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DOI: 10.1177/0963662515583621
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P U S
Mapping the minds of the mediators:
The cognitive frames of climate
journalists from five countries
Sven Engesser
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Michael Brüggemann
University of Hamburg, Germany
Abstract
This article is based on the premise that journalists play an important role as mediators of scientific
information and their interpretations of climate change influence media debates and public opinion. The
study maps the minds of climate journalists from five different countries (Germany, India, Switzerland,
the United Kingdom, and the United States) and different types of leading media outlets. It identifies five
cognitive frames that vary between attributing the responsibility for climate change to lobbying and national
interests, blaming consumerist culture and the capitalist system, and expressing technological optimism.
The study provides evidence for the emergence of a sustainability frame, indicates a “blame game” between
industrialized countries and emerging economies, and shows the demand for a global ecological discourse.
Finally, it explores how individual factors such as specialization, professional aims, and political alignment
correlate with the cognitive frames of journalists.
Keywords
climate change, cognitive frames, cross-national comparison, framing, journalism
This article is based on the premise that the way climate change is represented in the mass media
has important consequences for the development of public opinion (Corbett and Durfee, 2004;
Hart, 2011). Sometimes, these media representations even have been criticized for resulting in
“illusory, misleading and counterproductive debates” (Boykoff and Smith, 2010). Therefore, it
appears plausible to explore where the media representations of climate change originate from and
investigate those who produce them: the climate journalists.
Corresponding author:
Sven Engesser, University of Zurich, Andreasstrasse 15, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland.
Email: s.engesser@ipmz.uzh.ch
583621PUS0010.1177/0963662515583621Public Understanding of ScienceEngesser and Brüggemann
research-article2015
Theoretical/research paper
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2 Public Understanding of Science
Why is this study of journalists worthwhile? Hall et al. (2009) conceive news as “end-product”
of “systematic sorting and selecting of events and topics according to a socially constructed set of
categories” (p. 648). In this process, they distinguish primary and secondary definers of social
issues, with the former being political, economic, or scientific “spokesmen” and the latter being the
mass media or the journalists. Although the influence of the journalists may be “secondary,” it
should not be underestimated. Jovchelovitch (1996) emphasizes that social representations “live
and die through the media” (p. 125) and Schudson (1995) stresses that “journalists add something
to every story they run” (p. 19).
We focus on climate journalists in particular because they play an important role in the process
of anchoring (i.e. embedding new phenomena into existing world views) and objectifying (i.e.
illustrating abstract ideas by concrete examples) the social representations of climate change
(Höijer, 2011; Moscovici, 1984).
Why is it important to explore the cognitions of individuals? Moscovici (1961) emphasizes the
contribution of individuals to the formation of social representations (Höijer, 2011: 2). Gaskell
(2001) puts the complex relation between the social and the individual in a nutshell: “While the
social shapes the contents of individual minds, so is the social a product of communication and
interaction between individual minds” (p. 232).
Moscovici (1961) also stresses the role of the mind by regarding social representations as “cog-
nitive polyphasia” which are composed of different “thought fragments and contradictory ideas”
(Höijer, 2011: 5). Marková (2003) even describes social representations as “thoughts in move-
ment” (p. 121).
The mindsets of climate journalists in particular are relevant for a number of additional rea-
sons: journalists are mediators of scientific information but they perform this role in different
ways (Fahy and Nisbet, 2011) and thereby contribute to the social construction of public knowl-
edge and ignorance (Stocking and Holstein, 2009). There is empirical evidence that the journal-
ists’ scientific knowledge (Wilson, 2000), professional norms (Boykoff and Boykoff, 2004),
ideological standpoints (Carvalho, 2007), political alignment (Elsasser and Dunlap, 2013), and
expertise (Brüggemann and Engesser, 2014) influence their coverage of climate change. Other
factors on the country level (Grundmann and Scott, 2014) or the organizational level (McCluskey,
2008) exert their influences on media content indirectly through the journalists by shaping their
interpretive frameworks.
It is also important to note that how journalists think about climate change is only one factor that
influences media representations: other relevant pieces of the puzzle are, for instance, the respec-
tive news organizations’ editorial policies, journalistic routines, actors external to the news organi-
zation, and cultural contexts (Shoemaker and Reese, 1996).
To pursue our research interest, we draw on the concept of framing because of four main rea-
sons: first, framing connects the fields of psychology, sociology, science communication, and jour-
nalism studies. Second, framing is considered a “bridging concept between cognition and culture”
(Gamson et al., 1992: 384), as well as a link between the individual and collective level of society
(Entman et al., 2009: 177). Third, framing is well-suited to analyze the representations of social
problems (Entman, 1993: 52), and climate change is widely considered one of the most important
problems of our time. Fourth, the framing approach provides fairly advanced methodological
instruments for the operationalization and measurement of the patterns of interpretation we are
interested in.
