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The Regional Dimension: How Regional Media Systems Condition Global Climate-Change Communication
Mikkel Eskjr Published online: 29 Nov 2012.

To cite this article: Mikkel Eskjr (2013): The Regional Dimension: How Regional Media Systems Condition Global Climate-Change Communication, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 6:1, 61-81 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2012.748933

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Journal of International and Intercultural Communication Vol. 6, No. 1, February 2013, pp. 61 81

The Regional Dimension: How Regional Media Systems Condition Global Climate-Change Communication
Mikkel Eskjr
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Global perspectives and national approaches have dominated studies of climate-change communication, reflecting the global nature of climate change as well as the traditional research focus on national media systems. In the absence of a global public sphere, however, transnational issue attention is largely dependent on regional media systems, yet the role this regional dimension plays has been largely overlooked. This article presents a comparative study of climate-change coverage in three geo-cultural regions, The Middle East, Scandinavia, and North America, and explores the link between global climate-change communication and regional media systems. It finds that regional variations in climate-change communication carry important communicative implications concerning perceptions of climate changes relevance and urgency. Keywords: Media Systems; Communication; COP15 Regional Media; Climate Change; International

In recent decades, climate change has become an important topic in international news. This is hardly surprising, given the political attention to climate change both within the UN system (IPCC reports, COP summits, UNDP reports), global politics (G8), IGOs (World Bank, OECD), and NGOs. Thus, the global dimension of climate change, in terms of environmental and social consequences as well as political and cultural responses, has increasingly positioned the issue as a key topic in international politics and international communication. Since climate change is a global risk, it has resulted in speculations about a new era of international cooperation and trans-cultural interaction. It has even been
Mikkel Eskjr is at Dept. of Communication, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Correspondence to: Mikkel Eskjr, Dept. of Communication, Aalborg University Copenhagen, A.C. Meyers Vnge 15, DK-2450 Kbh. SV. Copenhagen, Denmark. Email: eskjaer@hum.aau.dk
ISSN 1751-3057 (print)/ISSN 1751-3065 (online) # 2013 National Communication Association http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2012.748933

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suggested that climate change carries the potential for a cosmopolitical moment (Beck, 2007), in which national preoccupations and solutions are abandoned in favour of genuinely international responses and cooperation. From a mere communicative perspective, however, media studies have been rather sceptical about this alleged cosmopolitical potential, pointing out how national media still dominate international coverage and debate (Hafez, 2005). Indeed, several studies have demonstrated how international reporting is often domesticated or filtered through national prisms (Lee, Chan, Pan, & So, 2005). As a consequence, global perspectives and national approaches have dominated studies of climate-change communication. Regional dimensions and regional media systems have received less attention, although a renewed interest in comparative media systems has reframed the question of globalization as one of regionalising communication. However, these studies have mainly been confined to Western contexts. Thus, despite periodical calls for de-westernizing media studies (Curran & Park, 1990), comparative studies of Western and non-Western media systems are still rather limited, and virtually absent in the context of international climate-change communication. However, not only is adopting a regional perspective important for exploring the diversity of international communication, but also it allows us to address the challenges facing international climate-change communication. In the absence of a global public sphere (Scha fer, Ivanova, & Schmidt, 2011), transnational issue attention is largely dependent on regional media systems and the underlying mechanisms that guide how and why regional media present global risks such as climate change. Thus, this article offers a comparative content analysis of climate-change coverage in three geo-cultural regions, The Middle East, Scandinavia, and North America, representing three different media systems. The study is based on a sample of newspaper articles concerning climate change published between the 2008 and 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conferences. Thus, the scope of the study is exploratory and aimed at investigating the link between global climate-change communication and regional media systems. As the media are the main sources of climate-change information to the general public (Nisbet & Myers, 2007; UNDP, 2007), awareness of climate change is intricately linked with how it is presented in and by the media. Local and regional climate-change reporting is therefore instrumental in making the risks of climate change relevant to the local population. This study finds that while climate change has become a major international news topic, it is also marked by considerable regional variations. It is argued that these variations carry important communicative implications concerning regional perceptions of climate change in terms of relevance and urgency. Local reporting and regional perspectives are communicative resources, which are unevenly distributed across different media systems. They are almost absent in the three Middle Eastern papers due to different traditions and priorities in Arab news media as well as political constraints such as the risks of crossing editorial redline. To explore why and how such differences occur, five aspects of climate-change coverage are singled out in

