ECREA16-Abstract

491

Friday, November 11

1 4 : 3 0 – 1 6 : 0 0

OSC PS

Poster session

PS 100

Videonline Kuwait: A Reception Study of Science Video Efficacy

M. Bourk

, K. Omar

Gulf University for Science and Technology, Mass Communication and Media, Kuwait, Kuwait

Videonline Kuwait is part of a larger international study that examines the Internet as a source of popular science knowledge. Online video has already

eclipsed television inmany countries as the preferred source of science-related knowledge, particularly shorter information packages. In total, video content

constitutes more than half of traffic across the Internet. This study joins an emerging body of research that evaluates different content and formats of pop‑

ular science videos to evaluate online science popularisation initiatives. This study explores survey responses among Kuwaitis to two short science video

packages discussing the implications of climate change, which frame the same key facts using different media narrative styles communicated by changing

voiceover content. The first video script maintains a traditional documentary news style characterised by formal textual elements (e.g. impersonal narra‑

tion, formal structures). The infotainment style constructs the second video script and places a stronger emphasis on personal narration, colloquialisms,

and humour to communicate the key themes. Both videos use the same video footage. Participants receive an online questionnaire and answer several

questions before watching one of two randomly distributed video packages communicating key climate change themes. Once they have viewed the video,

participants answered a survey that measures perceptions of message salience, seriousness of the issue, and recall. Our prliminary findings indicate that

salience and seriousness perceptions do not only depend on the narrative but also the exposure level to online video. We also found a variance in salience

and seriousness perceptions according to age. The outcomes from the study will be used to facilitate more effective communication of science-related

knowledge and its popularisation in response to both changing media environments and audience preferences. The study is funded by the Spanish Ministry

of the Economy and Competitiveness (CSO2013–45301-P). Keywords: science communication; popular science; online video; climate change.

PS 101

Boredom and Climate Change: HaveWe Reached the Post-Problem Stage? A Discussion of the Issue-Attention Cycle in the Media

Coverage of UN Climate Reports

K. Duarte

University of Bergen, Department of Information Science and Media Studies, Bergen, Norway

This paper aims to present how the media covers the Un Climate 5

Assessment reports (AR5) in 2013–2014 (IPCC, 2013). Climate change has been on

the agenda for decades, but research shows that coverage in several countries has declined the last couple of years (Eide & Kunelius, 2012; McAllister et

al., 2016; Schäfer, Ivanova, & Schmidt, 2014). The media has a role as translator of science and still many people list traditional media as important sources

of information about issues of climate change (Norwegian Citizen Panel (NCP), 2013). There is no easy answer to why the issue-attention around climate

change has decreased. However, this study aims to fill a gap in the existing literature, trying to explain climate change coverage using the Issue-Attention

Cycle (Djerf-Pierre, 2012; Downs, 1972; Peters & Hogwood, 1985). Given that the journalists and media have a special role of translating the science:

How do they translate the climate science of the reports and where in the issue-attention cycle are we now? Downs (1972) argue that an issue-attention

cycle consists of five stages: The pre-problem stage, the alarmed discovery and euphoric stage, realizing the cost stage, gradual decline stage and finally,

the post-problem stage. The research questions will be answered by a mixed method approach, using quantitative data, surveys and interviews with

journalists. The case chosen is Norway, a country that has highly cited scientists working with the UN climate reports. Climate journalists have seldom

science backgrounds or training in Norway. The goal of this paper is to highlight what is covered and what is not covered in the media, showing the media’s

priorities and news values in practice. The preliminary findings suggest that we are slowly moving towards a post-problem stage of the problem, given that

the reports have not been given as much attention as earlier reports. This matters because it is an important contribution to the debate of where climate

journalism is heading, and that a problem for the media is not skepticism of climate change, but a decline in attention. As Downs’concludes: 'We should not

underestimate [the] public’s capacity to become bored– especially with something that does not immediately threaten them.” Keywords: issue-attention

cycle, climate journalism, climate reports, climate science

PS 102

Global Coverage of Climate Change Stories: AWorldwide Comparison from 1979 to 2012

K.A.D. John

, H. Wessler

, A. Scott

University of Mannheim, Institute for Media and Communication Science, Mannheim, Germany

University of Mannheim, Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Mannheim, Germany

Cline Center for Democracy/ University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Political Science, Champaign- IL, USA

Anthropogenic climate change is widely recognized as a global risk to the wellbeing of humans and nonhumans alike (Maibach et al.2008). The tremen‑

dous social and ecological consequences of global warming and its associated risks can only be solved by international cooperation (Beck 2010). Hence

capturing the global discourse about climate change is of high political relevance for climate action (Boykoff and Yulsman, 2013; Anderson 2009; Antilla

2005), because “lay people”, stakeholders and decision-makers learn about climate change from the mass media (Arlt et al. 2011; Carvalho 2010). We use

Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) (Blei et al. 2003), a statistical topic modelling approach, to determine topical fields of the global climate change debate

from 1979–2012. Topic modelling is a new approach in communication studies that uses a suite of algorithms in order to discover hidden thematic struc‑

tures in large collections of texts (Blei 2012). We describe the discursive development of the climate change debate using innovative tools from the fields

of Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics. Our sample qualifies as “big data” and is drawn from a huge worldwide database of mass

media content: The Summary of World Broadcasts, SWB, compiled by the BBC as a strategic source for the British government. The dataset encompasses