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Media and Climate Change Observatory<\/a> (MeCCO)<\/em> January media attention to climate change and global warming was up 8% throughout the world from the previous month of December 2017. Increases were detected in Asia (up 15%), Africa (up 43%) Europe (up 7%), Oceania (up 11%), and North America (up 9%), while holding relatively steady in the Middle East. The Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) detected a decrease in coverage in Central\/South America (down 14%). However, the global numbers were down about 5% from counts a year ago (January 2017). The high levels of coverage in January 2017 were largely attributed to the discussions of possible climate change and global warming policy stances after the inauguration of United States (US) President Donald J. Trump. At the country level, coverage went up from the previous month in Australia (+25%), India (+16%), Spain (+7%), the United Kingdom (UK) (+8%), and the United States (+13%), while it went down in Canada (-5%), Germany (-28%), and New Zealand (-13%).<\/p>\n Figure 1 above shows these ebbs and flows in media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through January 2018.<\/p>\n This month MeCCO expanded coverage to sixty-two newspaper sources across thirty-five countries, adding sources in Latin America. We have strengthened our Spanish-language searches for articles with the presence of terms “cambio clim\u00e1tico” or “calentamiento global”, while we expanded our searches now to Portuguese through searches for the terms “mudan\u00e7as clim\u00e1ticas” or “aquecimento global”. Figure 2 shows Latin American newspaper coverage from January 2005 through January 2018.<\/p>\n Also new to MeCCO is monitoring of climate change or global warming in US television coverage from January 2000 through January 2018. We now monitor ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News Network, MSNBC, and NBC.<\/p>\n Moving to considerations of content within these searches, Figure 4 shows word frequency data at the country levels in US newspapers, US television, UK newspapers, and Indian newspapers in January 2018.<\/p>\n The five representative US sources showed continuing signs of a ‘Trump Dump’ (where media attention that would have focused on other climate-related events and issues instead was placed on Trump-related actions (leaving many other stories untold)). This pattern of news reporting continued to be limited to the US context. For instance, in January US news articles related to climate change or global warming, Trump was invoked 4145 times through the 472 stories this month (a ratio of 8.8 times per article on average) in\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em>,\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/em>,\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>,\u00a0USA Today<\/em>, and\u00a0the Los Angeles Times<\/em>. In US television sources of\u00a0ABC<\/em>,\u00a0CBS<\/em>,\u00a0CNN<\/em>,\u00a0Fox News Network<\/em>,\u00a0MSNBC,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0NBC<\/em>, Trump was mentioned 4108 times through just 95 news segments (43 mentions per segment). However, in contrast in the UK press, Trump was mentioned in the\u00a0Daily Mail & Mail on Sunday<\/em>,\u00a0Guardian & the Observer<\/em>, the\u00a0Sun<\/em>, the\u00a0Daily Telegraph & Sunday Telegraph<\/em>, the\u00a0Daily Mirror & Sunday Mirror<\/em>, the\u00a0Scotsman & Scotland on Sunday<\/em>, and the\u00a0Times & Sunday Times<\/em>\u00a01265 times in 589 January articles (approximately 2.1 mentions per article on average). In the Indian press (Indian Express<\/em>,\u00a0The Hindu<\/em>,\u00a0Hindustan Times<\/em>, and\u00a0Times of India<\/em>), Trump was mentioned just 75 times in 353 articles in January (approximately 0.2 times per article on average).<\/p>\n The US-based Trump Dump can be illustrated through a remarkable\u00a0Washington Post<\/a><\/em>\u00a0opinion from the Editorial Board on January 20, entitled ‘The shutdown brouhaha has covered up far bigger news’. Noting that 2017 was determined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to be one of the warmest years on record, they wrote, \u201cOne byproduct of the day-to-day chaos of the Trump presidency is that the nation\u2019s biggest, long-term challenges are often forgotten. While Washington spent\u00a0this\u00a0week agonizing over the prospect of a totally unnecessary government shutdown, what should have been far bigger news went nearly unremarked.\u201d They went on to boldly write, \u201cLast year also marked a recent low in the federal government\u2019s response to climate change. President Trump installed a\u00a0climate-change denier<\/a>, Scott Pruitt, at the Environmental Protection Agency, signaling the end of landmark climate rules on power companies. Mr. Trump\u2019s energy secretary, Rick Perry, pushed for a pro-coal policy so absurd that the independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)\u00a0rejected it<\/a>\u00a0out of hand. The president also announced he would pull out of the Paris climate agreement, an accord that the United States spent years fine-tuning to ensure it was a fair deal.