Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

CSTPR Seminar: Reiner Grundmann

Wednesday March 9 2016 @ 12:00 pm
to 1:00 pm

March

9

Wed

2016

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Event Type
Seminar
Availability

Open to Public

Audience
  • CIRES employees
  • CU Boulder employees
  • General Public
  • NOAA employees
  • Science collaborators
  • Host
    CIRES

    Media Coverage of Climate Change in a Comparative Perspective
    by Reiner Grundmann  - Science and Technology Studies, University of Nottingham
    Abstract: Climate change is a global process which is addressed by international institutions but receives different responses in different countries. Countries differ, economically, politically, and culturally. However, much research is conducted on a national basis. This is entirely reasonable given the resource restrictions, both in terms of linguistic competence and amount of data. But it is not adequate for the challenge to understand the differences and commonalities of news reporting across countries. In this talk I will present findings from a comparison of the newspaper coverage of climate change in France, Germany, the UK, and the USA. This research is based on corpus linguistics methodology. I will show that the discourse in these four countries is different in that the press uses different terms to describe the problem, and that it assigns different meanings to these terms. Different domestic policy issues drive the climate change discourse. I will also show who the main claims makers in the media are and that so-called skeptical voices are by far in the minority.
    Biography: Reiner Grundmann is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Nottingham (UK). He has a long standing interest in sustainability and global environmental problems. His research explores the relation between knowledge and decision making, the role of expertise and public discourses, and comparative media analysis across countries and issues. He is also part of a large interdisciplinary project on urban sustainability, comparing the cities of Nottingham, Stuttgart, Chengdu and Shanghai. He is a author of numerous papers and books, co-author of the Hartwell Paper for a reorientation of climate policy, and blogger at Klimazwiebel. He tweets as @ReinerGrundmann.