Climate Change Within The Popular Media

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Climate change refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or due to human activity, (IPCC, 2007). It is important to understand that climate change is real, and it is increasing rapidly, (Emmott, 2013). In fact, in recent times, “nine out of the ten warmest years on record occurred between 2001 and 2011, and the surface waters of the UK coastal waters have increased by 0.7°C in the past 30 years”, (Hodder Education, 2013). Many different media platforms aim to portray scientific data for climate change, however, the accuracy of these articles is left to be questioned. To a certain extent, reports about climate change within the popular media is inaccurate. In order to change climate change altogether, mankind …show more content…

Therefore, journalists convey this false and biased information into their articles, in order to “work holistically”, rather than including specialist knowledge on the topic, (Deuze, 2005). This allows more inaccuracy in the popular media. An example of this is the manner in which Trump denies climate change, which in turn, causes inaccurate opinions, and has even altered the views of articles due to political pressure, further making popular media accounts of climate change imprecise.On the other hand, some popular media platforms are ones that specialise within geographical science and specifically climate change, such as the Royal Geographical Society and the IPCC. These publishing platforms will have more accurate data because they are written and researched by scientists. Science is about understanding the Earth’s climate and to predict how these systems will respond to a variety of changes (Emmott, 2013), and the only people who are able to provide the media with that level of exact data is …show more content…

There is less breadth in the content of tabloid news reporting, whereby there is under reporting on the important issues our society faces, and greater attention being paid to the domestic stories, (Connell 1998, Rooney 2000). Even though popular media does use scientific data produced by climate change experts in to support their information, the journalists lack the understanding needed to be accurate within their accounts. This causes inaccuracy, since the data provided by scientists in then construed to exaggerate the point, or completely misinterpret the point of the information. Boykoff and Mansfield (2008) state how they surveyed a dozen people over whether they had an increasing concern of global warming, after telling them that the past three months in 1998 were the warmest since 1731, and nearly everyone said yes, completely missing the idea that warming and cooling is a natural phenomenon, not just our own impact. Therefore, readers of these articles are not getting the right information passed onto them, causing them to be ‘brainwashed’. Therefore, accounts in the popular media about climate change are not accurate. Therefore, are accounts accurate within the popular media? In some ways yes, since some popular accounts within popular media specialise in this topic region, such as the National

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