Measuring the Success of Sustainable Development Indices in Terms of Reporting by the Global Press

Abstract

A variety of indices have been applied to the performance of nation states, both for research and as aids to help guide policy and intervention. While the literature on indices is extensive, the focus to date has been almost entirely on technical issues of index creation. However the success of an index is arguably related at least in part to the use of that index by policy makers and managers. While cause-effect can be difficult to determine, one approach is to measure 'success' in terms of the reporting of indices by an intermediary group such as the media, and this paper assesses the reporting of 24 indices by newspapers worldwide until 2012. The results suggest that index success is influenced by a number of factors, including the time it has existed, its focus, extent and quality of publicity, adaptability in terms of the scope for others to change the content and methodology of the index and resonance in terms of the match with ideas/culture/behaviour of people. The paper makes a case for a new research field that seeks to investigate the meaning and factors involved in 'success' of indices and how these should help with index development.

Sustainable Development—A Poorly Communicated Concept by Mass Media. Another Challenge for SDGs?

“…The sample of media for the content analysis consisted of the newspapers with global reach published in a 10-year time period from 2009 to 2018. A number of previous studies have focused on print media, because of its strong agenda-setting effect on public opinion as well as on the news agenda of other media [10][11][12][46][47][48] The counterpart to the above 22 selected sustainability themes for the media analysis, which provided a contextual frame, was sustainable development. The "sustainable development" concept has remained unchanged for almost forty years (since its launch in 1983) although many definitions attempting to more clearly define it, and related concepts have emerged.…”

“…The sample of media for the content analysis consisted of the newspapers with global reach published in a 10-year time period from 2009 to 2018. A number of previous studies have focused on print media, because of its strong agenda-setting effect on public opinion as well as on the news agenda of other media [10][11][12][46][47][48].…”

Stakeholders Perspectives on the Use of Indicators in Water Resources Planning and Related Strategic Environmental Assessment

“…The interviewees stressed that a limited initial number of indicators is important and noted the possibility of that number could be adapted to the needs and concerns of the different stakeholders: In general, technical experts will favor more detailed and disaggregated information; decision-makers, local actors, and NGO may require more or less aggregated information, depending on the type and level of use. Some of these groups will be interested in less technical information on RB management; thus, the option of aggregating information through indices should be equated, as suggested by Morse (2016). These concerns and perspectives, related to the size of the indicator set and the information's level of detail, have been widely discussed and underlined in the specialized literature, e.g., in Donnelly et al (2007), Gallopin (1997), Gao et al (2010), Mascarenhas et al (2015) and Morse (2015).…”

Sustainability Indicators Past and Present: What Next?

“…These data have come from the Nexis database of global media publications (https: //www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/nexis.page) but specifically searching newspapers where these phrases appears in English referring to the UK. The Nexis database has been applied in several published studies designed to explore reporting of indicators in the media [36][37][38][39]. Unsurprisingly, the number of "mentions" of the phrase surged in 2016, and is also higher than the 2010-2014 norm in 2015 when speculation over the referendum was rife and in 2017 as the UK started negotiating the terms of its exit from the EU.…”