Polarisation vs consensus-building: How US and German news media portray climate change as a feature of political identities

Robin Tschötschel
Additional contact information
Robin Tschötschel: University of Amsterdam

No r5zdc, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Perceptions of climate politics often align with individual political leaning and associated media consumption patterns, pointing to a need for a fine-grained understanding of how the media integrate climate change with political identities. This study presents an in-depth qualitative analysis of political identity portrayals from 229 articles published in six German and US news outlets during May-July 2019. The results show that the outlets consumed by left- and right-leaning audiences emphasise oppositional identity portrayals, portraying features that are likely to trigger a negative response towards political identities typically op-posed by their recipients. The outlets with a more balanced or centrist audience offer a wider array of identity portrayals and emphasise policy questions over fundamental beliefs. Observed patterns differ considerably between Germany and the US, reflecting political and media system differences. The results add to understanding how the media contribute to political polarisation and consensus-building regarding climate change.

Date: 2021-08-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-isf and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/61263c248bd2010076a7ba8f/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:r5zdc

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/r5zdc

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().