Attention to climate change in British newspapers in three attention cycles (1997–2017)

Abstract

Peaks in climate change newspaper coverage have been attributed to key events, such as major international climate change summits, on the basis that these are reported. This approach overlooks the possibility that unreported events have capacity to focus journalists' and editors' attention on climate change. This study considers the extent to which meteorological and political events-derived externally from what is reported in the media itself (some reported, some not)-coincide with attention to climate change in four UK newspapers. We call these events 'news prompts', since they are potential rather than actual news pegs: some are translated into news stories, others are not. The study brings together literatures on agenda-setting, newsroom practices, and the political economy and ideologies of newspapers. We find that the four newspapers we analyse have responded differently to climate-change related events including international policy events and extreme weather. In recent years, The Mail, The Telegraph and The Times have been relatively insensitive to climate change news prompts in comparison to the more left-leaning Guardian. As climate change coverage increases, so does sensitivity to climate news prompts. This suggests that the ideology of newspapers and the political economy of media outlets may drive climate coverage as much as routine newsgathering practices.

Social weather: A review of crowdsourcing‐assisted meteorological knowledge services through social cyberspace

“…In political use in the United States, climate change‐related tweets also exhibit the difference in use by people with different political briefs: when the tweets are classified according to the location of states, red states prefer ‘climate change’ rather than ‘global warming’, and blue states show the opposite preference (Jang & Hart, ). A similar phenomenon could also be observed between left‐ and right‐leaning news agencies (Saunders et al , ). Pearce et al .…”

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

“…A more comprehensive analysis would include a broader range of newspapers, both national and local, and a larger set of sampling points. While studies suggest that coverage of climate change is closely tied to major political events (Saunders et al., 2018; Schäfer et al., 2014), this larger set could include coverage of extreme weather events, such as flooding and heatwaves.…”

“…As noted above, we searched the UK ‘popular’ (Mail, Mirror) and ‘quality’ (Guardian, Telegraph) press, including online and printed versions, as well as the linked Sunday edition of each paper. We adopted a purposive sampling strategy informed by studies of how media interest in climate change increases at times of heightened political engagement (Saunders et al., 2018; Schäfer et al., 2014). For our target years, we took sampling points designed to capture such periods (see Table 1).…”

“…Secondly, against a broader trend of increasing press coverage of climate change, media attention is episodic rather than sustained. Coverage is tied to major events in climate governance; it therefore increases around key global events like the 2015 meeting of the Conference of Parties (CoP) to the UNFCCC which produced the Paris Agreement, as well as when major changes in domestic climate change policy are announced (Saunders, Grasso, & Hedges, 2018; Schäfer, Ivanova, & Schmidt, 2014). As a result, media attention is typically short lived.…”

¿Periodismo o greenwashing? Patrocinadores de la COP25 Chile-Madrid en la prensa española

“…Media coverage of climate change is shaped by issues that go beyond the mere setting of a thematic agenda, as they are influenced by journalistic routines, the ideology of the practitioner and the editorial line of the media outlet, as well as the culture in which they are embedded and the political economy of the media company (Saunders et al, 2018). It is therefore more appropriate to use a structural approach to make sense of media coverage on global warming.…”