Media Coverage Of Climate Change Research Articles

Climate policy uncertainty, media coverage of climate change, and energy markets: New evidence from time-varying causality analysis

Climate change is one of the most critical issues in the last decade, making investigating climate change risks' effects on the economy vital. Employing a novel time-varying Granger causality approach, we test causality from climate policy uncertainty (CPU) to the index returns of clean energy and nonrenewable energy sectors between November 2009 and December 2021. Our analysis generally reveals a significant causality from CPU to S&P clean energy sector index return throughout the sample period. In contrast, very limited significant causality is observed running from the CPU to the S&P nonrenewable energy index return. This result implies that investments in clean energy firms are affected by the CPU due to the cost of reversing the decisions in uncertain environments. On the other hand, the U.S. newspaper media coverage of climate change has a significant impact not only on the clean energy index returns but also on non-renewable energy index returns, implying an increase in the media coverage regarding climate change influences the awareness of investors on climate change, which affects their trading strategies.

“This community will grow” — little concern for future wildfires in a dry and increasingly hotter Swedish rural community

Increased risk of wildfires is often highlighted in media coverage of climate change in the Nordic countries. How an increased risk is reflected in the concerns and adaptive measures within the most likely affected communities is nevertheless not known. This study investigates concerns and adaptation to wildfires in a rural community in south-eastern Sweden. The comparatively dry study area has a history of frequent but often low-consequence wildfires and is projected to experience Sweden’s largest increase in severe fire weather towards 2100. Through narratives, this study elucidates potential wildfire concerns in this area and motivations behind adaptation measures. The narratives are compared to a physical causal network extracted from the literature on fires and their consequences in the region. Residents foresee an increased wildfire risk but do not consider it a threat to the future well-being of the community. Forest owners and homeowners express low commitment in preventive or adaptive measures. Instead, contrasting the reality of the twentieth century, the fire service is currently considered to be responsible for both preventing and suppressing fires. This attitude is attributed to the lack of severe implications from the generally well-managed fires in the region. Actions for prevention and adaptation seem triggered by media attention or experience from real high-consequence events occurring elsewhere, rather than local wildfire occurrence or climate change projections.

Learning from climate change news: Is the world on the same page?

Climate change challenges countries around the world, and news media are key to the public's awareness and perception of it. But how are news media approaching climate change across countries? With the problem of climate change and its solution being global, it is key to determine whether differences in climate change news reports exist and what they are across countries. This study employs supervised machine learning to uncover topical and terminological differences between newspaper articles on climate change. An original dataset of climate change articles is presented, originating from 7 newspapers and 3 countries across the world, and published in English during 26 Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). Three aspects are used to discriminate between articles, being (1) countries, (2) political orientations, and (3) COP meetings. Our results reveal differences with regard to how newspaper articles approach climate change globally. Specifically, climate change-related terminology of left-oriented newspapers is more prevalent compared to their right-oriented counterparts. Also, over the years, newspapers' climate change-related terminology has evolved to convey a greater sense of urgency.

The impact of climate change news on the US stock market

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the impact of climate change news on the dynamics of US stock indices.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical basis of the study was 3,209 news articles. Sentiment analysis was performed by a pre-trained bidirectional FinBERT neural network. Thematic modeling is based on the neural network, BERTopic.FindingsThe results show that news sentiment can influence the dynamics of stock indices. In addition, five main news topics (finance and politics natural disasters and consequences industrial sector and Innovations activism and culture coronavirus pandemic) were identified, which showed a significant impact on the financial market.Originality/valueFirst, we extend the theoretical concepts. This study applies signaling theory and overreaction theory to the US stock market in the context of climate change. Second, in addition to the news sentiment, the impact of major news topics on US stock market returns is examined. Third, we examine the impact of sentimental and thematic news variables on US stock market indicators of economic sectors. Previous works reveal the impact of climate change news on specific sectors of the economy. This paper includes stock indices of the economic sectors most related to the topic of climate change. Fourth, the research methodology consists of modern algorithms. An advanced textual analysis method for sentiment classification is applied: a pre-trained bidirectional FinBERT neural network. Modern thematic modeling is carried out using a model based on the neural network, BERTopic. The most extensive topics are “finance and politics of climate change” and “natural disasters and consequences.”