In a general sense, we conceive a frame as “central organizing idea or story line that provides
meaning to an unfolding strip of events” (Gamson and Modigliani, 1987: 143) and, specifically, we
understand a journalist frame as “knowledge structure” that is “employed by a journalist through-
out story construction” (Dunwoody, 1992: 78).
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Engesser and Brüggemann 3
As operationalization, we drew on Entman (1993: 52) who disaggregated frames into four basic
elements: problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and treatment recommenda-
tion. This approach has become the point of reference for many empirical analyses (e.g. Kohring
and Matthes, 2002; Matthes and Kohring, 2008). It is also supported by Scheufele and Scheufele
(2010) who argue: “If journalists think about problems, ask for causes, or recommend treatments
(cognitive level), they also apply these ways of thinking about an issue to their articles (textual
level)” (p. 120).
As climate change is a global problem and we aim at identifying cross-national patterns of
interpretation, our study is also cross-national in design. It addressed climate journalists from five
countries (Germany, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and different
types of leading news outlets. We followed Scheufele and Scheufele’s (2010: 120) recommenda-
tion and explored the journalist’s cognitions by means of a standardized survey. The aim of this
study is to explore the cognitive frames of climate journalists and to identify factors that help
explaining these frames. In this way, we shed light on the “black box” of the journalists’ minds and
reveal one of the presumably most important influences on the media coverage and public under-
standing of climate change.
1. Conceptualizing and contextualizing journalist frames
Most scholars agree that frames are patterns of interpretation. One point of departure is regarding
frames as cognitive structures (Goffman, 1974). These cognitive frames have been conceived as
sets of schemata that help human beings to process information (Scheufele and Scheufele, 2010).
Our study, for the sake of simplicity, will refer to the cognitive frames of journalists as journalist
frames.
The second point of departure is considering frames as patterns of interpretation embedded in
public discourse or the mass media. Thus, “frames in thought” can be distinguished from “frames
in communication” (Chong and Druckman, 2007). If the latter appear in media content produced
by professional journalists, they are commonly referred to as news frames (e.g. D’Angelo and
Kuypers, 2010).
Both types of frames are highly interconnected as Entman et al. (2009: 177) showed in their
integrative model of the framing process. The authors assume that the cognitive frames of the com-
municators influence the news frames. These news frames, in turn, affect the cognitive frames of
the audience. Finally, there are also feedback loops from audience frames to journalist and actor
frames (Entman et al., 2009).
The ground for studies on journalist frames was prepared by Gans (1979), Tuchman (1978), and
Gitlin (1980) who argued that journalistic practices and routines embody cognitive frames that
allow journalists to process information more quickly and effectively.
Dunwoody (1992) explored the relation between journalist frames and news frames. She reck-
oned that the absence of a journalist frame on scientific risk is one reason for the deficient reporting
of risks. Alternative frames, such as the accident frame, are cognitively more easily available to
journalists and thus more frequent in news coverage.
Scheufele (2006) investigated newsroom frames, which he conceived as the shared cognitive
frames of the journalists in a given newsroom on a given topic, by comparing reporting and com-
mentary within the same media outlets. He found high levels of overlap between these two types
of frames.
Brüggemann (2014) conceptualized the journalists’ contribution to news frames as “journalistic
framing practices” which are located on a continuum between “frame sending” and “frame set-
ting.” Journalists may primarily relay the frames advocated by actors or let their own cognitive
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4 Public Understanding of Science
frames dominate the coverage, depending on their professional context and the resonance of the
journalist’s frames with the broader cultural “frame repository.”
Both journalist frames (as cognitive patterns) and news frames (as identified in media content)
are products of society and culture, but they are not identical. Journalist frames may be based on
social and cultural frames, but they are also modified by the individual’s attitudes and background.
News frames, in contrast, are the product of professional collaboration and represent a mixture of
different social and cultural frames, actor frames, editorial frames, and journalist frames (Scheufele,
2006). Even though journalist frames and news frames overlap, the former can be used as a proxy
for the individual level and the latter as proxy for the collective level of social representations.
Accordingly, journalist frames may be an essential ingredient of the framing process but, in com-
parison to news frames, they have been largely neglected by empirical research. Therefore, this
study is devoted to their analysis.
