Reporting on the 2019 European Heatwaves and Climate Change: Journalists’ Attitudes, Motivations and Role Perceptions

Abstract

In summer 2019, several countries in Europe experienced unprecedented heatwaves. Two extreme event attribution (EEA) studies, which assess the role of climate change in extreme weather events, were published at roughly the same time as the heatwaves were taking place (June/August 2019). Building on a prior study of online news media coverage of the heatwaves, this study surveyed journalists from major news outlets in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. Based on the responses of 42 journalists, we found a relative lack of knowledge about EEA studies but a high level of importance assigned to writing about the link between the heatwaves and climate change (e.g., likelihood or intensity); a relatively low number of specialist reporters vs. general reporters covering the heatwaves; a strong reliance on scientific experts as sources; no inclusion of climate change deniers; stronger role perceptions as educators than advocates; relatively little time and resource constraints on their reporting; and an overall tendency for the journalists to report more about climate change. The findings provide new insights into journalism practice and climate journalism in terms of the peculiarities and contextual factors that can influence coverage of extreme weather events and climate change.

Visual portrayals of fun in the sun in European news outlets misrepresent heatwave risks

“…Indeed, news media outputs are a result of complex interactions between macro trends, the organisational meso‐level, and the micro‐level of individual journalists (Shoemaker & Reese, 1995). An interview study with journalists highlights the complexity of climate news production and the everyday structures and routines (including the covering of climate news stories by general news reporters rather than environment beat specialists), which might contribute to such effects (Strauβ et al, 2021). We hypothesise that the dominance of global image libraries (e.g., see Aiello, 2016); the fast‐paced and competitive nature of online news environment, the way images can drive engagement with a website via thumbnail images, and the news media organisation's social media engagement strategy (e.g., photographs requested from readers to illustrate a story) may all be key drivers of visual content.…”

Is it climate change? Coverage by online news sites of the 2019 European summer heatwaves in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK

“…21 For this study, we did not interview the journalists from the 20 media outlets writing about the heatwave to better understand their personal approach or the editorial policy of their media organizations towards the coverage of extreme weather events. However, this aspect formed the basis for a follow-up study (Strauß et al 2021). We did not analyze the visuals accompanying the text, when the advantages of following a multimodal approach (i.e., including images) to content analysis have been rightly stressed (Wozniak et al 2015), but this aspect will also be analyzed in a supplementary study.…”

Changing behavioral responses to heat risk in a warming world: How can communication approaches be improved?

“…Despite this, there appear to have been some practical and perceptual barriers to greater communication of attribution in the media. Survey research has found that journalists had a relative lack of knowledge about extreme event attribution studies, although they assigned a high level of importance assigned to writing about the link between the heatwaves and climate change (Strauss et al, 2022). This again suggests a need for strategic projects to equip key communicators with the skills to engage audiences with heat risks and their links to climate change.…”