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Opponents of battling the climate crisis have had twice the media coverage of those advocating to take action, according to a study published on Monday.
The new report looked at more than 1,700 climate-related press releases over a 30-year period, and news articles including the information which were published in the US's largest-circulation newspapers.
Researcher Rachel Wetts, an assistant professor at Brown University's sociology department, found that approximately 14 per cent of press releases in opposition of climate action, or denying the science behind the climate crisis, were more likely to grab headlines compared to roughly 7 per cent of those in support of climate action.
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Professor Wetts’ findings suggest why Americans show less concern about the climate crisis than people in other countries, and why climate policy has often stalled.
The 2020 Digital News Report found that globally, seven in 10 people view the climate emergency as a serious problem. However in the US a significant portion (12%) dispute its severity, in part because they may be “sceptical of the science”, the report said.
Regardless, Americans who say the climate crisis is not serious are just as likely to share views on it via social media or email as those who are deeply worried about it. “We see a highly vocal minority making a big noise online,” the report states.
Professor Wetts said: “The way climate change has been covered in the media could help us understand why there’s so much public disengagement on this issue."
The study involved categorising hundreds of press releases issued by businesses, advocacy organisations, scientific researchers, trade organisations and the public sector into those which supported or opposed climate action.
The press releases were issued between 1985 and 2014, the last year of complete data available when Professor Wetts began the study. It is unclear whether the balance has shifted in recent years, which have seen an increased focus on the changing climate along with growing calls to tackle the crisis, led by youth activist groups such as Greta Thunberg's school strikes for climate movement.
Plagiarism-detection software was used to scan almost 35,000 newspaper articles published about climate change in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today - the three largest-circulation newspapers in the US — to find the press releases which had been used in coverage.
Although only 10 per cent of releases pushed anti-climate messages, the rarer releases were twice as likely to get coverage as pro-climate action statements despite there being many more of them.
Statements that came from big companies, or groups representing business interests, had a higher chance of receiving news coverage. Around 16 per cent of releases issued by business coalitions and trade associations got coverage, compared to about 9 per cent from other kinds of organisations.
Professor Wetts said that the opinions of big business and opponents of climate action were given "outsize opportunity to sway this debate".
The study points to the fact that large and wealthy organisations, particularly in the fossil-fuel industry, received greater prominence in some mainstream media outlets, seemingly down to their vast financial resources and people power from PR firms, lobbyists and advertising agencies to craft policy messages.
The study also suggests that large advertisers at news media outlets may have been able to influence coverage through their ability to withhold ad revenue.
Big business may have also been awarded an advantage due to their "real or perceived importance in the functioning of the economy", leading to their views being seen as relevant to public well-being.
"In particular, the views of large employers are likely to be seen as newsworthy since these organizations could potentially respond to policy changes in ways that could cause economic disruption such as through plant closures, large-scale layoffs, or offshoring," the study found.
Perhaps surprisingly, science and technology organisations, like IBM, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - a federal research facility which recently co-authored a landmark study on the sensitivity of the climate to carbon dioxide emissions - were among the least likely to see their views gain traction. Only 2.9 per cent of their press releases generated news coverage.
Professor Wetts said her findings appear to support the argument that mainstream news organisations often mislead readers by giving equal weight to two sides of an argument. Separate studies have found that print and TV news outlets have historically overrepresented the extent of disagreement on the scientific basis of climate change, and given a prominent platform to a small number of contrarian scientists.
“Journalists seem to feel that they always have to include opposing voices when they report on climate change,” Wetts said. “But sometimes they give those opposing voices so much weight, they lead readers to believe that climate denial is more than a fringe stance.”
The impact of news coverage that lends equal weight to those who oppose climate action goes beyond altering public perception. It could also lead political leaders to modify the actions they take in the fight against the climate crisis, the study found.
“The media is providing a distorted picture of how different groups feel on this issue,” she said. “That can dampen political will to act on climate change, with potentially serious consequences for how we as a society address — or fail to address — this issue.”
The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
xratedcheese on July 28th, 2020 at 12:49 UTC »
Also, the flat-earther minority gets more coverage than the globe-earther majority. The confused, goofy outliers make the news. You don't publish an article every time someone says something normal and sensible and backed by tons of data.
notrunningrightnow on July 28th, 2020 at 12:18 UTC »
The headline and article are misleading. I don't have time to get into all the problems with the data but here is what the research shows (see methods below for how the author coded 'for' and 'against').
The author showed 90% of press releases were 'for' addressing climate change (also lumping 'ambiguous' in there because that means there was some call to action) and 10% were 'opposed'.
In the paper ( https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/07/21/1921526117 ) Figure 2 shows that about 78% of press coverage (news organizations covering the press releases) is for climate action, 5% ambiguous, and the rest "opposed". So about 83% of press coverage is supporting some form of climate action. This is less than the 90% of generated press releases but far from how people will interpret the headline and news article.
What the author showed is that articles opposed or not specifying direct action are over-represented (even then, the 95% confidence intervals overlap between 'for' and 'against', indicating these are significant results in part because the sample is large). However, articles opposed to climate action are still a small minority (about 14% or so [reality is likely in the range of 6-22%, based on the confidence intervals]). There is even enough uncertainty that it's possible 'opposed' articles are not over-represented.
Also, not all press releases are equal or are equally marketed. Sometimes, press releases also come out during the wrong time (e.g., COVID-19 dominates news now so anything else isn't covered much). A textual analysis is insufficient to capture the nuances of the functioning of mass media. That's a fair criticism of almost all research though (over-simplification). My point is "bias" might be in some cases nothing more than unlucky timing.
There is much more to this paper (it's interesting and worth reading) but the linked press coverage of it misrepresents what the author's research shows.
Here are some of the methods in case you wonder how the author coded "for", "ambiguous", and "against": "I coded press releases as expressing opposition to climate action if they (a) call into question the reality, seriousness, or anthropogenic origins of climate change, or if they (b) include a rhetorical denunciation of personal, corporate, or political action to address climate change, without regard to the stated (or unstated) justifications for such opposition. In other words, any press release which states opposition to climate action, for whatever reason, is included in my definition. Conversely, press releases were coded as supportive of action to address climate change if they (a) expressed the reality, seriousness, and/or anthropogenic origins of climate change, or if they (b) stated support for some form of ameliorative action to address climate change, including personal, corporate, or political forms of mitigation or adaptation to climate change.
"Finally, press releases were coded as ambiguous if they expressed opposition to one particular form of climate action (say, nuclear energy), but simultaneously expressed support for another form of action (say, solar power). These press releases, where one form of action was advocated for while another was denounced, were coded as ambiguous, regardless of which forms of action were being advocated and which were being opposed. Press releases were also coded as ambiguous if they (a) did not discuss the reality, seriousness, or anthropogenic origins of climate change, and also (b) did not state support for or opposition to any form of ameliorative action.
"Using this procedure, most press releases were categorized as communicating either support for (83.2%) or opposition to (10.4%) climate action. The remainder (6.4%) were coded as ambiguous."
BloodyMess on July 28th, 2020 at 11:00 UTC »
It makes sense that an apparatus devoted to reporting uncommon events (i.e., "news") falls prey to exception bias.
Obviously it's useful to measure, but the more interesting question is how to objectively fix that problem without outright dictating what can be reported on.