the regional dimension how regional media system condition global climate
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The Regional Dimension: How Regional
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Climate-Change CommunicationMikkel EskjrPublished online: 29 Nov 2012.
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The Regional Dimension: HowRegional Media Systems ConditionGlobal Climate-ChangeCommunication
Mikkel Eskjr
Global perspectives and national approaches have dominated studies of climate-change
communication, reflecting the global nature of climate change as well as the traditional
research focus on national media systems. In the absence of a global public sphere,
however, transnational issue attention is largely dependent on regional media systems,
yet the role this regional dimension plays has been largely overlooked. This article
presents a comparative study of climate-change coverage in three geo-cultural regions,
The Middle East, Scandinavia, and North America, and explores the link between globalclimate-change communication and regional media systems. It finds that regional
variations in climate-change communication carry important communicative implica-
tions concerning perceptions of climate changes relevance and urgency.
Keywords: Media Systems; Regional Media; Climate Change; International
Communication; COP15
In recent decades, climate change has become an important topic in international
news. This is hardly surprising, given the political attention to climate change bothwithin the UN system (IPCC reports, COP summits, UNDP reports), global politics
(G8), IGOs (World Bank, OECD), and NGOs. Thus, the global dimension of climate
change, in terms of environmental and social consequences as well as political and
cultural responses, has increasingly positioned the issue as a key topic in international
politics and international communication.
Since climate change is a global risk, it has resulted in speculations about a new era
of international cooperation and trans-cultural interaction. It has even been
Mikkel Eskjr is at Dept. of Communication, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Correspondence to: MikkelEskjr, Dept. of Communication, Aalborg University Copenhagen, A.C. Meyers Vnge 15, DK-2450 Kbh. SV.
Copenhagen, Denmark. Email: [email protected]
ISSN 1751-3057 (print)/ISSN 1751-3065 (online) # 2013 National Communication Association
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2012.748933
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication
Vol. 6, No. 1, February 2013, pp. 61 81
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suggested that climate change carries the potential for a cosmopolitical moment
(Beck, 2007), in which national preoccupations and solutions are abandoned in
favour of genuinely international responses and cooperation.
From a mere communicative perspective, however, media studies have been rather
sceptical about this alleged cosmopolitical potential, pointing out how nationalmedia still dominate international coverage and debate (Hafez, 2005). Indeed, several
studies have demonstrated how international reporting is often domesticated or
filtered through national prisms (Lee, Chan, Pan, & So, 2005).
As a consequence, global perspectives and national approaches have dominated
studies of climate-change communication. Regional dimensions and regional media
systems have received less attention, although a renewed interest in comparative
media systems has reframed the question of globalization as one of regionalising
communication. However, these studies have mainly been confined to Western
contexts. Thus, despite periodical calls for de-westernizing media studies (Curran& Park, 1990), comparative studies of Western and non-Western media systems are
still rather limited, and virtually absent in the context of international climate-change
communication.
However, not only is adopting a regional perspective important for exploring the
diversity of international communication, but also it allows us to address the
challenges facing international climate-change communication. In the absence of a
global public sphere (Schafer, Ivanova, & Schmidt, 2011), transnational issue
attention is largely dependent on regional media systems and the underlying
mechanisms that guide how and why regional media present global risks such as
climate change.Thus, this article offers a comparative content analysis of climate-change coverage
in three geo-cultural regions, The Middle East, Scandinavia, and North America,
representing three different media systems. The study is based on a sample of
newspaper articles concerning climate change published between the 2008 and 2009
United Nations Climate Change Conferences. Thus, the scope of the study is
exploratory and aimed at investigating the link between global climate-change
communication and regional media systems.
As the media are the main sources of climate-change information to the general
public (Nisbet & Myers, 2007; UNDP, 2007), awareness of climate change is intricatelylinked with how it is presented in and by the media. Local and regional climate-change
reporting is therefore instrumental in making the risks of climate change relevant to
the local population. This study finds that while climate change has become a major
international news topic, it is also marked by considerable regional variations. It is
argued that these variations carry important communicative implications concerning
regional perceptions of climate change in terms of relevance and urgency. Local
reporting and regional perspectives are communicative resources, which are unevenly
distributed across different media systems. They are almost absent in the three Middle
Eastern papers due to different traditions and priorities in Arab news media as well as
political constraints such as the risks of crossing editorial redline. To explore why andhow such differences occur, five aspects of climate-change coverage are singled out in
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order to illustrate the influence of regional media systems and the communicative
implications of this for public perception of climate change. As such, the concept of
regional media systems serves a double purpose: as an analytical means to identify
regional differences in global climate-change communication, and as a theoretical
framework that explains inter-regional variations.
Climate Change: Global Risk
Global Research
Although climatic changes are projected to have different regional consequences,
climate change still represents a global risk and a challenge to our ecological
interdependency (UNDP, 2007, p. 2). Consequently, research on social and cultural
aspects of climate change, including policy, awareness, and communication, has often
taken an international approach. This is especially true of research conducted by
international bodies like the UN, the World Bank, and the OECD (OECD, 2005;UNDP, 2007; World Bank, 2010) as well as the many international polls on public
climate-change perception and awareness (Eurobarometer, 2009; Nisbet & Myers,
2007; Pew, 2009; World Bank, 2009).
