Communicating Climate Change and Energy Security

New Methods in Understanding Audiences

Greg Philo, Catherine Happer

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415835091
• eBook ISBN: 9781135048105
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book, drawing on new research conducted for the UK Energy Resource Centre (UKERC), examines the contemporary public debate on climate change and the linked issue of energy security. It analyses the key processes which affect the formation of public attitudes and understanding in these areas, while also developing a completely new method for analysing these processes. The authors address fundamental questions about how to adequately inform the public and develop policy in areas of great social importance when public distrust of politicians is so widespread. The new methods of attitudinal research pioneered here combined with the attention to climate change have application and resonance beyond the UK and indeed carry global import.

1
Climate Change and Energy Security

Debates on Media Reporting and Public Beliefs and Behaviours

Public Debate on Climate Change and its Reporting in the Media

Climate change first began to impinge on policy-making discussions in the late 1980s. Following a mainly upwards trajectory of global coverage, fuelled by major developments such as the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol agreement in 1997, it emerged in the mid-2000s as a mainstream media subject. UK newspaper coverage since the turn of the millennium experienced intense growth (Boykoff 2007), peaking in early 2007, a pattern replicated in the US (Boykoff and Nacu-Schmidt 2013). Only a sharp and largely isolated spike in 2009 experienced globally, due primarily to the coverage of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, would rival it (Boykoff and Nacu-Schmidt 2013). The headlines were provided by a number of key developments in this growth period (Boykoff 2007). The first of these was the worldwide attention to Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, still one of the most widely referred to sources on climate change, which the Washington Post described as transforming the issue into ‘a water-cooler phenomenon, sparking conversation throughout the Oprah-sphere’.¹ Although Gore did not have the same level of familiarity with the UK public, the release of the movie still sparked British tabloid coverage and debate late that year (Boykoff and Mansfield 2008). Also in 2006 Richard Branson, a familiar—and popular—figure in the UK, made a much-publicised contribution to the development of renewable energy. Further, the much-debated landmark Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the largest and most detailed summary of the climate change situation ever undertaken, was released in March 2007 to much fanfare in the quality press on both sides of the Atlantic. In the run-up to the peak of media coverage early that year, climate change was ‘big news, bigger news than ever before’ (Doulton and Brown 2009, p. 191). However, climate change being so much in the news was not the only distinctive aspect of this period of reporting. Perhaps more significant still was the critical change in tone of coverage at this time in certain factions of the media in both the UK and the US (Boykoff 2007²; Boykoff and Mansfield 2008), which led Boykoff to describe it as an ‘evolutionary shift’ in reporting of climate change (Boykoff 2007, p. 6).³ The IPCC report, which was so unequivocal in its pronouncements of a warming planet, was met with a general lack of criticism. The liberal BBC published a report in 2007 that noted that the corporation had

held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus. (BBC Trust 2007, p. 40)

This marked a turning point in the amount of space given to sceptics. Even Rupert Murdoch, CEO of Fox News, the most sceptical mainstream news outlet in the US, gave a speech that offered evidence of a conversion, in which he said that ‘climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats’ and even pledged to improve coverage in his media outlets over time (Huertas and Adle 2012; Copeland 2012). In the UK, in an editorial in Autumn 2006, The Sun acknowledged its own previously sceptical position that ‘[t]oo many of us have spent too long in denial over the threat from global warming’.⁴ Amidst the well-established phenomenon of polarised coverage, the resourcing of which has only, in some cases, come to light years later (Monbiot 2013), evidence of a sea change was rife. In order to highlight just how distinctive this 2006–07 high point was, and the key factors across media, politics and culture that have shaped the more typical trends in reporting, we will provide a general overview of the literature on the complex and dynamic process of multimedia climate change reporting.

