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SCI04
Climate Change Communication
PP 554
Who Captures the Voice of Climate? Policy Networks and the Media’s Political Role in Australia, France and Japan
S. Asayama
1
, J. Lidberg
2
, A. Cloteau
3
, J.B. Comby
4
, P. Chubb
2
1
National Institute for Environmental Studies- Japan, Center for Social and Environmental Systems Research, Tsukuba, Japan
2
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
3
University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Versailles, France
4
Panthéon-Assas University “Paris II”, Paris, France
There is no single problem definition of climate change and hence no ultimate single solution to it. The agreement on global targets on binding policy
decisions must be bargained and determined by local political institutions. This fact of 'post-national”21
st
century politics highlights the importance of sit‑
uating media coverage into the framework of national political systems. In dealing with climate policy-making, governments are dependent on complex
networks of various actors with specific interests and resources. Here, the concept of ‘policy networks’ becomes valuable for the analysis of climate policy.
Policy networks operate through the exchange of resources between members of a network, and the media is an actor in the network, which enables
other actors in the network to make their claims, also acting independently to construct and negotiate meanings. Understanding who enters the media
to speak about climate assists in building knowledge of how media operate in climate policy networks. We use the concept of policy network to build
a perspective from which to make sense of media coverage in relation to policy-making. In this paper, we compared the ‘voice representation’ in the IPCC
AR5 coverage across three countries -- Australia, France and Japan. By contextualizing media analysis into local political and media contexts, we aimed to
understand how the news coverage is constructed in the local political contexts as well as address questions about the media’s role in the complex nexus
of science-policy-media networks in different countries. In the analysis, we closely looked into the ‘voice representation’on the IPCC AR5 coverage in each
country, that is, who is defined as the authorized voice speaking for the climate. In each country, two newspapers with different political orientations was
chosen to cover a broad spectrum of ideological positions pertaining to climate change from conservative to liberal. Our coding unit is based on the ‘voices’
that are defined as named people who are quoted either directly or indirectly in the news coverage.We analyzed the voice representation from two aspects:
dominance (who was given the power to speak) and diversity (the variety of voices represented). Based on the analysis of‘voice representation’of the IPCC/
AR5 coverage as well as our knowledge about each country’s political and media contexts pertaining to climate change, we describe what types of policy
network exist in each country, and define the role of media in the networks. Our analysis showed that in all three countries there are at least two different
policy networks built around energy-climate political decisions: a strategic policy community built around a specific energy bloc, pushing a particular set
of policy actions, and an alternative issue network organized around the environmental risks and alternative economic pathways. Against the local backdrop
in climate policy networks, the media played different roles by giving different actors a voice to speak for the climate, but the media’s political effects on
local policy networks were similar in each country, serving to disconnect the networks rather than bind them together.
PP 555
Role of NGOs in Communicating Climate Change in the Coastal Region of Bangladesh
S. Mahmud
1
1
University of Hamburg, Institute of Journalism and Communication Studies, Hamburg, Germany
Much of the scholarly research on the communication of climate change emphasises media’s role in influencing public perceptions. Environmental NGOs
have become the subject of empirical investigation lately with recognition of their important roles in communicating climate science and advocating trans‑
national public activism. Yet, little is known about the role of NGOs in constructing public perceptions of climate change at the grassroots level, particularly
in the countries which are considered most vulnerable. This research attempted to minimise this scholarly gap by investigating NGOs’ role in constructing
public perceptions of climate change risks in the coastal region of Bangladesh. Based on qualitative method of data collection and analysis, this research
conducted in-depth interviews (n = 38) in the southwestern coastal villages in Bangladesh, which already held a prominent position in the global imagi‑
nary of climate change impacts. Study findings indicated NGOs as most common sources of climate change knowledge for the lay people along with media.
However, NGOs were more successful than media in communicating the issue. Participatory approaches to communication by NGOs made it easier for lay
people to perceive risks of climate change while information from news media was regarded too complicated to understand. NGOs’communication strate‑
gies included mainstreaming climate change issues in disaster management training, forming community groups to facilitate community-based adapta‑
tion, organise people for grassroots mobilisation, and using non-traditional media (e.g., drama and folk songs) to create public awareness. NGOs used their
already established strong networks in rural Bangladesh as agents of socio-economic development to communicate risks of climate change. This study also
revealed that NGOs successfully transferred some salient features of climate change to the lay people which included ‘localisation’and ‘politicisation’of cli‑
mate change risks.The issue was presented within the discourse of global inequality of risk production and distribution. Accordingly, lay people’s perception
of“we”as victims and“they”as wrongdoers were largely constructed with information obtained from advocacy programmes of the NGOs. They also created
some opinion leaders in the communities, who worked as bridges between formal and informal knowledge of climate change. NGOs were particularly
successful in raising climate change awareness among the women, who had limited access to media. On a critical note, this research identified a clear gap
between“increased awareness”and“intended behavioural responses”of the lay people.This implied that the lay people did not take communicated climate
change information (e.g., from NGOs) at its face value. Instead, as the interview data shown, they embed meanings on climate change risks, which came
from their informal social interactions, and personal experiences and memories of natural hazards.