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order to illustrate the influence of regional media systems and the communicative implications of this for public perception of climate change. As such, the concept of regional media systems serves a double purpose: as an analytical means to identify regional differences in global climate-change communication, and as a theoretical framework that explains inter-regional variations. Climate Change: Global Risk Global Research Although climatic changes are projected to have different regional consequences, climate change still represents a global risk and a challenge to our ecological interdependency (UNDP, 2007, p. 2). Consequently, research on social and cultural aspects of climate change, including policy, awareness, and communication, has often taken an international approach. This is especially true of research conducted by international bodies like the UN, the World Bank, and the OECD (OECD, 2005; UNDP, 2007; World Bank, 2010) as well as the many international polls on public climate-change perception and awareness (Eurobarometer, 2009; Nisbet & Myers, 2007; Pew, 2009; World Bank, 2009). The global aspects of climate change have also been the subject of several sociological discussions (Beck, 1992, 2007; Giddens, 2009; Luhmann, 1995). Most prominently, Ulrich Beck has argued that in the era of world risks, modern societies are confronted with the consequences of self-generated catastrophes. Global risks undermine the current (national) structures and political architecture, which may foster fundamental uncertainty as well as political apathy. However, they may also contain a liberating element resulting in explosive transformations, depending on whether global risks give way to moral and political impulses (Beck, 2007, pp. 107, 50), thus leading to new ways of addressing global risks such as climate change. Media studies have looked at climate-change communication from an international perspective (Boykoff & Roberts, 2007), or investigated the relations between global media and public opinion (Leiserowitz, 2007). However, the majority of these have either focused on the presentation of climate change as a global risk (Cottle, 2009; Mazur & Jinling, 1993; Risbey, 2007) or dealt with systemic constraints on communicating and generating global, ecological responsibility (Boykoff & Boykoff, 2007; Carvalho, 2007a) Climate-Change Communication: Methodological Nationalism? Most media research on climate-change communication has been based on national studies, which tend to confine themselves to a Western context (Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004, 2007; Carvalho & Burgess, 2005; Ereaut & Segnit, 2006; Ungar, 1999; Weingart, Engels, & Pansegrau, 2000). Besides offering a national picture of climatechange media coverage, these studies have highlighted an ideological dimension in climate-change reporting (Carvalho, 2007b); emphasized the narrative structures the media has used (McComas & Shanahan, 1999); or looked at the somewhat intricate

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relations between national climate-change science and climate-change communication (Ungar, 2000). Confining research to a national context raises the question of whether climatechange communication studies exemplify the pervasiveness of methodological nationalism (Beck, 2007; Beck & Willms, 2002). So far, such studies have privileged the nation state as a quasi-natural unit for sociological analysis (Ko nig, 2006, p. 62). This is, however, a rather complex question. On the one hand, it can be argued that an analytical strategy based on a national framework is inadequate, given that climate change represents a fundamentally de-localised risk and a new type of global interdependency (Beck, 2007, p. 106). On the other hand, a considerable amount of media research has documented the continuous influence of national media systems on media industries and audience reception (Chadna & Kavoori, 2010; Lee et al., 2005; Sreberny, 2006). As a corrective to over-enthusiastic notions of globalization and cosmopolitical visions of international communication, these studies are important reminders that international news tends to be communicated nationally or regionally*even in a globalized era. Regional Aspects The Missing Dimension Yet both the global/international and the local/national approach tend to overlook a third perspective on global climate-change communication, namely the regional level of international communication. Hafez has pointed out that a discussion of globalization which rests on concepts of local and global, but then leaves out the regional level, easily becomes under-complex [untercomplex] (Hafez, 2005, p. 19). Hafez argues that supra-national and regional forces contribute to the internationalisation of communication, while also representing a restricted, or rather regionalised globalization. In a similar vein, Straubhaar suggests that the role of geocultural regions needs to be emphasized more, and argues that we should reconsider globalization as a set of regionally differentiated patterns of modernization (Straubhaar, 2006, pp. 683, 689). One reason why the regional dimension has been largely overlooked is the predominant Western perspective within media studies. In the West, media has developed in tandem with differentiation in the political system and public sphere (Habermas, 1989 [1962]). This explains why the nation state still forms the background for most theories (Hallin & Mancini, 2004; Hardy, 2008) and empirical studies (Curran, Iyengar, Lund, & Salovaara-Moring, 2009) on Western media systems. Outside a Western context, however, the nation-state framework might be less significant. Recent studies of, for instance, the Arab media system suggests that linguistic communities, shared historical experiences, a sense of common cultural identity (Lynch, 2006), as well as norms and practices of Arab journalism (Mellor, 2007), are just as important forming an Arab media system as the more traditional focus on national political systems (Rugh, 2004).