The politics of politicization: Climate change debates in Canadian print media.

Politicization is frequently employed as an analytic concept to explain the relationships between politics and media coverage of climate change. However, relatively few works explore how different notions of politicization are mobilized by actors in media discourses themselves. This article does so via a framing analysis of climate change coverage in Canadian newspapers. I investigate how different relationships between science and politics are conceived and associated with varying positions on climate change. In particular, I examine a supposition in science and technology studies that the media remains committed to deficit models and thus uncritically reproduces the authority of science. Scientistic discourses exist but among a diversity of politicization framings. A key finding is that the strongest appeals to scientific neutrality are associated with climate skepticism. This casts light on the nuanced, strategic "politics of politicization" in climate change debates. A more fine-grained and reflexive approach to politicization discourses can help identify productive interventions.

Reversing the Gaze: Developing Indigenous and Western Media Frames to Compare Coverage of Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples in the News Media*

AbstractThe news media is an important force shaping societal views of the socio‐politics of climate change. International scholarship finds it not uncommon for Indigenous cultures, communities, and perspectives to be underrepresented and misrepresented in Western media, especially on climate change issues. Research also indicates that accurate Indigenous representation occurs when Indigenous peoples are the authors of news articles themselves. We developed a Holistic Media Coding Protocol informed by Indigenous and Western perspectives to guide our content analysis of media coverage of climate change, environmental issues, and Indigenous peoples. We examined news articles from two Indigenous news publications, Indian Country Today and Navajo Times, and two Western news publications, The New York Times and The Salt Lake Tribune. Our findings indicate that creating and utilizing a theory‐informed Holistic Media Coding Protocol challenges the recurrent Western gaze on Indigenous peoples. This Holistic Media Coding Protocol contributes to our understandings of the media, settler colonialism, and climate change from Indigenous and Western perspectives. Overall, this research responds to a critical call for sociologists to engage more deeply with settler colonialism, Indigenous issues, and intersectional environmental justice.

Topic modeling three decades of climate change news in Denmark

Climate change is a dynamic and rapidly evolving media agenda. First associated with scientific notions of the greenhouse effect, it was later presented as global warming before reaching the current and broader picture of climate change. Over its development, climate change reporting has touched on a broad range of topics reflecting shifting scientific understandings, political interventions, and public anxieties, all of which condition the public's view and actions on climate change. To better understand which issues the Danish public has been exposed to, this study uses topic modeling to analyse 32 years of climate change communication in Denmark (1990–2021, n = 63,743). It identifies 85 topics grouped into 14 themes dealing with climate change in Danish national media outlets. Topics differ in prevalence and longitudinal stability while reflecting outlet bias in political leaning and communicative modalities. The most pronounced differences in climate change reporting are between public service media and traditional newspapers. This indicates that media users relying mainly on online news from public service providers, without additional access to print media, will receive information on climate change that is more topical and less politicized, more thematic and less structural, more about high-level politics than everyday interventions and more concerned with consequences than solutions.

Climate Change in Indonesian National Online Media Coverage: Agenda Setting and Sentiment Analysis

This study aims to analyze how Indonesia’s national online media covers the issue of climate change. Media coverage of climate change is a fairly important issue in Indonesia to analyze how the media makes the issue of climate change a media agenda and, at the same time, monitor how the government’s commitment to the issue of climate change both in terms of policy, prevention, and handling. The method used is a descriptive quantitative content analysis method using a sentiment analysis approach. This study analyzed 3608 titles of news articles published in five Indonesian national online media, namely Antaranews, Detik.com, and Republika.co, Tempo.co, and Tribunnews.com during the five years 2019-2023. The study results show that the frequency of the coverage of climate change issues is most widely reported by Antaranews at 51% and is dominated by positive sentiments as a media company owned by the Indonesian government. In contrast to non-government-owned media, namely Detik.com, Republika, Tempo.co, and Tribunnews.com, the issue of climate change is also on the media agenda, although more than Antara news. This media agenda setting is close to the media framing of climate change issue policies, not merely the amount of coverage but climate change is highlighted on the focus of how weak the handling of the impacts of climate change is.

