Media, Politics, and Climate Change: The ASA Task Force Report and Beyond (original) (raw)

2010: Climate Change controversies in the media - sociological insights

Events over the past year -most notably the Copenhagen conference, controversies over the IPCC, and more recently the Gulf oil spill -have significantly shaped news coverage on climate change, likely marking a new era or stage in the issue's "narra@ve cycle". However, the interpreta@on of these events and their symbolic power depend on social and historical condi@ons that give them meaning and relevance. That's why their impact on changes in news coverage is likely to differ in important ways across na@onal seGngs.

Media Politics and Climate Change: Towards a New Research Agenda

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and the media have been demonstrated to play a key role in shaping public perceptions and policy agendas. Journalists are faced with multiple challenges in covering this complex field. This article provides an overview of existing research on the media framing of climate change, highlighting major research themes and assessing future potential research developments. It argues that analysis of the reporting of climate science must be placed in the wider context of the growing concentration and globalization of news media ownership, and an increasingly ‘promotional culture’, highlighted by the rapid rise of the public relations industry in recent years and claims-makers who employ increasingly sophisticated media strategies. Future research will need to examine in-depth the targeting of media by a range of actors, as well as unravel complex information flows across countries as media increasingly converge.

Climate Change and how the media sensitizes the public on the issue

This paper studies the important role which media plays in educating the public on the issue of climate change. The media is a very important player in climate change com¬mu¬nic¬a¬tion – most people do not read sci¬entific reports, spe¬cialist web¬sites and blogs, or the dry reports of the IPCC ( Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Although in theory, the ‘facts’ of climate change sci¬ence should be reported in a straight¬for¬ward way by news¬pa¬pers and tele¬vi¬sion net¬works, con-sid¬er¬able dif¬fer¬ences exist between the edit¬orial lines taken by dif¬ferent media organ¬isa¬tions about the reality and ser¬i¬ous¬ness of climate change. Through time, mass media coverage has proven to be a key contributor – among a number of factors – that have shaped and affected science and policy discourse as well as public understanding and action. Mass media representational practices have broadly affected translations between science and policy and have shaped perceptions of various issues of environment, technology and risk Adaptation to climate change has been defined by Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as “adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial activities”

Communicating in the anthropocene: the cultural politics of climate change news coverage around the world

In this chapter, we survey how media representational practices shape 'news' on climate change around the world. Mass media stitch together formal science and policy with everyday activities in the public sphere, yet expressions vary across cultures and social, environmental, economic and political contexts. We focus on the production of climate change news and then assesses how these processes broadly influence awareness and engagement. This chapter brings attention to how power flows through shared as well as different cultures, politics, and societies. We also appraise how media representations construct knowledge, norms, and conventions about variegated dimensions of climate change. Furthermore, we consider how interactions between science, media, policy and the public have contributed to perceptions, misleading debates, priorities and understandings concerning climate change that, in turn, guide efforts seeking to enlarge rather than constrict the spectrum of possibility for responses to climate challenges at multiple scales. Such work catalyzes ongoing investigations in the wider volume on how environment and communication dynamically influence perceptions, attitudes, intentions, decision-making and management of risk in non-linear, complex ways.

Climate Change and the Media

Media communication—and the coverage of mass media in particular—is an important source for people’s awareness of, and knowledge about, anthropogenic climate change. Accordingly, many scholars have analyzed the emergence, characteristics, uses and effects of mediated communication about climate change in recent years. This article reviews the respective field, presents its major findings and outlines future directions for research. in Wright, James D. (Ed.): International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol 3. Oxford: Elsevier. 853–859.

Sources, Media and Modes of Climate Change Communication

This article reviews existing research on the portrayal of climate change within the print media, paying particular attention to the increasing role that celebrities have come to play within popular culture. While this is certainly not a new development, celebrities are increasingly appearing as key voices within the climate change debate, providing a powerful news hook and potential mobilizing agent. Early coverage of climate change was dominated by scientific sources, but as the debate became more institutionalized and politicized a wider variety of competing sources entered the news arena. Yet media prominence is not necessarily a reliable indicator of influence. How issues are framed is of crucial importance and celebrity interventions can be a double-edged sword.

Mass Media Roles in Climate Change Mitigation

Handbook of Climate Change Mitigation, 2012

News media portrayals of climate change have strongly influenced personal and global efforts to mitigate it through news production, individual media consumption, and personal engagement. This chapter explores the media framing of mitigation strategies, including the effects of media routines, factors that drive news coverage, the influences of claims-makers, scientists, and other information sources, the role of scientific literacy in interpreting climate change stories, and specific messages that mobilize action or paralysis. It also examines how journalists often explain complex climate science and legitimize sources, how audiences process competing messages about scientific uncertainty, how climate stories compete with other issues for public attention, how large-scale economic and political factors shape news production, and how the media can engage public audiences in climate change issues.

Communicating Climate Change in the Anthropocene: The dynamic cultural politics of climate change news coverage and social media around the world

The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication, 2022

In this chapter, we survey how legacy and social media representational practices shape the cultural politics of knowledge, information and news coverage on climate change around the world. Mass media stitch together formal science and policy with everyday activities in the public sphere, yet expressions vary across cultures and social, environmental, economic and political contexts. Since 2015 and the publication of the first edition of this Handbook, the world’s coverage of climate change—both in terms of frequency and content—has changed substantially. To understand these changes, we focus on the shifting production of climate change news across both newspaper coverage and social media to assess how these processes broadly influence awareness and engagement. New data on these changes in coverage from 2014 to 2021 are presented and analysed to bring attention to how power flows through shared as well as different cultures, politics, and societies. In particular, we explore how legacy and social media representations of climate change construct knowledge, norms and conventions about variegated dimensions of climate change through novel coverage of, for example, the Trump presidency, extreme weather events, climate change as an ‘intersectional’ story and the ‘Greta Thunberg Effect’ in the rise of #climatenews in digital spaces. In this new updated chapter, we consider how interactions between science, media, policy, digital technology and the public have contributed to perceptions, misleading debates, priorities and understandings concerning climate change that, in turn, guide efforts seeking to enlarge rather than constrict the spectrum of possibility for responses to climate challenges at multiple scales. Such work builds on and catalyzes ongoing investigations into how environment and communication dynamically influence perceptions, attitudes, intentions, decision-making and management of risk in non-linear, complex ways in a climate changed world.

Political economy, media, and climate change: sinews of modern life

In this 21st century, examining how climate change is described and considered, largely through mass media, is as important as formal climate governance to the long-term success or failure of efforts to confront the challenge. Mass media stitch together formal science and policy with the public sphere. And many dynamic, contested factors contribute to how media outlets portray climate change. This paper addresses contemporary political economics—from greater workloads and reductions in specialist science journalism to digital innovations and new media organizational forms—as they relate to media coverage of climate change. By way of recent studies and indications of these dynamics, we appraise how power flows through culture, politics, and society, to construct coverage, public discourses, and knowledge on climate change. In so doing, we explore how media representations of climate change have changed over time, and particularly how the rise of digital media has reshaped climate coverage. Considerations of climate change, arguably the most heavily politicized scientific issue at the turn of the new millennium, seek to inform and anticipate corollary science issues, such as ongoing concerns for genetically modified organisms, nanotechnology risks, and increased threats to water quantity and quality. The focus on political economy—the 'sinews' of modern life—can also then help to inform perceptions and decision making in associated environmental challenges.