Climate Change and the Media
Mike S Schafer, Universitt Zrich, Institut fr Publizistikwissenschaft und Medienforschung, Zrich, Switzerland
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract
Media communication and the coverage of mass media such as TV, radio, newspapers, or the Internet in particular is an
important source for peoples awareness of, and knowledge about, anthropogenic climate change. Accordingly, many
scholars have analyzed the emergence, characteristics, uses, and effects of mediated communication about climate change in
recent years. This article reviews the respective eld, presents its major ndings, and outlines future directions for research.
The Relevance of the Media in Climate Change
Communication
Climate change, compared to many other issues, is an
unobtrusive topic. This is because the climate and its past,
current, or future developments are not easily observable rst
hand. The term climate refers to statistical averages of weather
indicators, such as temperatures, precipitation, wind, and so
on. To speak of climate, these indicators have to be moni-
tored and described on large scales both in terms of space and
time. The World Meteorological Organization, for example,
proposes to speak of climate when referring to average
weather over at least 30 years. Spatially, climates are usually
described for entire countries, continents, hemispheres, or the
whole world. Such dimensions lie far beyond most peoples
life-worlds and biographical horizons. In addition, the main
anthropogenic causes of climate change greenhouse gas
emissions remain invisible.
A second reason for the issues unobtrusiveness is its
complexity. The climate and its changes are observed and
(re)constructed primarily by scientists, whose results are
rather complex and difcult to understand for many people.
This is due, among other factors, to the growing number of
disciplines participating in climate science. Each comes with
its own kinds of data, measures, models, and heuristics,
which results in climate models including more and more
variables and interrelations between these. Moreover, the
ndings of climate science, as those of any other science, are
not unanimously agreed upon. Although a consensus seems
to exist within the respective scientic community about the
basic features and causes of anthropogenic climate change,
dissent, and uncertainty can be found in many details.
Thirdly, climate change is also an unobtrusive issue because
its social effects and the measures to mitigate them are debated,
complex, and, at times, difcult to understand: A lot of the
consequences of climate change, and most likely the more severe
ones, are not occurring here and now. They will appear in the
future and affect countries in the Global South more than those
in North America or Western Europe. In addition, stakeholders
advocate different actions that are often based on elaborate,
difcult to understand rationales and justications. The most
important strand of current climate politics involves interna-
tional efforts at mitigation, that is, a reduction of greenhouse
gas emissions in developed countries, in particular, constituting
a political process that is far removed from peoples life-worlds.
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 3
As a result, the causes and consequences of climate change
and its implications are not directly and easily perceivable, and
what most people know about them stems from media
communication. The mass media means of communication
that distribute content such as text, pictures, and sound to an
anonymous and spatially diverse public via technical means,
such as newspapers, TV, or radio are particularly relevant in
this respect. Surveys in the US, the UK, Australia, and Germany
show that mass media particularly television, followed by
newspapers and, increasingly, the Internet are the most
important sources from which people draw information about
climate change. These studies also show mass media to be more
important than peoples interpersonal communication with
family members and friends, as well as workshops and school
classes. Accordingly, they are important arenas and important
agents in the production, reproduction, and transformation of
the meaning of climate change (Carvalho, 2010: 172).
Overview of the Research Field
The outlined importance of mass media communication on
climate change has long been acknowledged by the scientic
community. A number of introductory texts into the eld are
available, such as Mosers (2010) historical overview of climate
change communication that spans mass media as well as other
kinds of communication. Carvalhos (2010) description of the
politics of climate change communication, Schfers (2012)
overview of online communication about the issue ONeill
et al. s (2013) review of visual communication about climate
change, and Andersons (2009) or Olausson and Berglezs
(2014) programmatic formulation of a future research
agenda are further examples.
Taken together as a whole, the research eld reveals a number
of specics. A recent meta-analysis of some 130 relevant publi-
cations shows the growth of the eld (Schfer and Schlichting,
2014): After only a few analyses were published in the 1980s
and 1990s, research activity increased and remained on
a moderate level until the mid-2000s, when annual publication
numbers rose considerably. Today, analyses of media represen-
tations of climate change constitute a lively and growing eld.