Cross-Country Analysis of the Association between Media Coverage and Exposure to Climate News with Awareness, Risk Perceptions, and Protest Participation Intention in 110 Countries

ABSTRACT Few studies analyze international media coverage of climate change, and few still explore media's role in public opinion about climate change from a comparative perspective. Using data from the 2022 Yale Meta survey of 108,946 Facebook monthly active users from 110 countries and territories, the current research finds that perceived awareness is associated with perceived personal and future risks but not protest participation intention. Only perceived personal harm was associated with protest intention. People in countries most exposed to climate-related impacts were more likely to show heightened perceptions of harm to self and future generations. An analysis of a subset of countries (n = 52) where media coverage data was externally available for 2015–2022 indicates that media coverage is positively associated with self-reported exposure to climate change and perceived awareness about the issue. However, media coverage is not related to perceived personal or future risks and is negatively associated with protest participation intent across countries. Despite low media coverage of climate change, citizens in poor and developing countries see climate change as a greater risk and are more willing to participate in protests compared to citizens in developed countries. Findings help clarify theoretical and practical implications for climate change communication research.

Mediated climate rift society: articulation and metabolic rift theories in analyzing climate change news in South Africa

IntroductionJournalism is essential in addressing climate change. Journalists' constructions of climate change issues, worldviews, and proposed solutions legitimise those aspects that are made commonsensical and are given discursive salience. The news media has often constructed climate change as a purely scientific issue whose solutions rely on technological interventions- thus neglecting climate change's cultural and political economics. This paper seeks to situate climate change journalism research within ecoCultural Studies and Environmental Sociology.MethodsThrough articulation and metabolic rift theories combined with discourse analysis techniques, this study examines how four weekly newspapers (the Sunday Times, the Mail & Guardian, the City Press, and the Sunday Independent) in South Africa reproduced and re/presented neoliberal climate change solutions anchored on “green” and “clean” transition discourses - from 2011 to 2018.ResultsThe majority of discourse actors support the green economy initiative, with its normalisation facilitated by actors like scientists, media, and politicians. This discourse, prominent during both Zuma and Ramaphosa's administrations, has been integrated into South Africa's energy blueprints, emphasising job creation and cleaner air. While perpetuating capitalist inequalities, the green economy has been championed as a national project aligning with public aspirations. News media often portrays climate change solutions through a neoliberal, techno-optimistic lens, emphasising “green economy” and “sustainable development”. These solutions, paired with market principles, balance economic growth and environmental responsibility.

Heterogeneous impacts of climate change news on China's financial markets

This paper investigates the influence of climate change news on China's major assets: stocks, exchange rates, treasury bonds and green bonds. Using 1.4 million articles from 2017 to 2022, we create climate change news indices (CCNIs) spanning natural disasters, climate governance, energy transition, climate cooperation, and climate communication. We establish CCNI–return and CCNI–value-at-risk connectedness networks for asset returns and extreme risks, respectively. The findings suggest a moderate effect of climate change news on Chinese financial markets. Both natural disasters and energy transition news affect treasury and green bond returns. Energy transition news notably influences extreme risks for green bonds. Dynamic analysis shows that policies related to climate governance and energy transition can affect treasury and green bond returns in specific periods, while negative news related to natural disasters and energy transition increase extreme risks for stocks and green bonds. Our study underscores the need to enhance China's green financial system in order to effectively address climate change.

Climate change news risk and corporate bond returns in China

By constructing a climate change news index based on the textual analysis of newspapers and estimations of the covariance of bond returns, this paper investigates whether climate change news risk is “priced in” in Chinese corporate bonds. We find that bonds with a higher climate change news beta are associated with lower future returns. Moreover, the low climate change news beta premium originates from the transition news beta. Additionally, the low climate change news beta premium is more obvious during times of heightened climate change news risk, which is consistent with the asset pricing theory of intertemporal hedging demand.

