the regional dimension how regional media system condition global climate

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The Regional Dimension: How Regional

Media Systems Condition Global

Climate-Change CommunicationMikkel EskjrPublished online: 29 Nov 2012.

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The Regional Dimension: HowRegional Media Systems ConditionGlobal Climate-ChangeCommunication

Mikkel Eskjr

Global perspectives and national approaches have dominated studies of climate-change

communication, reflecting the global nature of climate change as well as the traditional

research focus on national media systems. In the absence of a global public sphere,

however, transnational issue attention is largely dependent on regional media systems,

yet the role this regional dimension plays has been largely overlooked. This article

presents a comparative study of climate-change coverage in three geo-cultural regions,

The Middle East, Scandinavia, and North America, and explores the link between globalclimate-change communication and regional media systems. It finds that regional

variations in climate-change communication carry important communicative implica-

tions concerning perceptions of climate changes relevance and urgency.

Keywords: Media Systems; Regional Media; Climate Change; International

Communication; COP15

In recent decades, climate change has become an important topic in international

news. This is hardly surprising, given the political attention to climate change bothwithin the UN system (IPCC reports, COP summits, UNDP reports), global politics

(G8), IGOs (World Bank, OECD), and NGOs. Thus, the global dimension of climate

change, in terms of environmental and social consequences as well as political and

cultural responses, has increasingly positioned the issue as a key topic in international

politics and international communication.

Since climate change is a global risk, it has resulted in speculations about a new era

of international cooperation and trans-cultural interaction. It has even been

Mikkel Eskjr is at Dept. of Communication, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Correspondence to: MikkelEskjr, Dept. of Communication, Aalborg University Copenhagen, A.C. Meyers Vnge 15, DK-2450 Kbh. SV.

Copenhagen, Denmark. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 1751-3057 (print)/ISSN 1751-3065 (online) # 2013 National Communication Association

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2012.748933

Journal of International and Intercultural Communication

Vol. 6, No. 1, February 2013, pp. 61 81
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2012.748933http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2012.748933


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suggested that climate change carries the potential for a cosmopolitical moment

(Beck, 2007), in which national preoccupations and solutions are abandoned in

favour of genuinely international responses and cooperation.

From a mere communicative perspective, however, media studies have been rather

sceptical about this alleged cosmopolitical potential, pointing out how nationalmedia still dominate international coverage and debate (Hafez, 2005). Indeed, several

studies have demonstrated how international reporting is often domesticated or

filtered through national prisms (Lee, Chan, Pan, & So, 2005).

As a consequence, global perspectives and national approaches have dominated

studies of climate-change communication. Regional dimensions and regional media

systems have received less attention, although a renewed interest in comparative

media systems has reframed the question of globalization as one of regionalising

communication. However, these studies have mainly been confined to Western

contexts. Thus, despite periodical calls for de-westernizing media studies (Curran& Park, 1990), comparative studies of Western and non-Western media systems are

still rather limited, and virtually absent in the context of international climate-change

communication.

However, not only is adopting a regional perspective important for exploring the

diversity of international communication, but also it allows us to address the

challenges facing international climate-change communication. In the absence of a

global public sphere (Schafer, Ivanova, & Schmidt, 2011), transnational issue

attention is largely dependent on regional media systems and the underlying

mechanisms that guide how and why regional media present global risks such as

climate change.Thus, this article offers a comparative content analysis of climate-change coverage

in three geo-cultural regions, The Middle East, Scandinavia, and North America,

representing three different media systems. The study is based on a sample of

newspaper articles concerning climate change published between the 2008 and 2009

United Nations Climate Change Conferences. Thus, the scope of the study is

exploratory and aimed at investigating the link between global climate-change

communication and regional media systems.

As the media are the main sources of climate-change information to the general

public (Nisbet & Myers, 2007; UNDP, 2007), awareness of climate change is intricatelylinked with how it is presented in and by the media. Local and regional climate-change

reporting is therefore instrumental in making the risks of climate change relevant to

the local population. This study finds that while climate change has become a major

international news topic, it is also marked by considerable regional variations. It is

argued that these variations carry important communicative implications concerning

regional perceptions of climate change in terms of relevance and urgency. Local

reporting and regional perspectives are communicative resources, which are unevenly

distributed across different media systems. They are almost absent in the three Middle

Eastern papers due to different traditions and priorities in Arab news media as well as

political constraints such as the risks of crossing editorial redline. To explore why andhow such differences occur, five aspects of climate-change coverage are singled out in

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order to illustrate the influence of regional media systems and the communicative

implications of this for public perception of climate change. As such, the concept of

regional media systems serves a double purpose: as an analytical means to identify

regional differences in global climate-change communication, and as a theoretical

framework that explains inter-regional variations.

Climate Change: Global Risk

Global Research

Although climatic changes are projected to have different regional consequences,

climate change still represents a global risk and a challenge to our ecological

interdependency (UNDP, 2007, p. 2). Consequently, research on social and cultural

aspects of climate change, including policy, awareness, and communication, has often

taken an international approach. This is especially true of research conducted by

international bodies like the UN, the World Bank, and the OECD (OECD, 2005;UNDP, 2007; World Bank, 2010) as well as the many international polls on public

climate-change perception and awareness (Eurobarometer, 2009; Nisbet & Myers,

2007; Pew, 2009; World Bank, 2009).

