Reading the papers: ideological cultures and media discourses on scientific knowledge

Comunicação apresentada na Conferência “Does discourse matter? Discourse, power and institutions in the sustainability transition”, Hamburg, Germany, 11-13 July 2003.
Climate change is a contested issue at the scientific, political, economic and social levels. The media are a central arena for such a debate. As a marketplace of arguments, the media promote some claims, ideas and voices while suppressing others. The paper will argue that the discursive (re)construction of the sciences of climate change in the media is strongly entangled with ideological standpoints. Understood as a set of ideas and values that legitimate a programme of action vis-à-vis a given social and political order, ideology works as a powerful selection device in deciding what is scientific news, i.e. what the relevant ‘facts’ are. Ideology also shapes the discursive construction of uncertainty and narrativizations of the future. The above-mentioned claims are based on extensive analysis of press coverage of climate change, possibly the most serious environmental threat we are facing. Departing from a database of around 2500 articles published in the Guardian, The Independent and The Times between 1985 and 1997, I have examined those news texts that fall into ‘critical discourse moments’ in the constitution of climate change as a political and public problem. The theo-methodological orientation is mainly inspired by Critical Discourse Analysis. The analytical framework has a textual and a contextual components. At the textual level, emphasis is given to morphological characteristics and structural organization of texts; objects of discourse; actors; language and rhetoric; discursive strategies; and ideological standpoints, while the contextual analysis runs along two axis: comparative-synchronic (simultaneous depictions of the issue in different newspapers) and historical-diachronic (temporal sequences and evolutions). The paper will show that there are profound differences across newspapers and among journalists in the depiction of the sciences of climate change, and how this both results from and (re)produces particular ideological views. The representation of scientific knowledge has important implications for evaluating political programmes and assessing the responsibility of both governments and the public in addressing climate change.