Does Climate Change News Matter?

We explore the importance of climate change as a news topic and examine the relationship between climate change news and financial returns using a large news database that consists of more than 4 million news stories. We use multinomial inverse regression—a Bayesian approach capable of handling the multi-dimensionality of our data—to translate news into a quantifiable input. We also build a climate change dictionary from different sources to identify climate change related words. We find that climate change is a persistent topic in our news universe, which indicates that it is a relevant news topic. This relevance is supported by the non-zero contribution of climate change related trigrams (CCRTs) in the constructed news index. However, our sample does not show an increasing trend of the relative daily presence of CCRTs, which signals that the news are unlikely the source that furthers the perceived increasing awareness of climate change. Lastly, we determine the salient CCRTs present during good and bad days of the market. This result highlights the presence in the news of topics related to fuel and energy, emission, climate change, disaster, and fiscal policy.

Media coverage of climate change, eco-anxiety and pro-environmental behavior: Experimental evidence and the resilience paradox

As a risk amplification station, media coverage affects people's concerns about environmental hazards and mitigation behaviors. Substantial evidence has revealed that media coverage is a crucial predictor of eco-anxiety and pro-environmental behaviors. However, few studies have explored the causal relationship between them and whether the resilience paradox applies to exposure to media coverage of the climate crisis. To examine these questions, we conducted a preregistered experiment (Study 1, N = 284) and a cross-sectional survey (Study 2, N = 507) with Chinese youths online. The results showed that global warming news increased state eco-anxiety and donations to the environmental organization. But there was no significant link between eco-anxiety and pro-environmental behavior. The attention to climate change coverage in daily life was positively correlated with eco-anxiety and pro-environmental behavior, and eco-anxiety played a mediating role. Additionally, the resilience paradox could explain individual emotion and behavior in the face of media coverage. Individuals with high resilience felt less eco-anxious but also engaged in fewer pro-environmental behaviors. Findings suggest that we should consider the degree of eco-anxiety and individual differences when using media coverage to increase people's behavioral engagement. Future research should focus on the balance between individual well-being and environmental sustainability.

The Role of Climate Change News in Pharma Industry

Abstract In this article, we aim to study the role of climate change news in the European Big-Pharma companies returns. The goal of the research is to explain if the sentiment of the news posted on Twitter can explain the market movements, even if current global events may affect stock prices. The previous literature reveals the impact of climate change in the economy, but in the field of pharma companies, there is less information of how climate change affects the evolution in the stock market. We used the VADER methodology to examine and analyze the climate change news posted on Twitter. This allows us to extract the sentiment and use it to study the dependence between sentiment score and the evolution of the European Big-Pharma companies. To examine the relation, we use Ordinary Least Squares regressions and Quantile Regression. Our results reveal the fact that there is no significant dependency between the sentiment score of the news published on Twitter by the biggest newspapers and the price increase of the European Pharma companies stocks. We observe a small increase in dependence when we use the sentiment score with 1 day lag in the Ordinary Least Squares regressions and another improvement in results with Quantile Regression.

Extreme weather as a window: Exploring the seek and supply of climate change information during meteorological disasters in China

Public engagement is essential for China to address climate change; however, few studies have explored how to encourage climate awareness among Chinese residents. The objective of this study is to explore the role of local extreme weather in advancing Chinese people's climate change awareness. Whether local extreme weather functions as an opportunity to trigger the public's interest in climate change across China and whether the local online information environment resonances with extreme weather by providing climate change news feeds have been examined by a combination of city-level meteorological warnings and search engine data. The results have verified that residents from 50 of the 360 cities show increasing concern for climate change when an extreme weather event occurs locally; however, only the online information environment of two cities echoes local extreme weather by providing more information about climate change or global warming. Correlations between extreme weather events such as heavy rain, an extreme weather event that has occurred in China, and climate change are underestimated. The effect of extreme cold events and snowfall on climate change awareness should also be noted more in China. This study suggests there is still a lot of room for improvement regarding both increasing and satisfying the public's pre-existing climate change-related concerns. A promising approach would be adopting climate change prevention and adaptation as a news report framework for extreme weather events.