2. News frames of climate change
In the following section, we will provide a brief overview over the current state of research on the
news frames of climate change. The presented news frames will serve as a foil and contrast to the
journalist frames identified by our own empirical study.
In terms of news content, it is possible to distinguish issue-specific and generic frames. While
the former are tailored to a particular event or issue (e.g. climate change), the latter are broader
patterns of interpretation that can be applied to a multitude of issues (De Vreese, 2002). Examples
of generic frames are conflict, human-interest, responsibility, morality, and economic conse-
quences frames (Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000).
Dirikx and Gelders (2010) showed that some of these generic frames appeared in public debates
on climate change—with the exception of the morality frame and only rare occurrences of the
human-interest frame. However, by drawing on a pre-established list of generic frames, one cannot
guarantee to have identified all relevant frames of a specific issue. This becomes even more evident
when considering that Semetko and Valkenburg’s (2000) list of frames mainly derived from studies
of political communication. Therefore, we will briefly present some of the frames more specific to
the issue of climate change (for a general overview, see Dahinden, 2002; Nisbet, 2010).
First, the risk/disaster frame focuses on the dangers associated with technology and science.
This frame is sometimes also entitled “Pandora’s Box,” “Frankenstein’s Monster,” and “Runaway
science” (Durant et al., 1998; Gamson and Modigliani, 1989). It very prominently appears in cli-
mate change coverage (Painter, 2013). Second, there is the uncertainty frame portraying science as
producing contradictory research results, weak explanations, or dubious forecasts. This frame is
also highly relevant in climate change debates (Antilla, 2005; Painter, 2013; Schlichting, 2013;
Shehata and Hopmann, 2012). Third, the progress frame depicts advances in technology and sci-
ence as beneficial for mankind. This frame is closely related to the opportunity frame (McCright
and Dunlap, 2000; Painter, 2013; Zehr, 2009).
These frames may be useful to understand the public debates on climate change but not
sufficient. The economic consequences frame, for instance, may be used both by “warners” to
emphasize the costs of anthropogenic climate change and by “deniers” to stress the costs of
emission reductions. Besides, the skeptics and their counter-frames are much less prominent
than the proponents of the “anthropogenic climate change frame” (Shehata and Hopmann, 2012:
179). Today, this frame is difficult to question and can be considered the dominant frame of
climate change (Höijer, 2011). Therefore, former “deniers” (p. 5) are likely to turn to other
frames in order to oppose state regulations which make it necessary to identify the current frames
on climate change inductively.
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Engesser and Brüggemann 5
Many studies refer to Entman (1993) in order to explain their approach to framing, but they
rarely follow his idea to conceptualize frames as combinations of the frame elements problem defi-
nition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and treatment recommendation.
Trumbo (1996), for instance, regards problems, causes, judgments, and remedies as separate
frames. While this approach may be fruitful to show how the debate developed over time from
discussing causes to focusing on remedies, this approach is not able to grasp the connections
between problems and solutions.
Schlichting’s (2013) study comes closer to implementing Entman’s idea. She shows how indus-
try actors connect problem definitions to a policy agenda and how these configurations of frame
elements change over time. While the industry used to emphasize scientific uncertainty, it, at pre-
sent, no longer questions the existence of anthropogenic climate change. Instead, it presents itself
as forerunner in fighting climate change through technological innovation thus downplaying the
need for government regulation.
3. Method
To map the minds of the mediators, we conducted a standardized survey among 64 climate journal-
ists from five countries (Germany, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States)
and different types of leading news outlets which will be described in the following.
Sample
In order to extend the database and identify cross-national patterns, the study included climate
journalists from Germany, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. All five
countries share high amounts of CO2 emissions, either in terms of total emissions or per capita
(Clark, 2011) and are thus likely to feature vivid debates on climate change. The industrialized
countries differ in terms of climate change skepticism, which is relatively high in the United States,
medium in the United Kingdom, and low in Germany and Switzerland (Grundmann and Scott,
2014).
In contrast to the industrialized countries, we included India as exemplary emerging economy
(for a similar approach, see Painter, 2013). It has been known for its divergent position in global
climate policy negotiations and its active propagation of “climate justice” (Agarwal and Narain,
1991; Audet, 2013). Accordingly, the Indian English-language press and Indian non-government
organization’s (NGO) have argued along developmental, postcolonial, and North–South divides
(Billett, 2010: 13; Schmidt and Schlichting, 2014: 147).
We selected leading professional news outlets from different sectors of the media landscape:
two upmarket newspapers (preferably one conservative and one liberal), one midmarket newspa-
per, one regional newspaper from a metropolitan area, and one predominant online player (see
Table 1). Our selection of news outlets was inspired by previous studies (e.g. Boykoff and Nacu-
Schmidt, 2013). As media outlets, in our digital world, are no longer confined to print distribution,
we included also the online editions.