News Reporting of Climate Change: The Challenges

It goes without saying that the media play a key role in communicating climate change to the public. They not only are the major source of information generally but also, in the case of complex scientific subjects such as climate change, are often looked to not only to inform but also to clarify and simplify. Commentators have noted the difficulties news journalists face in covering climate change for mass audiences. Much has been written about the way in which journalistic norms are at odds with the nature of a subject such as climate change (Boykoff and Boykoff 2004, 2007; Boykoff and Smith 2010; Boykoff 2011; Dixon and Clarke 2012). In the journalism profession, norms shape how issues are reported and reflect a variety of social forces with which journalists must contend, including pressures within the newsroom such as editorial expectations (Dixon and Clarke 2012), newspaper ideologies (Carvalho and Burgess 2005; Doulton and Brown 2009), time constraints and market forces. In Who Speaks for the Climate? (2011), Boykoff discusses how interacting norms, including personalization, dramatization and novelty, contribute significantly to the shaping and selection of ‘climate stories’ and the process by which they are defined as ‘newsworthy’. In respect of these, it is easy to see how an issue that is largely intangible to the average person (Trumbo 1996)—something that might happen to someone sometime in the future—does not make for an easy news story to report. It is further made more challenging because it is based on a complex science that most people, including journalists, will never understand (Wilson 2000)—which to an extent reflects a communication failure between scientists and journalists (Russill and Nyssa 2009). Therefore, it is difficult to simplify and present climate change in the form of a story even if it were deemed ‘newsworthy’. That newsworthiness for the majority of the popular press also presupposes neoliberal values that promote global markets and consumer excess also helps to discourage coverage of an issue that lies in opposition to them.

The final norm that Boykoff (2011) highlights (as well as Corbett and Durfee 2004; Ward 2008; Dixon and Clarke 2012) however has been of the greatest interest. ‘Balance’ in reporting can be a positive force. By including diverse points of view, journalists can achieve objectivity by abstaining from advocating particular positions and by presenting a diversity of positions and voices that allow people to make informed decisions (Dixon and Clarke 2012). It also helps journalists who cannot fact-check the validity of or understand every claim made and is particularly useful in the case of contentious stories. Conversely, balanced reporting can weaken commitment to accuracy if journalists fail to ensure that the perspective with the most supporting scientific evidence is conveyed (Corbett and Durfee 2004; Boykoff and Boykoff 2007; Boykoff 2011). In other words, without the context in relation to where the strength of evidence lies, ‘balanced’ news stories create a false sense of even-handed debate and, in some cases, controversy between two perspectives, both of which are attributed equal claim to legitimacy (Dixon and Clarke 2012). Boykoff and Boykoff’s seminal 2004 paper ‘Balance as Bias: Global Warming and the US Prestige Press’ outlines the way in which the US prestige press’s adherence to balance, and most significantly the consistent lack of recognition that the number of experts endorsing the climate change argument hugely outnumber those who are sceptical, has led to systematic bias in coverage of anthropogenic climate change.

The Battle for Space

We will summarise two significant aspects. The first is the way in which the norm of balanced reporting made way for a range of speakers to contribute to the public discourse. Boykoff and Goodman (2009) note that, at one point, the only viable voices were the scientists, but as climate change became a more mainstream journalistic subject and balance was employed as a criteria, other voices entered the debate. The range of views extended, and perceptions of who was permitted to speak about the climate altered dramatically. Scientists were followed by activists and politicians and political commentators which fostered a shift in the perception of the ‘authorized definers’ of climate change (Carvalho 2007). What evolved was a community of climate sceptics: a minority of contrarian scientists, with varying levels of legitimacy, were joined by sceptics from a range of institutions and influences—such as conservative think tanks, who ideologically want less government engagement in all aspects of society—and researchers funded by carbon-based industries as well as the political sphere. Although these sceptics should not be seen as a homogenous force with a shared philosophy, arguments tend to centre on doubts about the science and/or the scientific process, including scrutiny of the level of consensus (Oreskes and Conway 2010; Gavin and Marshall 2011). A 2011 study by Oxford University called Poles Apart found that, in both the US and the UK, there are specific organisations for ‘climate change sceptics’. Through a concerted strategy of public relations and lobbying of newspaper editors, organisations, such as the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) in the UK, are invited to contribute to a range of media outlets and are instrumental in shaping the agenda on reporting, particularly newspaper reporting. The GWPF’s Lord Lawson and Benny Peiser were by far the most quoted sceptics in the Poles Apart sample, often appearing in opinion pages and editorials as opposed to actual news articles. Outside of such organisations, there are similarly individuals who dominate sceptical coverage—such as Jeremy Clarkson who wrote sixteen columns for The Sun in which he ridiculed concerns about climate change from 1998 to 2006—suggesting a small pool of voices from which the media draw (McKnight 2010).