The global aspects of climate change have also been the subject of several
sociological discussions (Beck, 1992, 2007; Giddens, 2009; Luhmann, 1995). Most
prominently, Ulrich Beck has argued that in the era of world risks, modern societies
are confronted with the consequences of self-generated catastrophes. Global risks
undermine the current (national) structures and political architecture, which may
foster fundamental uncertainty as well as political apathy. However, they may alsocontain a liberating element resulting in explosive transformations, depending on
whether global risks give way to moral and political impulses (Beck, 2007, pp. 107,
50), thus leading to new ways of addressing global risks such as climate change.
Media studies have looked at climate-change communication from an interna-
tional perspective (Boykoff & Roberts, 2007), or investigated the relations between
global media and public opinion (Leiserowitz, 2007). However, the majority of these
have either focused on the presentation of climate change as a global risk (Cottle,
2009; Mazur & Jinling, 1993; Risbey, 2007) or dealt with systemic constraints on
communicating and generating global, ecological responsibility (Boykoff & Boykoff,
2007; Carvalho, 2007a)
Climate-Change Communication: Methodological Nationalism?
Most media research on climate-change communication has been based on national
studies, which tend to confine themselves to a Western context (Boykoff & Boykoff,
2004, 2007; Carvalho & Burgess, 2005; Ereaut & Segnit, 2006; Ungar, 1999;
Weingart, Engels, & Pansegrau, 2000). Besides offering a national picture of climate-
change media coverage, these studies have highlighted an ideological dimension in
climate-change reporting (Carvalho, 2007b); emphasized the narrative structures themedia has used (McComas & Shanahan, 1999); or looked at the somewhat intricate
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relations between national climate-change science and climate-change communica-
tion (Ungar, 2000).
Confining research to a national context raises the question of whether climate-
change communication studies exemplify the pervasiveness of methodological
nationalism (Beck, 2007; Beck & Willms, 2002). So far, such studies have privilegedthe nation state as a quasi-natural unit for sociological analysis (Konig, 2006,
p. 62). This is, however, a rather complex question. On the one hand, it can be argued
that an analytical strategy based on a national framework is inadequate, given that
climate change represents a fundamentally de-localised risk and a new type of global
interdependency (Beck, 2007, p. 106). On the other hand, a considerable amount of
media research has documented the continuous influence of national media systems
on media industries and audience reception (Chadna & Kavoori, 2010; Lee et al.,
2005; Sreberny, 2006). As a corrective to over-enthusiastic notions of globalization
and cosmopolitical visions of international communication, these studies areimportant reminders that international news tends to be communicated nationally
or regionally*even in a globalized era.
Regional Aspects*
The Missing Dimension
Yet both the global/international and the local/national approach tend to overlook a
third perspective on global climate-change communication, namely the regional level
of international communication. Hafez has pointed out that a discussion of
globalization which rests on concepts of local and global, but then leaves outthe regional level, easily becomes under-complex [untercomplex] (Hafez, 2005,
p. 19). Hafez argues that supra-national and regional forces contribute to the
internationalisation of communication, while also representing a restricted, or rather
regionalised globalization. In a similar vein, Straubhaar suggests that the role of
geocultural regions needs to be emphasized more, and argues that we should
reconsider globalization as a set of regionally differentiated patterns of moderniza-
tion (Straubhaar, 2006, pp. 683, 689).
One reason why the regional dimension has been largely overlooked is the
predominant Western perspective within media studies. In the West, media has
developed in tandem with differentiation in the political system and public sphere
(Habermas, 1989 [1962]). This explains why the nation state still forms the
background for most theories (Hallin & Mancini, 2004; Hardy, 2008) and empirical
studies (Curran, Iyengar, Lund, & Salovaara-Moring, 2009) on Western media
systems.
Outside a Western context, however, the nation-state framework might be less
significant. Recent studies of, for instance, the Arab media system suggests that
linguistic communities, shared historical experiences, a sense of common cultural
identity (Lynch, 2006), as well as norms and practices of Arab journalism (Mellor,
2007), are just as important forming an Arab media system as the more traditionalfocus on national political systems (Rugh, 2004).
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The literature comparing regional media systems is still rather limited, although
Hallin and Mancinis (2004) study of Western media systems has re-ignited interest in
the field. Paradoxically, while their study considers the nation state the primary unit
of analysis (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 71), it nevertheless presents a model based on
regional media systems. When discussing the future of media systems it emphasisesthe challenges from global forces like commercialisation, modernization, and
globalization.
Thus, to some degree Hallin and Mancinis theory blends national, regional, and
global levels of description. Quite tellingly, however, the theory is still restricted to a
Western context. In discussing the theorys applicability, Hallin and Mancini (2004)
believe it will be useful to scholars working on other regions (p. 6) and suggest that
the Mediterranean model could be particularly relevant for developing regions where
political polarization often continues to be strong (Hallin & Mancini, 2005, p. 231).
