Picture: Cedar Fire crosses Interstate 15, October 2003, by United States Marine Corps, Wikimedia Commons

Major U.S. wildfires rarely framed as societal issues

“With findings that news framing is presenting a hazard only in terms of capital value when citizens suffer a multi-layered loss, scholars must question why certain frames are dominant and others nearly absent”, Carol Terracina-Hartman of the Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania writes in a new study. She examined 10 historic US wildfires using the concepts … Continued

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Published: 12 Oct 2020

ARTICLE: Japanese news media took no lessons from Fukushima

Leading Japanese news outlets failed their audiences during the Fukushima nuclear incident – and they have done little to improve, a team of Japanese researchers write. They interviewed the responsible editorial staff of 14 national news organizations. The interviewees readily admitted they had been unprepared to report on the disaster. Few newsrooms had journalists specialized … Continued

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Published: 13 Dec 2019
Picture: Polar bear by Andy Brunner, license CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: Framing of climate change news has only limited effects to selective exposure

Framing of the stories plays only a limited role in driving exposure to climate change news, a new study finds. Lauren Feldman of Rutgers University and P. Sol Hart of the University of Michigan, conducted two news browsing experiments, testing six different climate change frames. The experiments were done with national samples of adults in … Continued

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Published: 3 May 2018
Untitled by Khusen Rustamov, licence CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: Australian papers prioritize business over nature

The discourse surrounding the protection of the Great Barrier Reef has become increasingly business-oriented in Australian newspapers, Kerrie Foxwell-Norton, of Griffith University, and Claire Konkes, of University of Tasmania, write. The authors compared the topic’s coverage in four newspapers in 1981 and 2012. Foxwell-Norton and Konkes’ sample focused on two important events of mediatized environmental … Continued

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Published: 20 Apr 2018
Picture: Smog in Beijing by 螺, license CC BY-SA 3.0

ARTICLE: Reporting of the Beijing’s 2013 smog hazard emphasized the role of experts

Air pollution is one of the main environmental concerns in Chinese cities. Sibo Chen, of Simon Fraser University, studied how Beijing’s smog hazard in 2013 was covered by the Xinhua News Agency, China Daily, South China Morning Post (SCMP) and the Associated Press (AP). The severity of the smog hazard captured the media’s attention in … Continued

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Published: 11 Apr 2018
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ARTICLE: Combining investigative journalism with stand-up comedy can improve public engagement

“Dirty Little Secrets” was a project from 2015 bringing together New Jersey news organizations, comedians, two universities, and a national investigative journalism organization CIR. The project turned investigative news material about New Jersey’s toxic contamination areas into stand-up comedy routines. Caty Borum Chattoo of American University and Lindsay Green-Barber of The Impact Architects, examined this … Continued

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Published: 22 Mar 2018
Untitled by Steve Cliff, licence CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: How do journalists, NGO’s and government delegations interact?

United Nations’ climate change conferences gather delegations from governments and non-governmental organisations from around the world. These events are also keenly observed by a number of journalists, making the events interesting venues for researching journalist-source interaction. A team of researchers interviewed a total of 106 journalists, delegates and NGO representatives at three conferences, and supplemented … Continued

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Published: 29 Jan 2018

ARTICLE: Climate change reporting needs alternative frames

Environmental injustice is a key issue in understanding climate change. When discussing environmental justice, mainstream media mainly reproduces anthropocentrism, that is, a human-centric view, write Renée Moernaut, of Vrije Universiteit Brussel and University of Antwerp, Jelle Mast, of Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and Yves Pepermans, of University of Antwerp. The researchers conducted a multimodal framing analysis, looking … Continued

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Published: 14 Dec 2017
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ARTICLE: Not all “digital players” differ from legacy media

Digital native news outlets are not all the same when it comes to topic priorities, write James Painter, of University of Oxford, Silje Kristiansen, of Northeastern University, and Mike S. Schäfer, of University of Zurich. The authors analysed the coverage of the 21st climate change summit, also known as Conference of the Parties (COP). The … Continued

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Published: 20 Nov 2017
Picture: Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling Tower by Ruhrfisch, license CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped

ARTICLE: Environmental narratives work better when they resonate with people’s orientations

Fuyuan Shen and Lee Ahern of Pennsylvania State University, and Jiangxue Han of Appalachian State University, studied how individuals’ environmental orientations moderate how people perceive environmental news. The researchers did an experiment in which they made 88 students read either a narrative or informational newspaper article on the environmental consequences of shale gas drilling in … Continued

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Published: 19 Oct 2017