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The literature comparing regional media systems is still rather limited, although Hallin and Mancinis (2004) study of Western media systems has re-ignited interest in the field. Paradoxically, while their study considers the nation state the primary unit of analysis (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 71), it nevertheless presents a model based on regional media systems. When discussing the future of media systems it emphasises the challenges from global forces like commercialisation, modernization, and globalization. Thus, to some degree Hallin and Mancinis theory blends national, regional, and global levels of description. Quite tellingly, however, the theory is still restricted to a Western context. In discussing the theorys applicability, Hallin and Mancini (2004) believe it will be useful to scholars working on other regions (p. 6) and suggest that the Mediterranean model could be particularly relevant for developing regions where political polarization often continues to be strong (Hallin & Mancini, 2005, p. 231). But they also emphasise that the framework is not intended to be applied to the rest of the world without modification (Hallin & Mancini, 2005, p. 231). Thus, previous research suggests that a regional dimension represents an important fault line in international communication. That is also true for studies on climate-change communication. With noteworthy exceptions (Boykoff, 2010; Saab, 2008; Scha fer et al., 2011; Shanahan, 2009; Tolan, 2007; Tolba & Saab, 2006) little research has been done on climate-change communication outside a Western context. Comparing Regional Media Systems: Data and Methodology This paper looks at two interrelated questions regarding the regional dimension of climate-change communication:
RQ1: What are the major regional differences in international climate-change communication? RQ2: To what extent are these differences conditioned by regional media systems?

The paper draws on a comparative content analysis (Krippendorff, 2004; Riffe, Lacy, & Fico, 2005) of how climate change has been covered in newspapers from three different geo-cultural regions:
. North America represented by The New York Times; . Scandinavia represented by the Danish daily Politiken; . The Levant represented by The Daily Star and LOrient le Jour (Lebanon), as well as Jordan Times (Jordan).

The newspapers have been selected to form a reasonably comparable sample frame. While there are differences in the international scope of the papers (The New York Times and The Daily Star having a broader international readership), all the papers publish climate-change news, and all belong to the quality broadsheet tradition. Hence, the selection represents nationally or regionally well-respected papers with a high level of professionalism, which is also the case for the Middle Eastern sample,

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especially the two Lebanese papers (UNDP, 2003, p. 66). Despite belonging to the quality tradition, none of the Middle Eastern papers have the resources to develop website capacities (including website journalism) that are comparable with the other regions. The samples are therefore restricted to print articles alone. There are two other major reasons governing this selection; one methodological, the other theoretical. First, by including Western and non-Western media it is possible to compare what in methodological terms is called most likely and most unlikely cases (Flyvbjerg, 2006) regarding the likelihood of climate-change communication. Generally speaking, it can be assumed that Scandinavia and North America represent most likely regions when it comes to covering climate change, while the Middle East represents a most unlikely region, as the Arab world faces a number of social and political challenges that are considered more urgent than the risks of future climate change. In so far as climate change receives fair media attention in a most unlikely region like the Middle East, it can be assumed that climate change has indeed become a global news topic. A second reason for including the three regions is the possibility of comparing Western and non-Western media systems. Whereas Scandinavia belongs to a democratic-corporatist model, North America represents a liberal or market based media system (Hallin & Mancini, 2004) and the newspapers from the Levant belong to a less well-defined Arab media system. The nature of the Arab media system has been subject to intense debate (Fandy, 2007; Lynch, 2006; Mellor, 2007; Rugh, 2004, 2007; Sakr, 2001). While most research acknowledges the existence of a particular Arab media system, it is less clear whether Arab media should be conceptualized and defined in national/regional or political/economic terms. Thus, the Middle Eastern newspapers in this study formally belong to the Arab media system as they are owned, published, and distributed by Middle Eastern news companies. However, as non-Arabic language newspapers, they possess certain editorial privileges and forms of expression that make them more international and westernized compared to the majority of Arab media. The present discussion of regional media systems is limited to print media. Today media systems are increasingly based on electronic and digital media. Yet for historical and political reasons, print media is a defining variable in most media systems (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 67) as the newspaper industry often spells out the characteristics of a given media system. Data, Coding, and Analysis Data were obtained from a sample of five 2-week periods spanning 1 year from COP14 (2008) to COP15 (2009). There were both practical and analytical reasons behind this sampling strategy, which differs from the constructed week sampling often recommended by content analysis methodology (Riffe, Aust, & Lacy, 2009). First, most of the study was conducted in Damascus, Syria, and data were collected with the help of Danish embassies in Amman and Beirut. For practical reasons, it was impossible to obtain copies of the three Middle Eastern newspapers based on a simple

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random sample or composite week sample. Collecting papers in consecutive weeks turned out to be a more feasible strategy. The sample of the two other newspapers was obtained from the LexisNexis database (The New York Times) and the Danish database InfoMedia (Politiken). Second, for analytical reasons the five samples were purposively selected in order to coincide with international summits dealing with questions of climate change in order to investigate the impact of trigger events on regional climate-change reporting. The five samples thus correspond with:
. . . . .

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COP14 (14th Conference of the Parties) Poznan, Poland, December 2008; IPCC 30th meeting, Turkey, March 2009; G8, Italy, July 2009; UNFCCC meeting, Bangkok, October 2009; COP15, Copenhagen, Denmark, December 2009.