But they also emphasise that the framework is not intended to be applied to the restof the world without modification (Hallin & Mancini, 2005, p. 231).
Thus, previous research suggests that a regional dimension represents an
important fault line in international communication. That is also true for studies
on climate-change communication. With noteworthy exceptions (Boykoff, 2010;
Saab, 2008; Schafer et al., 2011; Shanahan, 2009; Tolan, 2007; Tolba & Saab, 2006)
little research has been done on climate-change communication outside a Western
context.
Comparing Regional Media Systems: Data and Methodology
This paper looks at two interrelated questions regarding the regional dimension of
climate-change communication:
RQ1: What are the major regional differences in international climate-changecommunication?
RQ2: To what extent are these differences conditioned by regional media systems?
The paper draws on a comparative content analysis (Krippendorff, 2004; Riffe,
Lacy, & Fico, 2005) of how climate change has been covered in newspapers from three
different geo-cultural regions:
. North America represented by The New York Times;
. Scandinavia represented by the Danish daily Politiken;
. The Levant represented by The Daily Star and LOrient le Jour (Lebanon), as well
as Jordan Times (Jordan).
The newspapers have been selected to form a reasonably comparable sample frame.
While there are differences in the international scope of the papers (The New York
Times and The Daily Star having a broader international readership), all the papers
publish climate-change news, and all belong to the quality broadsheet tradition.
Hence, the selection represents nationally or regionally well-respected papers with ahigh level of professionalism, which is also the case for the Middle Eastern sample,
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especially the two Lebanese papers (UNDP, 2003, p. 66). Despite belonging to the
quality tradition, none of the Middle Eastern papers have the resources to develop
website capacities (including website journalism) that are comparable with the other
regions. The samples are therefore restricted to print articles alone.
There are two other major reasons governing this selection; one methodological,the other theoretical. First, by including Western and non-Western media it is
possible to compare what in methodological terms is called most likely and most
unlikely cases (Flyvbjerg, 2006) regarding the likelihood of climate-change
communication. Generally speaking, it can be assumed that Scandinavia and North
America represent most likely regions when it comes to covering climate change,
while the Middle East represents a most unlikely region, as the Arab world faces a
number of social and political challenges that are considered more urgent than the
risks of future climate change. In so far as climate change receives fair media
attention in a most unlikely region like the Middle East, it can be assumed thatclimate change has indeed become a global news topic.
A second reason for including the three regions is the possibility of comparing
Western and non-Western media systems. Whereas Scandinavia belongs to a
democratic-corporatist model, North America represents a liberal or market
based media system (Hallin & Mancini, 2004) and the newspapers from the Levant
belong to a less well-defined Arab media system. The nature of the Arab media
system has been subject to intense debate (Fandy, 2007; Lynch, 2006; Mellor, 2007;
Rugh, 2004, 2007; Sakr, 2001). While most research acknowledges the existence of a
particular Arab media system, it is less clear whether Arab media should be
conceptualized and defined in national/regional or political/economic terms. Thus,the Middle Eastern newspapers in this study formally belong to the Arab media
system as they are owned, published, and distributed by Middle Eastern news
companies. However, as non-Arabic language newspapers, they possess certain
editorial privileges and forms of expression that make them more international and
westernized compared to the majority of Arab media.
The present discussion of regional media systems is limited to print media. Today
media systems are increasingly based on electronic and digital media. Yet for
historical and political reasons, print media is a defining variable in most media
systems (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 67) as the newspaper industry often spells outthe characteristics of a given media system.
Data, Coding, and Analysis
Data were obtained from a sample of five 2-week periods spanning 1 year from
COP14 (2008) to COP15 (2009). There were both practical and analytical reasons
behind this sampling strategy, which differs from the constructed week sampling
often recommended by content analysis methodology (Riffe, Aust, & Lacy, 2009).
First, most of the study was conducted in Damascus, Syria, and data were collected
with the help of Danish embassies in Amman and Beirut. For practical reasons, it wasimpossible to obtain copies of the three Middle Eastern newspapers based on a simple
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random sample or composite week sample. Collecting papers in consecutive weeks
turned out to be a more feasible strategy. The sample of the two other newspapers
was obtained from the LexisNexis database (The New York Times) and the Danish
database InfoMedia (Politiken).
Second, for analytical reasons the five samples were purposively selected in order tocoincide with international summits dealing with questions of climate change in
order to investigate the impact of trigger events on regional climate-change
reporting. The five samples thus correspond with:
. COP14 (14th Conference of the Parties) Poznan, Poland, December 2008;
. IPCC 30th meeting, Turkey, March 2009;
. G8, Italy, July 2009;
. UNFCCC meeting, Bangkok, October 2009;
.
COP15, Copenhagen, Denmark, December 2009.
Strictly speaking, this is a non-random sample, as the starting point of the five
samples was not randomly drawn. However, the international meetings were
distributed throughout the year, minimising seasonal basis, and some meetings
hardly received any media attention, resulting in little effect on sample size.