\u201d<\/p>\n These stories were examples of attention paid primarily to\u00a0political<\/em>\u00a0content of coverage during the month. In this space, China continued in its path to take up a leadership position on decarbonization in the void left by the United States. Journalist Hiroko Tabuchi of\u00a0The New York Times<\/a><\/em>\u00a0reported that China continued to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by banning the ongoing production of over 500 car models – from both foreign and domestic companies – that don\u2019t meet new Chinese fuel economy standards. Also, preceding the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, where climate change was a much discussed topic by all world leaders besides US President Donald Trump, the WEF Global Risks Report – a survey of 1,000 international business, government, education and service leaders – was released. Reporter Kim Hjelmgaard from\u00a0USA Today<\/a><\/em>\u00a0wrote “Mother Nature topped the most significant risks facing the world for a second year in a row… that includes natural disasters and extreme weather events that human-caused climate change may be abetting”.<\/p>\n Across the globe in January there were a range of stories that intersected with the\u00a0cultural\u00a0<\/em>arena. For example, at the end of January the Doomsday Clock was advanced closer to midnight due primarily to concerns of climate change and nuclear war. Journalist Doyle Rice from\u00a0USA Today<\/a><\/em>\u00a0quoted Rachel Bronson, president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who said “Because of the extraordinary danger of the current moment, [we] move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock thirty seconds closer to catastrophe. This is the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953 at the height of the Cold War”.<\/p>\n Intersecting\u00a0political\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0cultural<\/em>\u00a0dimensions, coal was anthropomorphized and championed throughout the month in media accounts, mainly focused on actions in the US Trump Administration. While market forces (e.g. competition with natural gas and renewables) work against coal, numerous media reports mentioned coal mine closings. For example, the\u00a0Associated Press<\/a><\/em>reported on 400 jobs lost at a Pennsylvania coal mine closing announcement in early January. Yet as part of the FERC rebuff of a pro-coal policy put forward in mid-January (mentioned in the\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0<\/em>editorial above), journalist Joanna Walters from\u00a0The Guardian<\/a><\/em>\u00a0wrote that the decision was \u201ca blow to the president\u2019s high-profile mission to revive the struggling US coal industry\u201d. The end the month, Kenneth Vogel and Rachel Shorey in\u00a0The New York Times<\/a><\/em>\u00a0outlined shadowy carbon-based industry donations to the Trump Administration that may help explain these against-the-grain pro-coal stances. Nonetheless, in the US State of the Union address by the President on January 30, Trump championed \u201cbeautiful and clean coal\u201d in energy priorities going forward in 2018, despite some factual challenges mentioned by the editorial team in\u00a0The Australian<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n In January, coverage relating primarily to\u00a0ecological<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0meteorological<\/em>\u00a0issues garnered attention. There were a number of stories about extreme weather events around the world. For example, a\u00a0‘bomb cyclone’<\/a>\u00a0in the Northeast began the month. Also, James Queally, Melissa Etehad, and Brittny Mejia reported in the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/a><\/em>\u00a0on how the southern California mudslides related to preceding wildfires and flood events across the state.<\/p>\n Media accounts also focused on primarily\u00a0scientific<\/em>\u00a0dimensions of climate change and global warming. The most media attention in the month focused on the temperature records set in 2017. For example, journalist Damian Carrington at\u00a0The Guardian<\/a><\/em>\u00a0was one of many reporters and outlets that covered news that 2017 was the warmest year on record without an El Ni\u00f1o, and the third warmest year after 2016 and 2015.<\/p>\n Onward we go into 2018.<\/p>\n – report prepared by Max Boykoff, Jennifer Katzung and Ami Nacu-Schmidt<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) January 2018 Summary January media attention to climate change and global warming was up 8% throughout the world from the previous month of December 2017. Increases were detected in Asia (up 15%), Africa (up … Continue reading
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