Strictly speaking, this is a non-random sample, as the starting point of the five samples was not randomly drawn. However, the international meetings were distributed throughout the year, minimising seasonal basis, and some meetings hardly received any media attention, resulting in little effect on sample size. Consequently, the sample might not differ much from a randomly based consecutive week sample. Furthermore, this sample yields more data than the recommended constructed week sample, which has been a necessary strategy in order to gain enough comparative material from the Middle Eastern newspapers. The sample included all articles containing the words climate change, global warming, greenhouse gas, and CO2 (n 0913). It was subsequently coded according to the following principles:
. distribution of news genres: front-page, article, paragraph, leader, and op-ed; . distribution of news categories: foreign/domestic news as well as political, economy, environmental news or human-interest stories; . attribution of articles: staff journalists vs. international news agencies and op-ed pieces by local authors vs. international syndicates; . number of secondary articles: news stories containing one or more search words but which are otherwise not about climate change (or environmental matters).

Based on a content analysis, the study investigates patterns of regional climatechange reporting and discusses to what extent it reflects systemic conditions and constraints. Occasionally, the analysis is supplemented by a more qualitative approach offering examples of specific content constellations. This part draws on qualitative media analysis, which is looking for patterns across time based on readings rather than quantifications of multiple texts (Altheide, 1996). As the investigation is based on a sample from a handful of newspapers, it does not claim to be representative of climate-change communication in Scandinavia, North America, or the Arab world in general. It is an explorative study investigating the

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significance of regional variations and the connections between climate-change communication and regional media systems. Regional Aspects: Global News, Local Priorities The data show that all the sampled newspapers paid substantive attention to climate change, indicating that climate change has to some degree become a global news topic in broadsheets newspapers (cf. Figure 1). However, data also reveal significant regional variations in terms of number of articles, editorial priorities, and the importance of so-called trigger events. Thus, to begin with, we have to distinguish seemingly similar patterns in global climate-change reporting and underlying variations at the regional level. The New York Times exemplifies fairly stable climate-change coverage, with limited difference in the number of articles between the first four sample periods. This stability illustrates how international climate-change summits seem to have limited influence on editorial priorities. Whereas COP14 and G8 were covered extensively in both The New York Times and Politiken, the IPCC meeting in Turkey or the UNFCCC meeting in Bangkok were hardly mentioned. Nonetheless, during these four meetings the number of articles concerning climate change remained almost identical, indicating that in the two Western papers climate-change coverage does not generally depend on so-called trigger events. The main exception is the coverage of COP15, which generated an extraordinary amount of media attention in all the sampled newspapers, not least in the Danish newspaper Politiken. However, as COP15 was hosted on Danish ground, representing the biggest international event in Denmarks political history, COP15 was

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Figure 1 Number of articles per sample.

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over-represented in the national press. Its coverage in Politiken consisted of both hard and soft news, with particular focus on how the Danish authorities managed the official and unofficial activities relating to COP15. The three Middle Eastern newspapers represent a fundamentally different picture. Trigger events like COP15 and the G8 summit generally result in more intensive climate-change coverage indicating that unless climate change is the subject of an international summit, it is regarded as less newsworthy. However, given that the Middle East represents a most unlikely region, where climate-change reporting can be expected to be infrequent, Figure 1 shows the extent to which climate change has become a global news topic covered in all three regions. This general picture of global media concern is confirmed when looking at the distribution of climate-change news items such as front-page stories, paragraphs, editorials, or op-ed pieces. Table 1 demonstrates that nowhere is climate-change reporting confined to an entirely secondary position, for instance, at the paragraph level. Climate-change features as front-page news and is the subject of editorials and op-eds in all the newspapers, although with varying degrees of intensity. On the face of it, Table 1 reveals a remarkably similar pattern in climate-change reporting; the three Middle Eastern papers publish almost the same number of articles (between 85 and 87) and differ primarily in the number of front-page stories and op-ed pieces. Likewise, the two Western papers have a fairly equal distribution of front-page stories, articles, and paragraphs and differ mainly in respect to editorials and op-eds. A closer look at the content of articles, however, points to important regional differences. All articles have been coded as primary or secondary depending on whether the subject was mainly on climate change or just a peripheral theme in an otherwise different news story. Table 2 shows that the latter is more frequent in the two Western newspapers compared to the Middle Eastern papers. This seems to reflect the status that climate change has acquired in Western media and politics over recent years. No longer is climate change treated as an isolated subject or problem. Rather, the complexity of climate change means that the problem has become an integrated part of several policy areas ranging from production, transportation, agriculture, housing, consumption, and even culture and lifestyle. Consequently, a
Table 1 Distribution of news items
New York Times n Front page Article Paragraph Editorial Op-ed Total n 0913. 24 200 15 22 52 313 % 8 64 5 7 17 101 Politiken n 17 200 17 8 100 342 % 5 58 5 2 29 99 n 2 53 9 1 20 85 Jordan Times % 2 62 11 1 24 100 The Daily Star n 13 49 10 1 14 87 % 15 56 11 1 16 99 LOrient le Jour n 11 56 14 1 4 86 % 13 65 16 1 5 100

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New York Times n % 27 Politiken n 33 % 10 n 5 Jordan Times % 6 The Daily Star n 3 % 4 LOrient le Jour n 1 % 1

Secondary articles n 0127.

