Article
BAMOS Dec 2020
11
Climate science in Australian newspapers
A case study of Australian media coverage of the State of the Climate reports
Lucy M Richardson and David C Holmes , Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub
As Australia increasingly experiences the effects of climate change , our understanding of the science and its use to inform policy decisions becomes more and more critical . Every two years , two of Australia ’ s leading scientific organisations , the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO , produce a national State
of the Climate report that draws together monitoring and projection data to inform the Australian public and decision makers .
With the recent publication of last year ' s updated
State of the Climate report , understanding how these reports are represented in the media is an important step to helping improve engagement between scientists and the media on this critical topic .
A recent study by the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub analysed the coverage of the State of the Climate Reports ( 2010 , 2012 , 2014 , 2016 and 2018 ) in Australian newspapers . By analysing the message framing , presentation of the science and the voices cited by the different news authors and publishers , the study identified both hopeful trends and areas for improvement .
These reports are released at the end of a calendar year , often after the working year has ended and when news cycles are slowing down , which means that they tend not to draw as much commentary from policy makers , politicians and interest groups .
The study found an overwhelmingly positive coverage of the science presented in these reports , with discussion of the science and acceptance of the reality of climate change in almost 90 percent of the 169 analysed articles .
This coverage was not without its challenges , however , with some journalists continuing to feel the need to defend the reports from those who refuse to accept the science , which typically occurred in the more politicised articles .
Very few articles ( less than 10 percent ) actively perpetuated narratives denying the integrity of the science .
When it comes to the broader framing of the articles , by far the most common narratives were those presenting the urgent need to take action on climate change ( climate emergency narratives were evident in 73 percent of articles ), followed by narratives that politicised the issue or discussed its politicisation ( 57 percent of articles ). These two types of narratives were also somewhat related , as when climate emergency narratives were absent , so too were politicisation narratives .
Despite previous studies ’ findings that media ownership substantially affected the prevalence of climate change denialism and urgency in news articles ( see for example , Burgess et al . ( 2020 ) Black Summer : Australian newspaper reporting of the nation ’ s worst bushfire season ), this doesn ’ t seem to be as significant a difference for articles mentioning these State of the Climate reports .
Comparing the coverage of Australia ’ s two largest media organisations — News Corp and Nine Publishing — there were very few differences in the strengths and proportions of climate emergency , politicisation and denialism narratives except for those articles showing strong climate emergency or strong climate dismissive narratives ( as opposed to absent , mild or moderate such narratives ). Compared with the 14 percent of News Corp articles with narratives strongly dismissive of the science , none of Nine Publishing ’ s articles had similarly strong narratives . Reflecting similar acceptance trends , while 8 percent of News Corp articles had strong climate emergency narratives , 16 percent of Nine Publishing articles had similar strength narratives .
Scientific expertise was also the most commonly cited , as might be expected when discussing such reports , however this was inversely related to politicisation narratives , i . e . most common when politicisation narratives were absent , and least when politicisation was strong and politician / government voices were present .
Overall , the analysis of media coverage of the biennial State of the Climate reports shows strong support for this important science and places value on the voices of the climate science community .