Another less talked about aspect of this is the way in which groups on the opposite side of the debate, with beliefs rooted in the scientific arguments but without expertise, claim space in the public debate. Although there is some discussion over whether charismatic and/or celebrated individuals advance the case for climate change with the public (Boykoff and Goodman 2009), it inevitably weakens the link between actual scientists and the issue, with debates often taking place between two individuals with strongly held ideologies. Without actual scientists taking part, it is easy for the debate to be framed as personal belief rather than as science, which audience members may assume reflects the status of climate change as an issue. In the UK and in the US, there is a strong correlation between a news outlet’s ideological approach and the construction of climate change and, by association, the prominence given to speakers from organisations on either side of the debate (Painter 2011). As a result, there is a substantial difference in the depiction across different newspapers and whilst the media is highly sensitive to shifts in political and scientific areas, this tends to take place only as long as it is within the bounds of their extant ideologies (Doulton and Brown 2009). Notably the Poles Apart study also found that this phenomenon was not detectable in the media in other non-English-speaking countries. Politicisation is particularly acute in the English-language media, and scientists are far less vocal (Painter 2011).

The Construction of Uncertainty

A second and related product of this tendency to balanced representations in the English-speaking media and the resultant inclusion of contrarian views from both scientists and nonexperts has been the construction of climate change as a subject of uncertainty (Dunlap and McCright 2010; Boykoff and Rajan 2007; Doyle 2011a). Scientists deal in hypotheses and uncertainty rather than in absolutes, but through the inability (of scientists and journalists) to communicate these uncertainties effectively to the wider public, they have given sceptics greater opportunity to undermine their credibility. The sceptics have systematically exploited those areas in which there is the greatest level of uncertainty to discredit climate science, and they have done so very effectively. In this sense, journalistic norms, which not only are at odds with a narrative of possibilities but also are focused on balance, have aided the sceptics in framing climate change in terms of scientific uncertainty. It is a news subject always with a question mark over it.

Challenges to ‘Balance as Bias’

The foundation of the ‘balance as bias’ argument in relation to media reporting has strong support (Boykoff and Boykoff 2004; Boykoff 2011; Gavin and Marshall 2011). However, there is counterevidence. A study by Rick et al. (2011), which looked at how the US and UK newspapers portrayed sea-level rise projections, found that, with few exceptions, journalists had accurately portrayed the scientific research. This isolated study, which the authors described as a ‘bright spot’ in the analysis of media representations of climate change, does however suggest that more nuanced analyses of distinct areas with varied levels of scientific consensus might yield different results than those that look at blanket coverage of ‘climate change’. This includes discussions about the wide range of subjects, including policy, ethics, as well as less rigorously researched areas of science. Although numerous studies have shown the high level of scientific consensus in relation to the fact of anthropogenic climate change which founds the balance as bias claims (Oreskes 2004; Anderegg et al. 2010), in some of the more specific areas of climate science, such as the rate of progression and the connection between regional extreme weather events and climate change, there is currently not such a strong level of consensus. It is perhaps not surprising that newspapers do not make the connection (Gavin 2010). In these areas of the climate change debate, arguably there is no clear standard by which to measure the accuracy of reporting (Jones 2011; Nisbet 2011⁵). Balance as bias therefore is not always a simple phenomenon to record.

