Coverage of climate change issues in Kenyan print media: a case of Daily Nation and Standard newspapers

Climate change is an issue of public interest and given the adverse effects of climate change, concerted efforts are imperative as different stakeholders work on solutions. The media with its power to set and build agenda is very critical, especially in its coverage of climate change. This study sought to analyse the extent to which climate change stories are given prominence, the nature of climate change stories, and drivers of climate change stories in The Daily Nation and The Standard between 2018 and 2019. The study was anchored on the agenda setting theory to examine prominence accorded to climate change stories, agenda building to assess who the drivers of coverage are beyond the newsroom and the framing theory was used to examine the framing of climate change stories. The research adopted a descriptive content analysis research design. The study developed analysis criteria and a code sheet for content analysis and an interview guide for key informant interviews with media house editors. The researcher interviewed one media editor from The Daily Nation and one from The Standard. The study had four key words; climate change, global warming, floods and drought. When these terms were used, a total of 1730 articles were retrieved. The study found that the Kenyan print media does not use placement of stories on front pages to set the climate change agenda. Media houses focus more on adaptation stories and that they rarely cover mitigation stories. It also established that they frame climate change stories using disaster and that victims are the key actors in disaster stories while government officials feature prominently in events driven stories. The study concluded that climate change coverage is not given prominence through placement of stories on key pages and recommended that media houses need to consider strategic placement for those stories in front pages. The study recommended that media houses need to give significant focus on mitigation efforts