverage, i.e., the presentation of the necessity of actions against climate change and the tone of climate change coverage. The findings suggests that ideological cultures play a role in the coverage of climate change in countries in which global warming has brought about much discussion in the political field and that are characterized by a highly competitive media landscape which is historically related to the political field.     

Developments in the Framing of Climate Change as a Public Health Issue in US Newspapers

News media are major channels for the transmission of information to the public and deliver news about the latest developments regarding health issues such as climate change. How the media frame such information may enhance public understanding and enable appropriate responses by individuals and communities. This study follows up on previous research examining media portrayals of climate change in US newspapers from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2008. Here, we content analyze 270 news stories on climate change as a public health issue from five US newspapers between 1 January 2011 and 31 December 2012. Findings indicate that the total number of articles about climate change declined while emphasis on the public health dimension of climate change increased. The types of generic news frames (i.e., dramatic/substantive) most frequently used did not considerably change across the two time periods, however. To explain this, we discuss ways in which people may assess and spark change in news framing of public issues to better reach and influence a range of audiences.     

Competition gives way to cooperation: rethinking Sino-Indian relations in climate change negotiations

In global climate change politics, China and India have worked closely with each other, representing two big emitters from the developing world. This article reviews Sino-Indian cooperation during four UN climate change negotiations from 2009 to 2012. Their collaboration echoed the perception of neorealism in international relations (IR) studies that states will seek “external balancing” for maximizing national “relative gains”. China and India are expected to continue their cooperation on climate change issues when sharing the same structural position as big economies and big emitters, the same pressure in carbon emission reductions, and the same goal of improving living standards for their citizens. Encountering the devastating impacts of climate change and the deadlock in responsibility division in current global climate change governance, this work seeks to shed light on the evolving multilateral governance environment and its complex implications for Sino-Indian relations from an IR perspective.     

The 2014 Walrus Haul Out: A Case Study of Selective Exposure to Environmental News Coverage

In this article we examine in real time the political selective exposure process involved when the public confronted the “walrus haul out” of October 2014, a news event attributed by some climate change researchers to the effects of the climate change-driven reduction of Arctic sea ice. Analyzing data assessing the amount of major TV and cable news network coverage of the haul out, and evaluating public opinion data collected from a rolling cross-sectional survey of US adults take at the time, we show that coverage of this event was not equitably distributed across news media news sources, that exposure to news source is related to the respondents’ ideological dispositions, and that exposure to coverage of the walrus haul out is related to ideology, the selectivity of political news habits, and climate change knowledge. We conclude with a discussion of the apparent inevitability of selective exposure to media coverage of climate change-related events and the implications for effective climate change communication.     

Climate Change Reporting in Great Lakes Region Newspapers: A Comparative Study of the Use of Expert Sources

This study focuses on the use of science sources as experts in news stories about climate change coverage in the Great Lakes region of the US and Canada. We examine, using the hierarchy of influences model, whether the use of scientific sources in climate change coverage may be related to factors such as geographic location, reporting frequency, and authorship, in the prestige press as well as regional and local media. The study found that as many or more non-scientists than scientists are selected as sources regardless of geographic location, reporting frequency, or authorship. However, the study also found that the more stories reporters produce on this topic, the more likely their stories are to use and give prominence to science sources. In addition, the articles included few denier sources, but denier views are more likely to appear in a more prominent location in the articles than supporters when stories are framed as conflict over global warming. These results highlight the need for additional research examining the expertise of climate scientists in news stories to better understand news decision-making in the context of complex scientific reporting.     

Global Climate Talks from Failure to Cooperation and Hope: Swedish News Framings of COP15 and COP21

The purpose of this study is to offer an analysis of how two UN Conferences of Parties, COP15 in Copenhagen 2009 and COP21 in Paris 2015, were covered and debated in Swedish newspapers. Two national and two regional newspapers were selected for the study, and a qualitative frame analysis was conducted on 309 articles. A typology of frames applicable to science-related policy and climate change debates was used and its relevance for global climate summit context was discussed. Having territory in the Arctic region, indigenous populations affected by climate change measures, and political and public sensitivity to environmental issues, the climate debate has particular significance in the Swedish case. Findings indicate a trust in the role of national and supra-national governance to address climate change problems, but also that newspapers in Sweden maintained a focus on the global aspects of the two meetings, rather than framing them as surrogate battlefields for domestic politics.     

