Climate Change in Four News Magazines: 1989-2009

This longitudinal study examined how four news magazines, The Economist from Great Britain, Mclean’s of Canada, and two American publications, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report, portrayed climate change during six separate years, four years apart, a 20-year-period (1989-2009), focusing on what frames were used, did they change over time, and were their differences by publication. Major findings are that the publications did not differ from each other, but all four eventually eliminated the term “greenhouse effect” in favor of climate change to go along with global warming. The magazines also changed from their initial episodic, or isolated theme-oriented story structure to a broader, and more connected, thematic form. The dominant frame throughout the 20 years was political. The scientific frame diminished over time and the ecological-meteorological virtually disappeared.

The frames used to describe climate change did change over the 20-year period (see Table 2), and while the four publications also changed, their use of frames was consistent. Although the political-economic set of frames dominated each year of the six-year study, it increased in usage in the 1990s as did the culture and society of frames. As Table 2 indicates, their increase came at the loss of scientific and ecological/meteorological frames. As Table 3 shows, the four magazines were almost identical.  The four magazines also were similar in how they depicted climate change as either episodic or thematic, but again their use also changed over time. Table 4 demonstrates a significant change, a graduate shift from episodic to thematic. in news magazines as a major political issue and increasingly as a social and cultural issue as well.
The study revealed that there were no major differences in the way that climate change was framed between publications. However, the frames that were used to portray the issue over time did change.
The major primary frame that emerged from this study was that of political-economic. The study also showed a significant shift from the scientific frame as the second most represented frame to the social and cultural frame. This shift indicates that the issue has become more commonplace in the lives of everyday citizens. Rather than view the issue as a scientific issue that citizens have no control over or effect upon, the social cultural frame encompasses issues of stewardship, pop culture, public understanding, and justice and risk.
Global warming, overall, was the most frequently used term to describe the climate change phenomenon, appearing 814 times, followed by climate change, appearing 530 times. The term greenhouse effect only appeared 121 times during the study. This was consistent with the reasoning of Bolstad (2007) who noted that both terms are widely accepted. It is types of sources frame information differently, or at least disseminate information that is framed differently, as indicated by the statistically significant differences in framing of the global warming/climate change issue shown in Table 5. Not only is it interesting to study the differences in framing by sources but also the relative amount of framing. Government (including the president, appointed and elected officials as well as government agencies) constitute 35.2% of all sources and use the political-economic frame by nearly a three-to-one ratio over the other three frames combined. It is noteworthy that government spokespeople are the least likely to discuss the issue in scientific terms.
It might be considered somewhat surprising that individual source types did not differ significantly over time nor by publication as questions in RQ2. The largest percentage of 489 uses of one or more frames was the other category with 30%. Other sources by percentage of frames was special interests, 20%; educational institutions 13%; government agencies and appointed officials, 10% each; and in a three-way tie at 6% each were elected officials, the United Nations, and the president.
The answer to the RQ3 wonder about whether frames were structured in episodic or thematic fashion was partially answered. The appearance of thematic or episodic frames did change significantly by year but not by publication or source. Although 62% of all frames were thematic, it was not always thus. As Table 6    There was no significant difference among the publications in regard to how the subject was treated.