JOUR90027 Chap.4 Climate Change Coverage: Framing and Balance
Climate Change Coverage: Framing and Balance
Climate change is presented as the biggest and clearest example of a global crisis, and the hardest test of objectivity and balance. This chapter gives you framing as a precise tool, using Entman's four functions and Han, Sun and Lu's study of 1,248 articles from five Chinese newspapers, which found environmental and human impact, responsibility, collaboration and conflict frames close together and human interest rare.
It compares party and market papers, examines reliance on official sources, sets out the balance-as-bias critique, and turns the method into a design for a two-country media report and an argument for essay prompt 3. The study's own limits, a sampling window built around climate conferences and a newspaper-only sample, become lessons for your research design.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Entman's four functions of a news frame
- 02
Six frames in Chinese climate coverage, 2005 to 2015
- 03
Party-sponsored versus market-oriented newspapers
- 04
Official sources and the politicising of climate change
- 05
Balance as bias and false equivalence
- 06
Designing a two-country climate comparison
Worked example · free
Coding a climate story for its frame
- 1Identify the human interest frame carried by the farmer's personal story.
- 1Identify the environmental and human impact frame in the scientist's account of consequences.
- 1Identify the collaboration or leadership frame in the minister's promise.
- 1Classify the sources as nonofficial (farmer, scientist) and domestic official (minister).
- 1Note what the mix suggests, using Han, Sun and Lu's finding that nonofficial sources go with impact frames.
Key terms
- Balance as bias
- Balance as bias is Boykoff and Boykoff's argument that giving equal space to a fringe scientific view distorted US prestige press coverage of global warming.
- Collaboration frame
- The collaboration frame presents climate change through agreements and joint efforts, a frame Han, Sun and Lu built inductively from their articles.
- Human interest frame
- The human interest frame tells a story through a personal narrative that evokes emotion, the least used frame in Han, Sun and Lu's sample.
- Market-oriented newspaper
- A market-oriented newspaper is a commercially driven Chinese daily, such as Southern Metropolis Daily, contrasted with party-sponsored papers.
- Official source
- An official source is a government or intergovernmental representative quoted in a story, as distinct from scholars, NGO members, businesspeople or citizens.
Climate Change Coverage: Framing and Balance FAQ
What frames did Han, Sun and Lu find?
Six: environmental and human impact (22.43 per cent of frame use), attribution of responsibility, collaboration, conflict, leadership and human interest (3.36 per cent). An economic consequence frame appeared in under half a per cent of articles and was dropped.
What is false balance in climate reporting?
It is treating a marginal view on settled science as an equal side, which signals to readers that experts are divided. Boykoff and Boykoff called the result balance as bias in the US prestige press.
How should objectivity apply to climate change?
One defensible answer to essay prompt 3 keeps balance for genuine policy disputes, such as how fast to phase out coal, and drops it for the established evidence that human activity is warming the climate.
Why do Chinese party papers frame climate differently?
Han, Sun and Lu link it to party journalism, officials' privileged access and a habit of following political agendas, which produce more collaboration and leadership framing and present climate change as a matter of global collective effort.
Why did Han, Sun and Lu sample only conference weeks?
Each year's sample covers the week either side of the UN climate conference from 2005 to 2015, which captures peaks of coverage. The authors acknowledge that this window inflates diplomatic frames and international sources, a limitation worth naming in your own design.
Assessment move
Read Han, Sun and Lu with a highlighter on three things: the six frames, the sampling window and the limits the authors admit. Then code three climate stories from this week's news using the same frames and note the sources. If you choose essay prompt 3, decide early which dimension of climate coverage you will focus on, because the prompt allows you to narrow it and depth beats coverage of every angle.
Keep a list of frames you notice that the six categories do not capture, as the authors did when they added collaboration.
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