Newspaper Coverage Of Climate Change Research Articles

Towards efficient and reliable utilization of automated data collection: Media scrapers applied to news on climate change

Abstract: Automated data collection provides tempting opportunities for social sciences and humanities studies. Abundant data accumulating in various digital archives allows more comprehensive, timely and cost-efficient ways of harvesting and processing information. While easing or even removing some of the key problems, such as laborious and time-consuming data collection and potential errors and biases related to subjective coding of materials and distortions caused by focus on small samples, automated methods also bring in new risks such as poor understanding of contexts of the data or non-recognition of underlying systematic errors or missing information. Results from testing different methods to collect data describing newspaper coverage of climate change in Finland emphasize that fully relying on automatable tools such as media scrapers has its limitations and can provide comprehensive but incomplete document acquisition for research. Many of these limitations can, however, be addressed and not all of them rely on manual control.

Vulnerable voices: using topic modeling to analyze newspaper coverage of climate change in 26 non-Annex I countries (2010–2020)

News media influence how climate change is represented, understood, and discussed in the public sphere. To date, media and climate change research has primarily focused on Annex I countries, or treated non-Annex I countries as a homogenous bloc, despite the global nature of climate change and its geographically uneven impacts. This study uses a mixed-method approach, combining machine learning (topic modeling), econometrics, and qualitative analyses, to investigate newspaper coverage of climate change in 26 non-Annex I countries. We compiled a dataset of 95 216 news articles (dated between 2010 and 2020 from 50 sources) in 26 lower-middle and upper-middle income non-Annex I countries. In line with previous research results, we find that most common topics represented are international governance of climate change, the economics of energy transitions, and the impacts of climate change. Advancing current research understanding, we also demonstrate heterogeneity in coverage between non-Annex I countries and discover that a country’s vulnerability to climate change is positively associated with the diversity of topics (based on an article-level entropy index) portrayed by its domestic news media outlets.

Analyzing variation in state newspaper coverage of climate change

Analyzing variation in state newspaper coverage of climate change

Understanding broadsheet newspaper attention to climate change objective facts in South Africa

South Africa is one of the most vulnerable countries to the impacts and risks of climate change in Africa. News media outlets play an important role in communicating content relating to climate change. Newspaper attention devoted to climate change has been more prolific in the Global North. To understand the portrayal of climate change science in news media in South Africa, this study examined objective facts coverage in three leading broadsheet newspapers between 1996 and 2016. Overall, this study found that newspaper coverage of climate change was at the highest peak in 2011. The findings revealed that attention to objective facts (observed climate trends, climate change impacts, and climate change projections) was not significant over a 20-year period. We found that objective facts generally dominated coverage in 2006 and 2007. Our findings indicate that newspaper attention to objective facts significantly decreased over the years. We also found that climate politics was the most dominant topic in the news articles. This study concludes that there is a considerable disconnect between the print media and objectivity when reporting climate change news stories in South Africa.

Framing climate change in local context: Newspaper coverage of climate change in three mountain towns in the intermountain west compared to national coverage

Research examines how journalists cover and frame the issue of climate change in mainly nationally circulated newspapers. This study compares and contrasts the framing of climate change between two nationally circulated newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, and three intermountain west, mountain town, community newspapers, Jackson Hole News & Guide in Jackson Hole, WY, Summit Daily in Summit County, CO, and Park Record in Park City, UT. This research compares national versus community coverage, coverage over time for the years 2011 and 2016, and coverage between the three communities, using five commonly used frames, responsibility, human interest, conflict, morality and economic consequences. Results indicate there are statistically significant differences when comparing national to community newspaper coverage as well as between the three community papers, indicating the importance of local context in media coverage of climate change and in frame analysis more generally. Climate change is a partisan issue, but community newspapers may be less partisan, so analyzing newspaper coverage at various scales adds to our understanding of how different contexts shape media coverage, which in turn may shape views on climate change.

Muted by a Crisis? COVID-19 and the Long-Term Evolution of Climate Change Newspaper Coverage

The reasons for the emergence of environmental issues in public debate have been widely studied, while the reasons for the disappearance of environmental issues from the public agenda are researched to a far lesser extent. This article presents how the newspaper coverage of climate change has evolved in Finland. The study is based on long-term (1990–2020) data from the leading national-level newspaper. The climate coverage has been characterized by an increasing overall trend and remarkable fluctuations in the intensity of debate. The monthly coverage of climate change had four distinctive peak periods. The drops from peak levels are explained by several factors, such as the end of a specific news event or policy process (e.g., international climate policy meetings), lack of weather anomalies (e.g., normal winter weather and snow coverage), silence of key influencers (policy-makers, business elite), and news competition together with reporting fatigue following abundant climate coverage. The first months of the intense phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 showed a deep, but not unprecedented drop in climate coverage from the preceding peak level. The persistence of anthropogenic climate change, gradual mainstreaming of climate concerns across different societal sectors, and recent policy debates around so-called green or sustainable recovery suggest that climate coverage is not likely to be muted in the near future.

