Lately, whenever we talk of climate change, a picture of Greta Thunberg talking to us about the imminent nature of the threat we face. Nevertheless, is the imminent threat facing scenario the only time we look at climate change? Climate change has sadly so become very “obtrusive” in the way people look at it. Spatially, ‘climates’ are usually described for entire countries, continents, hemispheres, or the whole world. Such dimensions lie far beyond most people’s life-worlds and biographical horizons. The climate and its changes are observed and(re)constructed primarily by scientists, whose Secondly, climate change is also an unobtrusive issue because its social effects and the measures to mitigate them are debated, complex, and, at times, difficult to understand. Many of the consequences of climate change, most likely the more severe ones, are not occurring here and now. For instance, the leading anthropogenic causes of climate change –greenhouse gas emissions –remain invisible. As a result, the causes and consequences of climate change and its implications are not directly and easily perceivable. Further, what most people know about them stems from a media communication. The existence of climate change itself, its extent, and urgency are “deeply contested consider- able competition among scientists, industry, policymakers, and NGOs, each of whom is likely to be actively seeking to establish their particular perspectives on the issues” (Anderson, 2009: 166). Using different kinds of strategic communication, these stakeholders often aim for media representation because media are the main forum for public debates and essential sources for information. Stakeholders also try to project themselves in the me- dia to be seen as viable actors in this field and inject their viewpoints into media coverage to influence the societal perceptions of climate change. It is also a cross-sectional topic that includes scientific as well as political, economic, cultural, and other facets. As a result, most journalists writing about climate change are not monothematic experts on this issue. On the one side, because the complex issue of climate change does not cater well to news values, journalists have to find and emphasize its newsworthy aspects to cover it. Therefore, they occasionally tend to play down or omit uncertainties connected to scientific information to comply with the news value of ‘unambiguity.’ Or to exaggerate the expected adverse outcomes of climate change to comply with the ‘negativity ‘news value.' In addition, studies have shown that media attention for climate change, as for many other issues as well, strongly fluctuates over time and that it peaks around specific events, basically it is event driven. With its doomsday approach to Climate Change, the question that needs to be addressed is whether journalists can churn out a new climate-coverage playbook that would surmount the widespread unobtrusiveness of climate change that could make a difference to the masses. The onus lies on collaborative efforts of a responsible media and consumers of such a media to change climate change’s “obtrusive” status to “unobtrusivity”.
results are rather complex and difficult to understand for many people.
10 Jan 2022
Pranjal Nangare