85

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considerable number of articles have been coded as secondary (see Table 2), reflecting how climate change blends with all sorts of political issues and topical questions and therefore features in almost any news genre and category. In contrast, the Middle Eastern newspapers rarely deal with climate change as a sub-theme in relation to other news stories. Climate change is still regarded as a rather particular issue with its own international agenda and is largely isolated from other types of political news, especially national politics. So far, the data presented indicates that climate change has become an integral part of the international news agenda although trigger events still play an important factor in generating attention, especially in the three Middle Eastern newspapers. The data also suggest that beneath apparently similar patterns of climate-change reporting lie fundamental regional differences and variations in terms of how climate change is presented and addressed. In the following sections these variations will be further illustrated by looking into five different aspects of regional climate-change reporting. Foreign/Domestic News The most significant regional difference is the distribution of foreign and domestic news as illustrated in Figure 2. It shows that the Middle Eastern papers treat climate

Figure 2 Foreign/domestic news (%).

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change almost exclusively as foreign affairs (82 89 percent). This is one of the clearest examples of how climate-change reporting is conditioned by regional media systems. Arab news media are frequently described as dominated by hard news and a preference for analyses of international politics (Mellor, 2007). This seems partly to reflect the elitist tendencies of Arab newspapers in general (Rugh, 2004), but also the political context of Arab media. Treating climate change as foreign news minimises the risks of crossing editorial redlines. By focusing on climate change as international news, it becomes a matter related to the international community*the Western world especially*that fits an official rhetoric in which the maladies of the Arab world are often portrayed as imposed by the outside world. Treating climate change as domestic news, on the other hand, runs the risk of exposing official neglects, contradictions, or corruption related to environmental policies. Domestic news relating to climate change is therefore primarily apolitical. This is the case in stories on projects to increase water supply in Jordan, improve water quality in Aqaba (an important tourist resort in Jordan), or on how climate change is threatening the Lebanese Cedar trees, the national symbol of Lebanon. This kind of domestic news reporting is especially salient in Jordan, which represents a neopatrimonial political system and a semi-authoritarian media system (Bank & Schlumberger, 2004), in which the media rarely question the general policy, and never the foreign policy of the regime. In The New York Times and Politiken the picture is almost the opposite. Here the majority of climate-change stories relate to domestic news indicating how climate change has become an integrated part of domestic politics. Thus, the distribution of foreign/domestic news in The New York Times (32 percent/68 percent) and Politiken (38 percent/62 percent) illustrates the differences between Western and Middle Eastern media landscapes, rather than between different Western media systems. The percentage of foreign/domestic news in the two Western newspapers correlates with another recent comparative analysis. This found an almost identical distribution in U.S. newspapers (34 percent/66 percent), although the numbers of Danish newspapers (29 percent/71 percent) differed somewhat from the findings in this investigation (Curran et al., 2009). Nonetheless, these figures illustrate the extent to which climate change has become an integrated part of the political agenda in both Scandinavia and North America. Climate change is no longer primarily an environmental discourse as it was in the 1980s and early 1990s. Rather, it has moved to the centre of national political concerns as witnessed by the shift in the climate-change discourse in the 1990s towards questions of economy and energy supply, and in recent years to questions of international security and securitization (Brown & Crawford, 2009; Wver, 2009). Hard News vs. Various News Closely related to the pattern of foreign/domestic news, is the distribution of hard news/soft news and of different news categories in general. Once again, the main differences in Figure 3 are between the Western and Middle Eastern newspapers.

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66 4 9 1 6

L'Orient le Jour

The Daily Star

59

13

Poli cs Economics Jordan Times

60 8 8 0 9

Environment Human Interest Other

New York Times

159

22

32

93

Poli ken 0% n=913 10% 20%

173

34

30

15

90

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30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Figure 3 News categories (%).

The high percentage of political news (68 77 percent) in the three Middle Eastern papers is directly related to the findings in Figure 2 concerning the distribution of domestic/foreign affairs. As foreign affairs are predominantly about international politics, a large share of foreign news will consequently result in a similarly high share of political news. Together, Figures 2 and 3 suggest that the discursive variations regarding climate-change stories are somewhat limited in the three Middle Eastern papers. The pattern in The New York Times and Politiken is surprisingly similar, with a fairly equal distribution of news categories. The high percentage of news coded as other illustrates the extent to which climate change has become an integrated part of our cultural reservoir. Climate change has become a more or less undisputed fact that can be referred to in the most unlikely contexts. Examples range from a wine review that discusses the impact of climate change on wine production (Pedersen, 2009), to a book review on a history of economics where climate change serves as the paradigmatic example of a global catastrophe (Kakutani, 2008). Climate change also increasingly appears in cultural reviews (theatre, cinema, TV, exhibitions, etc.), which is a further sign of how widespread expressions and anxieties about the risks of climate change have become in diverse cultural productions. Neutral or Politicized News? While Figure 3 points to a similar distribution of news categories in The New York Times and Politiken, there are important differences beneath this general pattern. A closer look at the specific content of news categories reveals different regional traditions. This becomes particularly apparent in the role and function of science in climate-change reporting.

