Citizens assemble: a study on the impact of climate reporting in the Irish media ‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’ the Citizens’ Assembly on ‘how the state can make Ireland a leader in tackling climate change’

ABSTRACT

The Citizens’ Assembly, a form of deliberative mini-public, tasked 99 ordinary Irish citizens with the responsibility of deliberating on five topics, after which they made recommendations to government. Throughout assembly meetings members were presented with up-to-date accurate information from experts. ‘How the State can make Ireland a leader in tackling climate change’ was considered third by the assembly over two weekends. On the final day the citizens voted on thirteen strongly endorsed recommendations for government to act on. The release of the final report in April 2018 saw a further four ancillary recommendations added. There was considerable media coverage surrounding the Citizens’ Assembly for this topic. This research undertakes a content analysis of four national media sources over fifteen-months; the Farmers Journal, the Irish Independent, The Irish Times and TheJournal.ie. We found that climate related reporting became more neutral in tone and more divergent in its relationship to evidence over the research period. There was a reflection of the key themes from the Citizens’ Assembly in each media source, and themes changed through time for each publication. Two of the media sources examined increased their overall levels of climate reporting while the other two decreased.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizens’ Assembly
• deliberative democracy
• mini-publics
• climate crisis
• climate change
• content analysis
• media
• adaptation

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the work undertaken by the three secondary assessors in their examination of a subset of articles.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A full list of context codes, or action codes, are provided with short description is available in the Appendix.

2 The term ‘climate’ or ‘climate change’ is used in the text in the context of anthropogenic climate change and directly refers to evidence in research journals or projects or refers to reports by reputable bodies (e.g. EPA). Allocation of this term grounds the material in scientific evidence.

3 The term ‘climate’ or ‘climate change’ is used in the text in the context of anthropogenic climate change. May discuss specific associated issues. May refer to evidence without referencing specific papers or research. May speak to an expert (head of reputable environmental organisation/Dr./Prof. in climate related areas), or involve politicians making change/discussing change.

4 The term ‘climate’ or ‘climate change’ is used in the text while connecting it to/attributing cause to human induced change.

5 A full list of context codes, or action codes, are provided with short description is available in the Appendix.

6 Falls into another category, not already incorporated into the context code list.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rhonda McGovern

Rhonda McGovern is a PhD candidate in Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities, TCD working on an Irish Research Council Laureate funded project to reconstruct the climate of Ancient Babylonia (CLICAB). This paper is based on her masters research work undertaken at the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units (ICARUS) at Maynooth University, Co. Kildare under the supervision of Professor Peter Thorne.

Peter Thorne

Peter Thorne is a professor in physical geography (climate change) at the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units (ICARUS) at Maynooth University, Co. Kildare. Prof. Thorne was a member of the expert advisory group for the Citizens' Assembly on climate change and an independent advisor to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action. He is a coordinating lead author for the 6th assessment of the IPCC, the chair of the Global Climate Observing System Atmospheric Observations Panel for Climate and sits on several groups of the World Meteorological Organization.