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.     

Frequent but Accurate: A Closer Look at Uncertainty and Opinion Divergence in Climate Change Print News

The prevalence of uncertainty and opinion divergence frames in climate change news reporting has generated concerns about the misrepresentation of scientific consensus. We first develop reliable, valid, and more nuanced measures of often-conflated types of uncertainty and opinion divergence frames. Then we analyse the co-occurrence combinations of those distinct types of opinions, sources, and topics in mainstream climate change news stories between 2005 and 2015. Results indicate that while uncertainty and opinion divergence frames are indeed frequent, once clearly distinguished, they in general accurately reference non-scientist sources (e.g. government officials) and topics that do not have a scientific consensus (e.g. the severity of climate change effects).     

Enhancing synergies between action on ocean acidification and the post-2020 global biodiversity framework

Ocean acidification is a substantial emergent threat to marine biodiversity and the goods and services it provides. Although efforts to address ocean acidification have been taken under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a far greater potential to do so exists by finding synergies between biodiversity conservation efforts and ocean acidification action. The ongoing process to develop a post-2020 global biodiversity framework offers an opportunity to ensure that opportunities for addressing ocean acidification are capitalized on and not overlooked. I argue that to achieve this, the following are needed: a technical integration of ocean acidification across the targets to be included in the post-2020 framework and a reframing of the issue as a biodiversity problem so as to highlight the synergies between existing biodiversity work and action needed to address ocean acidification. Given that the post-2020 framework is intended to establish the global biodiversity agenda for the coming decades, integration of ocean acidification will set a precedent for the other biodiversity-related conventions and encourage greater uptake of the issue across the wider international community. My approach is of direct relevance to those participating in the negotiations, both from a CBD Party perspective and the perspective of those advocating for a strong outcome to protect marine biodiversity and marine socioecological systems. My discussion of framing is relevant to those working beyond the CBD within other biodiversity-related conventions in which goals to address ocean acidification are sorely lacking.     

Environment as Politics: Framing the Cerattepe Protest in Twitter

Environmental protests across the globe are often studied with a particular focus on their environmental aspects, but these protests are also embedded in a local political setting shaped by governmental policies. Recent environmental protests in Turkey, which appear to be based on ecological grievances, have developed as a response to political decisions that gave priority to economic development and national interests over environmental concerns. This study examines the political character of the environmental protest in Cerattepe, and focuses on the framing practices of its players in order to see if their motivations transcended environmental concerns. The research combines framing with network analysis, and studies the propagation of frames through Twitter. It has been found that the political economic aspects became predominant in the protest network, while the frames fostered dense connections between activist groups.     

Framing fracking: scale-shifting and greenwashing risk in the oil and gas industry

In this paper, I examine corporate environmental communication on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and industry efforts to shape public perception of resource extraction and its impacts on the environment. I look at how the oil and gas industry (OGI) frames fracking to ease public fear by downplaying risk and shifting its scale with rhetoric presenting the benefits of this emergent technology. Contrasting and building on ecological modernisation versus risk society ideas, I use OGI print advertising supplemented by corporate social responsibility statements and other online material to critically evaluate framing in light of the practice of corporate greenwashing. Findings reveal OGI efforts to positively portray fracking in the interest of unfettered resource extraction and profits from energy production. Several themes emerge in OGI framing rhetoric, starting with the establishment of trust through education and claims of transparency and continuing with ideas touting safety and responsibility, scientific progress, economic benefits and jobs, energy security, environmental protection, and sustainability. On the whole, such rhetoric reflects ecological modernisation ideas that shift the perception of risk and its consequences, framing fracking in a way that obscures the negative impacts of dependency on a fossil fuel-based economy.     

Addressing concerns about climate policies: the possibilities and perils of responsive accommodation

Responsive accommodation is a political strategy that addresses concerns about a policy proposal by incorporating amendments that address those concerns. This approach can broaden the policy’s appeal, but is strategically risky, as it can alienate the policy’s base of support. We examine this strategy and its application in the politics of climate change. Using a novel survey experiment, relative public support is evaluated for two amendments to a carbon tax proposal – revenue neutrality assurances and a carbon tariff – designed to ease concerns about taxes and global competitiveness. Analysis shows that support for a carbon tax increases when coupled with a carbon tariff, but decreases among some of the policy’s supporters when described as revenue-neutral. These results suggest that policymakers using a responsive accommodation strategy must carefully weigh its possible risks and rewards in their particular context.     

Media Use and Public Perceptions of Global Warming in India

Media plays a vital role in informing the public about environmental threats. Although climate change is a global problem, developing countries such as India are often more vulnerable to the impacts due to poverty, illiteracy, and low public awareness. Using data from a nationally representative survey in India, this paper explores the relationships between media use, issue attention, and trust in informational sources on one hand and science-based climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy support on the other. Results suggest that the Indian media, through consistent and accurate coverage of global warming using trusted sources, can play a positive role in increasing public engagement among a largely unaware population. Implications for climate change communication in India are discussed.     

Fracking in the German Press: Securing Energy Supply on the Eve of The ‘Energiewende’ – A Quantitative Framing-Based Analysis

In many countries worldwide, unconventional hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking) is considered a natural steppingstone toward the use of renewable energies against the backdrop of climate change. Although commercial drilling for shale gas has not yet begun in Germany, the public discourse appears to be creating more controversy than in other European countries. Based on the theoretical concept of “framing,” we conducted a quantitative empirical study from January 2013 to December 2014 analyzing the coverage of fracking in three highly influential newspapers and political magazines in Germany. The results of this study provide the first insights into the discussion of fracking in the German news media and allow comparisons to the debate in other European countries. We found that fracking is mainly discussed in the economic context of securing the future energy supply while the potential risks of the technique are mostly ignored. We discuss our findings and try to explain the unbalanced reporting.     

Perceptions of Manipulation and Judgments of Illegitimacy: Pitfalls in the Use of Emphasis Framing when Communicating about CO2 Capture and Storage

The mitigation of climate change requires reductions in the amount of CO₂ emitted into the atmosphere. One way to achieve this in the short run is through the implementation of CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) technology. The viability of CCS not only depends on technical and regulatory issues, but also on public attitudes. Communication plays an important role in shaping these attitudes. This paper reports on two experiments performed to examine effects of emphasis framing in CCS communications, meaning that greater weight is given to advantages of CCS over disadvantages or vice versa. Although emphasis framing can be effective in shaping attitudes, our findings suggest that there may be long-term costs to using this communication technique as it can be perceived as manipulative. Moreover, emphasis framing is judged as relatively illegitimate when the source is expected to be impartial rather than biased.     

Dynamic Discourse Coalitions on hydro-fracking in Europe and the United States

ABSTRACT

Hydraulic fracturing for shale gas is a controversial issue in most countries. In these controversies, actors use discursive boundary work to convince various audiences of their position. Discursive boundary work is a communicative strategy that involves the framing of facts in contrast to other kinds of arguments. In this article we develop the Dynamic Discourse Coalition (DDC) approach to study how discourse coalitions deploy discursive boundary work to confirm, integrate, polarize or disintegrate their own and opposing discourse coalitions. The DDC approach enables a deeper understanding of the dynamics of controversies about hydraulic fracturing and similar contested technologies by illuminating the influence of communicative processes on policy formation. Based on an analysis of policy documents, academic reports, newspapers, interviews and websites we compare the dynamics of contesting discourse coalitions in the Netherlands and New York. This analysis explains why policy formed in different ways in the cases, despite the apparent similarity of the discourse coalitions that emerged in the respective controversies.