Media (mis)communication on the science of climate change
- 1 July 1994
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Public Understanding of Science
- Vol. 3 (3), 259-275
- https://doi.org/10.1088/0963-6625/3/3/002
Abstract
Climate change has been widely reported as a scientific and environmental issue. In six months' news coverage of climate change in New Zealand, reporting of basic scientific facts was overwhelmingly accurate. News sources rated over 80% of stories no worse than slightly inaccurate. However, one story in six contained significant misreporting. Some stories overstated the advance of climate change or confused ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect. Scientific sources rated coverage overall worse than their own individual judgments showed it to be. Examination of ways in which stories came about leads to recommendations on how scientists and journalists can work together to better inform the public about climate change.This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit:
- Climate of Opinion: Public and Media Discourse on the Global EnvironmentDiscourse & Society, 1994
- ‘In this paper we report …'’: Speech acts and scientific factsJournal of Pragmatics, 1992
- Source strategies and the communication of environmental affairsMedia, Culture & Society, 1991
- The media and the social construction of the environmentMedia, Culture & Society, 1991
- A Question of Accuracy: How Journalists and Scientists Report Research on HazardsJournal of Communication, 1990
- A Question of Quality: How Journalists and News Sources Evaluate Coverage of Environmental RiskJournal of Communication, 1990
- Some problems in conceptualizing the issue of “science and the media”Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 1990
- Covering Cancer: Newspapers and the Public InterestJournal of Communication, 1984
- Telling It Like It Isn'T: Inaccuracy in Editing International NewsInternational Communication Gazette, 1983
- The Structure of Foreign NewsJournal of Peace Research, 1965