Abstract
Climate change is arguably one of the most unforeseen global threats of the 21 st century. More than ever before, national and international conferences are organised regularly with heated political debates on why, who, how and when to frame polices with eco-protective strategies. In the face of these heated political debates, the role of the media in informing public opinions on the stakes of the crisis is indispensable. While the media mitigate and communicate climate change stories, there are observable discrepancies and diverse communal stances on the issue. The present study investigated the frequency and mitigation of media transmission of climate change realities in four leading Cameroonian newspapers and the stances of vulnerable locals towards the issue. From a corpus-based perspective, 30 editions of three Cameroonian leading newspapers published between the months of April and June 2018 were closely analysed to find out the frequency of publication and the degree of mitigation of climate change stories. Three publishers and 200 farmers were interviewed to ascertain their stances on the issue. The results revealed a relatively insignificant recurrence of climate change stories which stems from publishers’ subjective categorisation of “current” news in the country. Informed farmers perceived the issue as a distinct domestic phenomenon with a possible national effect, while their uninformed counterparts attributed the crisis to the natural order of climatic variation on planet earth. Such perceptions certainly inhibit against effective agencies to climate change solutions. Keywords : Media Discourses, Communal Stances, Climate Change, Cameroon DOI : 10.7176/RHSS/9-14-03 Publication date :July 31 st 2019
Highlights
Climate change is perhaps the most unanticipated threat of the 21st century, with well-known ramifications for earth’s ecosystems at different levels
The following table presents the distribution of climate change stories on the 30 newspapers we considered for analyses
In all the 30 newspaper issues studied, the front pages carried headlines that were mostly politically-oriented with asymmetrical social and administrative issues. While this could be based on the current socio-political crisis wrecking Anglophone Cameroon, climate change is quite important to be ignored even under the category of what is often considered in journalistic language as “minor” news
Summary
Climate change is perhaps the most unanticipated threat of the 21st century, with well-known ramifications for earth’s ecosystems at different levels. The gravity of the crisis has increasingly informed many international and national policies (Mburia, 2015) that seek to guide the preservation and protection of the ecosystem. Administrative authorities are mostly at the helm in the framing and implementation of such policies, which are often transmitted to local and vulnerable population through the media. Even at that, it is not quite clear how often the media, especially Cameroonian leading newspapers, educate locals on climate change realities, agencies and solutions
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
