The role of the press in reproducing the climate action contrarian framings of European think tanks

Moreno Cabezudo, Jose Antonio

The role of the press in reproducing the climate action contrarian framings of European think tanks

Citation

Moreno JA. The role of the press in reproducing the climate action contrarian framings of European think tanks. Journalism. 2024 Nov 25. DOI:10.1177/14648849241303284

Abstract

This article lies in the field of research on communication and obstructionism towards climate action. The research addresses the role of the press in reproducing framings hostile to climate action when quoting some European think tanks the literature has identified as disseminators of climate obstructionist messages. The methodology is based on content and framing analysis, covering all European newspapers that have mentioned the five selected think tanks. The analysis comprises the study of 1516 texts extracted from 203 European newspapers listed on the Factiva platform. The results show that most of the press coverage about these organizations reproduced their frames against climate action, although this reproductive coverage decreased over time. Among these frames, those with political content predominated over those with climate science content. In particular, frames attacking the climate movement and questioning policies for being harmful or ineffective overshadowed scientific questioning. The research also includes a gender component in the analysis of the authorship of the texts, which shows that texts by male authors were slightly more likely to reproduce climate obstructionism than those by female authors. Ultimately, this study contributes to the discussion on the role of journalism in amplifying climate action contrarian discourse.