Mass-media coverage, its influence on public awareness of climate-change issues, and implications for Japan's national campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Abstract

global environmental change 19 (2009) 203–212 contents lists available at sciencedirect global environmental change j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / g l o e n v c h a mass-media coverage, its influence on public awareness of climate-change issues, and implications for japan’s national campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions yuki sampei *, midori aoyagi-usui 1 social and environmental systems division, national institute for environmental studies, 16-2 onogawa, tsukuba, ibaraki 305-8506, japan a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t article history: received 29 january 2008 received in revised form 23 october 2008 accepted 23 october 2008 keywords: climate change cross-correlation analysis global warming newspaper coverage public opinion we analyse japanese newspaper coverage of global warming from january 1998 to july 2007 and how public opinion during parts of that period were influenced by newspaper coverage. we show that a dramatic increase in newspaper coverage of global warming from january 2007 correlated with an increase in public concern for the issue. before january 2007, we find that coverage of global warming had an immediate but short-term influence on public concern. with such transitory high levels of media coverage we suggest that for more effective communication of climate change, strategies aimed at maintaining mass-media coverage of global warming are required. (cid:2) 2008 elsevier ltd. all rights reserved. 1. …

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