This growth is accompanied by a diversication of research
approaches and objects. A relatively large number of earlier
single-country case studies (e.g., Boykoff, 2008; Gavin et al.,
2011) have increasingly been supplemented by comparative
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.91079-1 853
854 Climate Change and the Media
and longitudinal research. The theoretical foundations of the
respective studies range from politically oriented agenda-
setting approaches to critical discourse analysis and adopt
quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method research designs.
In spite of this diversication, however, the research eld is
still strongly focused on a small number of countries and
media: European and North American countries have received
by far the largest share of research attention and continuously
do so. Asian, African, and Latin American countries, many of
whom are strongly affected by the outcomes of climate change,
have not often been analyzed (Schfer and Schlichting, 2014).
In addition, most studies focus on print media, particularly
broadsheet newspapers. Even though the number of analyses
taking up online and social media is increasing, other media
are largely neglected. The importance of television as a source
of information about climate change, in particular, has not led
to an equally strong amount of scholarly attention for climate
change portrayals on TV.
Furthermore, not all steps of the communication process are
taken up equally. Most studies focus on the media presentation
of climate change, i.e., on how much attention media devote to
the issue, or how they evaluate and frame it. In contrast,
analyses of production processes, i.e., how different stake-
holders try to position themselves in media coverage and on
media consumption and its effects are less common.
The following article will focus on these subdimensions. It
will organize the literature into three distinct sections: agenda-
building efforts related to climate change, the role of journalists
and the characteristics of the respective media representations,
and their uses and effects.
Stakeholder Communication about Climate Change
The existence of climate change itself, its extent and urgency, as
well as the appropriate responses and measures toward it are
deeply contested[, with] considerable competition among
(and between) scientists, industry, policymakers and non-
governmental organizations (NGOs), each of whom is likely
to be actively seeking to establish their particular perspectives
on the issues (Anderson, 2009: 166). Using different kinds
of strategic communication, these stakeholders often aim
for media representation because media are the main forum for
public debates in modern societies and important sources for
information about climate change for many people. Therefore,
stakeholders try to position themselves in the media in order to
be seen as relevant and viable actors in the eld, and to inject
their positions and views into coverage in order to inuence the
societal perceptions of climate change and the subsequent
decisions about paths of action.
A considerable number of studies from political science,
sociology, communications, and public relations have analyzed
these efforts using structuration theory, agenda-building theory,
theories of the public sphere, or social movement theories (for
overviews see Hall and Taplin, 2007; McCright and Dunlap,
2003). They have shown that many concerned parties exist in
the case of climate change, which devote large amounts of
monetary, personal, cultural, and/or symbolic resources to the
issue. The strategic communication of these stakeholders can be
organized in different frames, i.e., ways of interpreting climate
change from a certain perspective that correspond with prefer-
ences for specic solutions (Table 1).
Anthropogenic Climate Change as a Global Problem
The rst frame, which already emerged in the early 1990s and
has been powerful ever since, emphasizes the existence of
anthropogenic climate change, and advocates various measures
to ght it. Its proponents consist of renowned individual
scientists such as James Hansen (US), Nicholas Stern (UK), and
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (GER), prominent activists like Al
Gore, hybrid scientic/political organizations such as the
United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Changes
(UNFCCC) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), large international environmental NGOs such as
Greenpeace or the World Wildlife Fund, and, in many coun-
tries, green parties. These stakeholders use their considerable
resources to argue that the warming of the climate system is
unequivocal, as is now evident, and very likely due to the
observed increase in anthropogenic [greenhouse gases]
(IPCC). It is further emphasized that these developments lead
to more extreme weather, intensify resource shortages, and are
already harming people and ecosystems (Greenpeace).
Therefore, the need for action to counteract climate change is
emphasized, such as the 2-degree goal to limit global warming
at 2
C compared to preindustrial levels.
