United States media representational practices and anthropogenic climate change: Investigations at the interface of science and policy

This project explores how United States (U.S.) media representational practices shape and affect ongoing international climate science and policy discourse regarding human contributions to climate change.; Eminent climate scientists have come to consensus that human influences are the primary contributor to modern global climate change. However, over time, the United States---top emitter of greenhouse gases on planet Earth---has taken an isolationist role by disputing this and also by refusing to join concerted international efforts to curb human activities contributing to climate change. Many complex factors contribute to these conditions. However, the norms and pressures that guide journalistic decision-making and shape mass media coverage of anthropogenic climate science are a critical---yet understudied---element shaping ongoing communications at the highly politicized climate science-policy interface.; The research is composed of three main components: First, I investigate the multifarious journalistic, political, cultural and economic norms that dynamically influence media coverage of anthropogenic climate science (Chapter 2). Second, I more specifically interrogate journalistic norms that shape the production of news on anthropogenic climate science at the science-policy interface (Chapter 3). Third, I focus analyses further through an examination of the journalistic norm of 'balanced reporting' when it is applied to anthropogenic climate change coverage in newspapers and television (Chapters 4 and 5). The first two steps are carried out through multiple qualitative methods such as interviews and critical discourse analyses. In step three, quantitative content analyses of human contributions to climate change are conducted, through archival research of newspaper and television news coverage. These endeavors employ the theoretical tools of political ecology, science studies, media studies and sociology of environment.; Overall---through these mixed-method and interdisciplinary approaches---this project demonstrates that that mass-media coverage of climate change is not simply a random amalgam of newspaper articles and television segments; rather, it is a social relationship between scientists, policy actors and the public that is mediated by such news packages. Moreover, this research shows that the U.S. mass media plays a significant role in shaping the ongoing construction and maintenance of discourse on anthropogenic climate change at the interface of science and policy.