Science Journalism: Problems and Challenges in a New Age

Abstract

A healthy environment is essential for the survival of living beings on the Earth. We depend on climate, weather, and natural resources for survival and economic activity. Nature is being destroyed by the human beings for their development. Development has resulted in lot of environmental problems. Pollution is the major environmental issue in urban India due to overpopulation, vehicular traffic and poverty. We are emitting a high level of pollutants which come from vehicles, factories, homes, and power plants that burn fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas. Pollution traps heat in the atmosphere that is causing severe environmental problems like climate change. The media-newspapers in particular-play an important role in disseminating environmental issues. The media cover the environmental stories in diverse perspectives such as those of government, human interest, nature/wildlife, pollution, business/economic, and science and technology. The journalists play a vital role on how environmental issues are perceived by the public. This study focused on how online newspapers covered news stories about environment issues. The objectives of this study are to find out how dominant online newspapers in Chennai framed environmental issues and to identify the difference between the English and Tamil online newspapers in covering environmental stories. Two English (The Hindu and The Times of India) and two Tamil (the Dina Thanthi and the Dinamani) online newspapers were analyzed for the calendar year 2014 to find the newspaper framing of environmental issues. The articles from the online newspapers were categorized into local, national, and international. The results suggested that the communication of climate science through local media might improve the public's knowledge level regarding environmental issues in general and climate change in particular.