Mikkel Fugl Eskjær

Communicating Climate Change in Regional News Media

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate regional variations in the international news coverage of climate change by comparing news reporting in two regional media systems.Design/methodology/approach – A case study of how COP14 and a European union (EU) summit on climate change are covered by three Middle Eastern and one Danish newspaper.Findings – The paper shows significant regional differences in the media coverage of climate change both in terms of quantity (numbers of news articles) and quality (editorial variations, sources, framing, use of graphics). Overall, the study suggests that regional differences in climate change coverage can be traced back to the financial resources, institutional practices and journalistic fields of different regional media systems.Research limitations/implications – The paper is a pilot project designed to test the analytical significance of regional variations in international media coverage of climate change.Originality/value – Whereas global variations in...

The Dynamics of Mediatized Conflicts

This chapter critically analyzes the philosophy, doctrine and practice of Influence Activity in defence. Influence Activity refers to a particular form of strategic communication conducted by the military in order to influence attitudes and behaviours through information-based activities. In doctrinal terms, Influence is defined as ‘..the power or ability to affect someone’s beliefs or action or a person or thing with such ability or power’ (MoD, 2009: 88). This ‘power’ is simultaneously conceived of as generating both ‘affect’ – in which the state of a particular scenario or dynamic is altered- and ‘effect’ in which a particular outcome is accomplished (see Morriss, 2002). Here, I examine the philosophy and practice of Influence and its associated ‘effects’ through an examination of the three embedded logics that frame and govern it: military logic (a Clausewitzian orientation to war); marketing logic (an orientation marketing principles); and media logic. These logics are particularly revealing of an encompassing military orientation to war that is both responding and contributing to the conditions in which war is performed, but also directly impacting upon how it is performed; in other words, war that is mediatized. This is explored here not only in relation to why ‘influence’ has assumed such centrality in the military’s understanding of war and defence, but also how influence is conceived and measured. In this latter regard, I argue that media (forms, ‘audiences’ and ‘effects’) are positioned in relatively idealistic terms as tangible, measurable and controllable, which, when combined with the application of ‘logics’, has a direct bearing on what, when and how media is utilized and understood. More specifically, I argue that this combination of logics and idealism is suggestive of an ‘imagining’ of (media) influence that directly relates to, and is framed by a fetishization of media (communication and effects). It is when this ‘imagining’ ‘feeds back’ into the performance of war and defence practice that we can most vividly locate the processes by which it becomes mediatized. In short, by problematizing the logics and conceptualization of influence, this chapter explores why and how the transformative power of media has become integral to war and the extent to which this is also transformative of the organization and implementation of defence politics and war itself. I start by locating the doctrine of Influence Activities within the overall framework of the strategic communications.

The Regional Dimension: How Regional Media Systems Condition Global Climate-Change Communication

Abstract Global perspectives and national approaches have dominated studies of climate-change communication, reflecting the global nature of climate change as well as the traditional research focus on national media systems. In the absence of a global public sphere, however, transnational issue attention is largely dependent on regional media systems, yet the role this regional dimension plays has been largely overlooked. This article presents a comparative study of climate-change coverage in three geo-cultural regions, The Middle East, Scandinavia, and North America, and explores the link between global climate-change communication and regional media systems. It finds that regional variations in climate-change communication carry important communicative implications concerning perceptions of climate changes relevance and urgency.

Mediatised risk culture: News coverage of risk technologies

In this article, we examine if and how a particular risk culture emerges as mediated and mediatised for a number of diverse technological risks. Modern news reporting is increasingly preoccupied with representing risk events in order to show how technological lifestyles affect our human and natural environments. In this article, we draw on data from project which used a comparative research design to investigate media coverage of four contemporary risks, in order to show how public risk communication contributes to the establishment of a broader mediatised risk culture. The project combined a quantitative content analysis with a qualitative study of a sample (n = 344) of news items across three different Danish media platform. We found that risk reporting varied substantially depending on dominant news themes, cultural resonance and media platform. However, within these variations we also found common elements such as the discursive representations of risk as contested and/or manageable. Based on the aggregate picture of the four risk studied, we argue that the media risk discourse takes a particular form that is different to risk discourse in other social arenas. Media risk discourse, therefore, tends to share certain cultural traits which results in the representation of risks as either (un-)manageable or (un-)controllable according to the level of public or elite disagreement in public debate.

Mediatization as Structural Couplings: Adapting to Media Logic(s)

The integration of media logic in mediatization studies has been fiercely debated. First of all, the applicability of the concept has been contested on the grounds that media logic is advancing a linear conceptualisation of mediatization. In addition, discussions of how social systems adapt to media logic have resulted in rather ambivalent notions of autonomy and functional differentiation. Consequently, mediatization studies have been divided in two opposite views regarding the relevance and applicability of media logic in studying processes of mediatization; one camp generally rejects the notion, while another has accepted the concept cautiously. This paper intends to overcome this division by acknowledging both the pitfalls and potentials of the concept of media logic. For such an endeavor to succeed a major re-interpretation of the concept of media logic is required. The paper suggests that the systems theoretical notion of structural coupling offers such a starting point. It describes how social systems are increasingly becoming structurally tied to the media system while upholding their operational autonomy. Thus mediatization designates a process of structural adaptation to the logic of the media systems, which is always context and systems specific, determined by the self-sustained structures of a given social system. The argument proceeds by discussing both the resemblances and differences between mediatization and media logic as well as looking into some of the critique raised against the use of media logic in mediatization studies. Following this review, the paper proposes an alternative approach to studying media logic based on the systems theoretical notion of structural coupling. The paper then goes on to show how such a model implies a fundamental change in our perspectives on media logic, from a simple conceptualization of media adaptation as a zero-sum game to a more complex notion of structural interaction. It also implies an analytical re-orientation away from questions of power and dominance towards questions of co-evolution. Finally, the paper demonstrates that the notion of mediatization as structural coupling allows for a plurality of media logics, opening up for an understanding of media logic as a more diverse concept, which nevertheless maintains a systematic description of mediatization. In the final section, this mainly theoretical argument will be illustrated by a case study of organizational adaptation to mediatization, which also serves to demonstrate the analytical potential of the isomorphic vocabulary of systems thinking.