The global aspects of climate change have also been the subject of several

sociological discussions (Beck, 1992, 2007; Giddens, 2009; Luhmann, 1995). Most

prominently, Ulrich Beck has argued that in the era of world risks, modern societies

are confronted with the consequences of self-generated catastrophes. Global risks

undermine the current (national) structures and political architecture, which may

foster fundamental uncertainty as well as political apathy. However, they may alsocontain a liberating element resulting in explosive transformations, depending on

whether global risks give way to moral and political impulses (Beck, 2007, pp. 107,

50), thus leading to new ways of addressing global risks such as climate change.

Media studies have looked at climate-change communication from an interna-

tional perspective (Boykoff & Roberts, 2007), or investigated the relations between

global media and public opinion (Leiserowitz, 2007). However, the majority of these

have either focused on the presentation of climate change as a global risk (Cottle,

2009; Mazur & Jinling, 1993; Risbey, 2007) or dealt with systemic constraints on

communicating and generating global, ecological responsibility (Boykoff & Boykoff,

2007; Carvalho, 2007a)

Climate-Change Communication: Methodological Nationalism?

Most media research on climate-change communication has been based on national

studies, which tend to confine themselves to a Western context (Boykoff & Boykoff,

2004, 2007; Carvalho & Burgess, 2005; Ereaut & Segnit, 2006; Ungar, 1999;

Weingart, Engels, & Pansegrau, 2000). Besides offering a national picture of climate-

change media coverage, these studies have highlighted an ideological dimension in

climate-change reporting (Carvalho, 2007b); emphasized the narrative structures themedia has used (McComas & Shanahan, 1999); or looked at the somewhat intricate

Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 63


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relations between national climate-change science and climate-change communica-

tion (Ungar, 2000).

Confining research to a national context raises the question of whether climate-

change communication studies exemplify the pervasiveness of methodological

nationalism (Beck, 2007; Beck & Willms, 2002). So far, such studies have privilegedthe nation state as a quasi-natural unit for sociological analysis (Konig, 2006,

p. 62). This is, however, a rather complex question. On the one hand, it can be argued

that an analytical strategy based on a national framework is inadequate, given that

climate change represents a fundamentally de-localised risk and a new type of global

interdependency (Beck, 2007, p. 106). On the other hand, a considerable amount of

media research has documented the continuous influence of national media systems

on media industries and audience reception (Chadna & Kavoori, 2010; Lee et al.,

2005; Sreberny, 2006). As a corrective to over-enthusiastic notions of globalization

and cosmopolitical visions of international communication, these studies areimportant reminders that international news tends to be communicated nationally

or regionally*even in a globalized era.

Regional Aspects*

The Missing Dimension

Yet both the global/international and the local/national approach tend to overlook a

third perspective on global climate-change communication, namely the regional level

of international communication. Hafez has pointed out that a discussion of

globalization which rests on concepts of local and global, but then leaves outthe regional level, easily becomes under-complex [untercomplex] (Hafez, 2005,

p. 19). Hafez argues that supra-national and regional forces contribute to the

internationalisation of communication, while also representing a restricted, or rather

regionalised globalization. In a similar vein, Straubhaar suggests that the role of

geocultural regions needs to be emphasized more, and argues that we should

reconsider globalization as a set of regionally differentiated patterns of moderniza-

tion (Straubhaar, 2006, pp. 683, 689).

One reason why the regional dimension has been largely overlooked is the

predominant Western perspective within media studies. In the West, media has

developed in tandem with differentiation in the political system and public sphere

(Habermas, 1989 [1962]). This explains why the nation state still forms the

background for most theories (Hallin & Mancini, 2004; Hardy, 2008) and empirical

studies (Curran, Iyengar, Lund, & Salovaara-Moring, 2009) on Western media

systems.

Outside a Western context, however, the nation-state framework might be less

significant. Recent studies of, for instance, the Arab media system suggests that

linguistic communities, shared historical experiences, a sense of common cultural

identity (Lynch, 2006), as well as norms and practices of Arab journalism (Mellor,

2007), are just as important forming an Arab media system as the more traditionalfocus on national political systems (Rugh, 2004).

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The literature comparing regional media systems is still rather limited, although

Hallin and Mancinis (2004) study of Western media systems has re-ignited interest in

the field. Paradoxically, while their study considers the nation state the primary unit

of analysis (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 71), it nevertheless presents a model based on

regional media systems. When discussing the future of media systems it emphasisesthe challenges from global forces like commercialisation, modernization, and

globalization.

Thus, to some degree Hallin and Mancinis theory blends national, regional, and

global levels of description. Quite tellingly, however, the theory is still restricted to a

Western context. In discussing the theorys applicability, Hallin and Mancini (2004)

believe it will be useful to scholars working on other regions (p. 6) and suggest that

the Mediterranean model could be particularly relevant for developing regions where

political polarization often continues to be strong (Hallin & Mancini, 2005, p. 231).