Scientic Uncertainty
In the mid-1990s, and particularly among representatives of
the US and Australian oil and automobile industries, a coun-
terframe to the abovementioned perspective emerged that has
also been used in other science-related public debates, for
example, around the effects of smoking and secondhand
smoking or genetic engineering: the scientic uncertainty
frame. It was sponsored by international corporations like Shell
or Elf as well as their representatives such as the Global
Climate Coalition, conservative think tanks, and various
administrations and political parties (especially in the US and
in Australia). The frame was less prominent in Europe and
other countries and has lost importance since the 2000s. The
frame argues that while global warming may exist, Scientists
do not agree on mans effect on the climate (Citizens for
a Sound Economy Foundation). Those scientists who argue
otherwise are portrayed as alarmists, and their work is dis-
credited as junk or pseudo science that has a political
purpose (Global Climate Coalition). If anything, a proper
response to the alleged state of affairs would be more research,
but any political regulation is rejected as being premature.
Economic Development
A third frame emerged in the wake of negotiations leading up
to the Kyoto Protocol. It accepts global warming as existent and
human activity as its major cause, but stresses the high
economic costs of action. We are now trying to be more
positive with the science, while still pointing to the high cost of
precipitate action (Ford), which might cost American fami-
lies billions of dollars and millions of jobs (Global Climate
Coalition) and damage competitiveness (Australian Industry
 Climate Change and the Media 855

Table 1 Frames of climate change and their sponsors

Anthropogenic climate change

Frame as a global problem Scientific uncertainty Economic development Ecological modernization

Central organizing Scientic evidence shows Scientic evidence about Climate change does exist, Technological development is
idea climate change exists and is climate change is but measures will seriously key to ghting climate
man-made; action is needed inconclusive; therefore, hamper (domestic) change, industry, and
action would be hasty economic development developed countries as
pioneers
Framing devices Scientic evidence points to Climate science as alarmist Climate change regulation Corporations acknowledge
climate catastrophe; and junk science; its leads to crippled economy responsibility, reframe
atmosphere as global background as a political and restricted lifestyle as them as business
common good; historical complot; climate change is well as a transfer of wealth opportunities for bridging
responsibility of developed a theory, not a fact technologies;
countries; global climate Ecoimagination
justice
Main frame Prominent individual scientists Fossil fuel, coal, automotive, US fossil fuel, coal and European multinational
sponsors and activists, scientic and electric utilities automotive industry, corporations, later adopted
institutions and industry, their associations; Australian coal industry, by many industry sectors in
organizations, IPCC, think tanks, conservative conservative politicians many world regions
environmental NGOs, green politicians, especially in the
parties US
Occurrence Emerged in 1990s and is still Early to mid-1990s, relatively From Kyoto negotiations in Started around Kyoto
widely used widespread geographically, 1997 to early 2000s negotiations, rst in Europe;
most strongly present in strong in many countries
Anglo-Saxon world since mid-2000s

NGO, non-governmental organizations; IPCC, intergovernmental panel on climate change.

Sources: Schlichting, I., 2013. Strategic framing of climate change by industry actors: a meta-analysis. Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture 7 (4),
493511; Schmidt, A., Schlichting, I., in press. In: Hemmer, I., Mller, M. (Eds.), Sustainability and Climate Change: Interpretations and Claims by Societal Actors from
Germany, India and the United States. Oekom, Rio20, Munich with additions from McCright, A.M., Dunlap, R.E., 2003. Defeating kyoto. The conservative movements impact
on US climate change policy. Social Problems 50 (3), 348373; Nisbet, M.C., 2009. Communicating climate change: why frames matter for public engagement. Environment 51
(2), 514518; Weingart, P., Engels, A., Pansegrau, P., 2000. Risks of communication. Discourses on climate change in science, politics, and the mass media. Public
Understanding of Science 9 (3), 261283; and from own research.

Greenhouse Network). Accordingly, it is argued that political
measures have to take this into account, and that the respon-
sibility for tackling climate change cannot solely lie on indus-
trialized, developed countries. To be as effective as possible, it
calls for a global effort that included countries like China,
India, Brazil, and others. Accordingly, international agreements
are rejected as long as they do not include all countries. This
frame is especially prominent among political and economic
factors from developed countries, especially from countries
with a strongly fossil-dependent economy like Australia or
Norway, but it also includes the US.
Ecological Modernization
The fourth frame acknowledges climate change as the single
biggest environmental challenge facing the planet (Hong
Kong Shanghai Bank of China), but focuses on technological
development as the key to ghting climate change and
describes industry actors and developed countries as pioneer-
ing this development. It highlights the potential of an ecolog-
ical modernization to create jobs and national welfare.