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The New York Times tends to include a higher number of scientifically framed articles (coded here as other in Figure 3) compared to Politiken. This includes news stories about research programmes to monitor climate change or news reports on the impact of climate change on the environment. It reflects a greater concern with the scientific grounds of climate change and climate-change policy. An article on measuring CO2 explains how our knowledge gap has serious policy implications and ends by quoting a researcher, stating that Its a national priority to understand the carbon budget so people can make smart, good policy (Moran, 2008, p. D3). The New York Times was the only newspaper in the sample to publish a front-page story about climate-change science on the first day of COP15 (Revkin & Broder, 2009). The article presents the scientific foundations behind negotiations at COP15 as well as reporting on the boost to climate-change scepticism provided by the socalled climategate scandal concerning the hacking of emails from the climate-change research unit at East Anglia University. This editorial emphasis on climate-change science might reflect how so-called climate sceptics have played an important role in the American climate-change debate (Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004). To some extent they have succeeded in turning the climate-change question into a discourse of scientific uncertainties rather than a political discourse; a tactic which has itself become a minor news topic (Sachs, 2010). However, the focus on climate-change science may also reflect liberal/market based media systems tendency towards a more neutral and apolitical style of news reporting compared to European media systems like the corporatist-democratic model of Scandinavia (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). In The New York Times, political news on climate change is more inclined to include assessments from experts, think tanks, or scientists, whereas articles in Politiken often bring political commentaries from the political opposition or politically involved NGOs, when reporting on official climate-change policy. Furthermore, Politiken has a greater tendency to publish polls that measure climate-change opinion according to party political alignments. Comparable trends are found on the op-ed pages. The New York Times op-ed pieces regularly appeal to a bipartisan policy on climate change, whereas op-ed pieces in Politiken are more politicized and confrontational, attacking the governments climate-change policy or suggestions from the political opposition. Finally, the importance paid to climate-change science may reflect wider cultural differences. On the one hand, climate-change reporting in general pays attention to science. This seems to be a natural outcome of the very nature of climate change. While it has repeatedly been suggested that recent extreme weather phenomena represent rather concrete forewarnings of climatic changes, climate change is still a mostly invisible and scientifically constructed risk. As such it differs from other risks of late modernity such as unemployment and economic globalization (Beck, 2002), which can be experienced first-hand as part of daily life. Scientific findings and discussion are therefore central to most climate-change stories. On the other hand, there seems to be culturally conditioned differences in the importance allocated to science in the struggle to solve or overcome the risks of climate change. While scientific solutions to climate change get media attention

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across the sample, The New York Times seems to be particularly concerned with the possibilities of a technological fix for global warming (Galbraith, 2009, p. B1). The same faith in a technological fix is harder to detect in Politiken, which seems to regard the answer to climate change within a more political context, as a political solution on a national as well as international level. Climate-change reporting in the Middle East relies, to a very large extent, on international news agencies (cf. next section). As the news agencies are based on the style and tradition of the liberal media system, the tendency towards neutral reporting and use of apolitical sources are reproduced in these news stories. Staff/Agencies Changing focus from news content to news producers, another set of regional differences are apparent, the most important being whether climate-change news is produced by staff journalists or copy-edited from international news agencies. This is a fundamental difference with considerable communicative implications, as it concerns questions of local relevance and public engagement. Table 3 reveals the extent to which Middle Eastern papers rely on international news agencies when reporting on climate change. Only domestic news that relates to climate change is by-lined, whereas international news on climate change is almost always attributed international news agencies; this is most likely a token of both limited resources and editorial priorities. A report by The Arab Forum for Environment and Development points out that less than 10 percent of the Arab press has a full-time editor for environmental issues (Saab, 2008). Consequently, environmental journalism lacks professional standards and continuous coverage: the Arab media treatment of environmental issues lacks follow-ups, and is characterized by immediate descriptive content rather than analysis and even accurate information (Saab, 2008, p. 188). The present study concurs with this description, both with respect to local environmental news and news reports on climate-change issues, which can be rather sporadic. However, during high profile international summits like the COP meetings and the G8, the situation is somewhat
Table 3 Attribution of articles
New York Times n By-lined article News agency Op-ed
a

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Politiken n 202 8 100 % 59 2 29 n

Jordan Times % 11 64 24

The Daily Star n 12 53 14 % 14 61 16

LOrient le Jour n 21 0 4 % 24 0* 5

% 68 1 17

213 2 52

9 54 20

n 0764. International articles in LOrient le Jour are not attributed to news agencies. However, the relatively small number of by-lined articles indicates that the majority of articles are copy-edited from news agencies.