But they also emphasise that the framework is not intended to be applied to the restof the world without modification (Hallin & Mancini, 2005, p. 231).

Thus, previous research suggests that a regional dimension represents an

important fault line in international communication. That is also true for studies

on climate-change communication. With noteworthy exceptions (Boykoff, 2010;

Saab, 2008; Schafer et al., 2011; Shanahan, 2009; Tolan, 2007; Tolba & Saab, 2006)

little research has been done on climate-change communication outside a Western

context.

Comparing Regional Media Systems: Data and Methodology

This paper looks at two interrelated questions regarding the regional dimension of

climate-change communication:

RQ1: What are the major regional differences in international climate-changecommunication?

RQ2: To what extent are these differences conditioned by regional media systems?

The paper draws on a comparative content analysis (Krippendorff, 2004; Riffe,

Lacy, & Fico, 2005) of how climate change has been covered in newspapers from three

different geo-cultural regions:

. North America represented by The New York Times;

. Scandinavia represented by the Danish daily Politiken;

. The Levant represented by The Daily Star and LOrient le Jour (Lebanon), as well

as Jordan Times (Jordan).

The newspapers have been selected to form a reasonably comparable sample frame.

While there are differences in the international scope of the papers (The New York

Times and The Daily Star having a broader international readership), all the papers

publish climate-change news, and all belong to the quality broadsheet tradition.

Hence, the selection represents nationally or regionally well-respected papers with ahigh level of professionalism, which is also the case for the Middle Eastern sample,



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especially the two Lebanese papers (UNDP, 2003, p. 66). Despite belonging to the

quality tradition, none of the Middle Eastern papers have the resources to develop

website capacities (including website journalism) that are comparable with the other

regions. The samples are therefore restricted to print articles alone.

There are two other major reasons governing this selection; one methodological,the other theoretical. First, by including Western and non-Western media it is

possible to compare what in methodological terms is called most likely and most

unlikely cases (Flyvbjerg, 2006) regarding the likelihood of climate-change

communication. Generally speaking, it can be assumed that Scandinavia and North

America represent most likely regions when it comes to covering climate change,

while the Middle East represents a most unlikely region, as the Arab world faces a

number of social and political challenges that are considered more urgent than the

risks of future climate change. In so far as climate change receives fair media

attention in a most unlikely region like the Middle East, it can be assumed thatclimate change has indeed become a global news topic.

A second reason for including the three regions is the possibility of comparing

Western and non-Western media systems. Whereas Scandinavia belongs to a

democratic-corporatist model, North America represents a liberal or market

based media system (Hallin & Mancini, 2004) and the newspapers from the Levant

belong to a less well-defined Arab media system. The nature of the Arab media

system has been subject to intense debate (Fandy, 2007; Lynch, 2006; Mellor, 2007;

Rugh, 2004, 2007; Sakr, 2001). While most research acknowledges the existence of a

particular Arab media system, it is less clear whether Arab media should be

conceptualized and defined in national/regional or political/economic terms. Thus,the Middle Eastern newspapers in this study formally belong to the Arab media

system as they are owned, published, and distributed by Middle Eastern news

companies. However, as non-Arabic language newspapers, they possess certain

editorial privileges and forms of expression that make them more international and

westernized compared to the majority of Arab media.

The present discussion of regional media systems is limited to print media. Today

media systems are increasingly based on electronic and digital media. Yet for

historical and political reasons, print media is a defining variable in most media

systems (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 67) as the newspaper industry often spells outthe characteristics of a given media system.

Data, Coding, and Analysis

Data were obtained from a sample of five 2-week periods spanning 1 year from

COP14 (2008) to COP15 (2009). There were both practical and analytical reasons

behind this sampling strategy, which differs from the constructed week sampling

often recommended by content analysis methodology (Riffe, Aust, & Lacy, 2009).

First, most of the study was conducted in Damascus, Syria, and data were collected

with the help of Danish embassies in Amman and Beirut. For practical reasons, it wasimpossible to obtain copies of the three Middle Eastern newspapers based on a simple

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random sample or composite week sample. Collecting papers in consecutive weeks

turned out to be a more feasible strategy. The sample of the two other newspapers

was obtained from the LexisNexis database (The New York Times) and the Danish

database InfoMedia (Politiken).

Second, for analytical reasons the five samples were purposively selected in order tocoincide with international summits dealing with questions of climate change in

order to investigate the impact of trigger events on regional climate-change

reporting. The five samples thus correspond with:

. COP14 (14th Conference of the Parties) Poznan, Poland, December 2008;

. IPCC 30th meeting, Turkey, March 2009;

. G8, Italy, July 2009;

. UNFCCC meeting, Bangkok, October 2009;

.

COP15, Copenhagen, Denmark, December 2009.

Strictly speaking, this is a non-random sample, as the starting point of the five

samples was not randomly drawn. However, the international meetings were

distributed throughout the year, minimising seasonal basis, and some meetings

hardly received any media attention, resulting in little effect on sample size.

