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ABSTRACT
This study focuses on the use of science sources as experts in news stories about climate change coverage in the Great Lakes region of the US and Canada. We examine, using the hierarchy of influences model, whether the use of scientific sources in climate change coverage may be related to factors such as geographic location, reporting frequency, and authorship, in the prestige press as well as regional and local media. The study found that as many or more non-scientists than scientists are selected as sources regardless of geographic location, reporting frequency, or authorship. However, the study also found that the more stories reporters produce on this topic, the more likely their stories are to use and give prominence to science sources. In addition, the articles included few denier sources, but denier views are more likely to appear in a more prominent location in the articles than supporters when stories are framed as conflict over global warming. These results highlight the need for additional research examining the expertise of climate scientists in news stories to better understand news decision-making in the context of complex scientific reporting.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Compared to those providing the RSS feeds, the circulation of newspapers without the service were no more than 98,326 (M = 14,310). In our sample, about 91% of the newspapers had the circulation under this number (M = 17,283). In other words, the circulation of the majority of the newspapers in the sample did not exceed the circulation of those without the RSS service.
2. The news briefs were excluded from the sample because mostly they did not offer writers’ information. By considering that reporting frequency was an important variable in this study, the sample did not include news briefs.