Operationalization
Journalist frames. In contrast to news frames, journalist frames cannot be precisely measured by
content analysis because media content will always represent a mix of journalist frames and other
influences from within and outside the newsroom (Scheufele, 2006). Therefore, it is more fruitful
to ask the journalists directly. However, even in interviews, as our qualitative pre-test with five
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6 Public Understanding of Science
climate journalists showed, journalists tend to anticipate the constraints of their daily work in their
answers. So, in order to get the most direct access to the journalist frames, we let the survey partici-
pants imagine a hypothetical situation. We asked them: “Imagine you could decide how the media
covered climate change. How important would be the following aspects for you?”
Drawing on Entman’s (1993) definition of frames, we assembled three item sets with problems,
causes, and solutions of climate change (see Tables A1 to A3 in the Appendix at http://pus.sagepub.
com). These sets were derived from the natural scientific literature on climate change (e.g.
Rahmstorf and Schellnhuber, 2007). The survey participants were asked to attribute importance to
each item on a 5-point scale from 1 (=not important at all) to 5 (=very important).
Influencing factors. In order to explain the journalist frames, we included a number of potential
influencing factors on the individual level that are known to shape the coverage of climate change,
such as formal education, expertise on the topic, experience with the topic, professional specializa-
tion, and political alignment.
Additionally, we operationalized the journalists’ belief in anthropogenic climate change by asking
them how they assessed four core statements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) on a 5-point scale from 1 (=scientifically untenable) to 5 (=scientifically well-founded).
These statements declared that (1) global warming exists, (2) emission reductions are necessary,
(3) climate change during the last century has been mainly caused by humans, and (4) it results in
major problems. The four items were combined into the averaged IPCC Affirmation Index, which
reached a satisfactory level of internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = .67).
We also inquired about three professional aims of the climate journalists: (1) increasing knowl-
edge on climate change, (2) raising ecological awareness, and (3) emphasizing the necessity of
ecological reforms in politics and economy. All influencing factors with statistically significant
correlations to the journalist frames are displayed in Table 4.
Table 1. Sampling by countries and news outlets.
News outlet Country Climate
journalists
CH DE IN UK USA
Upmarket
newspaper
NZZ FAZ Hindustan
Times
Daily Telegraph WSJ 11
Tages-Anzeiger SZ Indian Express Guardian NYT 24
Midmarket
newspaper
Blick BILD MidDayaThe Sun USA Today 3
Regional
newspaperb
Berner ZeitungcBerliner
Zeitung
The Hindu Manchester
Evening Newsc
LA Times 10
Online playerdNews.ch Spiegel
Online
Times of IndiaeBBC News Huffington Post 16
Climate
journalists
12 18 13 7 14 64
aNo authors could be identified; most other Indian midmarket newspapers are written in Hindi or other languages and
could not be analyzed.
bThe regional newspaper should come from another metropolitan area than the other papers.
cOnly one author could be identified.
dThe online player should have a certain degree of financial and editorial independence from its parent news outlet.
eTimes of India is mainly a quality newspaper but also a relevant online player.
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Engesser and Brüggemann 7
Data collection
As the target population of climate journalists, we defined all people who published articles on cli-
mate change in professional news outlets on a regular basis. In order to find these journalists, we first
analyzed the websites of the news outlets by using Google site search. We used the search string
“climate change” OR “global warming” OR “greenhouse effect” (and the equivalent in German). The
validity of these strings was tested in previous studies (e.g. Schmidt et al., 2013). We complemented
the Web search by scouring the print versions of the news outlets in LexisNexis and Factiva.
Subsequently, we manually identified all articles focusing on climate change and stating author
names. From the resulting list of names, we excluded all people who published less than two per-
tinent articles during a one-and-a-half year period (1 January 2011–1 August 2012) to eliminate
authors that only coincidentally wrote about climate change. We researched the e-mail addresses
of the remaining authors. We tested the reliability of the whole author search procedure on a sub-
sample consisting of the articles from one news outlet. Two coders achieved a satisfactory agree-
ment of 89%.
The author search generated a survey population of 170 climate journalists, which we invited by
e-mail to participate in our bilingual (English and German) online survey. The survey period lasted
2 weeks (27 September–10 October 2012). We sent two e-mail reminders to the journalists and,
wherever possible, also reminded them by phone. A sample of 64 people completed the question-
naire, which corresponds to a response rate of 38%. This can be considered satisfactory for a cross-
national online survey among journalists.