Consequently, the sample might not differ much from a randomly based consecutive

week sample. Furthermore, this sample yields more data than the recommended

constructed week sample, which has been a necessary strategy in order to gain

enough comparative material from the Middle Eastern newspapers.

The sample included all articles containing the words climate change, globalwarming, greenhouse gas, and CO2 (n0913). It was subsequently coded

according to the following principles:

. distribution of news genres: front-page, article, paragraph, leader, and op-ed;

. distribution of news categories: foreign/domestic news as well as political,

economy, environmental news or human-interest stories;

. attribution of articles: staff journalists vs. international news agencies and op-ed

pieces by local authors vs. international syndicates;

.

number of secondary articles: news stories containing one or more search wordsbut which are otherwise not about climate change (or environmental matters).

Based on a content analysis, the study investigates patterns of regional climate-

change reporting and discusses to what extent it reflects systemic conditions and

constraints. Occasionally, the analysis is supplemented by a more qualitative

approach offering examples of specific content constellations. This part draws on

qualitative media analysis, which is looking for patterns across time based on

readings rather than quantifications of multiple texts (Altheide, 1996).

As the investigation is based on a sample from a handful of newspapers, it does not

claim to be representative of climate-change communication in Scandinavia, NorthAmerica, or the Arab world in general. It is an explorative study investigating the



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significance of regional variations and the connections between climate-change

communication and regional media systems.

Regional Aspects: Global News, Local PrioritiesThe data show that all the sampled newspapers paid substantive attention to climate

change, indicating that climate change has to some degree become a global news

topic in broadsheets newspapers (cf. Figure 1). However, data also reveal significant

regional variations in terms of number of articles, editorial priorities, and the

importance of so-called trigger events. Thus, to begin with, we have to distinguish

seemingly similar patterns in global climate-change reporting and underlying

variations at the regional level.

The New York Times exemplifies fairly stable climate-change coverage, with limited

difference in the number of articles between the first four sample periods. Thisstability illustrates how international climate-change summits seem to have limited

influence on editorial priorities. Whereas COP14 and G8 were covered extensively in

both The New York Timesand Politiken, the IPCC meeting in Turkey or the UNFCCC

meeting in Bangkok were hardly mentioned. Nonetheless, during these four meetings

the number of articles concerning climate change remained almost identical,

indicating that in the two Western papers climate-change coverage does not generally

depend on so-called trigger events.

The main exception is the coverage of COP15, which generated an extraordinary

amount of media attention in all the sampled newspapers, not least in the Danish

newspaper Politiken. However, as COP15 was hosted on Danish ground, representing

the biggest international event in Denmarks political history, COP15 was

Figure 1 Number of articles per sample.

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over-represented in the national press. Its coverage in Politikenconsisted of both hard

and soft news, with particular focus on how the Danish authorities managed the

official and unofficial activities relating to COP15.

The three Middle Eastern newspapers represent a fundamentally different picture.

Trigger events like COP15 and the G8 summit generally result in more intensiveclimate-change coverage indicating that unless climate change is the subject of an

international summit, it is regarded as less newsworthy. However, given that the

Middle East represents a most unlikely region, where climate-change reporting can

be expected to be infrequent, Figure 1 shows the extent to which climate change has

become a global news topic covered in all three regions.

This general picture of global media concern is confirmed when looking at the

distribution of climate-change news items such as front-page stories, paragraphs,

editorials, or op-ed pieces. Table 1 demonstrates that nowhere is climate-change

reporting confined to an entirely secondary position, for instance, at the paragraphlevel. Climate-change features as front-page news and is the subject of editorials and

op-eds in all the newspapers, although with varying degrees of intensity. On the face

of it, Table 1 reveals a remarkably similar pattern in climate-change reporting; the

three Middle Eastern papers publish almost the same number of articles (between 85

and 87) and differ primarily in the number of front-page stories and op-ed pieces.

Likewise, the two Western papers have a fairly equal distribution of front-page stories,

articles, and paragraphs and differ mainly in respect to editorials and op-eds.

A closer look at the content of articles, however, points to important regional

differences. All articles have been coded as primary or secondary depending on

whether the subject was mainly on climate change or just a peripheral theme in an

otherwise different news story. Table 2 shows that the latter is more frequent in the

two Western newspapers compared to the Middle Eastern papers. This seems to

reflect the status that climate change has acquired in Western media and politics over

recent years. No longer is climate change treated as an isolated subject or problem.

Rather, the complexity of climate change means that the problem has become an

integrated part of several policy areas ranging from production, transportation,

agriculture, housing, consumption, and even culture and lifestyle. Consequently, a

Table 1 Distribution of news items

New YorkTimes Politiken

JordanTimes

The DailyStar

LOrient leJour

n % n % n % n % n %

Front page 24 8 17 5 2 2 13 15 11 13Article 200 64 200 58 53 62 49 56 56 65Paragraph 15 5 17 5 9 11 10 11 14 16Editorial 22 7 8 2 1 1 1 1 1 1Op-ed 52 17 100 29 20 24 14 16 4 5

Total 313 101 342 99 85 100 87 99 86 100

n0913.