Questioning the Doubt: Climate Skepticism in German Newspaper Reporting on COP17

Despite numerous international studies on climate change, there is skepticism in the media and it is prominent in public opinion polls. This article focuses in particular on the framing of climate skepticism in Germany, a country that, in the main, is said to be convinced about climate change. By using a two-step content analysis of 379 news articles (print and online) we demonstrate that climate skepticism is present in German news media reporting on the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban, South Africa. We identify two overarching skepticism frames: skepticism about the phenomenon of climate change and about climate science. Our analysis further shows that climate skepticism is not exclusive to a specific political ideology, even though a newspaper's ideology may influence how skeptical frames are being evaluated.     

Climate in the News: How Differences in Media Discourse Between the US and UK Reflect National Priorities

Studies dealing with media coverage of climate change have increased steadily over the last decade or so, alongside the media coverage of climate change itself. This article aims to contribute to this growing literature on two levels: to deepen understanding of distinctive patterns of language use across nations speaking a common language and to demonstrate the usefulness of a new approach for finding such patterns. Articles in The (London) Times and the New York Times, published between 2000 and 2009, were analyzed using methods related to computational linguistics. Results show that the US seemingly still constructs climate change as a problem, whereas the UK focuses on finding solutions for the (established) problem of climate change. This linguistic and conceptual gap may hamper mutual understanding and the crafting of global climate change mitigation policies.     

中国水资源管理适应气候变化的研究综述

以全球变暖为特征的气候变化已成为当今科学界、各国政府和社会公众普遍关注的最重要议题之一。气候变化对水资源管理的影响是具有重要学术价值的新兴研究方向,目前的重点研究领域主要包括:气候变化背景下水资源综合管理方式与集成研究,气候变化下水资源适应性管理机制,中国面临的水资源均衡性管理,公众参与水资源适应性管理的政策制定,对减缓措施与水资源可持续发展的认识。主要的研究方法包括:适应气候变化的定性分析方法(多尺度适应综合分析方法)、成本效益分析方法等。适应性管理是目前应对气候变化伴随的不确定性问题的有效策略,未来应在分析中国各流域水资源不确定性问题的基础上,建立气候变化情景下适应气候变化的水资源适应性管理体制机制。     

Climate Change Discourses and Citizen Participation: A Case Study of the Discursive Construction of Citizenship in Two Public Events

Citizen participation is a recurrent and democratically important issue in the ongoing debate about climate change. However, different meanings are ascribed to citizen participation in different contexts, ranging from top-down involvement to bottom-up engagement, thus creating tension between conflicting ideals. Focusing on public engagement and its construal in different situational contexts, we explore how citizens are discursively included or excluded from participation, as various climate change discourses unfold in two forums where local needs and global concerns interact. Furthermore, we address some opportunities and barriers regarding citizen participation in climate change issues.     

Conceptualising climate change in rural Australia: community perceptions, attitudes and (in)actions

Public engagement and support is essential for ensuring adaptation to climate change. The first step in achieving engagement is documenting how the general public currently perceive and understand climate change issues, specifically the importance they place on this global problem and identifying any unique challenges for individual communities. For rural communities, which rely heavily on local agriculture industries, climate change brings both potential impacts and opportunities. Yet, to date, our knowledge about how rural residents conceptualise climate change is limited. Thus, this research explores how the broader rural community—not only farmers—conceptualises climate change and responsive activities, focussing on documenting the understandings and risk perceptions of local residents from two small Australian rural communities. Twenty-three semi-structured interviews were conducted in communities in the Eden/Gippsland region on the border of New South Wales and Victoria and the north-east of Tasmania. There are conflicting views on how climate change is conceptualised, the degree of concern and need for action, the role of local industry, who will ‘win’ and ‘lose’, and the willingness of rural communities to adapt. In particular, residents who believed in anthropogenic or human-induced factors described the changing climate as evidence of ‘climate change’, whereas those who were more sceptical termed it ‘weather variability’, suggesting that there is a divide in rural Australia that, unless urgently addressed, will hinder local and national policy responses to this global issue. Engaging these communities in the twenty-first-century climate change debate will require a significant change in terminology and communication strategies.     

How Aware Are Other Nations of Climate Change? Analyzing Germans’ Second-Order Climate Change Beliefs About Chinese,US American and German People

ABSTRACT

What people believe about the beliefs of other people – second-order beliefs – has been acknowledged as a key factor that shapes public support for international climate policy. However, very little is known about their origins. Based on data from an online survey (n?=?935), we analyzed how German citizens assess the climate change awareness in their own nation as compared to those of the US and China. Even if the public climate change awareness in the US and China factually differs, we found that German citizens equivalently rate both nations similar and much lower than their own, a finding which can be explained with social identity processes and “in-group”/“out-group” biases. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrate that the attention individuals pay towards television and social media predict second-order beliefs on climate change awareness positively, while attention to print media is a negative predictor.