Climate Change Coverage in Greek Newspapers: 2001–2008

Abstract

This paper's aim is to identify the debate and document the coverage of climate change (CC) in the Greek national press and to assess to what extent this reporting exhibits the traits anticipated by the “polarized pluralist” character of the Greek “media system.” In order to do this, we analyzed articles published in three Greek quality newspapers (Kathimerini, Ta NEA, and Eleftherotypia) over the period 2001–2008 (N =2072). Our findings suggest a mixed picture: the Greek media debate is characterized by consensus on the anthropogenic causes of CC and on the promotion of renewable energy sources as a means for tackling Greek CC-related emissions. However when examining more specific/controversial CC-policy decisions, there is less evidence supporting a close link with the national character of Greek media reporting, with newspapers appearing to align themselves along partisan lines.

Keywords:

• climate change
• media analysis
• media systems
• Greece

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our COMPON colleagues for useful comments on previous drafts of this paper, and Elena Spathopoulou, Sofia Sidiropoulou, and Maria Kalivaki for their contribution in creating the articles database. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful and insightful comments. This research has been co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund—ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program “Education and Lifelong Learning” of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF)—Research Funding Program: Heracleitus II. Investing in knowledge society through the European Social Fund.

Notes

1. More particularly (i) the “Ecology/meteorological” frame means that the article refers mostly to plants, animals, and issues of biodiversity and habitat and/or reporting of weather events such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and weather trends; (ii) the “Policy-making” frame: the article refers mostly to individuals, processes or claims of governance at any level, whether international, in national government, opposition, the civil service, quasi non-governmental organizations or local authorities; (iii) the “Economic and energy interests” frame refers mostly to industry, commerce, markets, business groups, business lobbyists, specific products or spokespeople, and energy interests. This frame also includes articles dealing with CC's economic impacts upon society. (iv) For the “Culture” one, the article's content relates mostly to lifestyles, practices of individual and community living, consumption patterns and popular culture—films, books, and celebrities—as well as the impacts of CC on lifestyles. The (v) “Science and technology” frame refers mostly to discoveries, fundamentals, new studies, release of scientific reports on applied science and new technologies, including discussions of any scientific findings, scientific controversy, change in science, science reports, etc. Finally, (vi) “Civil society” frame relates to those articles reporting on civil law claims, campaigns and protests—demonstrations, direct action, email campaigns, etc.—public opinion polls and consumer reports.

2. The selection of the six “most common” statements out of hundreds is not due only to space restrictions. It also corresponds to a “plateau” threshold as far as the networks are concerned: adding more statements does not contribute significantly more ties to the graph.

3. In particular, they objected to the view that CC was a “market failure” in need of a state-intervention.