Is Strange Weather in the Air? A Study of U.S. National Network News Coverage of Extreme Weather Events

This paper asks whether extreme weather events are becoming more discernible. It uses the Vanderbilt University Television News Archives to determine if annual coverage given to heat waves, droughts, hurricanes and floods has increased on the network news between 1968 and 1996. An index of extreme weather events shows a clear trend toward increased coverage, especially since 1988. However, the different types of extreme events do not receive equal coverage: for example, annual peaks for droughts contain about twice as many stories as the peaks for heat waves. The data further reveal that there is no association between coverage of climate change and the overall coverage of extreme events. While extreme events have attracted more stories in the U.S., there has been no increase in the coverage devoted to extreme events in foreign countries. The possible effects of shifts in TV coverage on the public salience and understanding of climate change are discussed.

[1]  S. Dunwoody,et al.  Mass media coverage of technological and environmental risks: a survey of research in the United States and Germany , 1992 .

[2]  J. Houghton,et al.  Climate change 1995: the science of climate change. , 1996 .

[3]  The benefits and ethics of animal research. , 1997, Scientific American.

[4]  M. Shamos,et al.  The Myth of Scientific Literacy , 1995 .

[5]  A. Bancroft.  Strange Weather: Culture, Science and Technology in the Age of Limits , 2001 .

[6]  Richard A. Berk,et al.  Public perceptions of global warming , 1995 .

[7]  S. Iyengar,et al.  News That Matters: Television and American Opinion , 1987 .

[8]  S. Ungar.  Hot crises and media reassurance : a comparison of emerging diseases and Ebola Zaire , 1998 .

[9]  Debi Iacovelli.  The New Guard , 1995 .

[10]  S. Ungar.  Social scares and global warming: Beyond the Rio convention , 1995 .

[11]  S. Hilgartner,et al.  The Rise and Fall of Social Problems: A Public Arenas Model , 1988, American Journal of Sociology.

[12]  W. C. Adams.  Whose Lives Count?: TV Coverage of Natural Disasters. , 1986 .

[13]  W. Alvarez,et al.  T. Rex and the Crater of Doom , 1997 .

[14]  Eleanor Singer,et al.  Reporting on Risk: How the Mass Media Portray Accidents, Diseases, Disasters and Other Hazards , 1993 .

[15]  J. Gregory,et al.  The Coming Climate , 1997 .

[16]  Douglas Le Comte.  Highlights: Around the World , 1992 .

[17]  S. Ungar.  THE RISE AND (RELATIVE) DECLINE OF GLOBAL WARMING AS A SOCIAL PROBLEM , 1992 .

[18]  N. Nicholls.  Long-term climate monitoring and extreme events , 1995 .

[19]  Barbie Zelizer,et al.  Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory. , 1995 .

[20]  D. Easterling,et al.  Indices of Climate Change for the United States , 1996 .

[21]  D. Shaw,et al.  The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research: Twenty-Five Years in the Marketplace of Ideas , 1993 .

[22]  A. Mazur,et al.  Sounding the Global Alarm: Environmental Issues in the US National News , 1993 .

[23]  Andrew M. Ross,et al.  Technocultures. (Book Reviews: Strange Weather. Culture, Science, and Technology in the Age of Limits.) , 1991 .

[24]  Lee Wilkins,et al.  Risky business: Covering slow‐onset hazards as rapidly developing news , 1990 .

[25]  Doris A. Graber,et al.  Seeing is remembering: How visuals contribute to learning from television news , 1990 .

[26]  M. Rebetez,et al.  Public expectation as an element of human perception of climate change , 1996 .

[27]  Willett Kempton,et al.  Environmental Values in American Culture , 1995 .

[28]  E. Singer,et al.  Reporting on Risk: How the Mass Media Portray Accidents, Diseases, Other Hazards , 1993 .

[29]  H. Bernard.  Global Warming Unchecked: Signs to Watch for , 1993 .