Klimaatbeleid in de krant

Abstract The legitimacy of climate policy is a necessary condition for the broad acceptance of government interventions and civic participation. News media are an important source of information for public perceptions and beliefs concerning climate change and climate policy, which people will use to grant or deny legitimacy. In this article we apply the theoretical perspective of media framing to analyse Dutch newspaper coverage of climate change and climate policy during April and May 2019, by means of systematic manual content analysis. We use these empirical findings to further reflect on their potential significance for policy legitimacy as experienced by their readership. Overall, the newspapers pay little attention to climate change as a contested phenomenon and to humanity’s contribution to its cause and solution. In the fight to reduce CO2-emission, the Dutch government is portrayed as the principal agent. The responsibility of individual citizens is less often highlighted. Hence, newspaper coverage does not seem to challenge the fight against climate change as a legitimate policy goal. It does, however, pay ample attention to specific policy interventions to reduce CO2-emission and the controversies that surround them. In line with, or as a reflection of these findings, differences within public opinion are to be expected concerning the legitimacy of policy interventions, both with regard to their desirability on paper (input) and their actual (side) effects (output).

The representation of future generations in newspaper coverage of climate change: A study of the UK press

AbstractClimate change will rob future generations—today's children and those yet to be born—of the stable climate that previous generations have enjoyed. The article explores how future generations are represented in climate change coverage in the UK national press. We examine the ‘popular’ (Mail, Mirror) and ‘quality’ (Guardian, Telegraph) press from 2010 to March 2019. We found that little attention was given to future generations; young people rarely spoke and, along with those yet to be born, were represented in ways that obscured the temporal and social inequalities that are built into climate change.

Content Analysis of South African Sunday Newspaper Coverage of the Durban and Copenhagen Climate Change Conferences

Since the first United Nations climate change conference in 1995, newspapers have been vital in increasing coverage of climate change. Amidst growing number of events around climate change, the influence of international climate change conferences in newspaper coverage of climate change has not been fully interrogated in post-apartheid South Africa. This study aims to discover how three major South African Sunday broadsheet newspapers represented the Copenhagen conference (COP15) in 2009 and the Durban conference (COP17) in 2011. It used a national sample for the years 2009 and 2011, covering the City Press, The Sunday Independent and Sunday Times. The study carried out quantitative analysis of 58 articles published in the three leading Sunday newspapers between 01 January and 31 December. The direct involvement of South Africa on the Copenhagen and Durban climate change negotiations had an influence in the level of newspaper coverage. The frequency of articles published per month increased in November and December for all the years of interest. The dominantly reported main topics associated with COP are greenhouse gas emissions and the Kyoto Protocol. Both COP15 and COP17 were discussed frequently at a local level - domestic geographical scope. Overall, the article identified that South African print media is not consistent in the representation of COP. In order to better the reporting of international climate talks, print media has to be actively involved in integrative and collaborative engagement with COP relevant stakeholders.

“Reporting on climate change: A computational analysis of U.S. newspapers and sources of bias, 1997–2017”

News organizations constitute key sites of science communication between experts and lay audiences, giving many individuals their basic worldview of complex topics like climate change. Previous researchers have studied climate change news coverage to assess accuracy in reporting and potential sources of bias. These studies typically rely on manually coding articles from a handful of prestigious outlets, not allowing comparisons with smaller newspapers or providing enough diversity to assess the influence of partisan orientation or localized climate vulnerability on content production. Making these comparisons, this study indicates that partisan orientation, scale of circulation, and vulnerability to climate change correlate with several topics present in U.S. newspaper coverage of climate change. After assembling a corpus of over 78,000 articles covering two decades from 52 U.S. newspapers that are diverse in terms of geography, partisan orientation, scale of circulation, and objectively measured climate risk, a coherent set of latent topics were identified via an automated content analysis of climate change news coverage. Topic model results indicate that while outlet bias does not appear to impact the prevalence of coverage for most topics surrounding climate change, differences were evident for some topics based on partisan orientation, scale, or vulnerability status, particularly those relating to climate change denial, impacts, mitigation, or resource use. Overall, this paper provides a comprehensive study of U.S. newspaper coverage of climate change and identifies specific topics where outlet bias constitutes an important contextual factor.