Accordingly, the frame resonated not only among industry
representatives from BP, Shell, other companies, and conser-
vative politicians, but also among trade unions and NGOs, in
civil society and among liberal-to-left politicians like the Blair
administration in the UK.
In some variation, these frames are prevalent among many
stakeholders and in many societies. In some countries,
particularly Anglo-Saxon ones, stakeholders fall into two
ercely competing camps of climate change: proponents and
skeptics. Whereas in countries like Germany, the Netherlands
or India, the different frames and their sponsors are found in
a less conictive situation.
Climate Journalists and Their Role
Agenda-building efforts directed at the media are not always,
and not equally, successful. Publishing houses and journalists
play important roles as an intermediaries in this respect. Being
seen by journalism theory as gatekeepers of the news ow,
they ultimately decide which topics, stakeholders, and
perspectives are represented in the media. Accordingly, the role
of journalists in climate change communication has received
some scholarly interest (for overviews see Bodker and Neverla,
2013; Brggemann and Engesser, 2014). Most of these studies
are content analyses that measure journalistic output and
extrapolate information about the journalists from there, while
surveys among journalists and in-depth ethnographic studies
in newsrooms are largely missing.
Who Climate Journalists Are
Even though little is known about the sociodemographic
characteristics and attitudes of climate journalists, studies
have shown that they are a diverse group of professionals and
856 Climate Change and the Media
that their positions within the media differ strongly. As climate
change is a cross-sectional topic that includes scientic as well
as political, economic, cultural, and other facets, the issue is
taken up by numerous media desks and their journalists. As
a result, most journalists writing about climate change are not
monothematic experts on this issue. Still, climate journalists
seem to have become relatively knowledgeable about the issue
over time. While an early US journalist survey showed
considerable gaps in their knowledge about climate change,
later studies came to different results and documented that
journalists (average) knowledge about the issue is better than
that of decision-makers, NGO representatives and others.
Moreover, recent ndings indicate that most climate journal-
ists are in line with the IPCC view on climate change.
How Climate Journalists Work
Some aspects of climate journalists work differ strongly from
country to country. The sources they tend to use, for example,
have been shown to differ considerably according to varying
national cultures of journalism in countries such as Germany
and India, scientists are the major sources of climate change
coverage, whereas in developing countries media and news
agencies from other parts of the world and domestic political
elites seem to be more important. Other aspects of journalists
work seem to be rather stable across countries: journalists
working routines consist, among other things, of nding
newsworthy topics and highlighting their newsworthiness in
their coverage, while adhering to general journalistic norms
such as thoroughly researching information and providing
a balanced account of an issue to the readers. It has been shown
that these general characteristics also apply when journalists
cover climate change, but that they sometimes lead to prob-
lematic results. On the one side, because the unobtrusive and
complex issue of climate change does not cater well to news
values, journalists have to nd and emphasize its newsworthy
aspects in order to cover it. Therefore, they occasionally tend to
play down or omit uncertainties connected to scientic infor-
mation to comply with the news value of unambiguity; or to
exaggerate the expected negative outcomes of climate change to
comply with the negativity news value. Accordingly, news-
paper headlines like Our Earth is Dying (German tabloid
Bild, 3 February 2007) or, in turn, Climate Hysteria is
a Scam (Australias Narrogin Observer, 30 June 2010) have
been criticized as being sensationalist and biased. On the other
side, established journalistic norms have been shown to be
counterproductive at times when covering climate change. The
prime example is Boykoffs balance as bias thesis, which
argues that the norm of balanced reporting led to a coverage in
US media in the 1990s where a minority of climate skeptics was
portrayed as being equally important as the (large majority of)
proponents of anthropogenic climate change (cf. Boykoff,
2011: esp. 99ff.).
Media Representations of Climate Change
Analyses of media representations of climate change are most
prominent in the respective literature, mostly coming from
communication and political sciences as well as sociology.
These studies cover a large number of different countries even
though still primarily from the Western world different media
outlets, many years, and several facets of climate change. Their
main ndings are discussed in the following sections.