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considerable number of articles have been coded as secondary (see Table 2), reflecting

how climate change blends with all sorts of political issues and topical questions and

therefore features in almost any news genre and category.

In contrast, the Middle Eastern newspapers rarely deal with climate change as a

sub-theme in relation to other news stories. Climate change is still regarded as a

rather particular issue with its own international agenda and is largely isolated from

other types of political news, especially national politics.

So far, the data presented indicates that climate change has become an integral part

of the international news agenda although trigger events still play an important factor

in generating attention, especially in the three Middle Eastern newspapers. The data

also suggest that beneath apparently similar patterns of climate-change reporting lie

fundamental regional differences and variations in terms of how climate change is

presented and addressed. In the following sections these variations will be further

illustrated by looking into five different aspects of regional climate-change reporting.

Foreign/Domestic News

The most significant regional difference is the distribution of foreign and domestic

news as illustrated in Figure 2. It shows that the Middle Eastern papers treat climate

Figure 2 Foreign/domestic news (%).

Table 2 Secondary news items on climate change


JordanTimes

The DailyStar

LOrientle Jour

n % n % n % n % n %

Secondaryarticles

85 27 33 10 5 6 3 4 1 1

n0127.

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change almost exclusively as foreign affairs (8289 percent). This is one of the clearest

examples of how climate-change reporting is conditioned by regional media systems.

Arab news media are frequently described as dominated by hard news and a

preference for analyses of international politics (Mellor, 2007). This seems partly to

reflect the elitist tendencies of Arab newspapers in general (Rugh, 2004), but also thepolitical context of Arab media. Treating climate change as foreign news minimises

the risks of crossing editorial redlines. By focusing on climate change as international

news, it becomes a matter related to the international community*the Western

world especially*that fits an official rhetoric in which the maladies of the Arab world

are often portrayed as imposed by the outside world. Treating climate change as

domestic news, on the other hand, runs the risk of exposing official neglects,

contradictions, or corruption related to environmental policies.

Domestic news relating to climate change is therefore primarily apolitical. This is

the case in stories on projects to increase water supply in Jordan, improve waterquality in Aqaba (an important tourist resort in Jordan), or on how climate change is

threatening the Lebanese Cedar trees, the national symbol of Lebanon. This kind of

domestic news reporting is especially salient in Jordan, which represents a

neopatrimonial political system and a semi-authoritarian media system (Bank &

Schlumberger, 2004), in which the media rarely question the general policy, and never

the foreign policy of the regime.

In The New York Times and Politikenthe picture is almost the opposite. Here the

majority of climate-change stories relate to domestic news indicating how climate

change has become an integrated part of domestic politics. Thus, the distribution of

foreign/domestic news in The New York Times (32 percent/68 percent) and Politiken(38 percent/62 percent) illustrates the differences between Western and Middle

Eastern media landscapes, rather than between different Western media systems. The

percentage of foreign/domestic news in the two Western newspapers correlates with

another recent comparative analysis. This found an almost identical distribution in

U.S. newspapers (34 percent/66 percent), although the numbers of Danish news-

papers (29 percent/71 percent) differed somewhat from the findings in this

investigation (Curran et al., 2009).

Nonetheless, these figures illustrate the extent to which climate change has become

an integrated part of the political agenda in both Scandinavia and North America.Climate change is no longer primarily an environmental discourse as it was in the

1980s and early 1990s. Rather, it has moved to the centre of national political

concerns as witnessed by the shift in the climate-change discourse in the 1990s

towards questions of economy and energy supply, and in recent years to questions of

international security and securitization (Brown & Crawford, 2009; Wver, 2009).

Hard News vs. Various News

Closely related to the pattern of foreign/domestic news, is the distribution of hard

news/soft news and of different news categories in general. Once again, the maindifferences in Figure 3 are between the Western and Middle Eastern newspapers.



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The high percentage of political news (68 77 percent) in the three Middle Eastern

papers is directly related to the findings in Figure 2 concerning the distribution of

domestic/foreign affairs. As foreign affairs are predominantly about international

politics, a large share of foreign news will consequently result in a similarly high share

of political news. Together, Figures 2 and 3 suggest that the discursive variations

regarding climate-change stories are somewhat limited in the three Middle Eastern

papers.

The pattern in The New York Times and Politiken is surprisingly similar, with a

fairly equal distribution of news categories. The high percentage of news coded as

other illustrates the extent to which climate change has become an integrated part

of our cultural reservoir. Climate change has become a more or less undisputed fact

that can be referred to in the most unlikely contexts. Examples range from a wine

review that discusses the impact of climate change on wine production (Pedersen,

2009), to a book review on a history of economics where climate change serves as the

paradigmatic example of a global catastrophe (Kakutani, 2008). Climate change also

increasingly appears in cultural reviews (theatre, cinema, TV, exhibitions, etc.), which

is a further sign of how widespread expressions and anxieties about the risks of

climate change have become in diverse cultural productions.

