“Climate Change is Not Real”: Politics and media framing of the climate crisis

Abstract

In this study I compare conservative news sites to liberal news sites and analyze how they portray the climate crisis in their news articles. I ask the research question, how do different political leaning news articles influence their audiences perception on climate change? I argue that the way conservative news sites frame their articles related to climate change causes their readers to have a skewed perception on the severity and realness of the issue, while liberal news articles on climate change are scientifically factual. I collected my data by analyzing the coverage of the climate crisis in both conservative news sites (Fox news & New York Post) and liberal news sites (CNN and Newsweek). My findings support my argument and show that conservative news articles frame information on climate change in an unclear way and rarely publish articles discussing climate change compared to liberal news sites. These biases and misleading information found in conservative news sources cause their audience to have an unclear image on the climate crisis. Uncovering these biases in news sources is important for there to be productive group action to save the planet.