Climate Change Is a Relevant Media Issue Worldwide
Many studies have focused on the amount of attention media
devote to climate change. They show that the issue is a relevant
topic in many countries on all continents, outnumbering other
hotly debated science issues like stem cell research or genome
sequencing. They also demonstrate that media attention for
climate change has risen considerably in many countries since
the mid-2000s (Schmidt et al., 2014; see Figure 1).
Media Coverage Is Event-Driven
In addition, studies have shown that media attention for
climate change, as for many other issues as well, strongly
uctuates over time and that it peaks around specic events
(Schmidt et al., 2014). Some of these are weather events,
particularly extreme weather; coverage about climate change
peaked around Hurricane Katrina, the ood of the century in
Germany and the heat waves in Europe. Journalists, looking
for newsworthy angles of climate change and visible mani-
festations of the invisible phenomenon, occasionally interpret
such events as symptoms for climate change, even though
these claims often lack a scientic basis. Other events triggering
climate change coverage are sociopolitical ones. Particularly
inuential are the proceedings of international climate politics,
namely the Conferences of the Parties to the UNFCCC process,
where international climate politics is debated by high-ranking
politicians, and where numerous large NGOs provide addi-
tional interpretations and photo ops for journalists. These
high-prole political events occur annually, can be prepared
for, and systematically focus large amounts of media coverage
on climate change and climate politics. But media attention for
climate change has also been triggered by the recurring releases
of the IPCC Assessment Reports or the Stern Review on the
economic impacts of climate change, as well as by cultural
events such as the Live Earth concerts and movies like An
Inconvenient Truth or The Day after Tomorrow (Schfer
et al., 2014).
Coverage Has Moved from the Science of Climate Change
to Its Societal Impacts
Longitudinal content analyses in various countries demon-
strate that the placement of climate change in media coverage
has changed over time. While it was mostly dealt with on the
science pages (or segments) in the early 1990s, the issue moved
from being a primarily scientic issue into other sections of the
media, most notably to politics and the economy. This is
a symptom of a changing focus a societal turn in climate
change coverage. While the scientic basis of climate change is
still being reported upon at times (and, especially in Anglo-
Saxon countries, sometimes debated; see Painter and Ashe,
2012), its relative importance has decreased, while climate
change has increasingly become a political, economic, and
social issue. Aspects like the political efforts toward a global
 Climate Change and the Media 857

Figure 1 Media attention for climate change in 27 countries worldwide. For each country, one or two leading print media representing different
political positions were chosen for analysis. Leading print media were dened as national media with a high circulation, being published daily and
widely regarded as high-quality papers. The nal sample of the analysis contained 153 261 articles. Percentages indicate the amount of articles
dealing with climate change in relation to all articles published in the analyzed newspapers per month; 19962010; gaps in graphs are due to
missing data. Source: Schmidt et al., 2013.
858 Climate Change and the Media
treaty on emissions reductions, the costs of moving toward
low-carbon societies for national economies, or the humani-
tarian and security implications connected to potentially
intensifying resource conicts and climate-induced migration,
are increasingly taking center stage when media cover climate
change.
The Content of Climate Change Coverage Differs Considerably
from Country to Country
The increased focus of climate change coverage on societal
impacts also seems to come with an increasing domestication
of the issue. While the timing and, to some extent, the occa-
sions of coverage are still quite similar internationally
particularly among Western European and North American
countries the content of coverage often differs considerably.
While coverage in the Netherlands, for example, focuses more
on technical solutions in line with the described ecological
modernization frame, Swedish media emphasize moral and
ecological aspects to a larger extent. German media display
rather warmist standpoints similar to the anthropogenic
climate change as a global roblem frame, whereas media
coverage in the US and Australia is stronger polarized between
skeptics and warmists who devote more attention to the
scientic uncertainty frame. In countries beyond the Western
world, such as India or Bangladesh, postcolonial arguments
can be found, which interpret climate change as mainly of
Western concern (e.g., Billett, 2010).
