A changing climate of skepticism: The factors shaping climate change coverage in the US press

Abstract

Skepticism toward climate change has a long tradition in the United States. We focus on mass media as the conveyors of the image of climate change and ask: Is climate change skepticism still a characteristic of US print media coverage? If so, to what degree and in what form? And which factors might pave the way for skeptics entering mass media debates? We conducted a quantitative content analysis of US print media during one year (1 June 2012 to 31 May 2013). Our results show that the debate has changed: fundamental forms of climate change skepticism (such as denial of anthropogenic causes) have been abandoned in the coverage, being replaced by more subtle forms (such as the goal to avoid binding regulations). We find no evidence for the norm of journalistic balance, nor do our data support the idea that it is the conservative press that boosts skepticism.

Meat as a matter of fact(s): the role of science in everyday representations of livestock production on social media

“…According to several scholars [Maeseele and Raeijmaekers, 2017], environmental discourses in general, and climate change discourse in particular, have entered the post-political stage through a consensual public discourse, lacking the agonistic element which, according to Mouffe [2005], is constitutive of a well-functioning democracy. Climate conflicts seem to have shifted -at least in part -from direct denial of human-made climate change to rejection of the science behind various causes and solutions [Schmid-Petri et al, 2017] such as meat production and consumption as in the topical case. As argued by Höijer [2011] (cf.…”

Source Influence on Journalistic Decisions and News Coverage of Climate Change

“…A study of three major U.S. cable news channels in 2007 showed how coverage was not monolithic with Fox News significantly more likely to air climate skeptic views compared to CNN. According to Schmid-Petri et al (2015), the amount of attention to skepticism in the U.S. press has remained fairly constant but there has been a shift from fundamental skepticism to impact skepticism. By this they mean that while earlier coverage was dominated by denial concerning the existence of global warming and its anthropogenic causes this has been replaced by a focus on the necessary (or unnecessary) actions to combat climate change, with skeptics claiming that binding regulations would have a negative impact on the economy and pose a threat to individual freedoms.…”

Politicization of science: how climate change skeptics use experts and scientific evidence in their online communication

“…Several studies have been conducted on the journalistic representations of politicized scientific issues (e.g., Boykoff and Boykoff 2004;Friedman et al 1999;Painter and Ashe, 2012;Schmid-Petri et al 2015), and there is also some research analyzing the content and arguments of the climate change countermovement (e.g., Boussalis and Coan 2016;McCright and Dunlap 2000;Medimorec and Pennycook 2015). These studies have shown that science-related discussions POLITICIZATION OF SCIENCE are a typical element of the countermovement's discourse about climate change (e.g., Bentley et al 2016;Hoffman, 2011;McCright and Dunlap 2000).…”