Consequently, the sample might not differ much from a randomly based consecutive
week sample. Furthermore, this sample yields more data than the recommended
constructed week sample, which has been a necessary strategy in order to gain
enough comparative material from the Middle Eastern newspapers.
The sample included all articles containing the words climate change, globalwarming, greenhouse gas, and CO2 (n0913). It was subsequently coded
according to the following principles:
. distribution of news genres: front-page, article, paragraph, leader, and op-ed;
. distribution of news categories: foreign/domestic news as well as political,
economy, environmental news or human-interest stories;
. attribution of articles: staff journalists vs. international news agencies and op-ed
pieces by local authors vs. international syndicates;
.
number of secondary articles: news stories containing one or more search wordsbut which are otherwise not about climate change (or environmental matters).
Based on a content analysis, the study investigates patterns of regional climate-
change reporting and discusses to what extent it reflects systemic conditions and
constraints. Occasionally, the analysis is supplemented by a more qualitative
approach offering examples of specific content constellations. This part draws on
qualitative media analysis, which is looking for patterns across time based on
readings rather than quantifications of multiple texts (Altheide, 1996).
As the investigation is based on a sample from a handful of newspapers, it does not
claim to be representative of climate-change communication in Scandinavia, NorthAmerica, or the Arab world in general. It is an explorative study investigating the
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significance of regional variations and the connections between climate-change
communication and regional media systems.
Regional Aspects: Global News, Local PrioritiesThe data show that all the sampled newspapers paid substantive attention to climate
change, indicating that climate change has to some degree become a global news
topic in broadsheets newspapers (cf. Figure 1). However, data also reveal significant
regional variations in terms of number of articles, editorial priorities, and the
importance of so-called trigger events. Thus, to begin with, we have to distinguish
seemingly similar patterns in global climate-change reporting and underlying
variations at the regional level.
The New York Times exemplifies fairly stable climate-change coverage, with limited
difference in the number of articles between the first four sample periods. Thisstability illustrates how international climate-change summits seem to have limited
influence on editorial priorities. Whereas COP14 and G8 were covered extensively in
both The New York Timesand Politiken, the IPCC meeting in Turkey or the UNFCCC
meeting in Bangkok were hardly mentioned. Nonetheless, during these four meetings
the number of articles concerning climate change remained almost identical,
indicating that in the two Western papers climate-change coverage does not generally
depend on so-called trigger events.
The main exception is the coverage of COP15, which generated an extraordinary
amount of media attention in all the sampled newspapers, not least in the Danish
newspaper Politiken. However, as COP15 was hosted on Danish ground, representing
the biggest international event in Denmarks political history, COP15 was
Figure 1 Number of articles per sample.
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over-represented in the national press. Its coverage in Politikenconsisted of both hard
and soft news, with particular focus on how the Danish authorities managed the
official and unofficial activities relating to COP15.
The three Middle Eastern newspapers represent a fundamentally different picture.
Trigger events like COP15 and the G8 summit generally result in more intensiveclimate-change coverage indicating that unless climate change is the subject of an
international summit, it is regarded as less newsworthy. However, given that the
Middle East represents a most unlikely region, where climate-change reporting can
be expected to be infrequent, Figure 1 shows the extent to which climate change has
become a global news topic covered in all three regions.
This general picture of global media concern is confirmed when looking at the
distribution of climate-change news items such as front-page stories, paragraphs,
editorials, or op-ed pieces. Table 1 demonstrates that nowhere is climate-change
reporting confined to an entirely secondary position, for instance, at the paragraphlevel. Climate-change features as front-page news and is the subject of editorials and
op-eds in all the newspapers, although with varying degrees of intensity. On the face
of it, Table 1 reveals a remarkably similar pattern in climate-change reporting; the
three Middle Eastern papers publish almost the same number of articles (between 85
and 87) and differ primarily in the number of front-page stories and op-ed pieces.
Likewise, the two Western papers have a fairly equal distribution of front-page stories,
articles, and paragraphs and differ mainly in respect to editorials and op-eds.
A closer look at the content of articles, however, points to important regional
differences. All articles have been coded as primary or secondary depending on
whether the subject was mainly on climate change or just a peripheral theme in an
otherwise different news story. Table 2 shows that the latter is more frequent in the
two Western newspapers compared to the Middle Eastern papers. This seems to
reflect the status that climate change has acquired in Western media and politics over
recent years. No longer is climate change treated as an isolated subject or problem.
Rather, the complexity of climate change means that the problem has become an
integrated part of several policy areas ranging from production, transportation,
agriculture, housing, consumption, and even culture and lifestyle. Consequently, a
Table 1 Distribution of news items
New YorkTimes Politiken
JordanTimes
The DailyStar
LOrient leJour
n % n % n % n % n %
Front page 24 8 17 5 2 2 13 15 11 13Article 200 64 200 58 53 62 49 56 56 65Paragraph 15 5 17 5 9 11 10 11 14 16Editorial 22 7 8 2 1 1 1 1 1 1Op-ed 52 17 100 29 20 24 14 16 4 5
Total 313 101 342 99 85 100 87 99 86 100
n0913.