When climate change is not blamed: the politics of disaster attribution in international perspective

Analyzing the politics and policy implications in Brazil of attributing extreme weather events to climate change, we argue for greater place-based sensitivity in recommendations for how to frame extreme weather events relative to climate change. Identifying geographical limits of current recommendations to emphasize the climate role in such events, we explore Brazilian framings of the two tragic national disasters, as apparent in newspaper coverage of climate change. We find that a variety of contextual factors compel environmental leaders and scientists in Brazil to avoid and discourage highlighting the role of climate change in national extreme events. Against analysts’ general deficit-finding assumptions, we argue that the Brazilian framing tendency reflects sound strategic, socio-environmental reasoning, and discuss circumstances in which attributing such events to climate change—and, by extension, attribution science—can be ineffective for policy action on climate change and other socio-environmental issues in need of public pressure and preventive action. The case study has implications beyond Brazil by begging greater attention to policies and politics in particular places before assuming that attribution science and discursive emphasis on the climate role in extreme events are the most strategic means of achieving climate mitigation and disaster preparedness. Factors at play in Brazil might also structure extreme events attribution politics in other countries, not least some other countries of the global South.

How do Canadian media report climate change impacts on health? A newspaper review

Research on climate change media coverage is growing. Few studies, however, have investigated how the media portrays climate change impacts on human health. This review, therefore, presents a quantitative spatiotemporal analysis of Canadian newspaper coverage of climate change impacts on health between 2005 and 2015. Using the ProQuest® and Eureka® databases, a multiphase systematic review strategy was employed to identify relevant English and French articles from two national and six regional high-circulation newspapers. Quantitative and qualitative data were extracted from 145 articles and analyzed to characterize the range, extent, and nature of climate-health newspaper coverage in Canada and to compare these characteristics by region and over time. Coverage varied by region, with the highest proportion of climate-health coverage in Northern Territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut). Over time, there was a decreasing publication frequency trend. Almost all articles described negative climate change impacts on health, with a predominant focus on infectious and chronic noninfectious diseases; however, less than half of the articles discussed climate change solutions. These trends suggest that current media coverage might not drive widespread public support for policies and actions needed to protect against projected climate-health risks. Consequently, as climate change continues to challenge human health, increasing media emphasis on climate change impacts on human health, as well as a shift toward enabling and empowering climate change communication, in which viable mitigation and adaptation options are emphasized, could help to spur action to reduce climate change health risks.

Alerters, Critics, and Objectivists: Researchers in Austrian Newspaper Coverage of Climate Change

Newspapers are important fora for communicating scientific expertise to the public. Our article asks how researchers convey their expertise and link it to political actions in Austrian newspaper coverage of climate change. Based on researchers’ understanding of climate change and the degree of prescriptiveness of their policy recommendations, we identify three positions: alerters, critics, and objectivists. We illustrate how these three types advance different framings of the climate change debate and generate contradictory representations of climate science. Finally, we discuss our findings against the background of scholarly works on the nationally specific media representation of climate research.

Newspaper coverage of climate change in Fiji: A content analysis

Media plays a crucial role in the global fight against climate change, acting as a tool for awareness, advocacy and policy change. For Fiji, this role becomes even more essential with the country’s vulnerable island system facing the direct impact of current and future climate change threats. The primary aim of this study was to analyse climate change coverage in the Fiji press. The Fiji Times, Fiji’s national newspaper, was examined to identify trends in climate change coverage between January 2004 and December 2010. A quantitative analysis was initially carried out to see the volume of reports, followed by a qualitative look into the context and thematic values of the news reports. Empirical findings showed an increase in coverage over time, although there was a transiency in the high levels of coverage when looked at on a monthly basis. Published reports also show a trend of event-based reporting with more than 80 percent of articles being generated out of or following up on a climate change convention, meeting or report launch. An overall consensus on the scientific realities of climate change in the newspaper coverage, and relatively high coverage of impacts and threats of climate change highlighted the plight of the islands. Reporting of climate change issues needs to be prioritised if the press is to fulfill its role in providing timely information on climate change. Journalists training and collaboration with national stakeholders would assist in more effective climate change coverage instead of the great reliance on one-off events to spark recognition of the major environmental problem. Developments in the discourse since this research was conducted will be worth noting as climate change has continued to rise as one of the most salient global environmental issues of our time.

Characterizing the climate issue context in Mexico: reporting on climate change in Mexican newspapers, 1996–2009

Mexico stands out as an exception in the climate policy arena. In 2012, the Mexican government legislated a long-term greenhouse gas emissions reduction target, a feat which other large emerging economies (and many industrialized countries) have not been able to match. An analysis of newspaper coverage of climate change in Mexico from 1996 to 2009 offers insight on the issue context within which Mexico pursued its unilateral action. Like in many developing countries, climate change news coverage in Mexico increased steadily over the 15-year study period, with a significant increase in attention to the issue in 2007. Initially, news coverage of climate change in Mexico was dominated by framings tying climate change to weather patterns and adverse impacts at national and sub-national levels. As news coverage of the climate issue matured, there was an increase in frames linking climate change to domestic economic and energy concerns. A review of the secondary literature on climate change news coverage in other countries in the Global South suggests this domestic focus, in discussions both of climate impacts and of greenhouse gas emissions drivers, is unusual and may offer some insight into the antecedents of Mexico’s climate policy leadership.

