Climate change: Is more news good news?

The Indian media has been reporting on climate change far more frequently in the past months. As the international community prepares for the end-2015 Paris Conference of Parties (CoP) to the Climate Change Convention – which will decide on the successor to the Kyoto Protocol – there have been far more stories mentioning climate change and global warming in the Indian media.

Indian newspapers and climate change

Does this signify a coming of age for climate change reporting in the country, or is this a flash-in-the-pan interest that will not continue after the Paris CoP? This question emanates from the trend for India in the continuous assessment graphs being plotted by the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.  

The CSTPR graphs track 50 newspapers across the world using the keywords ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’. The global list includes four newspapers from India – the Hindu, the Times of India, Hindustan Times and the Indian Express.

Like with media across the world, Indian media’s interest in the subject peaked around the December 2009 Copenhagen CoP, where the world hoped for an international political solution to the climate change issue. However, that was not to be, and the media attention never peaked as much as with the Copenhagen CoP later. The only periods when the attention peaked was during and immediately before and after the annual CoPs, which were held near the end of the every year.

World newspapers and climate change

India follows this global pattern. However, there has been a consistent increase in media coverage in India since the beginning of 2012, from where there has been a near-consistent plateau in the CSTPR graph. Though this does mirror the global trend, there are far less peaks and troughs in the Indian graph.

Absence of peaks and troughs signify consistent day-to-day reporting, which means that there is a potentially higher issue recall among readers. This in turn means that there is potential for greater public pressure on policy makers to support greenhouse gas mitigation and climate change adaptation.

The CSTPR graph is just the tip of the Indian media iceberg, but it gives an indication of the trend. According to the Indian Readership Survey for fourth quarter of 2012 (the figures since 2013 have been disputed by the media industry), the Times of India, Hindustan Times and the Hindu are the top three most widely read English newspapers, with a combined readership of 13.5 million. The Indian Express added another 0.5 million.

The figures of the English newspapers, however, pale in comparison to the readership of the Hindi dailies, whose readership has grown manifold in the past 15 years. The most read Dainik Jagran itself had a readership of 16.5 million during Q4 of 2012. In spite of their lesser readership when compared to the Hindi newspapers, the four English dailies tracked by the CSTPR study have the potential of reaching a strong section of the readership in India and also parliamentarians and other decision makers.

Thus, if the increased reporting in these four newspapers reflects the thinking of the people who read them, then there is an increased attention on climate change in this section of the population. Even if it the other way around, i.e., these newspapers are driving the interest among the readers, it is a good indication that there is a greater discussion on climate change.

The CSTPR graphs show that in the build up to the Paris CoP, media attention on climate change has been increasing in most of the countries. In the USA, though the graph is still jagged the peaks of media stories, especially those contributed by the New York Times, have been high.

The graph for the UK is both similar and dissimilar to the one for the USA. The British media seems to have reported more frequently about climate change than its American counterparts. However, like in the USA there is one leader among the pack in the UK too. Since September 2014, the Guardian and Observer have been doing far more stories on climate change than any other media outlet in the world. In November 2014, the month before the Lima CoP, there were 446 stories in the Guardian and Observer.

Media in Australia and Canada continue to have periods of interest and disinterest. In the number of news stories on climate change published in a month, the Australian media scores much higher than the Canadian media.

As the CSTPR graph for India shows, the Indian media has had a weaker coverage on climate change before 2005, even though New Delhi hosted the CoP in 2002. This is despite the fact that India has been an active participant in the climate change negotiations since the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio Earth Summit).

Interestingly though, the Indian negotiating position has not changed much from the “we are against binding emission reduction targets” in the past 23 years. In Paris, India will need to show its commitment to emission reduction, even while keeping its space for economic growth.

This is where a steady flow of stories on climate change will help make the discussions in the country more comprehensive, and possibly also pressure the negotiators to have a more nuanced than a rhetorical position. The developed country vis-à-vis the developing country binary position of the early 1990s is certainly passé for India, and when there are more stories in the media there is more scope for the multiple dimensions of the climate change discussions to be articulated in the public domain.

Like with the Copenhagen CoP, an increased media attention on climate change in the build up, during and immediately after the Paris CoP can be expected in India. The likelihood of this momentum continuing is high, since the media has been steadily exploring how the climate change discussions link to the day-to-day lives of the readers, viewers and listeners.

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Citation for the graphs:

McAllister, L., Nacu-Schmidt, A., Wang, X., Andrews, K., Boykoff, M., Daly, M., Gifford, L., and Luedecke, G. (2015). World Newspaper Coverage of Climate Change or Global Warming, 2004-2015. Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Web. [18 June 2015] http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/media_coverage.

The missing link

The news is out – climate change reporting in the media has increased in the past couple of years. A continuing media monitoring study by the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research (CSTPR) of the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA, has posted the trends on their website. I saw it first on Mike Shanahan’s blog on the environment.

