1. The document analyzes the representation of climate change skeptics in German news media through a discourse analysis of over 400 articles discussing COP 17 in Durban. 2. Preliminary results found that explicitly skeptical frames were rare, with most clusters focusing on problems with climate policy or the difficulties of reinforcing rules. 3. It proposes that defeatism is the dominant frame in German media's reporting on climate change.

1. German Climate Skeptics and the News Media
A Discourse Analysis on Issues, Positions and the Specifics of these Agents
Jonas Kaiser, Markus Rhomberg
ECREA 2012 Istanbul | Panel: Science and Environment Communication

2. Where to start?
1. Diagnosis & Theoretical Overview
2. Who is a climate change skeptic?
3. Research Questions
4. Methodology
5. Preliminary Results
6. Where do we go from here?
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3. Diagnosis & Theoretical Overview
- Opinion research: skeptical minority in Germany (~30%, especially
young people, various studies)
- However: traditional news media does not seem to represent this
minority
Two main reasons for climate change skepticism:
- Uncertainty (Stehr & von Storch 1995, 2009; Funtowicz & Ravetz
1994; Weingart, Engels & Pansegrau 2002; Rhomberg 2010 /
Shehata & Hopman 2012 found no scientific uncertainty frames)
- Ideology (Carvalho 2007; Whitmarsh 2011; McCright 2009; Zia &
Todd 2010)
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4. Who is a climate change skeptic?
Working Hypothesis
Someone who is skeptical about the causes and impacts of climate
change as well as who questions climate science and climate policy.
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5. Research Questions
- Are there skeptical frames within the news media„s climate change
reporting?
- And if so:
- Who are the actors?
- What messages do they convey?
- How are these frame evaluated?
- Are there specific discourse coalitions?
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6. Methodology
- Discourse Analysis of the German news media„s reporting on
climate change (Gamson & Modigliani 1989; Ferree et al. 2002;
O‟Mahony & Schäfer 2005)
- „Critical Discourse Moments“ (Carvalho & Burgess 2005: 1466):
COP 17 Durban; Rio+ 20; COP 18 Doha (4 week period)
- Durban: ~402 articles from 19 media sources
- Print Sources: Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, die
tageszeitung, Handelsblatt, Spiegel, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine
Sonntagszeitung, Welt am Sonntag, Bild am Sonntag, Bild
- Online Sources:
Sueddeutsche.de, Faz.net, Welt.de, taz.de, Handelsblatt.de, Spiegel.de, Zeit.de, Bild.de
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8. Preliminary Results
Skeptical Clusters:
- Climate Change skepticism
- Denial (“Republicans call climate change a hoax”)
- Causes (“As long as the paradigm of human induced climate
change predominates – which is the case despite of rising
scientific doubt“)
- Impacts (“But will global warming lead to a disaster? The end of
the world seems to be delayed”)
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9. Preliminary Results
Skeptical Clusters:
- Climate science skepticism
- Politicization (“Additionally, most damaging to climate science
was that it got used by politics, many scientists complain”)
- Uncertainty (“The actual message is: We simply do not know
enough about most disasters in order to say something about
their development”)
- Alarmism (“A cultivated climate alarmism may revert to fatalism”)
- Conspiracy (“The goals of a worldwide regime are missed
regularly but one thing got accomplished: the critics of a
doomsday-catastrophism are publically as good as muzzled”)
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10. Preliminary Results
Other Clusters:
- Economy (“The economy is not allowed to suffer.”)
- Politics (“Politics for itself won‟t find trendsetting solutions”)
- Ethics (“Canada feels obliged to fight climate change as long as it
is fair for all countries”)
- Culture (“the energy hungry American Way of Life is getting more
popular despite the ecologic problems and thus more ecologic
friendly ways of life are getting pushed back”)
- Science (“The danger of climate change is that it is hard to grasp.
No one knows when, how and if its consequences will have an
impact on him or her”)
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11. Preliminary Results
I. Climate change skepticism in the German news media„s
reporting does exist but is very rare
II. Most of the clusters we found focused on the problems of climate
policy or why it is hard to reinforce international and national rules
III. We propose the dominance of the defeatism frame in the
German news media‟s reporting
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12. Where do we go from here?
I. Applying the established clusters & frames to Facebook, Google
Plus, Weblogs and Twitter (statements aggregated by TNS
Opinion)
II. Comparison of traditional news media and social media
III. Expert interviews with journalists and actors from the Social
Media sphere (Top 5)
jonas.kaiser@zu.de
@JonasKaiser
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