ABSTRACT
Community structure theory was used to compare national characteristics and cross-national newspaper coverage of climate change in leading newspapers in 21 countries in articles of 250+ words from 12/12/2015 to 09/27/2020. The resulting 454 total articles were coded for “prominence” and “direction” (“government responsibility,” “society responsibility,” or “balanced/neutral” coverage) and combined into composite “Media Vector” scores for each newspaper (range 0.4777–0.0130: total range 0.4647). All 21 (100% of) Media Vectors registered “government responsibility” for addressing climate change.
Overall, three clusters of privilege (populations “buffered” from health and economic uncertainty) were robustly connected to coverage supporting government responsibility for climate change, primarily privileged healthcare access: midwives per 100,000 (p = 0.000), male life expectancy at birth (p = 0.002), physicians per 100,000 (p = 0.002), and female life expectancy at birth (p = 0.004). Other measures of female school and communication/economic privilege were also significant. Regression analysis found midwives per 100,000 (46.7% of the variance), physicians per 100,000 (4.9%), and gross domestic product per capita (5.2%) collectively accounted for 56.9% of the variance associated with media emphasis on government responsibility for climate change.