Neutral or Politicized News?

While Figure 3 points to a similar distribution of news categories in The New York

Times and Politiken, there are important differences beneath this general pattern. A

closer look at the specific content of news categories reveals different regional

traditions. This becomes particularly apparent in the role and function of science inclimate-change reporting.

173

159

60

59

66

34

22

8

6

4

30

32

8

13

9

15

7

0

0

1

90

93

9

9

6

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Poli ken

New York Times

Jordan Times

The Daily Star

L'Orient le Jour

n=913

Poli cs

Economics

Environment

Human Interest

Other

Figure 3 News categories (%).

72 M. Eskjr


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The New York Times tends to include a higher number of scientifically framed

articles (coded here as other in Figure 3) compared to Politiken. This includes news

stories about research programmes to monitor climate change or news reports on the

impact of climate change on the environment. It reflects a greater concern with the

scientific grounds of climate change and climate-change policy. An article onmeasuring CO2 explains how our knowledge gap has serious policy implications

and ends by quoting a researcher, stating that Its a national priority to understand

the carbon budget so people can make smart, good policy (Moran, 2008, p. D3).

The New York Times was the only newspaper in the sample to publish a front-page

story about climate-change science on the first day of COP15 (Revkin & Broder,

2009). The article presents the scientific foundations behind negotiations at COP15

as well as reporting on the boost to climate-change scepticism provided by the so-

called climategatescandal concerning the hacking of emails from the climate-change

research unit at East Anglia University.This editorial emphasis on climate-change science might reflect how so-called

climate sceptics have played an important role in the American climate-change

debate (Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004). To some extent they have succeeded in turning the

climate-change question into a discourse of scientific uncertainties rather than a

political discourse; a tactic which has itself become a minor news topic (Sachs, 2010).

However, the focus on climate-change science may also reflect liberal/market based

media systems tendency towards a more neutral and apolitical style of news

reporting compared to European media systems like the corporatist-democratic

model of Scandinavia (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). In The New York Times, political

news on climate change is more inclined to include assessments from experts, thinktanks, or scientists, whereas articles in Politiken often bring political commentaries

from the political opposition or politically involved NGOs, when reporting on official

climate-change policy. Furthermore, Politiken has a greater tendency to publish polls

that measure climate-change opinion according to party political alignments.

Comparable trends are found on the op-ed pages. The New York Times op-ed

pieces regularly appeal to a bipartisan policy on climate change, whereas op-ed pieces

in Politiken are more politicized and confrontational, attacking the governments

climate-change policy or suggestions from the political opposition.

Finally, the importance paid to climate-change science may reflect wider culturaldifferences. On the one hand, climate-change reporting in general pays attention to

science. This seems to be a natural outcome of the very nature of climate change.

While it has repeatedly been suggested that recent extreme weather phenomena

represent rather concrete forewarnings of climatic changes, climate change is still a

mostly invisible and scientifically constructed risk. As such it differs from other

risks of late modernity such as unemployment and economic globalization (Beck,

2002), which can be experienced first-hand as part of daily life. Scientific findings and

discussion are therefore central to most climate-change stories.

On the other hand, there seems to be culturally conditioned differences in the

importance allocated to science in the struggle to solve or overcome the risks ofclimate change. While scientific solutions to climate change get media attention



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across the sample, The New York Times seems to be particularly concerned with the

possibilities of a technological fix for global warming (Galbraith, 2009, p. B1). The

same faith in a technological fix is harder to detect in Politiken, which seems to regard

the answer to climate change within a more political context, as a political solution

on a national as well as international level.Climate-change reporting in the Middle East relies, to a very large extent, on

international news agencies (cf. next section). As the news agencies are based on the

style and tradition of the liberal media system, the tendency towards neutral

reporting and use of apolitical sources are reproduced in these news stories.

Staff/Agencies

Changing focus from news content to news producers, another set of regional

differences are apparent, the most important being whether climate-change news isproduced by staff journalists or copy-edited from international news agencies. This is

a fundamental difference with considerable communicative implications, as it

concerns questions of local relevance and public engagement.

Table 3 reveals the extent to which Middle Eastern papers rely on international

news agencies when reporting on climate change. Only domestic news that relates to

climate change is by-lined, whereas international news on climate change is almost

always attributed international news agencies; this is most likely a token of both

limited resources and editorial priorities. A report by The Arab Forum for

Environment and Development points out that less than 10 percent of the Arab presshas a full-time editor for environmental issues (Saab, 2008). Consequently,

environmental journalism lacks professional standards and continuous coverage:

the Arab media treatment of environmental issues lacks follow-ups, and is

characterized by immediate descriptive content rather than analysis and even

accurate information (Saab, 2008, p. 188). The present study concurs with this

description, both with respect to local environmental news and news reports on

climate-change issues, which can be rather sporadic. However, during high profile

international summits like the COP meetings and the G8, the situation is somewhat

Table 3 Attribution of articles


JordanTimes

The DailyStar

LOrient leJour

n % n % n % n % n %

By-lined article 213 68 202 59 9 11 12 14 21 24News agency 2 1 8 2 54 64 53 61 0 0*Op-ed 52 17 100 29 20 24 14 16 4 5

n0764.a

International articles in LOrient le Jourare not attributed to news agencies. However, the relativelysmall number of by-lined articles indicates that the majority of articles are copy-edited from newsagencies.

