Media and Climate Change: Four Long-standing Research Challenges Revisited

Abstract

This paper suggests some further avenues of empirical and theoretical investigation for media research on climate change. "Old" suggestions, whose significance, as we see it, needs to be further reinforced, are included, as are "new" ones, which we hope will generate innovative research questions. In order to integrate the analysis with knowledge generated by media research at large, we revisit four research challenges that media scholars have long grappled with in the investigation of journalism: (1) the discursive challenge, i.e. the production, content and reception of media discourse; (2) the interdisciplinary challenge, i.e. how media research might engage in productive collaboration with other disciplines; (3) the international challenge, i.e. how to achieve a more diverse and complex understanding of news reporting globally; and (4) the practical challenge, i.e. how to reduce the theory-practice divide in media research.

The Endangered Arctic, the Arctic as Resource Frontier: Canadian News Media Narratives of Climate Change and the North

“…This is likely not an ideologically driven silencing of climate justice claims by media gatekeepers, but is likely a by‐product of routine news practices that frame discussion through scientific and economic lenses instead of around differential climate change responsibilities and impacts . Yet, the absence of a climate justice frame is consistent with observations that climate justice is often at the fringes of media coverage (Dreher and Voyer ; Olausson and Berglez ).…”

“…By interpreting climate change through a nation‐level lens, media coverage obscures regional or local differences in climate change responsibility, vulnerability, and capacity to adapt. As such, Canadian news framing fits a model of climate reporting that “promotes traditional national outlooks and ‘nationalizations’ of social reality” (Olausson and Berglez :260). From a climate justice perspective, news framing often fails to convey that positive and negative climate impacts on the north are unequally distributed, and largely pose risks to northern communities, while presenting opportunities for economic and political elites that are often located beyond these communities in southern Canada or in corporate headquarters around the world.…”

“…A substantial body of research focuses on media framing of climate change (Olausson and Berglez 2014;Schäfer and Schlichting 2014). An overarching theme is that climate change framing varies across countries.…”

Journalistic Norms, Cultural Values, and Coverage of Climate Change in the Philippines

“…It is helpful to recall the international challenge described by Olausson and Berglez (2014) here; it is the sociological, political, and cultural differences between nations that interact with journalistic work to produce messages about climate change. Despite the global nature of climate change as a problem, national journalistic culture remains deeply entrenched (Berglez, 2008;Cottle, 2011).…”

“…This omission speaks to the "international challenge" as described by Olausson and Berglez (2014) in their call for a "deeper understanding of climate change in the media around the world by taking into account the political, cultural, historical, social, and economic conditions in the actual country of investigation" (p. 256; emphasis in original), a challenge that lends itself to a comparative and sociological approach in order to better understand the experiences of cultures on the other side of the risk/responsibility divide in the climate change issue.…”