- 1, that Boykoff sort of jumps to the assumption that the American public has uncertainty about human-induced climate change without incorporating any measuring of this factor into his research...admittedly such uncertainty exists, but pinning down the extent of this uncertainty and where the public gets its information should really be the first step to what Boykoff is attempting
- 2, that by examining media presentations from 1995-2006 he has excluded the considerable media coverage of the UN-presented consensus that was announced earlier this year, for example the Newsweek article...examining any effect of what I would say is a selective consensus coverage on recent public opinion, and change in public opinion, might be informative, but you would have to incorporate measures of public opinion which Boykoff does not do
- 3, the whole conspiracy theory feel to the article.
The article is long so here are just the Abstract and Conclusion:
From convergence to contention: United States mass media representations of anthropogenic climate change science
Maxwell T Boykoff
Abstract
This article focuses on connected factors that contribute to United States (US) media reporting on anthropogenic climate change science. It analyses US newspapers and television news from 1995 to 2006 as well as semi-structured interviews with climate scientists and environmental journalists. Through analyses of power and scale, the paper brings together issues of framing in journalism to questions of certainty/uncertainty in climate science. The paper examines how and why US media have represented conflict and contentions, despite an emergent consensus view regarding anthropogenic climate science.
key words United States anthropogenic climate change mass media framing
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Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY
email: maxwell.boykoff@eci.ox.ac.uk
I believe there is validity to research on media effect on public opinion, but I also think Boykoff's analysis is incomplete and his bias is showing.Conclusion
This research argues that US media have portrayed conflict and contentions rather than coherence regarding scientific explanations of anthropogenic climate change. Through analyses of how and why US media coverage of anthropogenic climate change has continued such reporting through time, it demonstrates that differences are not random. Rather, they are systemic and occur in two main and interrelated ways: first, through complex socio-political and economic reasons rooted in macro-power relations, as well as micro-processes that under gird professional journalism; and second, through innate biophysical characteristics that contradictorily shape knowledge and epistemic framings at multiple scales over time.
This study of US television and newspaper coverage of anthropogenic climate change informs connected fields of struggle. Intersecting with news media, a clear example has been the discursive traction gained through Michael Crichton's 2004 novel State of Fear. This was a tale about an antagonist and extremist environmental group peddling what he characterised as the ‘myth’ of anthropogenic climate change. While behind the veil of ‘science fiction’, Crichton provided highly selective referencing of climate science. This then provided a vehicle through which oppositional views – irrespective of their validity – could be smuggled or paraded into the policy and public sphere. For instance, former Chair of the US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee James Inhofe (Republican – Oklahoma) made it ‘required reading’ for committee members (Janofsky 2005). Moreover, in 2006 President George W. Bush (and Karl Rove) invited Crichton into the White House to discuss climate policy (Janofsky 2006). Despite a veritable trailer-load of peer-reviewed work on anthropogenic climate change supporting this consensus view, systemic mobilisations of power and scale embodied in the success of this book thus fuelled an atmosphere of confusion. Also, in 2006 Crichton was awarded the American Association of Petroleum Geologists journalism award for his novel. This demonstrated how this book permeated discourses within US newspapers and television. This case also illustrated that while power influences the discourses within media, media power also feeds back into influences on policy and public understanding. In other words, Crichton empowered movements across scale, from individual perceptions to the perspectives of US federal powerbrokers regarding human contribution to climate change.
Thus, the construction of US climate change policy can be seen as manifestations of the complex interweaving of competing threads of meaning while tethered at varying lengths to science. Despite aforementioned institutional challenges, scientists need to re-invigorate initiatives to increase consistent contact with mass media to influence these contested discursive spaces with, in this case, anthropogenic climate change evidence. There are some fairly straightforward recommendations that can be made as first steps to take to improve media reporting on anthropogenic climate change. For example, more accurate yet succinct labelling of quoted sources in articles and segments – clarifying any scientific training or relevant funding sources – can help to better contextualise and situate comments made. However, aggregated together, the associated problems become more complex and daunting. What is needed is a fundamental re-evaluation of the role of science in informing environmental policy and practice via the media. Through reframing, power and scale are re-configured (or re-organised) and thus opened to new possibilities for climate change action (Swyngedouw 1992).
When the process of media framing – whereby meanings are constructed and reinforced – muddle rather than clarify scientific understanding of anthropogenic climate change, this can create spaces for US federal policy actors to defray responsibility and delay action regarding climate change. This work nests itself into larger ‘cultural circuits’ of climate change reflection and action (Carvalho and Burgess 2005), that is itself nested in multi-scale socio-political and biophysical influences. This research has sought to take steps to unpack and examine forces of co-production and ‘heterogeneous constructions’ that innately undergird this problem (Demeritt 2001; Jasanoff 2004). In sum, this article seeks to more capably theorise as well as demonstrate empirically how the situated and influential role of the US mass media has generated public perception of lively and contentious debate amid convergent views in climate science.
