According to the World Economic Forum global media platforms have an overall access to 3.8 billion people consuming their product daily. That gives them an extraordinary power to influence the public opinion over a specific topic (World Economic Forum, Power of Media, https://www.weforum.org/projects/power-of-media/ [checked on January 29, 2024]).
Author W. Lance Bennet in discussing the influence of the media, stated «Few things are as much a part of our lives as the news … [it] has become a sort of instant historical record of the pace, progress, problems, and the hopes of society»(Bennett WL (2002) News: The Politics of Illusion, 5th edition. New York, NY, USA: Longman).
Climate change coverage has been growing steadily in the last decade, from 47,000 articles in 2016-17 to about 87,000 in 2020-21(United Nations, Five ways media and journalists can support climate action while tackling misinformation, https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129162#:~:text=It%27s%20a%20fact%3A%20media%20shapes,its%20landmark%20series%20of%20reports).
The coverage of scientific subjects by mass media matters in many ways, in fact it can shape how a topic is perceived by the people and therefore having implications in how science is translated into policy. According to the American National Library of Medicine «the intersection of mass media, science and policy is a particularly dynamic arena of communication, in which all sides have high stakes»(National Library of Medicine, Signals and noise. Mass-media coverage of climate change in the USA and the UK, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1808044/).
Media are still the main source of information for readers and viewers, through the internet, television, newspapers, magazines and the radio. People get the most of their political, economic, and scientific information from traditional media, despite the important role played by social networks. Media and climate science first came together in 1950, specifically the British Saturday Evening Post published a story entitled ‘Is the World Getting Warmer?’, which questioned the connection between atmospheric temperature change, agricultural shifts, and rising sea levels. But 1957 was the peak of media coverage of human contributions to climate change, notably the American science reporter Robert C. Cowen wrote a paper for the Christian Science Monitor called ‘Are Men Changing the Earth’s Weather?’(Ibid).
For the following two decades only a few articles were published by outlets on climate science. In 1988 politics, media, and climate came together after Margaret Tatcher’s climate change statement to the Royal Society of London and the US Congress hearing of the NASA scientist James Hansen and his allegation on the connection between rising temperatures and burning of fossil fuels. That brought to a vast media attention, therefore more awareness of the public opinion. Throughout the next decades many arguments about the non-correspondence between rising temperatures and men's activities were covered, shaping a skeptic public opinion on issuing climate change, especially in the United States of America. This brings up the so-called ‘Bothsidesism’ or false balance reporting that has characterized most articles and reports on the climate crisis in the western countries. A study reported by Northwestern University shows that false-balance coverage can make people confused and make them doubt about scientific consensus as well as wonder if it is even worth taking seriously an issue (Northwestern, False balance in news coverage of climate change makes it harder to address the crisis, https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/07/false-balance-reporting-climate-change-crisis/).
Psychologist and professor at Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy (SESP) David Rapp said: «Climate change is a great case study of the false balance problem because the scientific consensus is nearly unanimous. If 99 doctors said you needed surgery to save your life, but one disagreed, chances are you’d listen to the 99, but we often see one climate scientist pitted against one climate denier or down player, as if it’s a 50-50 split –– When both sides of an argument are presented, people tend to have lower estimates about scientific consensus and seem to be less likely to believe climate change is something to worry about»(Ibid).
According to Professor Rapp, presenting the two assertions equally can bring up some problematic; doubt about scientific consensus; confusion about what is true; tendency to prefer the more placating opinion, and he continued «people think anything they can easily recall is likely to be true. If that’s false or misleading information that the media parroted or gave a platform to, the person will still give weight to it if it crops up again later because they’ve heard it once before»(Ibid).
The UN drafted five ways media and journalists should follow to support climate action while tackling misinformation. The first suggestion is ‘Stop being so (overly) dramatic’, according to UNESCO the “doom and gloom” narrative can make people lose interest on the topic(United Nations, Five ways media and journalists can support climate action while tackling misinformation, Stop being so (overly) dramatic, ,https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129162#:~:text=It%27s%20a%20fact%3A%20media%20shapes,its%20landmark%20series%20of%20reports.).
The second is ‘A climate change story goes beyond (the) climate’ meaning create an appealing storytelling not just to trigger emotions but showing what is the best for people’s interests. The third is ‘Get local and think more about climate justice’ reporting stories from all over the world about the harm caused by climate change. The fourth is ‘Build trust and engagement that can combat dis/misinformation’, using data for “risk formulation” to combat misinformation. Last but not least ‘Be guided by science and embrace yes’ promoting innovative projects and new collaboration between rich and poor countries.
Written by FeFeInformation
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