Data analysis
In order to compose the journalist frames of problems, causes, and solutions, we proceeded in two
steps. First, we reduced the number of dimensions behind the three item sets by means of three
separate principal component analyses (PCAs) for the 10 problems, 13 causes, and 15 solutions.
PCA is an established method of analysis in framing research (e.g. Semetko and Valkenburg,
2000). We extracted three components for problems, five for causes, and five for solutions which
can be regarded as frame elements. Second, we subjected the resulting 13 components to a second-
order PCA in order to identify combinations of problems, causes, and solutions across the three
item sets. The second analysis produced five components which can be considered the journalists’
cognitive frames on climate change. The whole process is illustrated in Figure 1 by using one of
the journalist frames as an example.
Prior to the data analysis, all items were z-standardized. For all the PCAs, the Kaiser-Meyer-
Olkin (KMO) measures of sampling adequacy produced satisfactory values (MSA = .66–.82). We
applied the Kaiser criterion and extracted all components with eigenvalues λ ⩾ 1. The solutions
displayed relatively clear elbows on the scree plots and explained between two-thirds and three-
fourths (66%–76%) of total variance. In order to achieve highly interpretable simple structures, we
conducted Varimax rotations. Another reason for choosing orthogonal instead of oblique rotation
was the fact that the second-order PCA aimed at identifying combinations across the item sets.
This was highly facilitated by orthogonally rotated first-order components because they are per se
uncorrelated within the item sets.
4. Findings and discussion
The prototypical climate journalist in our sample is male, 43 years old, has a master’s degree, is
employed full-time, and regards himself as a science or environment journalist. The gender and age
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8 Public Understanding of Science
distributions of our sample proved to be very similar to U.S. environmental journalists (Sachsman
et al., 2010). With regard to these demographics, our sample seems to be representative. For a
more in-depth analysis of the sample and a description of the different types of journalists
involved, see (Brüggemann and Engesser, 2014). In the following, we will focus on the recon-
struction of the journalist frames on climate change and on exploring the factors that influence
journalist frames.
Problems, causes, and solutions worth of journalistic coverage
According to the journalists in the sample, the most important problem related to climate change is
the spread of poverty, hunger, and diseases, followed by extreme weather events such as rain,
droughts, and flooding. They attribute the least importance to positive consequences of climate
change (see Table A1 in the Appendix). Among the causes, the participants rated the lack of glob-
ally binding agreements on the reduction of CO2 emissions as most relevant and a presumed failure
of the IPCC and other organizations as least relevant (see Table A2 in the Appendix). In terms of
Figure 1. Two-step composition of journalist frames.
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Engesser and Brüggemann 9
solutions, renewable energies scored highest and the expansion of nuclear power by far lowest (see
Table A3 in the Appendix).
We also asked the climate journalists how important they considered the three areas of prob-
lems, causes, and solutions as a whole. While solutions (M = 4.8, standard deviation (SD) = 0.5)
and problems (M = 4.7, SD = 0.6) reached almost equally high values, causes (M = 4.4, SD = 0.8)
scored significantly lower (paired T-tests with p < .01). So the respondents would prefer to focus
on the second part of the causal chain by discussing the harmful consequences of climate change
and ways to deal with them.
Frame elements: Components of problems, causes, and solutions
Before identifying frames, the relatively large lists of problems, causes, and solutions had to be
reduced to a manageable number of principal components which can be regarded as frame
elements.
The list of problems produced three components: ecological consequences of climate change
(e.g. melting ice and rising sea levels), socio-economic consequences (e.g. poverty, hunger, and
diseases), and positive consequences (see Table A1 in the Appendix). It should be mentioned that
the third component appears a bit underdeveloped because it comes up with only one item loading
and its initial eigenvalue is relatively small.
In terms of causes, five components emerged (see Table A2 in the Appendix): the most impor-
tant one is entitled lobbying and national interests and it attributes the responsibility for climate
change to lobbyists from CO2-intensive industries, failed national energy and transport policies,
and national interests. Capitalism and consumption identifies capitalist logic and consumerist life
style as major causes of climate change while another component points to technological and
bureaucratic delays. There is also a component that addresses communicative and political deficits
by criticizing scientists and journalists for not being able to communicate adequately and politi-
cians for their lack of commitment to the cause. The final component blames the emerging econo-
mies for being a major impediment to the solution of the world’s climate problems. It is also rather
weak in terms of factor loadings and eigenvalue.