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considerable number of articles have been coded as secondary (see Table 2), reflecting
how climate change blends with all sorts of political issues and topical questions and
therefore features in almost any news genre and category.
In contrast, the Middle Eastern newspapers rarely deal with climate change as a
sub-theme in relation to other news stories. Climate change is still regarded as a
rather particular issue with its own international agenda and is largely isolated from
other types of political news, especially national politics.
So far, the data presented indicates that climate change has become an integral part
of the international news agenda although trigger events still play an important factor
in generating attention, especially in the three Middle Eastern newspapers. The data
also suggest that beneath apparently similar patterns of climate-change reporting lie
fundamental regional differences and variations in terms of how climate change is
presented and addressed. In the following sections these variations will be further
illustrated by looking into five different aspects of regional climate-change reporting.
Foreign/Domestic News
The most significant regional difference is the distribution of foreign and domestic
news as illustrated in Figure 2. It shows that the Middle Eastern papers treat climate
Figure 2 Foreign/domestic news (%).
Table 2 Secondary news items on climate change
New YorkTimes Politiken
JordanTimes
The DailyStar
LOrientle Jour
n % n % n % n % n %
Secondaryarticles
85 27 33 10 5 6 3 4 1 1
n0127.
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change almost exclusively as foreign affairs (8289 percent). This is one of the clearest
examples of how climate-change reporting is conditioned by regional media systems.
Arab news media are frequently described as dominated by hard news and a
preference for analyses of international politics (Mellor, 2007). This seems partly to
reflect the elitist tendencies of Arab newspapers in general (Rugh, 2004), but also thepolitical context of Arab media. Treating climate change as foreign news minimises
the risks of crossing editorial redlines. By focusing on climate change as international
news, it becomes a matter related to the international community*the Western
world especially*that fits an official rhetoric in which the maladies of the Arab world
are often portrayed as imposed by the outside world. Treating climate change as
domestic news, on the other hand, runs the risk of exposing official neglects,
contradictions, or corruption related to environmental policies.
Domestic news relating to climate change is therefore primarily apolitical. This is
the case in stories on projects to increase water supply in Jordan, improve waterquality in Aqaba (an important tourist resort in Jordan), or on how climate change is
threatening the Lebanese Cedar trees, the national symbol of Lebanon. This kind of
domestic news reporting is especially salient in Jordan, which represents a
neopatrimonial political system and a semi-authoritarian media system (Bank &
Schlumberger, 2004), in which the media rarely question the general policy, and never
the foreign policy of the regime.
In The New York Times and Politikenthe picture is almost the opposite. Here the
majority of climate-change stories relate to domestic news indicating how climate
change has become an integrated part of domestic politics. Thus, the distribution of
foreign/domestic news in The New York Times (32 percent/68 percent) and Politiken(38 percent/62 percent) illustrates the differences between Western and Middle
Eastern media landscapes, rather than between different Western media systems. The
percentage of foreign/domestic news in the two Western newspapers correlates with
another recent comparative analysis. This found an almost identical distribution in
U.S. newspapers (34 percent/66 percent), although the numbers of Danish news-
papers (29 percent/71 percent) differed somewhat from the findings in this
investigation (Curran et al., 2009).
Nonetheless, these figures illustrate the extent to which climate change has become
an integrated part of the political agenda in both Scandinavia and North America.Climate change is no longer primarily an environmental discourse as it was in the
1980s and early 1990s. Rather, it has moved to the centre of national political
concerns as witnessed by the shift in the climate-change discourse in the 1990s
towards questions of economy and energy supply, and in recent years to questions of
international security and securitization (Brown & Crawford, 2009; Wver, 2009).
Hard News vs. Various News
Closely related to the pattern of foreign/domestic news, is the distribution of hard
news/soft news and of different news categories in general. Once again, the maindifferences in Figure 3 are between the Western and Middle Eastern newspapers.
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The high percentage of political news (68 77 percent) in the three Middle Eastern
papers is directly related to the findings in Figure 2 concerning the distribution of
domestic/foreign affairs. As foreign affairs are predominantly about international
politics, a large share of foreign news will consequently result in a similarly high share
of political news. Together, Figures 2 and 3 suggest that the discursive variations
regarding climate-change stories are somewhat limited in the three Middle Eastern
papers.
The pattern in The New York Times and Politiken is surprisingly similar, with a
fairly equal distribution of news categories. The high percentage of news coded as
other illustrates the extent to which climate change has become an integrated part
of our cultural reservoir. Climate change has become a more or less undisputed fact
that can be referred to in the most unlikely contexts. Examples range from a wine
review that discusses the impact of climate change on wine production (Pedersen,
2009), to a book review on a history of economics where climate change serves as the
paradigmatic example of a global catastrophe (Kakutani, 2008). Climate change also
increasingly appears in cultural reviews (theatre, cinema, TV, exhibitions, etc.), which
is a further sign of how widespread expressions and anxieties about the risks of
climate change have become in diverse cultural productions.
