8 pages., Online via UIUC Library electronic subscription., The author of this commentary argued that environmental journalism offers a conceptual model and guide to action for all journalists in the "post-truth" and "post-fact" era. "Since the specialism was formed in the 1960s, environmental journalists have reported on politically partisan issues where facts are contested, expertise is challenged, and uncertainty is heightened. To deal with these and other challenges, environmental journalism ... has reassessed and reconfigured the foundational journalistic concept of objectivity. The specialism has come to view objectivity as the implementation of a transparent method, as the pluralistic search for consensus, and, most importantly, as trained judgment."
9 pages., Via online journal., This study traces popularity-driven coverage of climate change in New Scientist with the special aim of identifying which aspects of the issue have been backgrounded. Unlike institutional communication or quality press coverage of climate change, commercial science journalism has received less attention with respect to how it frames the crisis. Assuming that the construction of newsworthiness in popular science journalism requires eliminating, or at least obscuring, some alienating information, the study identifies prevalent frames, news values and discursive strategies in the outlet’s most-read online articles on climate change (2013–2015). With the official statement of the World Meteorological Organization (2014) as a reference, it considers which dimensions of the coverage have been backgrounded, and illustrates how language is recruited to de-emphasize some representations through implicitness, underspecification, or syntactic and compositional devices. It finds that the coverage relies on threat frames, privileges novelty and the timeliness and impact of climate science, avoids responsibility and adaptation frames, and endorses the so-called progress narrative. It discusses how this may forestall social and personal mobilization by placing trust in science institutions and technologies to confront the crisis.
24 pages., Open access and online via ScienceDirect., The suggested model involves interactions and integration among knowledge (K), social practices (P), and values (V). Authors contemplated bottom-up relationships among scientists, environmental managers, science journalists, and other citizens operating within a context of top-down institutional constraints. They emphasized values and social practices, as well as knowledge, in addressing institutional change.
3 pages., Online via publication website., A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) meteorologist comments on reactions she gets from viewers, listeners, and readers in her coverage of natural disasters, climate, and related weather topics.
