{"id":1617,"date":"2015-04-30T20:06:18","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T20:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/?p=1617"},"modified":"2015-04-30T20:06:18","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T20:06:18","slug":"how-do-mass-media-drive-the-conversation-on-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/2015\/04\/30\/how-do-mass-media-drive-the-conversation-on-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do Mass Media Drive the Conversation on Climate Change?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A team of CSTPR researchers\u00a0is on the story<\/em><\/h3>\n

University of Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine<\/em><\/a>
\nApril 30, 2015<\/p>\n

By Meagan M. Taylor<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not an overstatement to say that Boulder is an international hub for environmental devotees: atmospheric research experts and polar-bear habitat activists alike.<\/p>\n

But Max Boykoff, associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, has a unique vantage point on the subject of climate change. Instead of measuring icecap melt, he measures social reactions to such events, on a global scale.<\/p>\n

You might say he analyzes the analysts.<\/p>\n

Boykoff\u2019s Media and Climate Change Observatory<\/a> (MeCCO) project examines global mass media coverage of climate change topics, to gauge the scope and level of public dialogue on the wellbeing of spaceship earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe developed ways to look at where and when the conversation is happening,\u201d he says of the research methodology. \u201cWe can tell what events indicate ebbs and flows in coverage, and what kinds of things facilitate the conversation or impede it.\u201d<\/p>\n

His idea to create MeCCO stemmed from a conversation with a colleague at Oxford University, where Boykoff is a senior visiting research associate in the university\u2019s Environmental Change Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were interested in climate coverage between the UK and U.S. media, but a lot of the conversation was speculative\u201d he says. \u201cWe said we should have some kind of monitoring system for media coverage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea led him to found\u00a0a graduate project for the CU-Boulder\u2019s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research (CSTPR), housed within the Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences (CIRES).<\/p>\n

The MeCCO team is composed of Boykoff, five graduate students, and post-doctoral researcher and visiting fellow Gesa Luedecke.<\/p>\n

Each month, the team extracts publications containing the terms \u201cclimate change\u201d or \u201cglobal warming\u201d from 50 sources in 25 countries, accessed through record databases Lexis Nexis, Proquest and Factiva. Boykoff also has counterparts at climate research institutes in Spain and Japan who compile articles from their national databases.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this project is a really valuable resource,\u201d Luedecke says. \u201cIt\u2019s objective, and it reflects what is important to our society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Objective, because the researchers cull data based on a consistent set of criteria. They target publications with a large and diverse geographical range, broad circulation, and reliable access to archives over time.<\/p>\n

Access to archives is particularly important because not all media warehouse their data, Boykoff explains. Television media archives, for instance, may store content for only a few days, and outside of the U.S., saved content is virtually nonexistent.<\/p>\n

While TV news and Twitter seem to be the most ubiquitous messengers of death-by-carbon-emissions, MeCCO uses only newspaper sources, for their consistency and predominance.<\/p>\n

\u201cNewspapers are influencers,\u201d Boykoff says. \u201cPrint media is able to dig in substantively into issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

But sorting through the deluge of information published on climate change is much more complex than just counting newspaper clippings.<\/p>\n

The team has indexed four factors that determine the quantity and range of coverage: political events, scientific findings, meteorological events and social inputs.<\/p>\n

Political events and publication of new scientific research may be the most obvious factors that cause a ruckus in the press.<\/p>\n

The November 2014 joint announcement by the United States and China to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in the next 10 to 15 years preceded a spike in coverage that month. Read more …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A team of CSTPR researchers\u00a0is on the story University of Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine April 30, 2015 By Meagan M. Taylor It\u2019s not an overstatement to say that Boulder is an international hub for environmental devotees: atmospheric research experts … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 16:45:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1618,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions\/1618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}