Beyond the Press

Considerations of media reporting and balance and accuracy therefore must take account of the fundamental complexity and the wide spectrum of climate change science and the differing areas of coverage. However, equally important, are considerations of the differences in the range of communicative media that are available to audiences. The evidence of balance as bias is largely derived from US and UK press, which are characterised by their opinion-led pieces and in the latter a competitive tabloid culture ‘with a strong political or quasi-campaigning agenda’ (Painter 2011, cited in Donald 2011). In other words, they are environments receptive to sceptical voices and balanced debate. Perhaps not surprisingly this apparent breeding ground for climate sceptics has been the subject of most of the studies of climate reporting.

Television is still however the main source of trusted political information (Ofcom 2007, 2012) and has been investigated much less. Recent studies that look at television in the US context (McKnight 2010; Feldman et al. 2011) suggest that the key factor in the level of divergence from scientific consensus is the ideologies behind news outlets across media. There is evidence of the unique tendency of news corporation-owned news outlets to emphasise the uncertainty of climate change, suggesting balanced media reports are not restricted to newspapers but related to specific news outlets. Although similar associations have been detected in the UK press with the Express, Daily Mail and Daily Star, with the greatest prevalence of sceptics quoted (Painter 2011), the television landscape in the UK is not so overtly partisan as it is in the US, largely because of the existence of the BBC and the ethos of public broadcasting. Although, as we will see, it does not necessarily follow that the BBC simply highlights the views of the scientists.

Television and the Copenhagen Moment

Gavin and Marshall (2011) analysed UK television coverage around the Copenhagen conference in 2009. The 2009 conference was a hugely important landmark in the battle to address climate change: a multimedia and global event that showcased the diverse range of groups involved in climate coverage at that point (Doyle 2011a). Of the five thousand journalists who received accreditation for the event, a sizable number represented charities, businesses, nongovernmental organizations and fossil fuel industries rather than mainstream news outlets. In fact the BBC sent only thirty-five members of staff (Doyle 2011a), hinting at the influence of previously discussed factors relating to the lack of conventional newsworthiness of a climate change conference (Boykoff 2011). However, in spite of this, the event became a key moment in climate change coverage, and this is partially due to the event that preceded it and that is perhaps the greatest controversy in the history of climate science. In November 2009, private e-mails and other documents were stolen or leaked from the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU). All the e-mails involved CRU staff in correspondence with many of the world’s leading climate scientists, including the main researcher behind the ‘hockey stick’ graph, Michael Mann. The controversy related to content that, it was suggested, showed that the scientists had manipulated or hidden data and had prevented the publication of studies with which they disagreed. The focus however was not the malpractice of the scientists, or the hacking of the data, it became the integrity of the scientific method, a key aspect of climate change scepticism. Lord Lawson of the GWPF was again highly visible in the media coverage of events (Painter 2011): perhaps most notably set against UEA scientist Bob Watson on Channel 4 evening news in February 2010. This story—dubbed ‘climategate’—hit the media just weeks before the Copenhagen summit and contributed to the climate talks instigating the greatest spike in media attention to climate change since the 2007 peak.

The UK print media coverage of the Copenhagen event deployed established framings of scientific uncertainty to undermine policy action (Doyle 2011a), but perhaps less predictably, Gavin and Marshall found similar patterns in television coverage. Their study found that contrarian claims, assumptions and lines of reasoning were prominent and presented in such a way as to give them undeserved authority. Although the BBC had moved to a position that it was no longer prepared to give sceptics equal weight (BBC Trust 2007), in the wake of climategate there seemed to be a subtle change in this position, with a conscious move to reflect the deniers in the run-up to Copenhagen. Gavin and Marshall highlight the introduction to a BBC bulletin on day one of the conference:

The opening ceremony took place against a background of accusations that some scientists have manipul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Climate Change and Energy Security: Debates on Media Reporting and Public Beliefs and Behaviours
• 2 Theorising the Media
• 3 Methodological Approach
• 4 News Media and Public Attitudes and Behaviours: Climate Change
• 5 News Media and Public Attitudes and Behaviours: Energy Security
• 6 Impacts on Attitudes and Behaviours over Time: The Revisits
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index