Stefan Cihan Aykut

CLIMATE CHANGE CONTROVERSIES IN FRENCH MASS MEDIA 1990–2010

This article offers an analysis of controversies surrounding the coverage of climate change in the French press. The theoretical framework for the analysis combines the sociology of public problems, media sociology, and science and technology studies. We present these controversies as an expression of a struggle over the ownership and framing of climate change as a public problem. Specific social groups are involved in this process of definition, framing, and agenda-setting. The success or failure of these groups in closing debates results in the construction of issues as either consensual matters-of-fact or controversial matters-of-concern. This framework allows us to distinguish between two phases in the career of this public problem, characterised by differences in ownership-configurations and the visibility of controversial points of view. We identify four relevant groups—scientists, politicians, journalists and non-governmental organisations—as well as certain social processes that help to explain changes in the attention that controversies received from the media. We conclude with the hypothesis of a third phase characterised by a relatively high degree of attention on controversies in French media.

After Copenhagen, Revisiting Both the Scientific and Political Framings of the Climate Change Regime

The chapter discusses the political results of the Copenhagen Conference and the evolutions in the international climate arena including geopolitical shifts, new issues on the agenda, and a changing cartography of the main actors. As recent attacks on the climate regime concern both its political governance and the peculiar relationship between science and politics that developed through its main institutions (IPCC and the Conference of the Parties), the first part retraces the construction of the climate arena and the second part analyzes the framing of the problem among climate science, expertise, and politics. Drawing on this historical sketch, we suggest the years 2000 were characterized by a convergence of top-down approaches in climate expertise and policies, structuring action and discourse around quantified reduction targets, temperature and concentration thresholds, and carbon budgets. The bottom-up character of the voluntary reduction commitments in the Copenhagen Accord—confirmed at Cancun and Durban—is a serious setback to this approach. We conclude by discussing several contributions coming from social scientists to the post-Copenhagen debate. These well-known intellectual figures shift the focus from the links between science and politics toward the relationships between science and societies.