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different. In these cases, there is a continuous news reporting, copy-edited from the international news agencies, which is highly informative and very often includes some sort of (political) analysis. The problem lies in the different perspectives on climate change provided by staff journalists and news agencies. News agencies write for a global readership, providing a general outlook on international climate-change negotiations. Consequently, international actors like the U.S., the EU, and the big emerging economies dominate the news, while regional aspects and consequences of climate change tends to disappear. However, without a local or regional dimension linking climate change with the experiences of the audience, it is hard to imagine the media raising awareness or contributing to civic engagement on the subject. A recent Arab Forum of Environment and Development survey (Saab, 2009) highlights the relationship between media and public perception of climate change. The survey documents a 100 percent increase in people who believe that climate change poses a serious threat (84 percent), compared to a survey from 2000 (42 percent), an increase mainly attributed to the media (Saab, 2009, p. 9). However, the survey also reveals that while 98 percent believe the climate is changing, 14 percent of the total sample*and as much as 27 percent in Syria*did not think this presented a threat to their country of residence. According to the survey, this significant discrepancy can be linked to the treatment of climate change by Arab media: Arab public perception of climate change is largely derived from international media, in the absence of real work in the countries of the region to identify local and regional ramifications of the climate threat and make them available to the public (Saab, 2009, p. 9). The present study corroborates this proposition by documenting how climate change in the three Middle Eastern papers is predominately treated as foreign news and mainly delivered by international news agencies. While the agencies provide crucial information on climate change and the environment, they cannot substitute the perspectives offered by local reporting, which are instrumental in making the risks of climate change relevant to the local population. Local vs. Global Opinion Makers While Table 3 shows a relatively high percentage of op-ed pieces in some Middle Eastern newspapers*equalling or surpassing that of The New York Times*which could suggest lively debate concerning the risks and policies of climate change, it turns out that the pattern of op-ed producers is similar to the pattern of news producers in general (see Table 4). Hence, with a few exceptions, all op-ed pieces are by foreign authors, and quite often distributed by Project Syndicate, an international syndicate that disseminates opinions to subscribing newspapers around the world. It defines itself as a collaboration of distinguished opinion makers from every corner of the globe (Project Syndicate, 2010), and consists mainly of articles by world leaders like Ban Ki-moon, Kofi Annan, Tony Blair; scholars like Joseph Nye; or international figures like George Soros, Bjorn Lomborg, etc.

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M. Eskjr Table 4 Sources of op-ed pieces in Middle Eastern newspapers

Jordan Times n % 85 0 15 100 The Daily Star n 8 2 4 14 % 57 14 29 100 n 2 0 2 4 LOrient le Jour % 50 0 50 100

Project Syndicate Other international authors Local/regional authors Total n 038.

17 0 3 20

These op-ed pieces are often quite general and analytical, but first and foremost they are a part of an exclusively international agenda. They lack the day-to-day character of an ongoing national/regional debate. Thus, there are no letters to the editor regarding climate change in the three Middle Eastern papers, nor any responses to earlier articles or op-ed pieces. An issue of Jordan Times during COP15 (December 8, 2009), which contained no less than four op-ed pieces on climate change, is illustrative of this international character. A piece proposing the greening of Asias housing sector was followed by a Reuters analysis of an upcoming OPEC meeting and its reaction to COP15. Then came an analysis by Associated Press on climate-change policy in the U.S., while the last op-ed piece dealt with the impact of climate change in Africa. Once again, the perspectives are extremely international rather than local or regional, presenting abstract analyses rather than political discussions. The New York Times and Politiken also differ regarding the number and content of op-ed pieces. In general there are fewer op-eds on climate change in the printed edition of The New York Times, and the debate appears more regulated and top-down (but perhaps also more focused) compared to Politiken. Thus, some of The New York Times weekly or biweekly columns (e.g., by Thomas Friedman, Paul Krugman) provide substantial input into the newspapers debate on climate change. Furthermore, most letters to the editor tend to comment on already published articles, quite often by experts and stakeholders (companies, NGOs) rather than ordinary citizens. Thus, the newspaper, rather than its readers sets the agenda in the op-ed section. Politiken has no op-ed columnists who comment regularly on climate change, apart from the editor of environmental affairs and occasional Project Syndicate op-ed pieces. However, Politiken publishes many letters to the editor along with more elaborate views by experts, stakeholders, politicians, and public servants. This gives the impression of an ongoing public debate involving a relatively broad representation of Danish society. This might reflect a relatively long and well-established tradition in Danish public debate concerning the environment and sustainable energy, but it also indicates a difference between the liberal and corporatistdemocratic media systems, where the latter has a tradition of tolerating and

