“…There are a number of reasons, however, why it is particularly challenging to track media coverage on adaptation: - Linguistic bias : As discussed above, there are myriad ways of talking about adaptation in public discourse, the most challenging of which is when the word adaptation is not even used, but only sector‐specific plans or actions are described (in coastal areas, for example, discussions of beach nourishment, or building hard shoreline protection, retreating from the coast or dealing with relocation of roads, airports, or water‐related infrastructure).
- Outlet bias : To make news searches manageable, researchers often focus on leading national (elite and popular) newspapers and/or magazines, and only reflect the discourse at that level; adaptation actions undertaken in local settings are easily missed that way. This is aggravated by the widely observed trend that small local newspapers and the number of qualified journalists that could report on these activities are in decline.
- Geographic bias : There is a well‐recognized bias in climate change media studies in favor of developed nations, thus not only under‐representing insights from other parts of the world, but also biasing what types of issues are covered. For example, given the generally greater financial resources in developed nations, which enable large‐scale infrastructure projects, an impression may arise that this is the sort of adaptation that mostly gets done.
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