Neutral or Politicized News?
While Figure 3 points to a similar distribution of news categories in The New York
Times and Politiken, there are important differences beneath this general pattern. A
closer look at the specific content of news categories reveals different regional
traditions. This becomes particularly apparent in the role and function of science inclimate-change reporting.
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0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Poli ken
New York Times
Jordan Times
The Daily Star
L'Orient le Jour
n=913
Poli cs
Economics
Environment
Human Interest
Other
Figure 3 News categories (%).
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The New York Times tends to include a higher number of scientifically framed
articles (coded here as other in Figure 3) compared to Politiken. This includes news
stories about research programmes to monitor climate change or news reports on the
impact of climate change on the environment. It reflects a greater concern with the
scientific grounds of climate change and climate-change policy. An article onmeasuring CO2 explains how our knowledge gap has serious policy implications
and ends by quoting a researcher, stating that Its a national priority to understand
the carbon budget so people can make smart, good policy (Moran, 2008, p. D3).
The New York Times was the only newspaper in the sample to publish a front-page
story about climate-change science on the first day of COP15 (Revkin & Broder,
2009). The article presents the scientific foundations behind negotiations at COP15
as well as reporting on the boost to climate-change scepticism provided by the so-
called climategatescandal concerning the hacking of emails from the climate-change
research unit at East Anglia University.This editorial emphasis on climate-change science might reflect how so-called
climate sceptics have played an important role in the American climate-change
debate (Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004). To some extent they have succeeded in turning the
climate-change question into a discourse of scientific uncertainties rather than a
political discourse; a tactic which has itself become a minor news topic (Sachs, 2010).
However, the focus on climate-change science may also reflect liberal/market based
media systems tendency towards a more neutral and apolitical style of news
reporting compared to European media systems like the corporatist-democratic
model of Scandinavia (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). In The New York Times, political
news on climate change is more inclined to include assessments from experts, thinktanks, or scientists, whereas articles in Politiken often bring political commentaries
from the political opposition or politically involved NGOs, when reporting on official
climate-change policy. Furthermore, Politiken has a greater tendency to publish polls
that measure climate-change opinion according to party political alignments.
Comparable trends are found on the op-ed pages. The New York Times op-ed
pieces regularly appeal to a bipartisan policy on climate change, whereas op-ed pieces
in Politiken are more politicized and confrontational, attacking the governments
climate-change policy or suggestions from the political opposition.
Finally, the importance paid to climate-change science may reflect wider culturaldifferences. On the one hand, climate-change reporting in general pays attention to
science. This seems to be a natural outcome of the very nature of climate change.
While it has repeatedly been suggested that recent extreme weather phenomena
represent rather concrete forewarnings of climatic changes, climate change is still a
mostly invisible and scientifically constructed risk. As such it differs from other
risks of late modernity such as unemployment and economic globalization (Beck,
2002), which can be experienced first-hand as part of daily life. Scientific findings and
discussion are therefore central to most climate-change stories.
On the other hand, there seems to be culturally conditioned differences in the
importance allocated to science in the struggle to solve or overcome the risks ofclimate change. While scientific solutions to climate change get media attention
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across the sample, The New York Times seems to be particularly concerned with the
possibilities of a technological fix for global warming (Galbraith, 2009, p. B1). The
same faith in a technological fix is harder to detect in Politiken, which seems to regard
the answer to climate change within a more political context, as a political solution
on a national as well as international level.Climate-change reporting in the Middle East relies, to a very large extent, on
international news agencies (cf. next section). As the news agencies are based on the
style and tradition of the liberal media system, the tendency towards neutral
reporting and use of apolitical sources are reproduced in these news stories.
Staff/Agencies
Changing focus from news content to news producers, another set of regional
differences are apparent, the most important being whether climate-change news isproduced by staff journalists or copy-edited from international news agencies. This is
a fundamental difference with considerable communicative implications, as it
concerns questions of local relevance and public engagement.
Table 3 reveals the extent to which Middle Eastern papers rely on international
news agencies when reporting on climate change. Only domestic news that relates to
climate change is by-lined, whereas international news on climate change is almost
always attributed international news agencies; this is most likely a token of both
limited resources and editorial priorities. A report by The Arab Forum for
Environment and Development points out that less than 10 percent of the Arab presshas a full-time editor for environmental issues (Saab, 2008). Consequently,
environmental journalism lacks professional standards and continuous coverage:
the Arab media treatment of environmental issues lacks follow-ups, and is
characterized by immediate descriptive content rather than analysis and even
accurate information (Saab, 2008, p. 188). The present study concurs with this
description, both with respect to local environmental news and news reports on
climate-change issues, which can be rather sporadic. However, during high profile
international summits like the COP meetings and the G8, the situation is somewhat
Table 3 Attribution of articles
New YorkTimes Politiken
JordanTimes
The DailyStar
LOrient leJour
n % n % n % n % n %
By-lined article 213 68 202 59 9 11 12 14 21 24News agency 2 1 8 2 54 64 53 61 0 0*Op-ed 52 17 100 29 20 24 14 16 4 5
n0764.a
International articles in LOrient le Jourare not attributed to news agencies. However, the relativelysmall number of by-lined articles indicates that the majority of articles are copy-edited from newsagencies.
