Media and cultural systems: Connecting national news dynamics and the cultures of social problems through a case study of climate change in the U.S. and U.K.

Abstract

This study builds a framework for research on relationships between national media systems and the cultural systems of specific social problems. In the case of U.K. and U.S. news coverage of the social problem of climate change, ethnographic fieldwork and a computational text analysis method known as topic modeling show that three processes are highly salient for understanding the connections between media systems and the cultural systems of social problems: (1) the economic underpinnings of media organizations; (2) relationships between media outlets and between outlets and their audiences; (3) longer histories of research, activism, and policymaking around social problems. This framework can enhance research on the specific, evolving roles that media play in supporting democratic processes and addressing social problems in different national economic, political, and media system contexts.