Climate Change Framed : How the Topical, Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Climate Change Framing Have Developed in Time

The framing of news stories is found to be changing throughout time. This thesis advances a quantitative, longitudinal content analysis to examine the news coverage on climate change in five different countries over a period of ten years. Applying Chyi and McCombs two-dimensional measurement scheme, this thesis finds that the international frame was the most deployed spatial frame, while the present frame was the most used temporal frame. The political action, environmental risk and science frames, in their own regard, were the most deployed topical frames. Centrally, the analysis showed that the environmental risked frame is increasingly superseded by the science frame. This suggests that scientific considerations have become increasingly important in climate change journalism. Additionally, a higher climatological vulnerability of a country does not appear to translate to a risk focused framing of news articles. Moreover, the analysis finds that the societal spatial frame is increasingly used, pointing to emphasised national considerations in climate change journalism. Finally, the data of the thesis supports the emergence of a previously unconsidered climate action frame