| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study was to establish the framing devices used by both the Daily
Nation and People Daily newspaper to communicate Climate Change information and do
a comparative analysis of each newspaper’s treatment of the topic. The target population
for this study consisted of all newspaper articles in the two local dailies ranging from
January, 2012 to June 2012.Systematic random sampling was used to select stories for
analysis from the population, where a total of 127 stories on climate change-related issues
were analyzed. The researcher used content analysis, where, a code sheet was developed
and utilized in data collection. The findings of this study seem to suggest that there are
two most common frames used by both the Daily Nation and People Daily newspapers to
communicate climate change. These two frames were the “effects” and “mitigation”
frames. Comparatively speaking, the leading frame in the Daily Nation newspaper was
the “effects” frame, with 45.6% of the sampled cases using this frame to communicate
climate change information. The second most commonly used frame in the Daily Nation
newspaper was the “mitigation” frame with a volume of 21.6% stories sampled
employing this frame. On the other hand, the leading frame in the People Daily
newspaper was the “mitigation” frame, which posted a volume of 41.4% of the sampled
cases. The “effects frame was second here, with 27.1% of the sampled stories reporting
climate change issues in this manner. It is recommended that the print media editors
should liaise with climate change scientists in order to bridge the gap between available
information on climate change issues and audience’s perceptions of the same. Again,
editorial boards should consider having special supplementary sections in their
newspapers dedicated to increasing level of awareness. Finally, print media firms should
train reporters on science journalism so as to increase interest in this topic and build on
the reporters’ capacity to apply the correct frames that would demystify climate change. | en_US |
