• DOI:10.1080/17524032.2014.995193
• Corpus ID: 143214856

Climate Skepticism in British Newspapers, 2007–2011

@article{Painter2016ClimateSI,
  title={Climate Skepticism in British Newspapers, 2007–2011},
  author={James Painter and Neil T Gavin},
  journal={Environmental Communication},
  year={2016},
  volume={10},
  pages={432 - 452}
}

• James Painter, N. Gavin
• Published 3 July 2016
• Sociology
• Environmental Communication

Climate skepticism in the UK media has not been a major focus of recent research. This paper aims to help fill the gap by looking at the incidence of skeptical voices in UK newspapers across three periods: 2007, 2009/2010, and 2010/2011. After analyzing more than 3200 articles, it finds that skeptical voices increased their presence markedly across all newspapers and all types of articles in the second period, and maintained a significant presence in many in the third. Uncontested skeptical voices were particularly prevalent in opinion pieces and editorials in right-leaning newspapers in the second. It also finds that skeptical voices or opinions were more likely to be included in pieces written by in-house non-specialist columnists than by environment editors or correspondents. The negative implications of the results for public understanding and the quality of public debate are then explored.