Media coverage of climate change: An international comparison

We present an international comparison of broadsheet newspaper coverage of climate change. We employ two complementary theoretical lenses, multiple streams theory and institutional theory, to explore why climate change has become headline news in some countries but has received comparatively little coverage in others. The study utilises a worldwide sample across 41 different countries for the year 2008, covering 113 leading national broadsheet newspapers. A cross-sectional regression model is used to identify whether and how a range of contextual factors impact coverage of climate change. To a certain extent, a country’s direct exposure to climate change and the measures that have been taken to combat global warming influence the position of climate change on the media agenda. Crucially, however, we identify a number of contextual factors that impact climate change-related media coverage in different national contexts. In particular, we find a significantly positive relationship between regulatory quality and levels of media coverage. At the same time, unemployment trends are significantly negatively related to media attention to climate change. Gross domestic product per capita does not help to explain levels of climate change-related media coverage. In other words, climate change appears to have moved beyond simply being a ‘rich country issue’.

Measuring and modeling Russian newspaper coverage of climate change

As a significant emitter of greenhouse gases and a country rich in fossil fuels, Russia plays a crucial role in achieving a comprehensive solution to climate-related challenges. Yet, Russia's official position on climate change has varied considerably since the beginning of global negotiations, with the country playing everything from policy leader to laggard. While there are a number factors that shape domestic policy positions, this study offers a comprehensive investigation of newspaper coverage on climate change in Russia. How have Russian newspapers discussed the issue since the Yeltsin era? We approach this question by compiling the largest data set of Russian newspaper coverage to date, which includes 11,131 climate-related articles from 65 papers over a roughly 35 year period. After introducing a “computer assisted” approach to measure the core themes running through climate change coverage, we statistically evaluate the national- and newspaper-level factors associated with how coverage is framed, focusing attention on 23 high circulation papers over the period from 2000 to 2014. We find that national-level predictors—particularly economic conditions—are highly influential in determining whether climate change is covered and how the issue is framed, while paper-level factors such as the presence of an energy interest and ownership structure also have notable effects. Overall, this study offers a rich data set and useful methods to better understand the drivers of climate communication in Russia.

Prospects for Environmental Communication Based on 25 Years of Newspaper Coverage of Climate Change and Eutrophication in Finland

Research on long-term media coverage of environmental issues has focused predominantly on English-speaking industrialized countries and on single isolated topics. This article presents a comparative analysis of the Finnish newspaper coverage of climate change and eutrophication from 1990–2014. The coverage of eutrophication showed an annual cycle with summertime peaks strongly influenced by local conditions and domestic news sources. The coverage of climate change had three distinctive peaks, influenced by several factors including international climate policy negotiations, domestic energy debates, and mild and snowless winter weather. The prospects for building public awareness of environmental issues through media representations are discussed.

Biased or balanced? ----A study of British and Chinese newspaper coverage of climate change in the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference

Nowadays, climate science communication is an issue not only discussed within a country but more like a global urgent task that needs wide perspective. This study investigated the prevalence of news frames in Climate change news coverage from the Guardian and China Daily during the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Five news frames, attribution of responsibility, human interest, economic consequences, morality and conflict were applied to 59 Chinese news stories and 71 British news articles. By applying deductive framing analysis, the results showed that with slight variation, the proportion and pattern of reports on Copenhagen Climate Summit were similar across the two countries. This outcome extends the knowledge of developing and developed countries’ news coverage on climate change. Keywords: Climate change; UK; China; newspaper; Copenhagen

Climate change in Peruvian newspapers: The role of foreign voices in a context of vulnerability

Media coverage of climate change has been an area of continued research during the last years, mostly with a focus on developed countries. This study attempts to contribute to this body of work by analyzing the coverage in a developing country. The study presents a content analysis of newspaper coverage of climate change in Peru through the study of frames, geographical focus, and climate change strategies (mitigation/adaptation). Additionally, the role of foreign voices is assessed by comparing the coverage by Peruvian reporters with the coverage by wire services, and by determining the types of sources present in the articles. Results show a prevalence of an effects frame, followed by a politics frame. Also, the study found a significant amount of stories originating from wire services. In general, coverage prioritizes mitigation strategies and policies while providing limited attention to adaptation, which can be insufficient for a highly vulnerable country.