From the greenhouse effect to climate change: Global warming and the evolution of an issue (2008)

Undergraduate: Megan Turek

Faculty Advisor: Jane Brown
Department: Journalism & Mass Communication

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Five-hundred articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post from 1987 to 2007 about global warming are read and coded for variables that lend insight into issues of issue salience, risk perception and urgency communicated about global warming. The data show that global warming rose as an issue of salience on the media agenda and evolved in terms of metaphor usage and frames of time and place. It was observed that the usage of the metaphor “greenhouse effect” dropped, while usage of the metaphor “global warming” was consistent and “climate change” rose. These trends on the media agenda were subsequently compared to trends on the public agenda using poll data. The poll data, however, raise more questions about the correlation between public opinion and media coverage than they answer. Overall it was observed that coverage global warming evolved distinctly, and it is suggested that this pattern of evolution might be witnessed in the coverage of other social issues.