Climate change and the Australian press: towards a better framework for analysing media construction of environmental issues

This study investigates how climate change was constructed in the Australian mainstream press over a two-year period, from 1st June 2003 to 31St May 2005. Three newspapers were examined: a metropolitan broadsheet owned by Fairfax, a national broadsheet owned by News Limited, and a metropolitan tabloid owned by News Limited. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used, and three traditional frameworks for analysing media coverage were combined: the cultural approach, the social-organisational approach, and the political-economic approach. A two-stage investigation was undertaken. First, a sample of potential news items about climate change (300 items per newspaper) was coded according to four factors: news value, news source, climate scepticism, and solutions to climate change. Logistic regression was then used to determine whether or not these factors had a significant effect on the likelihood of potential news items about climate change being reported in the Australian mainstream press. Second, news workers (12 in total) at the three newspapers were interviewed so as to develop a more thorough understanding of how cultural, social-organisational, and political-economic factors shape coverage of climate change, including the way in which these factors interact. Logistic regression analysis indicated that news value was the most important factor in determining which items in the sample were reported in the three newspapers. The comments of news workers revealed that coverage of climate change in the three newspapers was constructed through an interactive network of cultural, social-organisational, and political-economic factors. Four factors, in particular, underpinned this network: the background knowledge of reporters, the layout of the newspaper, the interests of editors, and the concentration in press ownership