Constructing an illusion of scientific uncertainty? Framing climate change in German and British print media

Abstract

This article uses quantitative content analysis data from June 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013 to examine the salience and construction of scientific uncertainty about climate change in German and British press coverage using quantitative content analysis data from June 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013. The results show that uncertainty about climate change − against overwhelming consensus among climate scientists − is prominent in the press coverage of both countries. The findings indicate that it is important to distinguish whether scientific uncertainty can be found at the level of single articles, or at the level of the coverage as a whole. The study also reveals that uncertainty is constructed differently in German and British press coverage in terms of the media’s framing of climate science and the types of actors who are involved in the construction of scientific uncertainty.

How climate change skeptics (try to) spread their ideas: Using computational methods to assess the resonance among skeptics’ and legacy media

“…The German setting, thus, may allow us to understand the spread of ideas, respectively, the conditions under which policy monopolies are destructed [53] by redefining the issue, by changing the positions formulated, or by changing the participants of the debate. This is even more interesting as some researchers have claimed that climate skeptics seem to be gaining attention and terrain in Germany: Brunnengräber [54] posited that climate skepticism is increasingly gaining societal acceptance, and Schmid-Petri and Arlt [55] show that climate skeptical arguments have slightly increased in mainstream German media over recent years.…”

Rebel with a cause: the framing of climate change and intergenerational justice in the German press treatment of the Fridays for Future protests

“…Only 16 out of 197 countries are currently meeting the climate goals of the Paris agreement, amongst them only three industrialized nations of the Global North who are keeping up with their historic responsibility as main energy consumers (Nachmany and Mangan, 2018; Santarius, 2007). Various studies on the current public and media discourse on climate change and its consequences seem to confirm that the framing of climate change in the media feeds into the political lack of climate mitigation action (Arnold, 2018; Bergmann and Ossewaarde, 2020; Boykoff, 2011, 2014; Cynk, 2018; McNamara and Gibson, 2009; Methmann and Oels, 2015; Nehrlich et al, 2011; Oels, 2015; Painter, 2013; Post et al, 2019; Schmid-Petri and Arlt, 2016; Schmidt and Schäfer, 2015, Sterman, 2013).…”

Climate change—that is not real! A comparative analysis of climate-sceptic think tanks in the USA and Germany

“…A great deal of research on the prevalence of climate change scepticism has been accomplished in the areas of communication, journalism, and media (e.g. Trumbo 1996;Shehata and Hopmann 2012;Elsasser and Dunlap 2013;Kaiser and Rhomberg 2016;Schmid-Petri and Arlt 2016;Schmid-Petri et al 2017). Additionally, some authors have examined in detail the content of contrarian information, and a few of those have had a particular focus on CTTs (Boussalis and Coan 2016;Cann 2015;Cann andRaymond 2018, Jacques et al 2008;McCright and Dunlap 2000).…”