Ahead of the COP21 meeting in Paris next week, David Robbins' Irish Times article considers 'Why the media doesn't care about climate change'.
"A key reason for the media’s relative lack of interest in climate change has to do with the nature of news itself. News likes unambiguous, discrete events, straightforward, one- off happenings rather than long-term social trends. ... The Paris climate change conference at the end of this month will, if previous experience is anything to go by, see a spike in media coverage of climate change. This is because a conference such at COP21 meets some of those news values discussed above. It is a contained event and so the media can make better sense of it. Coverage is likely to focus on the politics of the conference – winner or losers – rather than the substance of the debate or outcomes."
David is a PhD researcher in the DCU School of Communications and works with FuJo on the project Climate Change in Irish Media.
Cover Photograph: WorldBank