The solutions could be reduced to five components as well (see Table A3 in the Appendix): the
first component emphasizes technological solutions for the avoidance and disposal of CO2 and
supports nuclear power as CO2-neutral energy source. A second solution path demands voluntary
restraints and economic reforms of consumers and the capitalist system. Another treatment is
based on unilateral (if necessary) emission reductions of the industrialized countries. This is con-
trasted by the component suggesting that binding agreements should be reached, preferably on a
global level. Finally, there is a component which we entitled non-governmental communication
recommending intensified communication about climate change by scientists, journalists, and civil
society.
Journalist frames: Combinations of frame elements
The frame elements can be combined into five journalist frames: (1) industrialized countries’ eco-
nomic policies, (2) sustainability, (3) technological optimism, (4) emerging economies’ responsi-
bility, and (5) global ecological discourse (see Table 2).
Industrialized countries’ economic policies. From the perspective of the first frame, climate change
causes problematic consequences for society. The responsibility for solving the problem lies with
the industrialized countries, their organized corporate interests, and their national policy failure.
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10 Public Understanding of Science
Lobbyists and national interests block the effective reduction of emissions. Obligations to reduce
emissions should be pursued unilaterally if global agreements cannot be reached.
Sustainability. The second frame displays a causal interpretation that sees both capitalism as a struc-
ture and consumption behavior as a culture at the root of the problem. Consequently, solutions are
sought in economic reforms of the system and in voluntary restraints of consumers and the indus-
try. However, it is noteworthy that this frame does not explicitly say what the problem is.
Technological optimism. Clearly distinct from the second frame’s critical perspective on capitalism
and consumption, this frame relies on both old (i.e. nuclear energy) and new (e.g. climate engineer-
ing) technologies to solve the climate problem. This form of optimism also recommends covering
climate change’s positive consequences more intensively.
Emerging economies’ responsibility. This frame is incomplete because it lacks explicit problems and
solutions. Instead, it is based on the single idea that the emerging economies are a cause for con-
cern. However, this focus implies that the problem is the emerging nations’ population increase and
economic growth. The frame also clearly states that non-governmental communication is no appro-
priate treatment. Therefore, we still count this as a frame despite its fragmented nature.
Table 2. Journalist frames of climate change.
First-order components Second-order components
Industrialized
countries’
economic policies
Sustainability
Technological
optimism
Emerging
economies’
responsibility
Global ecological
discourse
Communalities
Lobbying and national interests (cause) .80 .76
Socio-economic problems (problem) .71 .78
(Unilateral) emission reduction (solution) .67 .54
Capitalism and consumption (cause) .86 .80
Voluntary restraints and economic reforms (solution) .83 .79
Technological solutions (solution) .77 .71
Technological and bureaucratic delays (cause) .77 .68
Positive consequences (problem) .62 .50
Emerging economies (cause) .81 .75
Non-governmental communication (solution) −.70 .61
Communicative and political deficits (cause) .74 .66
Ecological problems (problem) .63 .50
Binding (global) agreements (solution) .52 .57
Initial eigenvalue 2.34 1.82 1.67 1.56 1.26
Eigenvalue after rotation 1.94 1.83 1.76 1.56 1.56
Explained variance (%) 15.0 14.1 13.5 12.0 12.0
Cronbach’s alpha (items with displayed loadings) .65 .76 .58 .38 .37
Total explained variance (%) 66.6
Principal component analysis with Varimax rotation; N=48; factor loadings a<.5 suppressed.
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Engesser and Brüggemann 11
Global ecological discourse. The final frame differs from the other ones by focusing on the ecological
rather than the socio-economic consequences of climate change. According to this frame, the defi-
cient communication about these problems is the cause for the current failure to reduce emissions.
Consequently, this frame promotes a better public understanding of ecology in order to prepare the
ground for global political agreements.
When we relate these journalist frames to the news frames identified in previous empirical stud-
ies, we find that the well-established risk and disaster frame contains a component of socio-eco-
nomic risk and another component of ecological risk that do not necessarily go together, as our
study shows. They are aligned with different problem definitions and treatment recommendations:
while the social costs of climate change are absorbed by the industrialized countries’ economic
policies frame, the risks for the ecosystem are emphasized in the context of the global ecological
discourse frame. There also is a conceptual overlap between the opportunity frame mentioned in
the literature and our technological optimism frame.
Comparing journalist frames across countries
In the first place, the five-country design of the study was supposed to extend the database and
identify cross-national patterns. However, we inductively found some relevant country differences
which may inspire future studies. Due to the limited case numbers per country, these differences
should be interpreted with caution and our interpretation will focus on comparing three groups:
German-speaking countries, Anglo-Saxon countries, and India as emerging economy.
