![[PDF]](/pb-assets/Icons/adobe-pdf-icon-1498649896243.png){kind=icon}
Abstract
This article presents findings from a large-scale newspaper analysis of climate change discourses in four developed countries, using corpus linguistics methodology. We map the discourse over time, showing peaks and troughs of attention and explaining their causes. Different connotations of common terms such as global warming and climate change in different countries are analysed. Cluster and key-word analysis show the relative salience of specific words and word combinations during crucial periods. We identify main claims makers and the relative visibility of advocates and sceptics. The main finding is that former are far more prominent in all countries. We also look at the coverage of ‘climategate’. Finally, we make reference to existing theoretical frameworks.
References
Section:
| Antilla, L (2005) Climate of scepticism: US newspaper coverage of the science of climate change. Global Environmental Change 15(4): 338–352. Elsevier. DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2005.08.003. Google Scholar, Crossref | |
| Bell, A (1991) The Language of News Media. Blackwell, Oxford Google Scholar | |
| Biber, D (2010) What can a corpus tell us about registers and genres? In: McCarthy, M, O’Keeffe, A (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp.241–254. Google Scholar, Crossref | |
| Billett, S (2009) Dividing climate change: Global warming in the Indian mass media. Climatic Change 99(1–2): 1–16. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/s10584-009-9605-3. Google Scholar, Crossref | |
| Boykoff, M (2007) Flogging a dead norm? Newspaper coverage of anthropogenic climate change in the United States and United Kingdom from 2003 to 2006. Area 39(2): 470–481. Google Scholar, Crossref, ISI | |
| Brossard, D, Shanahan, J, McComas, K (2004) Are issue-cycles culturally constructed? A comparison of French and American coverage of global climate change. Mass Communication & Society 7(3): 359–377. Google Scholar, Crossref | |
| Brulle, RJ, Carmichael, J, Jenkins, JC (2012) Shifting public opinion on climate change: An empirical assessment of factors influencing concern over climate change in the US, 2002–2010. Climatic Change 114(2): 169–188. DOI:10.1007/s10584-012-0403-y. Google Scholar, Crossref, ISI | |
| Bryant, J, Zillmann, D (2002) Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Google Scholar | |
| Carvalho, A, Burgess, J (2005) Cultural circuits of climate change in UK broadsheet newspapers, 1985–2003. Risk Analysis 25(6): 1457–1469. DOI:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2005.00692.x Google Scholar, Crossref, Medline, ISI | |
| David, PA (1985) Clio and the Economics of QWERTY. Clio – A Journal of Literature History & the Philosophy of History 75(2): 332–337. Google Scholar | |
| Downs, A (1972) Up and down with Ecology – the ‘issue-attention cycle’. The Public Interest 28: 38–50. Google Scholar | |
| Dunning, T (1993) Accurate methods for the statistics of surprise and coincidence. Computational Linguistics 19(1): 61–74. Google Scholar | |
| Goldstone, JA (1998) Initial conditions, general laws, path dependence, and explanation in historical sociology. American Journal of Sociology 104(3): 829–845. Google Scholar, Crossref, ISI | |
| Grundmann, R (1999) The European public sphere and the deficit of democracy, ed. Smith, Dennis, Wright, Sue. Sociology Review Monograph: 125–146. Google Scholar | |
| Grundmann, R (2007) Climate change and knowledge politics. Environmental Politics 16(3): 414–432. Google Scholar, Crossref, ISI | |
| Grundmann, R, Krishnamurthy, R (2010) The discourse of climate change: A corpus-based approach. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines 4(2): 125–146. Google Scholar | |
| Hilgartner, S, Bosk, CL (1988) The rise and fall of social problems: A public arenas model. The American Journal of Sociology 94(7): 53–78. Google Scholar, Crossref, ISI | |
| McCarthy, M, O’Keeffe, A (2010) Historical perspective: What are corpora and how have they evolved? In McCarthy, M, O’Keeffe, A (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 3–13. Google Scholar, Crossref | |
| Morgan, M, Shanahan, J (1996) Two decades of cultivation research: An appraisal and meta-analysis. Communication Yearbook 20: 1–45. Google Scholar | |
| Nisbet, M (2009) Communicating climate change: Why frames matter for public engagement. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 51(2): 12–23. DOI: 10.3200/ENVT.51.2.12-23. Google Scholar, Crossref, ISI | |
| Nordhaus, T, Shellenberger, M (2009) Apocalypse fatigue: Losing the public on climate change. Available at: e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2210 (accessed 29 October 2012). Google Scholar | |
| Ryghaug, M, Sorensen, KH, Nass, R (2010) Making sense of global warming: Norwegians appropriating knowledge of anthropogenic climate change. Public Understanding of Science 24(3): 1–18. DOI: 10.1177/0963662510362657. Google Scholar, SAGE Journals, ISI | |
| Sabatier, PA, Jenkins-Smith, HC (1993) Policy Change and Learning. An Advocacy Coalition Approach. Boulder: Westview Press. Google Scholar | |
| Scott, M (1997) PC analysis of key words – and key key words. System 25(1): 1–13. Google Scholar | |
| Scott, M (2008) WordSmith Tools version 5. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software. Google Scholar | |
| Tognini Bonelli, E (2001) Corpus Linguistics at Work. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar, Crossref | |
| Trumbo, C (1996) Constructing climate change: Claims and frames in US news coverage of an environmental issue. Public Understanding of Science 5(3): 269–283. Google Scholar, SAGE Journals | |
| Whitmarsh, L (2008) What’s in a name? Commonalities and differences in public understanding of ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’. Public Understanding of Science 18(4): 401–420. Google Scholar, SAGE Journals, ISI |