Uses and Effects of Media Representations
of Climate Change
Compared to the analyses of media representations of climate
change themselves which are often justied with their alleged
effects on peoples issue awareness, knowledge, or behavior
their actual uses and effects have received less scholarly atten-
tion (cf Taddicken, 2013). Furthermore, scholarship on these
issues has many gaps: Studies tend to focus on cognitive effects,
but not on affective and other effects; on information-oriented
formats and not on entertaining or ctional ones; on print
media and not on TV (which has been shown to have the
strongest effects in general and to be the main source of
peoples information about climate change); on individual
level effects and not on meso (institutional) and macro (soci-
etal) effects; and on the general public and not on special
audiences such as scientists, politicians, or journalists. In
addition, the results of the few existing studies paint an unclear,
incoherent, and sometimes contradictory picture. Nevertheless,
a number of recurring results can be extracted.
Mass Media Are Important and Trusted Sources for Climate
Change Information
Regarding the uses of media representations of climate change,
it has been shown repeatedly that mass media particularly
television and newspapers, but increasingly the Internet as
well are the most important sources for peoples information
about climate change. Furthermore, mass media also seem
to be credible sources, whom people trust more on the issue
than, for example, family and friends. Beyond these rather basic
facts, however, little is known about uses and reception
processes. The social contexts in which users engage with
climate-related media content, their motivations, and grati-
cations as well as their interpretations of the content have not
yet been taken up properly. Motivational theories like uses-
and-gratications and theories of interpersonal communica-
tion and information diffusion could be useful to shed light on
these facets.
Agenda-Setting Effects on the Audiences Issue
Awareness Exist
Studies on the effects of media representations of climate
change have mainly focused on individual level effects on
peoples problem awareness, their level of information, and
their willingness to act, i.e., on potential rst-level agenda-
setting effects and on persuasion. They have demonstrated
that the amount of climate change representations that people
encounter in mass media is linked to their awareness of the
issue, pointing toward an agenda-setting effect. This result has
mainly been established through surveys of peoples self-
assessed media use, which are rarely supplemented with
analyses of actual media content or use. Future studies should
take these factors into account, and also aim to distinguish the
specic contribution of different media with regards to
agenda setting.
Mass Media Use Increases Knowledge about Climate Change
Cognitive effects of media representations of climate change
have also been repeatedly shown. People acquire information
about the issue from the media and learn something about it.
This includes factual information about the phenomenon
itself the extent and causes of climate change as well as
potential solutions and options for (individual) action
(Stamm et al., 2000; Taddicken, 2013). These processes of
information acquisition have been well established for cases
in which people turn to media specically for information
about climate change. Their existence and extent is less certain
for general, unspecic media use, i.e., in cases where people
use media habitually and come across climate change infor-
mation involuntarily.
Behavioral Effects Are Less Clear
The existence of media effects on climate change-related
behavior has not yet been established. Studies have found
effects of media use on peoples information-seeking; those
using media and learning from them are more likely to search
for more information about climate change in the future
(Zhao, 2009). Regarding climate-related behavior and action,
however, only some weak media effects have been found, and
in practically all cases refer to behavioral intentions rather than
actual behavior. Even in these cases, the evidence is mixed:
whereas effects could be shown for the intention to engage in
societally relevant activities, no media inuence could be
shown for self-reported investment decisions or lifestyle
changes (Arlt et al., 2011). Therefore, more robust studies in
longitudinal behavioral effects are necessary.

Outlook
While media portrayals of climate change have been taken up
in many studies, scholarship still has many gaps. Analyses of
the production, presentation, and consumption of these media
portrayals need to be balanced better in the future, with
a particular emphasis on the uses and effects of media
portrayals of climate change. More studies on media uses and
effects could also help assess, and maybe answer, normative
calls for social sciences to play a role in the transition toward
low-carbon societies. In order to do so, the objects of analysis,
namely the countries and media, which are analyzed should be
more diverse, with more studies taking up non-Western
countries and audiovisual and online media. As climate
change is a transnational phenomenon affecting countries
around the world, it would also be worthwhile to engage in
more comparative research in order to better understand the
(potentially) varying perspectives on the issue, and to look for
a potential transnationalization or globalization of the
respective debates.
See also: Agenda Setting, Media Effects on; Audiences, Media;
Environmental Movements; Environmental Sciences; Mass
Media, Representations in; Media Effects; Media and Social
Movements; News: General; Public Sphere and the Media;
Science Communication; Science and Media.
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