Environmental Sustainability as Challenge for Media and Journalism

Bonfadelli, Heinz

doi:10.1007/978-90-481-8730-0_15

Cited by 37 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…• • Paying much attention to scandals and catastrophic events, but less to lingering problems such as decreasing biodiversity, or abstract concepts such as sustainability (Bonfadelli, 2007;Dernbach, 2012;Krassuski, 2010); • • Focussing on negative aspects, rarely mentioning solutions (Bonfadelli, 2007;Krassuski, 2010;Major and Atwood, 2004;Thorbrietz, 1986); • • Mostly reporting on a short-term basis, rather than following long-term processes (Dernbach, 2012), preferring an episodic rather than a thematic approach describing the wider context and the interconnectedness of environmental issues (Anderson, 2009;Hansen, 2011); • • Fear-mongering or playing down environmental problems (Braun, 1996); lack of adequate risk communication (Dunwoody and Peters, 1992;Hingst et al, 1995); • • Rarely mentioning scientific uncertainty (Dudo et al, 2011;Heidmann and Milde, 2013); • • Producing a biased account, for example, on climate change, by a 'balanced' coverage (as a substitute for validity checks), thus giving disproportionate weight to a minority of 'climate sceptics' (Anderson, 2009;Boykoff and Boykoff, 2004;McCright and Dunlap, 2003) or mavericks (Braun, 1996;Mooney, 2004); • • Rarely including information on costs and economic aspects when reporting on sustainability (Bonfadelli, 2007); • • Falling short of describing the interconnectedness of political, economic and social processes (Davydova, 2013; Society of Environmental Journalists, 2013); • • Failure to report financial ties and conflicts of interest (Cook et al, 2007);…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining criteria for good environmental journalism and testing their applicability: An environmental news review as a first step to more evidence based environmental science reporting

Rögener

Wormer

2015

Public Underst Sci

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While the quality of environmental science journalism has been the subject of much debate, a widely accepted benchmark to assess the quality of coverage of environmental topics is missing so far. Therefore, we have developed a set of defined criteria of environmental reporting. This instrument and its applicability are tested in a newly established monitoring project for the assessment of pieces on environmental issues, which refer to scientific sources and therefore can be regarded as a special field of science journalism. The quality is assessed in a kind of journalistic peer review. We describe the systematic development of criteria, which might also be a model procedure for other fields of science reporting. Furthermore, we present results from the monitoring of 50 environmental reports in German media. According to these preliminary data, the lack of context and the deficient elucidation of the evidence pose major problems in environmental reporting.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining criteria for good environmental journalism and testing their applicability: An environmental news review as a first step to more evidence based environmental science reporting

Rögener

Wormer

2015

Public Underst Sci

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“…One indicator is the amount of attention that an issue receives from the mass media [10,15]. A second, procedural indicator refers to who has access to the discourse and influences the framing processes.…”

Section: Communication About Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Communication Regarding Sustainability: Conceptual Perspectives and Exploration of Societal Subsystems

et al. 2013

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Sustainability issues are typically characterized by high complexity and uncertainty. In light of this, communication plays a crucial role in coping with these challenges. The previous debate on sustainability communication has largely focused on how to communicate sustainability issues to others. Sustainability communication, however, involves more than sender oriented communication to persuade others (-communication of sustainability‖); it also embraces processes of dialogue and discourse (-communication about sustainability‖). Based on this distinction, we develop a typology of communication modes, including communication for sustainability. Inspired by the notion of functional communication systems, we explore sustainability communication in six societal subsystems, applying the typology of communication modes. Drawing mostly on examples from Germany, we find a shift from -communication of‖ towards -communication about‖ sustainability in most subsystems. While communication subsystems have a tendency towards operational closure, a variety of interlinkages exist. We discuss three key areas of -opening up‖ communication subsystems, leading to transdisciplinarity, societal deliberation and governance, each meeting one of sustainability's core challenges.

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“…A third strand, finally, focuses more explicitly and specifically on the terminology of sustainability and how it is used in the media. The spectrum of research approaches ranges from critical qualitative discourse analysis of national newspapers (Lewis, ) to large‐scale international bibliometric investigations into patterns, providing explanations for the usage of these terms (Barkemeyer et al , , ; Bonfadelli, ; Holt and Barkemeyer, ). Findings of these studies suggest that sustainability terminology is increasingly used in the press worldwide, but also finds that it is used with conceptual biases.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Does the Media Mean by ‘Sustainability’ or ‘Sustainable Development’? an Empirical Analysis of Sustainability Terminology in German Newspapers Over Two Decades

Fischer

Haucke

Sundermann

2017

Sustainable Development

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There is broad agreement that the regulative idea of sustainability needs to be specified in public deliberation so that it can contribute to sustainable development policies and practices. The media plays a critical role in this endeavor. However, journalists commonly criticize the terminology of 'sustainability' and 'sustainable development' as blurred, fuzzy and ambiguous. The vibrant controversy over how journalists should engage with the sustainability terminology is however facing an apparent lack of research on how sustainability terminology actually has been embraced and used in the media.This study aims to close the aforementioned research gaps in providing a twofold account of the field in Germany. First, in a trend analysis, it sketches the usage of sustainability terminology in six major German newspapers from 1995 to 2015. Second, in an in-depth analysis for the three years 2001, 2007 and 2013, more than 16 000 usages of sustainability terminology have been coded according to their underpinning meaning. The findings show that sustainability terminology in major German newspapers is used in about twice as many articles in 2015 compared with 1995. What changes is not only the frequency, but also the meanings, with which sustainability terminology is used. There is an apparent tendency towards a 'semantic consolidation' of sustainability terminology in the post-2000 years. The meaning thereby moves away from a non-specific and replaceable fashion word towards a more sophisticated and elaborated reflection of the concept of sustainable development. Data analysis finds that political alignment of the newspaper plays a critical role in this.

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Environmental Sustainability as Challenge for Media and Journalism

Cited by 37 publications

References 30 publications

Defining criteria for good environmental journalism and testing their applicability: An environmental news review as a first step to more evidence based environmental science reporting

Defining criteria for good environmental journalism and testing their applicability: An environmental news review as a first step to more evidence based environmental science reporting

Communication Regarding Sustainability: Conceptual Perspectives and Exploration of Societal Subsystems

What Does the Media Mean by ‘Sustainability’ or ‘Sustainable Development’? an Empirical Analysis of Sustainability Terminology in German Newspapers Over Two Decades

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