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different. In these cases, there is a continuous news reporting, copy-edited from the
international news agencies, which is highly informative and very often includes
some sort of (political) analysis.
The problem lies in the different perspectives on climate change provided by staff
journalists and news agencies. News agencies write for a global readership, providinga general outlook on international climate-change negotiations. Consequently,
international actors like the U.S., the EU, and the big emerging economies dominate
the news, while regional aspects and consequences of climate change tends to
disappear. However, without a local or regional dimension linking climate change
with the experiences of the audience, it is hard to imagine the media raising
awareness or contributing to civic engagement on the subject. A recent Arab Forum
of Environment and Development survey (Saab, 2009) highlights the relationship
between media and public perception of climate change. The survey documents a 100
percent increase in people who believe that climate change poses a serious threat (84percent), compared to a survey from 2000 (42 percent), an increase mainly attributed
to the media (Saab, 2009, p. 9).
However, the survey also reveals that while 98 percent believe the climate is
changing, 14 percent of the total sample*and as much as 27 percent in Syria*did
not think this presented a threat to their country of residence. According to the
survey, this significant discrepancy can be linked to the treatment of climate change
by Arab media: Arab public perception of climate change is largely derived from
international media, in the absence of real work in the countries of the region to
identify local and regional ramifications of the climate threat and make them
available to the public (Saab, 2009, p. 9).The present study corroborates this proposition by documenting how climate
change in the three Middle Eastern papers is predominately treated as foreign news
and mainly delivered by international news agencies. While the agencies provide
crucial information on climate change and the environment, they cannot substitute
the perspectives offered by local reporting, which are instrumental in making the
risks of climate change relevant to the local population.
Local vs. Global Opinion Makers
While Table 3 shows a relatively high percentage of op-ed pieces in some Middle
Eastern newspapers*equalling or surpassing that of The New York Times*which
could suggest lively debate concerning the risks and policies of climate change, it
turns out that the pattern of op-ed producers is similar to the pattern of news
producers in general (see Table 4). Hence, with a few exceptions, all op-ed pieces are
by foreign authors, and quite often distributed by Project Syndicate, an international
syndicate that disseminates opinions to subscribing newspapers around the world. It
defines itself as a collaboration of distinguished opinion makers from every corner
of the globe (Project Syndicate, 2010), and consists mainly of articles by world
leaders like Ban Ki-moon, Kofi Annan, Tony Blair; scholars like Joseph Nye; orinternational figures like George Soros, Bjorn Lomborg, etc.
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These op-ed pieces are often quite general and analytical, but first and foremost
they are a part of an exclusively international agenda. They lack the day-to-day
character of an ongoing national/regional debate. Thus, there are no letters to theeditor regarding climate change in the three Middle Eastern papers, nor any
responses to earlier articles or op-ed pieces.
An issue ofJordan Times during COP15 (December 8, 2009), which contained no
less than four op-ed pieces on climate change, is illustrative of this international
character. A piece proposing the greening of Asias housing sector was followed by a
Reuters analysis of an upcoming OPEC meeting and its reaction to COP15. Then
came an analysis by Associated Press on climate-change policy in the U.S., while the
last op-ed piece dealt with the impact of climate change in Africa. Once again, the
perspectives are extremely international rather than local or regional, presenting
abstract analyses rather than political discussions.
The New York Timesand Politikenalso differ regarding the number and content of
op-ed pieces. In general there are fewer op-eds on climate change in the printed
edition ofThe New York Times, and the debate appears more regulated and top-down
(but perhaps also more focused) compared to Politiken. Thus, some ofThe New York
Times weekly or biweekly columns (e.g., by Thomas Friedman, Paul Krugman)
provide substantial input into the newspapers debate on climate change. Further-
more, most letters to the editor tend to comment on already published articles, quite
often by experts and stakeholders (companies, NGOs) rather than ordinary
citizens. Thus, the newspaper, rather than its readers sets the agenda in the op-ed
section.
Politiken has no op-ed columnists who comment regularly on climate change,
apart from the editor of environmental affairs and occasional Project Syndicate op-ed
pieces. However, Politiken publishes many letters to the editor along with more
elaborate views by experts, stakeholders, politicians, and public servants. This gives
the impression of an ongoing public debate involving a relatively broad representa-
tion of Danish society. This might reflect a relatively long and well-established
tradition in Danish public debate concerning the environment and sustainable
energy, but it also indicates a difference between the liberal and corporatist-democratic media systems, where the latter has a tradition of tolerating and
Table 4 Sources of op-ed pieces in Middle Eastern newspapers
Jordan Times The Daily StarLOrient le
Jour
n % n % n %
Project Syndicate 17 85 8 57 2 50Other international authors 0 0 2 14 0 0Local/regional authors 3 15 4 29 2 50Total 20 100 14 100 4 100
n038.