Common volatility shocks driven by the global carbon transition

We propose a novel approach to measure the global effects of climate change news on financial markets. For that purpose, we first calculate the global common volatility of the oil and gas industry. Then we project it on climate-related shocks constructed using text-based proxies of climate change news. We show that rising concerns about the energy transition make oil and gas share prices move at the global scale, controlling for shocks to the oil price, US and world stock markets. Despite the clear exposure of oil and gas companies to carbon transition risk, not all geoclimatic shocks are alike. The signs and magnitudes of the impacts differ across climate risk drivers. Regarding sentiment, climate change news tends to create turmoil only when the news is negative. Moreover, the adverse effect is amplified by oil price movements but weakened by stock market shocks. Finally, our findings point out climate news materialises when it reaches the global scale, supporting the relevance of modelling geoclimatic volatility.

Return volatility, correlation, and hedging of green and brown stocks: Is there a role for climate risk factors?

We examine the effects of three monthly climate risk factors, climate policy uncertainty (CPU), climate change news (CCN), and negative climate change news (NCCN), on the long-run volatilities and correlation of daily green and brown energy stock returns, and perform a hedging analysis. Given that our dataset combines daily and monthly data, we apply mixed data sampling models such as GARCH-MIDAS and DCC-MIDAS. To deal with volatility clustering, asymmetric effects, and negative skewness in innovations, which characterize our dataset, we use those models in asymmetric form with a bivariate skew-t distribution. Firstly, the GARCH-MIDAS models indicate that climate risk has a significant impact on the long-run volatility of brown energy stocks. Secondly, the DCC-MIDAS models reveal that the long-run correlation of green-brown stock returns decreases with the climate risk, suggesting a negative effect and hedging opportunities. Thirdly, the hedging analysis shows that incorporating a climate risk factor, especially NCCN, into the long-run component of dynamic correlation significantly improves the hedging performance between green and brown energy stock indices. The results are robust to an out-of-sample analysis under various refitting window sizes. They matter to portfolio and risk managers for energy transition and portfolio decarbonization.

The Spanish population’s interest in climate change based on Internet searches

The climate crisis is one of the most important global problems facing humanity. Analyzing the search for information on climate change (CC) on the internet can be a predictor of public interest in this problem and, therefore, of the degree of concern exhibited by citizens. This study analyzes the interest in CC among the Spanish population and identifies some variables that may influence this interest. The methodology involves the collection and analysis of data obtained from SEMrush and Google Analytics. We analyzed the search trends of four key descriptors related to CC (“climate change,” “global warming,” “climate emergency” and “greenhouse effect”) during two periods of time, and the relationship between these searches and three relational variables (volume of news in the media, occurrence of extreme weather events and CC-related events). The results indicate that the Spanish population’s interest in CC via the Internet has increased in recent years and is directly influenced by variables such as media coverage of CC, events related to CC, and social pressure exerted by social movements for CC. Some proposals are discussed and presented in relation to the concern for this problem.

The Global South and Climate Coverage: From News Taker to News Maker

Global media coverage of climate change has grown consistently—although unevenly—over recent years. While major differences exist in how much attention is paid to climate coverage in different parts of the world, how climate is discussed has been noticeably uniform and the major thrust of the “climate communication agenda” remains recognizably “global” in that it is driven by the more mature media markets in the North and especially by the narratives coming out of international climate institutions (e.g., the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], climate Conference of the parties [COPs] international nongovernmental organizations [NGOs], and think tanks). Building on the recent experience of the 2022 floods in Pakistan, this essay argues that with the advent of what we are calling the age of adaptation, climate reporting is likely to shift rapidly from mostly explaining why climate change is important (and generally convergent broad ideas about what might be done about it) to reporting on localized climate impacts (and often divergent preferences on how to allocate responsibility and evaluate the cost of those consequences). This will, we argue, make global media narratives on climate change not only more complex and more contentious, but also more honest.