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different. In these cases, there is a continuous news reporting, copy-edited from the

international news agencies, which is highly informative and very often includes

some sort of (political) analysis.

The problem lies in the different perspectives on climate change provided by staff

journalists and news agencies. News agencies write for a global readership, providinga general outlook on international climate-change negotiations. Consequently,

international actors like the U.S., the EU, and the big emerging economies dominate

the news, while regional aspects and consequences of climate change tends to

disappear. However, without a local or regional dimension linking climate change

with the experiences of the audience, it is hard to imagine the media raising

awareness or contributing to civic engagement on the subject. A recent Arab Forum

of Environment and Development survey (Saab, 2009) highlights the relationship

between media and public perception of climate change. The survey documents a 100

percent increase in people who believe that climate change poses a serious threat (84percent), compared to a survey from 2000 (42 percent), an increase mainly attributed

to the media (Saab, 2009, p. 9).

However, the survey also reveals that while 98 percent believe the climate is

changing, 14 percent of the total sample*and as much as 27 percent in Syria*did

not think this presented a threat to their country of residence. According to the

survey, this significant discrepancy can be linked to the treatment of climate change

by Arab media: Arab public perception of climate change is largely derived from

international media, in the absence of real work in the countries of the region to

identify local and regional ramifications of the climate threat and make them

available to the public (Saab, 2009, p. 9).The present study corroborates this proposition by documenting how climate

change in the three Middle Eastern papers is predominately treated as foreign news

and mainly delivered by international news agencies. While the agencies provide

crucial information on climate change and the environment, they cannot substitute

the perspectives offered by local reporting, which are instrumental in making the

risks of climate change relevant to the local population.

Local vs. Global Opinion Makers

While Table 3 shows a relatively high percentage of op-ed pieces in some Middle

Eastern newspapers*equalling or surpassing that of The New York Times*which

could suggest lively debate concerning the risks and policies of climate change, it

turns out that the pattern of op-ed producers is similar to the pattern of news

producers in general (see Table 4). Hence, with a few exceptions, all op-ed pieces are

by foreign authors, and quite often distributed by Project Syndicate, an international

syndicate that disseminates opinions to subscribing newspapers around the world. It

defines itself as a collaboration of distinguished opinion makers from every corner

of the globe (Project Syndicate, 2010), and consists mainly of articles by world

leaders like Ban Ki-moon, Kofi Annan, Tony Blair; scholars like Joseph Nye; orinternational figures like George Soros, Bjorn Lomborg, etc.



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These op-ed pieces are often quite general and analytical, but first and foremost

they are a part of an exclusively international agenda. They lack the day-to-day

character of an ongoing national/regional debate. Thus, there are no letters to theeditor regarding climate change in the three Middle Eastern papers, nor any

responses to earlier articles or op-ed pieces.

An issue ofJordan Times during COP15 (December 8, 2009), which contained no

less than four op-ed pieces on climate change, is illustrative of this international

character. A piece proposing the greening of Asias housing sector was followed by a

Reuters analysis of an upcoming OPEC meeting and its reaction to COP15. Then

came an analysis by Associated Press on climate-change policy in the U.S., while the

last op-ed piece dealt with the impact of climate change in Africa. Once again, the

perspectives are extremely international rather than local or regional, presenting

abstract analyses rather than political discussions.

The New York Timesand Politikenalso differ regarding the number and content of

op-ed pieces. In general there are fewer op-eds on climate change in the printed

edition ofThe New York Times, and the debate appears more regulated and top-down

(but perhaps also more focused) compared to Politiken. Thus, some ofThe New York

Times weekly or biweekly columns (e.g., by Thomas Friedman, Paul Krugman)

provide substantial input into the newspapers debate on climate change. Further-

more, most letters to the editor tend to comment on already published articles, quite

often by experts and stakeholders (companies, NGOs) rather than ordinary

citizens. Thus, the newspaper, rather than its readers sets the agenda in the op-ed

section.

Politiken has no op-ed columnists who comment regularly on climate change,

apart from the editor of environmental affairs and occasional Project Syndicate op-ed

pieces. However, Politiken publishes many letters to the editor along with more

elaborate views by experts, stakeholders, politicians, and public servants. This gives

the impression of an ongoing public debate involving a relatively broad representa-

tion of Danish society. This might reflect a relatively long and well-established

tradition in Danish public debate concerning the environment and sustainable

energy, but it also indicates a difference between the liberal and corporatist-democratic media systems, where the latter has a tradition of tolerating and

Table 4 Sources of op-ed pieces in Middle Eastern newspapers

Jordan Times The Daily StarLOrient le

Jour

n % n % n %

Project Syndicate 17 85 8 57 2 50Other international authors 0 0 2 14 0 0Local/regional authors 3 15 4 29 2 50Total 20 100 14 100 4 100

n038.

