Journalism and IPCC AR5: A Global Perspective

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel will provide an overview of how media in different parts of the world covered the recent findings of climate science - the IPCC Assessment Report 5 (its four sub-reports: WG1, WG2, WG3 and the Final synthesis report) during 2013 and 2014. A global analysis, starting from IPCC coverage in mainstream newspapers in 20 countries around the world, will look at the amount of attention, salience of the topic, and actors used as news sources. It will also show at how particular frames of interpretation were mobilized, how the scientific language used by IPCC was modified into journalistic discourse, and how the messages of IPCC became translated and domesticated into different localities and contexts. Thus, the panel offers an insight into the dynamics of mediated, global environmental governance.
Starting from a core comparative sample of mainstream news in 20 countries (Presentation 1, Risto Kunelius & Ville Kumpu, University of Tampere, Finland), the panel opens four thematically focused perspectives to the lessons of global, mediated climate politics, shedding critical light to the factors influencing the diffusion and interpretation IPCC results. Presentation 2 (Hillel Nossek, College of Management Studies and Academic Studies, Israel) looks at how journalists view the IPCC as a source of knowledge. Presentation 3 (Midori Aoyagi National Institute of for Environmental Studies, Japan and Shinichiro Asayama Tohuko University, Japan)
) opens question about the mediation of climate science into policy networks and the role that the media plays in this. Presentation 4 (Dmitry Yagodin, University of Tampere, Finland and Matt Tegelberg, University of York, Canada) maps out the diffusion of key IPCC views and the narratives related to this in the web. Presentation 5 (Anna Roosvall, University of Örebro, Sweden) takes a specific look at the landscape of public discourse and public opinion by looking at dynamics of reader comments and reactions in related to IPCC findings.
Together, the panel reports new global results on a key ongoing issues of environmental communication, opening several specific questions related to the challenges of this poses to journalists and to ongoing public opinion processes. It takes an empirically grounded look at the the ways in which climate journalism operates in the quickly emerging era of networked, global communication infrastructure.
The international panel represent both experienced media researchers and emerging scholars in the field, and the work is based a wide and sustained cooperative network. The MediaClimate –network has been operating since 2008. The network currently includes 28 academics from 20 countries around the world. It has so far published two books. Global Climate, Local Journalism (edited by Eide, Kunelius & Kumpu, Bochum: ProjektVerlag, 2010) analyzing global coverage of the COP 15 meeting in Copenhagen and Media Meets Climate (edited by Eide & Kunelius, Gothenburg: NORDICOM, 2012) providing a series of thematic transnational analyses, also including an overview of the summit coverage until COP 17. (http://mediaclimate.net/publications).

Sub Unit

• Environmental Communication

Cosponsor

• Journalism Studies

Chair

• Risto Kunelius, U of Tampere

Individual Presentations

• Attention, Sources, and Frames: How Journalism in 20 Countries Mediated IPCC AR5 - Risto Kunelius, U of Tampere

• Journalists and the IPCC: Professional Evaluations - Hillel Nossek, College of Management Academic Studies

• Digital Networks and Narratives: Mapping the IPCC AR5 flows - Dmitry Yagodin, University of Tampere; Matt Tegelberg, Trent U

• Policy Networks: Journalism, IPCC, and Stakeholder Networks - Midori Aoyagi, National Institute for Environmental Studies; Shinichiro Asayama, National Institute for Environmental Studies

• Media, Climate Change, Justice and Solidarity - Anna Roosvall, Orebro U

Respondent

• Michael Brueggemann, U of Zurich