People have recognized that the modern technological advances that we experience up until now have come with grave implications on environmental issues. Policy makers, debates, and public deliberations on environmental issues are now geared to solving these problems. However, the awareness from the public is not entirely borne out of first hand experiences. After all, we are all not scientists here. The mass media is, in part, responsible for steering public attention towards the myriad environmental issues.
Mass media, from its print era to the digital age era of internet and smartphones have always been responsible in both creating and distributing mass cultural materials (Campbell, Martin, and Fabos, 2013). Its most important function is its ability to provide news and information that is crucial in the creation and maintenance of both democracy and deliberation platforms.
This paper explores the role and impact of mass media in environmental issues. We specifically look at discourses on climate change and global warming in scientific community and compare it with media coverage and public awareness. We concluded that despite the potential of mass media to influence environmental discourse, its disparity in media coverage on environmental issues has stunted this potential.
Realizing the Power of Mass Media
The enlightenment period in the late seventeenth-century and the early eighteenth-century were marked by an emerging public sphere (Campbell, Martin, and Fabos, 2013). Habermas defined the public sphere, not only as a physical space but also as a platform for critical discourse and debates. Here, the participants—most of whom belong to the emerging middle class—is free to discuss and debate ideas on almost about anything without the threat, censorship or condemnation of the state or the aristocrats. The public sphere conceived the very ideals of democracy and the abolition of the absolute power of aristocracy. The public sphere established rights to form assemblies, rights to free speech, and right to free press (Campbell, Martin, and Fabos, 2013).
Habermas stressed that the public sphere, which ideally is a form of an open and accessible mode of communication, is important in creating societal critical discourses and perpetuating the ideals of democracy. Today, mass media plays a crucial role in creating and sustaining these public spheres (Campbell, Martin, and Fabos, 2013), and at times mass media in the digital age has even become a new public sphere.
Carey further pointed out that mass media facilitates the cultural ritual of communication (Campbell, Martin, and Fabos, 2013). Mass media, as a form of communication, “produces, maintain, repair, and transforms reality” (Campbell, Martin, and Fabos, 2013, p. 539). However, while Carey sees communication through mass media content as a reflection of shared cultural sentiments and belief, Habermas warns that the media power is not always going to be neutral, and its content may not necessarily be a result of democratic evaluations (Campbell, Martin, and Fabos, 2013). In fact, Habermas, and the Frankfurt School, caution against the manipulation of mass media (Ritzer, 2010; Campbell, Martin, and Fabos, 2013). They contend that at the hands of capitalist cultural industries, mass media—through their continuous supply of phony mass culture—rather than provide a platform for critical discourse can stupefy individuals and inhibit them to critical view there society (Ritzer, 2010).
Agenda Setting and Public Discourse
How do we concretize the effects of media to society, specifically its influences in public discourse on environmental issues such as climate change and global warming? One theory on media effects may provide the answer to this question.
According to Campbell, Martin, and Fabos (2013), mass media, through its focus on particular issues and events can set or determine public discourses. This phenomenon is called agenda setting. In particular, agenda setting make use of increased exposure of issues or events to bring into people’s consciousness. The media, in turn, are able to convince the individuals that the issues that they are showing are indeed current, salient, and pertinent. For example, ecological issues were at its peak in terms of media coverage during the first Earth Hour. At that time, people rated environmental issues as the most important issues on social concerns (Campbell, Martin, and Fabos, 2013). In 2006, the release of the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, reignited the concern for global warming. However, as studies would show, the decreased media coverage for these issues also decreases its importance.
The extent of the effects of media in issues may be, in the large part, explained by the salient function of mass media (Boykoff and Rajan 2007). The mass media has become one of the most important source of information, from the most mundane entertainment news to information on new technological and environmental issues. In part, the views that people have about various issues, may be greatly influenced by how mass media frame their reports (Boykoff and Rajan 2007).
A Case Study: Japanese News Coverage and Climate Change
A review on a systematic study done by Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui (2009) on the Japanese newspaper coverage on climate change shows evident agenda setting effects on environmental issues such as climate change. Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui (2009) postulated that the heightened coverage of environmental issues increases public awareness, but only so far as the mass media sustain such coverage.
Their study made use of content analysis to study environmental newspaper coverage from January 1998 to September 2007 (Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui, 2009). Within this time period, they saw three peaks where environmental concerns were given attention to: in 2001, 2005, and 2007. The first peak happened in 2001. This peak showed a relatively high, albeit short environmental coverage (Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui, 2009). During this time, the Kyoto Protocol, a legal framework adapted by Japan in 1998 to combat global warming, gained attention when it was discussed in the G8 summit in Genoa, and when it was then advocated by Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi in the Conference of the Parties held in Germany (Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui, 2009). The second peak in 2005 coincided with the Kyoto Protocol implementation, and its first program “Cool Biz” was launched (Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui, 2009). The peak reached at least 500 counts of newspaper articles regarding the campaign “Cool Biz”. In 2007, the peak was prolonged and sustained from January, and the numbers of articles on environmental concerns were still rising well after the study was concluded on September 2007 (Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui, 2009).
However, what is more interesting in the study was the survey result from the public regarding their perception of the most salient or serious issues faced by the world and by Japan. Drawn from a representative samples of 2000 respondents, the top response rate in between year 2005 to 2007 on the most serious issue in the world was the ‘environment’, while the most serious issue in Japan was ranging from “pension”, “aging demographic”, and “economy” (Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui, 2009). The result of the survey revealed that the issues of the environment were seen as an international issue, largely because the environmental issues tackled were framed with international events (Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui, 2009). Moreover, the number of newspaper coverage on domestic issues such as economy and pension were comparatively higher than overall coverage of environmental concerns.