The sustainability frame produces the largest differences (see Table 3). It is strongest in India
and weakest in the United Kingdom and the United States. When comparing India to the German-
speaking and the Anglo-Saxon countries, the differences are statistically significant (F(2,
45) = 3.96, p = .026). These findings become plausible when considering that India is an emerging
economy with a relatively high population increase and economic growth. Climate journalists liv-
ing there are confronted with an exploding level of consumption and its consequences on a daily
basis and may therefore raise questions of sustainability more urgently than their colleagues in the
industrialized countries. On the other hand, the United Kingdom and the United States are widely
known for their consumerist culture and this may be reflected in the journalists’ reluctance to evoke
the sustainability frame which questions the capitalist system.
The situation is completely different when it comes to the emerging economies’ responsibility
frame. This frame is most strongly supported by climate journalists from the Anglo-Saxon countries
and least by journalists from India (F(2, 45) = 2.82, p = .070). These findings may be an indication
for a certain kind of “blame game” in which the industrialized countries assign the responsibility for
climate change to the emerging economies and vice versa. However, shifting the blame to others and
trying to put one’ own house in order at the same time seems to be no contradiction in the Anglo-
Saxon countries where relatively high values for the industrialized countries economic policies and
the emerging economies’ responsibility frames co-occur. On the other hand, Indian journalists appear
to be rather reluctant to blame any group of countries, be them industrialized or emerging.
Also, a global ecological discourse is most emphatically demanded in the Anglo-Saxon coun-
tries, which is a very plausible finding given that in both countries public debate is still haunted by
organized climate change denial, and therefore better communication is one of more urgent needs
in the views of climate journalists.
Individual factors and journalist frames
Beyond the macro level and the national context, there are also factors situated at the individual
level that correlate with journalist frames. Among them, the IPCC Affirmation Index proved the
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12 Public Understanding of Science
most important. The more the climate journalists in our sample agreed to the four core statements
of the IPCC, the more they supported the industrialized countries economic policies and global
ecological discourse frames (see Table 4). This correlation may imply that the more “skeptical” the
journalists were toward climate change, the more they refrained from those two frames that empha-
sized both global agreements, the responsibility of the industrialized world, and the need to reduce
CO2 emissions. Not only those survey participants in line with the IPCC’s arguments but also those
who regarded themselves as more left-wing oriented supported the industrialized countries eco-
nomic policies frame.
We also found that the more specialized the respondents were, the more they preferred to dis-
cuss the emerging economies’ responsibility and refrained from advocating the sustainability
frame. Those who regarded themselves as experts on climate change did not favor the sustainabil-
ity frame either. The more the climate journalists took up the cause of raising ecological awareness,
the more they supported the sustainability frame. This may indicate a gap between two groups of
journalists: the more politicized ones who promote a change of the political and economic system
and the more neutral ones who may have ended up in the science beat and thus may have acquired
more expertise on climate change.
5. Conclusion and outlook
This study revealed five journalist frames of climate change: the first frame emphasized the respon-
sibility of the industrialized world to reduce CO2 emissions in spite of strong lobbying against
climate policy (industrialized countries’ economic policies). The second frame aimed at a reform
of the economic system and a change of consumer behavior (sustainability). The third frame relied
on technology to solve the problem (technological optimism). The fourth frame set the focus on the
emerging economies as important contributors to climate change (emerging economies’ responsi-
bility). Finally, the global ecological discourse frame regarded communication as important way
to raise awareness for the ecological consequences of climate change. These five journalist frames
go beyond or cut across the news frames identified by previous studies.
Our survey has shed light on three main aspects. First, most content analyses of climate cover-
age either have not found or ignored the sustainability frame (for a notable exception, see Schmidt
Table 3. Journalist frames by country.
Country Journalist frame
Industrialized
countries’
economic policies
Sustainability
Technological
optimism
Emerging
economies’
responsibility
Global ecological
discourse
CH (N=9) −0.13 0.19 0.36 −0.16 −0.20
DE (N=14) −0.29 −0.16 −0.23 −0.01 −0.30
GB (N=6) 0.30 −0.43 0.27 0.37 0.42
USA (N=10) 0.59 −0.34 −0.39 0.42 0.37
IN (N=9) −0.27 0.73 0.25 −0.53 −0.02
Means are z-standardized factor values.
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Engesser and Brüggemann 13
Table 4. Individual factors and journalist frames.
