Media and Climate Change: Four Long-standing Research Challenges Revisited

Abstract

This paper suggests some further avenues of empirical and theoretical investigation for media research on climate change. “Old” suggestions, whose significance, as we see it, needs to be further reinforced, are included, as are “new” ones, which we hope will generate innovative research questions. In order to integrate the analysis with knowledge generated by media research at large, we revisit four research challenges that media scholars have long grappled with in the investigation of journalism: (1) the discursive challenge, i.e. the production, content and reception of media discourse; (2) the interdisciplinary challenge, i.e. how media research might engage in productive collaboration with other disciplines; (3) the international challenge, i.e. how to achieve a more diverse and complex understanding of news reporting globally; and (4) the practical challenge, i.e. how to reduce the theory–practice divide in media research.

Keywords:

• climate change
• media studies
• research challenges
• journalism
• environmental communication
• climate journalism

Notes

1. The workshop took place at Örebro University, Sweden, 4–5 December 2012, and involved 13 experienced environmental communication scholars from the UK, Germany, Sweden, and Canada.

2. http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/media_coverage/index.html (downloaded 7 March 2014).