Climate Change Coverage: History, and Current Trends
Perhaps one of the most pressing and long-standing issue in environment is the alarming rise of the Earth’s temperature. According to Boykoff and Rajan (2007) climate change researches can be traced back during the 18th century, where climate science was focusing on the association of precipitation and deforestation and the relationship of sun, sunspots, atmosphere and different gases to the Earth’s temperature. In the late 19th century, the climate discourse expanded to the role of human activities in the changing temperature of Earth and by 1896, Arrhenius was already investigating the creation of greenhouse effect from carbon dioxide emission (Boykoff and Rajan, 2007).
However, it was not until 1950s where climate change as first talked about in print media. The article “Is the World Getting Warmer” written by Abarbanel and McClusky for UK’s Saturday Evening Post tackled on the issue of global warming, agriculture and the rising sea levels (Boykoff and Rajan, 2007).. In 1957, it was the International Geophysical Year in US. This coincided with the relative peak of climate change coverage. Most notable was the article written by Cowen for the Christian Science Monitor entitled “Are Men Changing the Earth’s Weather” which discusses the contribution of human activities in the changing climate (Boykoff and Rajan, 2007). Yet, for the most of the 60s and 70s, environmental issues were not a concern for the mass media (Boykoff and Rajan, 2007).
In 1972, the first UN Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm, Sweden (Meaken, 1992). The summit’s main agenda was to talk about the global natural environment. Although the conference did not talk center on climate change, it was the first time that state leaders came together to recognize that they have a common enemy, that is the increasing environment degradation (Meaken, 1992).
It was not until 1988, when climate change peaked again in the media. However, this time, there is an evident interaction of mass media, climate science and policy makers (Boykoff and Rajan, 2007). The rise of media coverage where due to the prominent UK Prime Minister Thatcher who advocated for the sustainable development and raise awareness on climate change in her speech in the Royal Society of London (Boykoff and Rajan, 2007). On the other hand, US environmental coverage heightened when the NASA scientist, James Hansen stated that he was 99 percent certain that the burning of the fossil fuel were responsible in the elevated temperature and that they are not merely natural variations (Boykoff and Rajan, 2007).
More Environmental News Coverage: The Case of U.S
According to Miller and Pollak (2013), the visibility of environmental concerns in news coverage only constitutes 1.2 percent of the overall news headlines from theory nationally news organizations in the United States. They argued that the lack of prioritization of environmental issues inhibits the public awareness, as well as cause environmental issues to be deprioritized from public agenda. Unfortunately, according to the Pew Research Center, entertainment news is three times more likely to be covered in mass media, than environmental concerns (Miller and Pollak, 2013). Moreover, nationally irrelevant and local crime-to-environment news is the focus of most news platforms.
On the other hand, the Huffington post, which consists of 3 percent of environment related headline, as well as local news platforms, which feature 7.3 percent of environment-related headlines, is more likely to prioritize environmental issues than other mainstream news organizations (Miller and Pollak, 2013).
Dividing Discourse
However, other than quantity the quality of the news coverage is more important. As was said earlier, the information that mass media impart is knowledge gained by the public. Thus, the mass media has the responsibility to make sure that their coverages are substantial and research based. According to Boykoff and Rajan (2007), within the discourse of climate change is the divide between those who believe in the existence of climate change, and those who do not. The dissenters of the climate change, however, are evidently coming from the coal- based industries (Boykoff and Rajan, 2007). The dissenters have become powerful in the U.S., creating their own think tanks and having an influential access to the policy makers in US. They have reframed environmental news towards their favor and have aimed to “disempower” climate scientists (Boykoff and Rajan, 2007).
Despite sound data from scientists, the vast complexity of the environmental discourse, specifically climate change, has been harder to be reproduced by journalists without losing the essentials of these findings, and framing it in a way that readers will be encouraged to read (Boykoff and Rajan, 2007). However, what is alarming is that the U.S mass media tend to put equal weight to dissenting views on climate change, despite its lack of sound and valid empirical evidences (Boykoff and Rajan, 2007).
Moving Towards Resolution
It is evident that mass media is one of the most influential communication mode in people’s lives. The mass media plays a crucial role in connecting public discourses, scientific findings, and social policy (Boykoff, 2009). As Habermas argued, mass media is important in maintaining democracy. It frames our understanding and influences our social realities. Because media has an agenda setting effect, the mass media agents should be mindful on what themes and issues they must be tackling, as well as, how they must be framing and reframing these issues.
Climate change and global warming encompasses borders. Its dire effect may be first felt by developing countries (Singer, 223); but that is not to say that developed countries will be exempted from the effects. In fact, developed countries have the most responsibility in these problem as they are the biggest contributed to CO2 emission (Singer 221).
So far, there are two proposed concrete solution for climate change: 1) You-broke-it, you-fix-it view, and the 2) Equal share principle. The first solution takes into consideration the historical emission of each country, and those with greater emission have generally bigger responsibilities in solving climate change (Singer, 221). However many oppose this solution and reasons that industrialized nation have not known then that CO2 was harmful and that the industrial revolution have benefitted the world, not only the old industrialized countries who are currently the biggest emitter of CO2 (Singer, 223). The second proposition is geared towards solving climate change while at the same time supporting developing countries. This principle see operates as a carbon-trading scheme where poor countries can sell their quotas to richer countries that have exceed their own. This scheme helps in solving poverty, while at the same time incentives poor countries to keep their emission low.
The international community is continue to explore other avenues to solve climate change. It must be realized that climate change cannot be solved by a single state along, thus strong cooperation and collaboration from everyone potentially affected must be forged. The media must also play an important role in emphasizing environmental issues. As evident in the 1972 Stockholm UN conference, environmental degradation is everyone’s common enemy, and the solutions should not only be left to the international community, but it must also be realized at the individual level.
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