Content Analysis of South African Sunday Newspaper Coverage of the Durban and Copenhagen Climate Change Conferences

Abstract

Since the first United Nations climate change conference in 1995, newspapers have been vital in increasing coverage of climate change. Amidst growing number of events around climate change, the influence of international climate change conferences in newspaper coverage of climate change has not been fully interrogated in post-apartheid South Africa. This study aims to discover how three major South African Sunday broadsheet newspapers represented the Copenhagen conference (COP15) in 2009 and the Durban conference (COP17) in 2011. It used a national sample for the years 2009 and 2011, covering the City Press, The Sunday Independent and Sunday Times. The study carried out quantitative analysis of 58 articles published in the three leading Sunday newspapers between 01 January and 31 December. The direct involvement of South Africa on the Copenhagen and Durban climate change negotiations had an influence in the level of newspaper coverage. The frequency of articles published per month increased in November and December for all the years of interest. The dominantly reported main topics associated with COP are greenhouse gas emissions and the Kyoto Protocol. Both COP15 and COP17 were discussed frequently at a local level - domestic geographical scope. Overall, the article identified that South African print media is not consistent in the representation of COP. In order to better the reporting of international climate talks, print media has to be actively involved in integrative and collaborative engagement with COP relevant stakeholders.

Understanding broadsheet newspaper attention to climate change objective facts in South Africa

“…For example, Lyytimäki 2011 found that Finnish newspapers devoted more attention to climate change in the months of November and December. This is consistent with the analysis conducted in leading Spanish newspapers from 2000 to 2014 (Fernández-Reyes et al 2015, Mulaudzi and Kioko 2020). Their study exhibits similar global trends in terms of increasing issue attention to climate change in November and December.…”

Climate change journalism in South Africa: noticeable improvements, less than adequate

“…Several studies have also concluded that climate change journalism know-how in South Africa was poor, and this was detectable from the country's media's performance in reporting about the climate issue, which was inadequate (see Cramer, 2008;Shanahan, 2009;Tagbo, 2010;Bosch, 2012;Johannessen, 2013;Smith, 2013;Evans & Musvipwa, 2016;Mulaudzi & Kioko, 2020). More recent studies, however, have found that media coverage seemed to have been on the rise in recent years.…”