A131. Rice, R. E., Gustafson, A., &
Hoffman, Z. (2018).
Frequent but accurate: A closer look at uncertainty and opinion
divergence in climate change print news. Environmental
Communication, 12(3),
301-321.
The
prevalence of uncertainty and opinion
divergence frames in climate change news reporting has generated
concerns about
the misrepresentation of scientific consensus. We first develop
reliable,
valid, and more nuanced measures of often-conflated types of
uncertainty and opinion
divergence frames. Then we analyse the co-occurrence combinations of
those
distinct types of opinions, sources, and topics in mainstream climate
change
news stories between 2005 and 2015. Results indicate that while
uncertainty and
opinion divergence frames are indeed frequent, once clearly
distinguished, they
in general accurately reference non-scientist sources (e.g., government
officials) and topics that do not have a scientific consensus (e.g.,
the
severity of climate change effects).
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