To mediate climate change: A comparative study of Swedish news media representation of climate change risks

Abstract

One of the most serious global issues presently is climate change. News media has an important role in informing the public about issues such as climate change and contributes to shape public opinion and the political agenda. This thesis therefore asks questions of what and how climate change risks have been represented by Swedish news media. As recent research has found that framing climate change risks as a public health issue, as well as situating climate change risks in the spatial locality of media recipients, influences media recipients’ emotional response and will to engage with the issue of climate change, such inquiries have also been examined. Further, this study compares two given years, namely 2009 and 2015, to investigate if there is any indication that media representation of climate change risks has shifted. The study was conducted by reviewing and coding several hundred news articles published in 2009 and 2015 by five major Swedish newspapers. The study found that climate change risks to a large extent were framed as a public health issue in both 2009 and 2015. Further, climate change risks were by Swedish media mainly spatially situated outside of Sweden in both examined years. Overall, news media representation of climate change risks were similar in 2009 and 2015. The findings suggests that media recipients’ engagement with climate change have barely changed between 2009 and 2015, based on media representation and media recipients’ emotional response to media representation of climate change risks.