Global environmental change is
one of the major challenges faced by humanity in 21st century and beyond. The
policy choices today reveal the consequences for the future generations and mass
media is powerful to shape the thinking patterns of people round the world. The
understanding of environmental issues and the coverage has been crucial in
increasing public awareness and on growing scientific consensus.
Global warming is defined as “the rise in earth’s temperature when gases from
greenhouse trap heat and light from sun”. The increase in temperature is
affecting living beings and their lives. The gradual increase in temperature is
causing climate changes in various parts of the world. Earth is warming and many
scientific and humanistic changes are occurring due to the change in
environment. These changes are seen in every part of the world and are a current
issue addressed by every country and its media. Media is an instrument of
providing understanding of the issues to the audiences because it has approach
at foreign level. All over the world every continent is using its media to
inform and educate national and international audiences about global warming and
its climatic effects as it would change the world drastically in coming years.
Parton & Morrison (2011) reviews the literature on communicating climate change
to investigate the role of major groups of information i-e scientists, business,
government, media and general public. It is found that climate change in US is
viewed with three frames; scientific skepticism, security threat and economic
opportunity. Australia framed the issue in terms of the cause i-e CO2 emissions.
Regarding CO2 emissions there are two forms; tragic and comic. Tragic means the
consequences that humans cannot alter. Comic frame considers the issue as crisis
that forecasts future challenges and adaptive action. In German discourse the
framing includes scientist’s politicization, politician’s argumentation and
media’s ignorance of portraying uncertainties.
Speck (2010) examines issues that seem to be important in addressing climatic
change in Australia. Pilot study is used to explore the following; perceptions
about the he nature of mitigation policy in Australia, debate on climate change,
and the portrayal of change in media. These factors are measured through the
case studies using interviews of opinion leaders. Opinion leaders include:
Policy makers, Journalists, Activists, Politicians, and Academics. Interview
questions revealed certain key themes: Weather vs. climate, acceptance of
climate change as real, Personal experience, Sensationalism in the media, role
of the skeptics, Personal opinions of journalists, Culture, use of probabilities
in scientific reporting, Leadership, Severe climatic events and Stagnation of
climate change policy. Results indicate the opinion leader understand the
phenomenon and believe that the mitigation policy in Australia is having slow
progress because media is portraying uncertainty regarding climate changes,
weakness of Australian leadership, the political cost of non-effective policy.
Corbett et al (2002) investigate public understanding to global warming issue
portrayed through media. It focuses on the uncertainty constructed by media.
Hypothesis posed are: The readers of newspaper stories that include context will
be more certain of scientific claims (contained in the story) than those who
read the article with controversy only. Hypothesis-2: The readers of newspaper
stories with both context and controversy will have more certainty than
controversy alone and less certainty than context alone. Hypothesis-3: The
stronger the individuals' environmental ideology, the stronger their prior
certainty about the existence of global warming. Survey is conducted and the
sample includes two undergraduate communication classes from University of Utah.
The results are in accordance with the hypotheses posed.
Quigley (2008) finds how the
environmental organizations can play their part in increasing the quality or
quantity of print-media coverage regarding climatic changes. Content of
published articles is analyzed. Keywords of “global climate change” or “global
warming” are measured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist,
Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report from 1st September 2006 to 31st August
2007. For answering the first research question, review of the working of
environmental organizations is conducted as well as interviews are arranged and
for the second research question, content is analyzed. It is found that the
environmental organizations are now realizing that they should reach out media
firms to spread out understanding of environmental issues among audiences.