The Media and the Major Emitters: Media Coverage of International Climate Change Policy

Abstract

News media outlets are crucial for the dissemination of information on climate change issues, but the nature of the coverage varies across the world, depending on local geopolitical and economic contexts. Despite extensive scholarship on media and climate change, less attention has been paid to comparing how climate change is reported by news media in developed and developing countries. This article undertakes a cross-national study of how elite newspapers in four major greenhouse gas emitting countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, China and India—frame coverage of climate change negotiations. We show that framing is similar by these newspapers in developing countries, but there are clear differences in framing in the developed world, and between the developed and developing countries. While an overwhelming majority of these news stories and the frames they deploy are pegged to the stance of domestic institutions in the developing countries, news frames from developed countries are more varied.