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Global warming—global responsibility? Media frames of collective action and scientific certainty

Department of Media and Communication Studies, Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden, ulrika.olausson{at}oru.se

The increasing interconnectedness of the world that characterizes the process of globalization compels us to interlink local, national, and transnational phenomena, such as environmental risks, in both journalistic and academic discourse. Among environmental risks of global scope climate change is probably the one receiving the most attention at present, not least in the media. Globalization notwithstanding, national media are still dominated by a national logic in the presentation of news, and tensions arise between this media logic and the transnational character of environmental risks that call for a collective responsibility transcending the borders of the nation-states. This article presents results from studies of the construction of global climate change in three Swedish newspapers. It discusses the media's attribution of responsibility for collective action along an axis ranging from local to national to transnational, and highlights the media's reluctance to display any kind of scientific uncertainty that would undermine the demand for collective action. The results underline the media's responsiveness to the political setting in which they operate and the growing relevance of the transnational political realm of Europe for the construction of news frames on global climate change in European national media.

Key Words: climate change • news media • mitigation • adaptation • responsibility • scientific certainty • framing theory • critical discourse analysis • transnational journalism.

This version was published on July 1, 2009

Public Understanding of Science, Vol. 18, No. 4, 421-436 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0963662507081242


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