14 DAY TRIAL // A new research shows that mass-media has a tendency of coating most of its stories regarding the perils of global warming – increased floods and droughts, higher temperatures, and glacier meltdown – into a “doomsday cloak,” enticing either panic, or a sensation of disbelief among the viewers, readers and/or listeners. The report, published by experts at the University of the Basque Country (UBC), also demonstrates that the media plays a central role in people forming an opinion on issues such as environmental protection, sustainable development and natural heritage, and that most individuals shape their opinions depending on the channel they watch, the sites they read, and the radio shows they listen to.
One of the main researchers for the new study, UBC Lecturer Jose Ignacio Lorente, said that he was concerned with “the way in which social communication media, particularly news media, contribute to creating and spreading social visions of sustainable development and the conservation and protection of the environment in general and natural heritage in particular.” Details of the research are published in the latest issue of the Spanish-language journal Revista Latina de Comunicacion Social (or the Latin Journal of Social Communication, in English).
“The media make(s) an active contribution to tackling the complexity of the sustainability crisis of the current model of development, by confining their interpretation to environmental problems, but also fail to consider the social, economic and cultural aspects of a production system based on growth and the massive exploitation of natural resources,” he went on to say. The paper was published after the team analyzed numerous news agendas, framing procedures (the way in which the news is presented – its angle), and priming procedures (the reasons presented that justify the selected angle).
In the case of the Bali Summit, the media “avoided addressing the real reasons behind the political argument in detail, by means of a narrative strategy in which dramatizing conflicts, threats and delays regarding CO2 quotas prevailed,” the expert added. On that occasion, the angles referred to the potentially devastating effects of global warming, and their impact on the planet, and not on what was causing the problem, and, most importantly, on who was responsible for it. These names gently slip under the radar, as news corporation owners also have an interest in the fossil fuel industry.
“The emphasis the media placed on scientific evidence regarding the human nature of the causes for climate change was not linked to citizens' sphere of activity, despite fact that their everyday decisions and behavior – transport, energy saving, recycling – account for 20% of the problem,” Lorente shared. And the media is just saving itself by doing this, psychologists believe, because people in general are too afraid of their impact, and don't want to be told constantly that what they are doing is wrong, even if they know this is true themselves.