Actor constellations in climate change coverage of German news media. A time comparison analysis (2000-2019)

Using an actor-centered approach that combines automated and manual procedures of quantitative content analysis, we have analysed actor constellations of the public climate change discourse in Germany during two time periods.

The question, which actors from which social spheres are present in public discourse (in which combinations) is relevant from several perspectives. Following Habermas’ ideal of a civil public sphere, a normative requirement for public discourse is that in principle all social groups can participate (“transparency function” (Neidhardt 1994: 8)). A public discourse that is conducted exclusively or predominantly among actors from the “political center” (Habermas, 1992: 430) would be problematic especially when political decisions have to be made regarding socially relevant questions and problems – such as climate change. An increasing presence of political actors could be an indicator for politicization of the climate change discourse (Chinn et al. 2020), while constellations such as a copresence of scientific and political actors could be interpreted as a form of journalistic balancing.

Following these considerations, we ask 1) how diverse the choice of actor groups in German news media coverage on climate change is, and 2) if actor constellations change over time.
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To answer our research questions, we have retrieved all articles dealing with the topic of climate change that have been published in six German news media titles (two news magazines, two national quality newspapers, and two regional newspapers) during two periods of time (2000-2001: 2,581 articles and 2018-2019: 11,064 articles) via a keyword search in the Nexis database. From this population we randomly selected 700 articles per investigation period and checked for content fit. Using a named-entity recognition procedure, we have automatically identified all individual actors that were mentioned within the thematically relevant articles (about 8,000 individual actors). By manual coding we determined 2,000 actors that were quoted verbatim or indirectly within the articles (1,000 per investigation period). For these actors we have coded (among other variables) to which social subsystem they belong. We distinguished between political actors (divided into executive, legislative or administrative branches and individual political parties), scientists, actors in scientific administration and medicine, interest groups and other “peripheral” (Habermas 1992: 432) actors from civil society.

Our analysis shows that the German media discourse on climate change is dominated by the political executive in both investigation periods (largest group of actors). However, their dominance decreased significantly over time (from about 40% to 20%). In this sense one could speak of a depoliticization of the media discourse on climate change. The proportion of scientists (the second largest group of actors) also decreased over time, while the share of interest groups and other peripheral actors increased.

References:

Chinn, S., Hart, P. S., & Soroka, S. (2020). Politicization and Polarization in Climate Change News Content, 1985-2017. Science Communication, 42(1), 112–129.

Habermas, J. (1992). Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats (2. Aufl.). Suhrkamp.

Neidhardt, F. (1994). Öffentlichkeit, öffentliche Meinung, soziale Bewegungen. In F. Neidhardt (Ed.), Öffentlichkeit, öffentliche Meinung, soziale Bewegungen (S. 7–41). Westdeutscher Verlag.