The Two Cultures Observatory Research Group of the Universitat de València, run by Martí Domínguez, has published a scientific study that confirms the loss of interest in climate change on the part of the three largest daily Spanish newspapers since the entry into office of PP’s government. This contrasts the active campaign that took place in 2007 from the most conservative media. Cut in this kind of information in 2014 is particularly marked in ‘El Mundo’ and ‘ABC’ with respect to ‘El País’.
Research concludes that there has been a decline in interest about climate change in these newspapers in 2014 in regard to 2007, going from 285 opinion articles published in 2007 to 91 published seven years later. This situation is particularly marked in El Mundo and ABC, with a total of 61 and 90 articles published in 2007 in contrast with a total of 6 and 9 in 2014.
Scientific research has analysed 376 works of journalism including leading articles, column, opinion article and cartoons. The years chosen, 2007 and 2014, correspond to the publication of the forth and fith reports carried out by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international organization established in 1988 and recognised by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
“Journalism’s opinion during 2007 showed a clear polarization between articles sided with the scientific consensus, and denialist or sceptical pieces about climate change, being the latter the one with the greatest presence in ‘ABC’ and ‘El Mundo’. This polarization has been overcome by a near silence about the topic in ABC and El Mundo opinion genres, and an important decrease in El Pais, as if it were an exhausted topic”, points out Martí Domínguez, Professor ar the Department of Language Theory and Communication Sciences and main author of the scientific article.
In 2007 arguments against the existence of climate change dealt with three main ideas: lack of scientific consensus, political interests and attacks on politicians, such as José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, former Prime Minister of Spain. In addition to questioning the human factor as the main cause of global warming. In the meantime, in 2014, political criticism practically disappeared coinciding with a conservative party in the government, and columnists that still keep arguing against climate change focused on Barack Obama government.
The article has been published online on the magazine ‘Public Understanding of Science’ without financial support for research or publication. Anna Mateu and Íngrid Lafita, two researchers of The Two Cultures Observatory Research have participated in the study. Object of study focused on opinion genres taken from these periodical publications, a source specially interesting to get to know the media treatment of climate change since it functions as an indication of the topics each medium pays more attention to.
About the importance of this study, Martí Domínguez, who is also director of Mètode Science Studies Journal of the Universitat de València, adds; “Some studies have focused on analysing the communication of climate change in Spanish media, but there is a lack of research on the use of denialist arguments in Spanish press”.
Methodology
The published research has analysed a digital archive consisting of print and online press, known as ‘My News’. In order to achieve their goal, they looked for the keywords climate change and global warming, both in the headline or the body of the text. Cartoons were looked for in journals and archives by hand. There were 1.643 articles found, of which 376 were finally included in the corpus. Then, Martí Domínguez, Anna Mateu and Íngrid Lafita analysed the content of each of the references and classified them into three groups: newspaper, publication date and genre. Finally, it was examined if each of them supported the scientific consensus about climate change or if, on the contrary, they took an sceptical attitude.
For the denialist or opposing arguments to the existence of climate change, authors’ statements were classified in four groups according to the classification provided by skepticalscience.com: It’s not happening, It’s not us, It’s not bad and It’s too hard.
Evolution of Denialism in Spain
The journal which has dedicated more space to climate change opinion in 2007 and 2014 is El Pais, followed by ABC and El Mundo. It was in October 2007 when the biggest amount of articles were published, concurring with the Nobel Peace Prize to the Vice President of the United States Al Gore. 73% of total articles (276) reflect a consensus on the existence and consequences of climate change. On the contrary, 96 samples adopt a denialist, sceptical or relativistic position.
Regarding publishers, El País is the journal which has written most of them in 2007 (24), compared to 13 in 2014. In addition to being the only one which openly supports the consensus position on the existence of climate change. In opposition, El Mundo published eight editorials on the topic in 2007, two of them reflecting denialist or sceptical positions. In the meantime, there is a change in attitude in 2014, apparently giving up on denialist positions, as well as a sharp reduction in the coverage of climate change.
ABC published five denialist or sceptical editorials out of 10 total climate change articles in 2007. While in 2014, only one -on the consensus side- was published. Besides, opinion articles’ aggressiveness has decreased in 2014 with respect to 2007 in this journal.
As for the analysis of cartoons published on climate change, El País published 43 in the year 2014, while El Mundo and ABC published none. In 2007, it was 54, 5 and 11 respectively.
Denialist article’s content
Research carried out by Martí Domínguez, Anna Mateu and Íngrid Lafita describes in detail the arguments given by denialist columnists. One of the most frequent is the comparison between climate change and a religion, speaking of scientists’ dogmatism, or climate religion, among others. In this sense, Manuel Hidalgo, Antonio Burgos, Carmen Rigalt, Raúl del Pozo o Federico Jiménez Losantos use concepts or expressions such as ecological fundamentalism, climate change’s prophets, or the new religion of climate change, among others.
In other cases, defenders of the existence of climate change are considered alarmist, to encourage eco-hystery; and are thought to be leftist, naming them with the pejorative noun rojerío (people of left-wing ideology), explained Universitat de València research team. Defending climate change according to this line of thought also “goes against progress, being bigotry or a romantic medioambientalism, a cause of leftist and demagogic hippies”.
These columnists focused specially on public figures such as Al Gore when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007; and particularly on former Prime Minister of Spain, José Luis Zapatero, attacking him harshly, as detailed in the article by The Two Cultures Observatory research group. Thus, he is referred as Z Presidente (President Z) or Hombre Z (Z Man), in reference to the term ZP (Zapatero).
“It is very significant that conservative columnists’ attacks turn against Barack Obama in 2014” while PP took on Spanish government and Mariano Rajoy was Prime Minister. According to the published study, this situation occurs because these columnists needed a new target, and they found it on the American democratic president.
American and Spanish conservative
These arguments have led to a comparison between the model of conservative press in Spain and the US. These journals and FAES (Foundation for Analysis and Social Studies), an organization founded by José María Aznar following the characteristics of the American conservative style -sharing similarities with the form used by Bush administration, identify themselves with the arguments of Spanish denialist journalists. Media representation of climate change in the United Kingdom also suffered a change between 2000 and 2006, in a similar way to the case of Spain between 2007 and 2014, with a gradual shift towards the loss of interest.
Impact
Public Understanding of Science is a journal with impact, being a benchmark in science communication research. It is in the top quartile of Communication scientific journal (11/76), and of History and Philosophy of Science (2/44), according to Journal Citation Report.
Article:
Martí Domínguez, Íngrid Lafita and Anna Mateu. Taking climate change seriously: An analysis of op-ed articles in Spanish press. Public Understanding of Science, April 25, 2016 (online)