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advocating more partisan views regarding the media as part of the political process

rather than being above politics (Hallin & Mancini, 2005, pp. 224227).

Discussion: Climate Change and Regional Media SystemsThe five aspects of climate-change reporting presented above point towards different

cultural perceptions of climate change in terms of relevance, historical responsi-

bilities, and regional influence on climate-change negotiations. However, they also

illustrate the influence of regional media systems.

The difference in discursive variations between Western and Middle Eastern

newspapers demonstrates the distinction between, on the one hand, an elitist or

clientelistic press system and, on the other hand, commercial press models. Whereas

the former expresses the views of the political elite (Rugh, 2004) or depends on some

sort of patron (Fandy, 2007), the latter relies on a diverse audience in order togenerate revenues. The former is dominated by hard news, illustrated by the

dominance of foreign news and the absence of human-interest stories relating to

climate change. The latter is marked by greater discursive variety and a preference for

domestic news, generally considered more relevant and attractive to a broad and

diverse readership.

These pronounced differences between Western and non-Western newspapers

might easily overshadow the more subtle disparities between Western media systems.

However, the different emphasis on science, polls, political sources and commentaries

in The New York Timesand Politiken, as well as the different political character of op-

ed pieces, seem to reflect the contrast between media systems based on internal andexternal pluralism. Internal pluralism refers to a mainly liberal media system, in

which individual media institutions reflect the wider political spectrum. External

pluralism, on the other hand, belongs to a media system with strong party political

affiliations (e.g., the corporatist-democratic model), where the political spectrum is

represented by the entire media system rather than by individual media institutions

(Hallin & Mancini, 2004).

This is a rather crude distinction, which has undergone considerable historical

transformations. For several decades the corporatist-democratic model has evolved

towards the liberal media system, diminishing the ties to specific political parties.Meanwhile, some liberal media systems have experienced increasing polarization,

especially within the electronic media, resulting in the emergence of the opinion-

based, rather than information-based, media traditionally associated with the

polarized-pluralist media system. However, within the newspaper market it is still

a useful distinction, which reflects the different historical accentuations and

journalistic traditions in North American and Scandinavian newspapers.

It is also a reminder that differences in international climate-change reporting cut

across a simple Western/non-Western dichotomy. While there are obvious dissim-

ilarities between Western and Middle Eastern newspapers in terms of economic

resources, political culture, and editorial freedom, this study also finds thattendencies towards a less politicized and more scientific discourse on climate change



19/22

are shared by The New York Times and the Middle Eastern newspapers, albeit for

rather different reasons. Whereas commercial interests bring about a rather neutral

form of political reporting in the liberal media system, political constraints and

editorial redlines result in more or less uncritical reporting in Arab media. However,

the predominance of expert views in international climate-change news alsodemonstrates the global influence of the liberal media system as the three Middle

Eastern papers copy-edit most of their climate-change stories from news agencies

located in the North-Atlantic region.

Conclusion

The present study has investigated the relationship between climate-change reporting

and the influence of regional media systems. It finds that climate change has become

a global news topic covered by all the sampled newspapers, but also that there areimportant interregional variations at play, as illustrated through the discussion of five

aspects of climate-change reporting. The dynamics of these regional aspects often

interact and reinforce each other.

The tendency of Middle Eastern papers to copy-edit climate-change stories from

international news agencies, resulting in an overrepresentation of international news,

is directly related to the political economic context of most Arab media. It reflects the

limited economic resources of many Middle Eastern media but also the risks of

crossing editorial redlines, which could easily occur if climate change was presented

in terms of local issues and challenges. In both cases this leads to rather one-

dimensional and uncritical climate-change reporting focusing on trigger events anddevelopments in international politics with limited relevance for the local population.

In contrast the two Western newspapers primarily present climate change as

domestic news produced by staff journalists. At a political level, this illustrates how

the complexity of climate change now touches on several aspects of social life,

becoming implicit in many policy areas and social discourses. At a commercial level,

climate change is deemed more relevant for subscribers and readers if domesticated

or linked to the life-world of ordinary citizens. Consequently climate-change

reporting is more diverse, locally produced, and nationally anchored.

Regional variations, however, do not follow a simple Western/non-Westernpattern. The commercial and political tradition of the liberal media market results

in a less politicized and neutral climate-change reporting compared to the

democratic-corporatist media system in which partisan views are more accepted

and pronounced. This explains the inclination towards expert views and scientific

debates in The New York Times and the more politicized op-eds and letters to the

editor in Politiken.

The preceding not only indicates the importance of advancing research on regional

media systems in order to conceptualize theoretical and communicative implications

in the field of international communication but also has a particular bearing on

climate-change reporting, as climate change represents a truly global risk. Withoutsome measure of equal access to relevant climate-change information at a

78 M. Eskjr


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trans-regional level, it will be difficult to sustain global awareness and public interest

in addressing the challenges of a changing climate.

AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers as well as the editor of

this journal for their helpful suggestions and comments on an earlier draft.

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