The CSTPR has produced graphs for global trends (2004-2011) and also for India (2000-2011), Japan (2005-2011), UK (2000-2011) and USA (2000-2011).

In the global graph, the curves for the continents look similar. Climate change reporting across the world has increased since the middle of 2006. The tallest spike in all the graphs is around end-2009, which correlates to an increase in reporting everywhere closer to the Fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP-15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held at Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009. There are a few smaller spikes after 2009.

The global trend on climate change reporting (source: CSTPR)

For the global study, Boykoff and Mansfield looked at climate change coverage in 50 newspapers. They used the keywords "climate change or global warming" over multiple search engines to get the number of stories.

Interestingly, after the spike related to the Copenhagen COP, there is a decline in climate change stories in North America and Europe. Newspapers in Oceania show consistent interest in the subject. In fact, since February the number of news reports have been steadily rising from Oceania. Maybe the flood in the eastern part of the continent and the drought in the western part is contributing to the interest in the subject. Though showing a decline in the recent months, Asia and Middle East have been keeping pace with coverage in Europe and North America in the past two years. The study records very few stories on climate change from Africa and South America.

The trend on climate change reporting in India (source: CSTPR)

For the Indian study, Boykoff has looked at four newspapers - Indian Express, the Hindu, Hindustan Times and the Times of India. The Hindu has had the highest coverage, followed by the Indian Express and Times of India. The Indian newspapers have had a peak corresponding to the Copenhagen COP. This is in keeping with the world trend.

There are a few other peaks in the Indian graph. I wrote to Dr Boykoff to confirm what was the reported during the other spikes in the Indian graph. They relate to the coverage around annual COPs.

Overall, the trend for India is clear. There are far more climate change stories in Indian newspapers since end-2005 when compared to the years 2000 to 2005.

The Indian graph caught my attention since it gave empirical evidence to a conversation I had with my environment journalist friend in India a few weeks ago. My friend and I go a long way. We both started writing on environment and development more or less at the same time - in the late 1980s-early 1990s. In 2001, both of us were invited to Helsinki to interview the Finnish Environment Minister, Ms Satu Hassi, before her maiden visit to India. He was representing the Indian Express and I the Hindu Business Line newspaper.

A few weeks ago, I was discussing with my friend the present environmental reporting situation in the Indian media. I have been away from the country for two years and needed to know the situation from him. He said that there has been an increased reporting on environment in India, and especially so on climate change. The CSTPR graph for India confirmed what he said.

The trend is not surprising for somebody who has followed climate change negotiations since the 1990s. India was not listed among the countries that had to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the first reporting period of 2008-2012. Even in the 1990s it could be foreseen that India would be under pressure to make binding commitments on making emission reductions in the second phase. This background went into all the discussions on emissions trading after the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. The sustained growth of the Indian economy in the past decade has ensured that the pressure to make India join has been getting stronger in every annual COP.

In the buildup to each COP, since the one held at Nairobi, Kenya, in November 2006, there have been international stories mentioning about Indian emissions in relation to the global picture. These cues have been picked up by Indian media and there are many stories on Indian policy position before, during and immediately after the COPs. The spikes on the Indian graph are not coincidental. 

In his blog Shanahan asks, “newspapers in developing countries are publishing more stories about climate change, but how much is locally relevant and how much is just recycled from the West?” 

In Indian media the dividing line is not between Western stories and Indian stories. The Indian media generates its own stories, and even when a story from the West is used it is contextualized for India. The dividing line is between the macro policy stories and the local stories on environment which do not link to the  larger climate change picture. 

Many of the local stories which have a link to climate change will not get counted in a study such as the one being done by CSTPR because they do not use the keywords (climate change or global warming) in them. Most of the stories on industrial pollution, forest rights, iron ore mining, wind energy and solar energy may not get reflected. 

All stories do not need to make a mention about climate change. But if they do then they will help building the concept of climate change among the readers. The issue of climate change and global warming are still vague for the uninitiated. That is still because the reader cannot link between the developments that he experiences in his day-to-day life to something related to a warming world and discussions that experts have in international meetings.

And herein lies the catch in the entire climate change narrative - the missing middle link. There are stories on global meetings and policies and there are local stories. How the macro links the micro and vice versa is mostly lost in the reporting. This, however, is not a gap with the reporting alone. Scientists themselves shy away from making the connection. Maybe the science on climate change is still evolving and it is not possible to make definitive statements.

At least in the recent years, journalists, scientists and policy makers have tried to talk about the linkage with climate change during major extreme weather events. In August 2010, for instance, there were two important stories that had caught global attention - floods in Pakistan and fires in Russia. The events were heavily reported.There were a few caveat-ridden hints to climate change in some stories and when interviewed scientists did make some indirect references.

Nearly 20 years after the UNFCCC came into being, people do talk about climate change. However, it is still a distant concept, which does not link to day-to-day realities. It will become tangible and palpable only when it reflects in local stories.