ABSTRACT
Introduction Research on the media and the environment/environmental issues since the 1970s has overwhelmingly focused on the news media and their reporting on environmental controversies and problems. Most of this research on news in turn has tended to focus on news coverage of specific environmental issues, problems or disasters over a limited period of time, and in this respect has provided valuable evidence on the processes involved in the short-term public construction and representation of particular issues or problems. What these studies have been less adept at accounting for or explaining are the longer-term ups and downs or cyclical nature of news media attention to the environment and environmental issues. This chapter thus examines research that has studied the longer term trends in news media coverage of the environment generally or of particular environmental issues. The chapter reviews the evidence that these studies have provided on the factors and processes that drive and influence news media attention to the environment, and it explores how longitudinal studies of news coverage of environmental issues can contribute to our understanding not only of the politics and careers of environmental issues, but also of the privileged roles of media and communication processes in this context.