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advocating more partisan views regarding the media as part of the political process
rather than being above politics (Hallin & Mancini, 2005, pp. 224227).
Discussion: Climate Change and Regional Media SystemsThe five aspects of climate-change reporting presented above point towards different
cultural perceptions of climate change in terms of relevance, historical responsi-
bilities, and regional influence on climate-change negotiations. However, they also
illustrate the influence of regional media systems.
The difference in discursive variations between Western and Middle Eastern
newspapers demonstrates the distinction between, on the one hand, an elitist or
clientelistic press system and, on the other hand, commercial press models. Whereas
the former expresses the views of the political elite (Rugh, 2004) or depends on some
sort of patron (Fandy, 2007), the latter relies on a diverse audience in order togenerate revenues. The former is dominated by hard news, illustrated by the
dominance of foreign news and the absence of human-interest stories relating to
climate change. The latter is marked by greater discursive variety and a preference for
domestic news, generally considered more relevant and attractive to a broad and
diverse readership.
These pronounced differences between Western and non-Western newspapers
might easily overshadow the more subtle disparities between Western media systems.
However, the different emphasis on science, polls, political sources and commentaries
in The New York Timesand Politiken, as well as the different political character of op-
ed pieces, seem to reflect the contrast between media systems based on internal andexternal pluralism. Internal pluralism refers to a mainly liberal media system, in
which individual media institutions reflect the wider political spectrum. External
pluralism, on the other hand, belongs to a media system with strong party political
affiliations (e.g., the corporatist-democratic model), where the political spectrum is
represented by the entire media system rather than by individual media institutions
(Hallin & Mancini, 2004).
This is a rather crude distinction, which has undergone considerable historical
transformations. For several decades the corporatist-democratic model has evolved
towards the liberal media system, diminishing the ties to specific political parties.Meanwhile, some liberal media systems have experienced increasing polarization,
especially within the electronic media, resulting in the emergence of the opinion-
based, rather than information-based, media traditionally associated with the
polarized-pluralist media system. However, within the newspaper market it is still
a useful distinction, which reflects the different historical accentuations and
journalistic traditions in North American and Scandinavian newspapers.
It is also a reminder that differences in international climate-change reporting cut
across a simple Western/non-Western dichotomy. While there are obvious dissim-
ilarities between Western and Middle Eastern newspapers in terms of economic
resources, political culture, and editorial freedom, this study also finds thattendencies towards a less politicized and more scientific discourse on climate change
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are shared by The New York Times and the Middle Eastern newspapers, albeit for
rather different reasons. Whereas commercial interests bring about a rather neutral
form of political reporting in the liberal media system, political constraints and
editorial redlines result in more or less uncritical reporting in Arab media. However,
the predominance of expert views in international climate-change news alsodemonstrates the global influence of the liberal media system as the three Middle
Eastern papers copy-edit most of their climate-change stories from news agencies
located in the North-Atlantic region.
Conclusion
The present study has investigated the relationship between climate-change reporting
and the influence of regional media systems. It finds that climate change has become
a global news topic covered by all the sampled newspapers, but also that there areimportant interregional variations at play, as illustrated through the discussion of five
aspects of climate-change reporting. The dynamics of these regional aspects often
interact and reinforce each other.
The tendency of Middle Eastern papers to copy-edit climate-change stories from
international news agencies, resulting in an overrepresentation of international news,
is directly related to the political economic context of most Arab media. It reflects the
limited economic resources of many Middle Eastern media but also the risks of
crossing editorial redlines, which could easily occur if climate change was presented
in terms of local issues and challenges. In both cases this leads to rather one-
dimensional and uncritical climate-change reporting focusing on trigger events anddevelopments in international politics with limited relevance for the local population.
In contrast the two Western newspapers primarily present climate change as
domestic news produced by staff journalists. At a political level, this illustrates how
the complexity of climate change now touches on several aspects of social life,
becoming implicit in many policy areas and social discourses. At a commercial level,
climate change is deemed more relevant for subscribers and readers if domesticated
or linked to the life-world of ordinary citizens. Consequently climate-change
reporting is more diverse, locally produced, and nationally anchored.
Regional variations, however, do not follow a simple Western/non-Westernpattern. The commercial and political tradition of the liberal media market results
in a less politicized and neutral climate-change reporting compared to the
democratic-corporatist media system in which partisan views are more accepted
and pronounced. This explains the inclination towards expert views and scientific
debates in The New York Times and the more politicized op-eds and letters to the
editor in Politiken.
The preceding not only indicates the importance of advancing research on regional
media systems in order to conceptualize theoretical and communicative implications
in the field of international communication but also has a particular bearing on
climate-change reporting, as climate change represents a truly global risk. Withoutsome measure of equal access to relevant climate-change information at a
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trans-regional level, it will be difficult to sustain global awareness and public interest
in addressing the challenges of a changing climate.
AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers as well as the editor of
this journal for their helpful suggestions and comments on an earlier draft.
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