This study compares newspaper coverage of Beijing’s air pollution in China and the United States (2008–2013). There are two aims: (a) to systematically compare how such a local environmental crisis has been reported across the two countries, and (b) to explore how the news coverage were produced under the influences of social systems and news flows between the two countries. Based on the hierarchy of influence theory, the content analysis reveals that US media covered the issue earlier, having more topics ‘politicizing’ the pollution, using more negative complaints as overall themes of the news articles, more US sources, and a noticeable number of Chinese NGO sources. By comparison, Chinese media reported pollution with more Chinese sources, more self-legitimizing overall themes in which topics regarding strategies and solutions of the pollution were emphasized; it also covered the issue with mild self-criticism. The results contribute to the literature of comparative media analysis between China and the US as well as the hierarchy of influence model by suggesting a two-way flow of news between the two countries.

No abstract

This study proposes, from a cross-national perspective, a model of environmental citizenship that includes predictors at the individual and contextual levels. The model is based on multiple theoretical considerations from environmental sociology, media studies, and economics. The study, based on secondary data, reports that at the individual level, media use, environmental concern, and postmaterialism positively predict environmental citizenship. However, the data also allow to test whether the effects of these variables vary depending on social and environmental contexts. Beyond the individual level, results show that, overall, the effect of environmental concern is stronger in countries with better environment quality. The results also show that economic development at the country level positively explains a stronger effect of postmaterialism on environmental citizenship than in less developed countries. The study shows that environmental citizenship is stronger in countries with lower levels of environment quality, and in countries with less developed media systems.

Chinese news publications potentially play a crucial role in mitigating global climate change. Presently, the majority of scholars treat the Chinese news media system as one single entity. We expect, however, Chinese party-sponsored and market-oriented newspapers differ in their representation of climate change. Using the conceptual framework of news diversity, we examined how Chinese journalists reported on climate change by examining their use of media frames, source types, and multiple viewpoints in news articles. The results revealed that market-oriented newspapers were indeed significantly different by including more diverse viewpoints, conflict frames, and environmental nongovernmental organizational sources, while party-sponsored newspapers employed more domestic political, science, and scientific uncertainty frames. The results suggest that researchers should be cautious about generalizing past findings to the entire Chinese media ecosystem because it is unique, diverse, and complex.

Many communities, especially minority communities, have to deal with contaminated water supplies. Remediating such risks is usually expensive, so requires action from state and/or federal governments. In turn, this requires political support for provision of a collective good, an altruistic action. We use data from a Mechanical Turk convenience sample to examine the influence of values and beliefs on donations to remediate water quality, using actual donations to an environmental group as our dependent variable. We find that views about minorities are the strongest predictor of donations, with symbolic racism-beliefs that minorities have received advantageous treatment-substantially reducing donations. In addition, altruistic values have an indirect effect of increasing the likelihood of donating while selfinterested values reduce donations. It appears that support for collective action on water quality is closely tied with both altruism and racial views, suggesting links between research on environmental justice and on environmental decision-making.