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advocating more partisan views regarding the media as part of the political process rather than being above politics (Hallin & Mancini, 2005, pp. 224 227). Discussion: Climate Change and Regional Media Systems The five aspects of climate-change reporting presented above point towards different cultural perceptions of climate change in terms of relevance, historical responsibilities, and regional influence on climate-change negotiations. However, they also illustrate the influence of regional media systems. The difference in discursive variations between Western and Middle Eastern newspapers demonstrates the distinction between, on the one hand, an elitist or clientelistic press system and, on the other hand, commercial press models. Whereas the former expresses the views of the political elite (Rugh, 2004) or depends on some sort of patron (Fandy, 2007), the latter relies on a diverse audience in order to generate revenues. The former is dominated by hard news, illustrated by the dominance of foreign news and the absence of human-interest stories relating to climate change. The latter is marked by greater discursive variety and a preference for domestic news, generally considered more relevant and attractive to a broad and diverse readership. These pronounced differences between Western and non-Western newspapers might easily overshadow the more subtle disparities between Western media systems. However, the different emphasis on science, polls, political sources and commentaries in The New York Times and Politiken, as well as the different political character of oped pieces, seem to reflect the contrast between media systems based on internal and external pluralism. Internal pluralism refers to a mainly liberal media system, in which individual media institutions reflect the wider political spectrum. External pluralism, on the other hand, belongs to a media system with strong party political affiliations (e.g., the corporatist-democratic model), where the political spectrum is represented by the entire media system rather than by individual media institutions (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). This is a rather crude distinction, which has undergone considerable historical transformations. For several decades the corporatist-democratic model has evolved towards the liberal media system, diminishing the ties to specific political parties. Meanwhile, some liberal media systems have experienced increasing polarization, especially within the electronic media, resulting in the emergence of the opinionbased, rather than information-based, media traditionally associated with the polarized-pluralist media system. However, within the newspaper market it is still a useful distinction, which reflects the different historical accentuations and journalistic traditions in North American and Scandinavian newspapers. It is also a reminder that differences in international climate-change reporting cut across a simple Western/non-Western dichotomy. While there are obvious dissimilarities between Western and Middle Eastern newspapers in terms of economic resources, political culture, and editorial freedom, this study also finds that tendencies towards a less politicized and more scientific discourse on climate change

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are shared by The New York Times and the Middle Eastern newspapers, albeit for rather different reasons. Whereas commercial interests bring about a rather neutral form of political reporting in the liberal media system, political constraints and editorial redlines result in more or less uncritical reporting in Arab media. However, the predominance of expert views in international climate-change news also demonstrates the global influence of the liberal media system as the three Middle Eastern papers copy-edit most of their climate-change stories from news agencies located in the North-Atlantic region. Conclusion The present study has investigated the relationship between climate-change reporting and the influence of regional media systems. It finds that climate change has become a global news topic covered by all the sampled newspapers, but also that there are important interregional variations at play, as illustrated through the discussion of five aspects of climate-change reporting. The dynamics of these regional aspects often interact and reinforce each other. The tendency of Middle Eastern papers to copy-edit climate-change stories from international news agencies, resulting in an overrepresentation of international news, is directly related to the political economic context of most Arab media. It reflects the limited economic resources of many Middle Eastern media but also the risks of crossing editorial redlines, which could easily occur if climate change was presented in terms of local issues and challenges. In both cases this leads to rather onedimensional and uncritical climate-change reporting focusing on trigger events and developments in international politics with limited relevance for the local population. In contrast the two Western newspapers primarily present climate change as domestic news produced by staff journalists. At a political level, this illustrates how the complexity of climate change now touches on several aspects of social life, becoming implicit in many policy areas and social discourses. At a commercial level, climate change is deemed more relevant for subscribers and readers if domesticated or linked to the life-world of ordinary citizens. Consequently climate-change reporting is more diverse, locally produced, and nationally anchored. Regional variations, however, do not follow a simple Western/non-Western pattern. The commercial and political tradition of the liberal media market results in a less politicized and neutral climate-change reporting compared to the democratic-corporatist media system in which partisan views are more accepted and pronounced. This explains the inclination towards expert views and scientific debates in The New York Times and the more politicized op-eds and letters to the editor in Politiken. The preceding not only indicates the importance of advancing research on regional media systems in order to conceptualize theoretical and communicative implications in the field of international communication but also has a particular bearing on climate-change reporting, as climate change represents a truly global risk. Without some measure of equal access to relevant climate-change information at a

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trans-regional level, it will be difficult to sustain global awareness and public interest in addressing the challenges of a changing climate. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers as well as the editor of this journal for their helpful suggestions and comments on an earlier draft. References
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