Climate change as reported in the press of Finland: From screaming headlines to penetrating background noise

Abstract

News coverage of climate change has increased in the English‐speaking industrialised countries since 2005. The development of news coverage, especially in the United States, has been widely studied. Knowledge of the development and contents of climate debate in other languages than English is sparse. This paper presents the development on the press news coverage on climate change in Finland during the period 1990–2009 and discusses different social, economic and ecological factors influencing the news coverage.

Keywords:

• Climate change
• Finland
• Press coverage
• Piercing effect

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr Vilja Varho for the comments on the manuscript. The study was supported by the Academy of Finland (The climate discussion on transport – an interdisciplinary environmental analysis (CAST), project no.128307).