Individual factor Journalist frame Descriptives
Industrialized
countries’ economic
policies
Sustainability
Technological
optimism
Emerging
economies’
responsibility
Global ecological
discourse
NMin. Max. M SD
IPCC Affirmation Index (average of four items ranging from
1=scientifically untenable to 5=scientifically well-founded)
.65** .44** 64 2.25 5.00 4.50 0.60
Professional specialization (1=all-rounder to 5=specialist) −.55** .29+58 1 5 3.62 1.37
Professional aim: raise ecological awareness (1=I do not
agree at all to 5=I fully agree)
.50** 61 1 5 3.87 1.13
Political alignment (1=right-wing to 7=left-wing) .35* 51 1 7 2.92 1.20
Expertise on climate change (1=very low to 5=very high) −.30* 62 2 5 3.79 0.77
Experience as climate journalist (in years) −.28+61 1 40 8.43 7.58
Formal education (1=high school to 4=PhD) −.26+62 1 4 2.92 0.75
Values are Pearson’s correlation coefficients, N=40–48; non-significant values are suppressed.
Marked values are (or tend to be) statistically significant: +p<.1; *p<.05; **p<.01.
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14 Public Understanding of Science
and Schlichting, 2014). There are two possible explanations for this: on one hand, the sustainability
frame could, in fact, have been absent in the news. This could have been due to the reason that the
political and economic aspects of climate change are generally considered more newsworthy than
the effects on the ecosystem. On the other hand, the sustainability frame could have been present
in the news but previous studies failed to identify it because their methodological instruments were
not adequate.
Second, our analysis indicates a blame game between industrialized and emerging countries:
journalists in India are reluctant to communicate the contribution of emerging countries to climate
change while their colleagues in the Anglo-Saxon countries refrain from questioning the Western
consumerist culture. Third, some journalists feel that better communication, a global ecological
discourse, belongs onto the agenda of climate change coverage. This notion may have been fos-
tered by the antagonism between “deniers” and “warners” that has been distorting the climate
debate for many years now.
In the terminology of social representation theory, the journalist frames also differentiate or
extend the dominant representation of climate change as put forward by the IPCC. They also
diverge from the “polemic” representation of climate change as a mere conflict between “warning”
and “denial.” Instead, they may be considered “emancipated” representations established in the
minds of the climate journalists (Höijer, 2011: 5).
Furthermore, we presented empirical evidence that a series of individual factors influence the
cognitive frames of journalists, such as specialization, professional aims, and political alignment.
Finally, we provided a methodological contribution on how frames can be reconstructed using a
two-step component analysis.
Three limitations of this study may guide the way for future research: (1) the limited number of
cases, (2) the need to further validate the journalist frames, and (3) the need to empirically analyze
the link between cognitive frames and news frames.
First, the limited N, most of all, results from the fact that the universe of climate journalists was
per se not as large as other target populations in the social sciences. We tried to compensate for this
by expanding the population to five different countries and five news outlets in each country, and
by taking several measures to enhance the response rates in our survey. However, the limited N
prevented us from conducting robust comparisons between the different types of media because
this would have resulted in very small subgroups. Besides, it is probable that some substantial dif-
ferences between the countries did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance due to
limited case numbers.
Journalist frames are latent constructs in the minds of the journalists and difficult to validate. In
our study, we measured them by correlations on the aggregate level. We have not provided robust
evidence that the frame elements actually co-occur on the individual level. Here, more qualitative
approaches should complement our study.
Finally, we did not analyze whether the cognitive frames actually guide the journalists’ writing.
Future studies should combine interviews with journalists and analyses of their articles in order to
further investigate their role as secondary definers of social issues. Yet, our study contributes to a
better understanding of the public climate change debate which moves beyond the dominant rep-
resentation of the IPCC, and the “polemic” representation of “warning” and “denial” toward more
differentiated patterns of interpretation.
Acknowledgements
Both authors have equally contributed to this article.
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Engesser and Brüggemann 15
Funding
This study was supported by postdoctoral funding (Forschungskredit) from the University of Zurich granted
to Michael Brüggemann for the research project “Framing Climate Change.
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Author biographies
Sven Engesser is a senior research and teaching associate at the Institute of Mass Communication and Media
Research (IPMZ) at the University of Zurich. He has received his PhD from LMU Munich. His research
interests include climate communication, journalism, political communication, media systems, and interna-
tional comparison.
Michael Brüggemann (PhD, University of Hamburg) is a Professor of Communication Research, Climate and
Science Communication at the University of Hamburg and Principal Investigator at the interdisciplinary clus-
ter of excellence Climate System Analysis and Prediction (CLISAP). His research explores the transforma-
tions of journalism, political, and science communication from a comparative perspective. For recent publica-
tions, see www.bruegge.net.
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