Media Coverage of Climate Change & Global Warming

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Because decisions can be made by governmental agencies concerning actions that reduce human impact on global warming, individuals have a responsibility to seek out factual information to aid them in voting decisions. This is a challenging endeavor; because much of today’s media coverage concerning human effect on global warming and climate change is vague, uses rhetorical devices, and offers fallacious reasoning, which influence society towards making decisions regardless of factual information. Because of this, it is important for citizens to think critically when evaluating media coverage pertaining to human impact on climate change and global warming. Human impact of global warming and climate change (now simply referred to as GWCC) has become a political issue because not all individuals and business are willing to voluntarily take the actions necessary that could help slow the rate of GWCC trends. According to Milfont (2012), these necessary actions “would require stringent policy interventions, which in democratic societies, would only be possible by widespread public support for at least the broad and long-term goals of such interventions” (p.1003). Media greatly influences this public support. To illustrate, COIN (2014) reveals that “right-leaning media are far more likely to carry skeptical opinion” (para.1), on the other hand, “skeptical opinions are rarely to be found” in left-leaning media, and sometimes to the point of exaggeration (para.1). Furthermore, survey results to measure public opinion can be misleading simply due to the wording of survey questions. A study conducted by Schuldt, Konrath, and Schwarz (2011) concludes that “partisan divide on the [GWCC] issue dropped from 42.9 percentage points under a... ... middle of paper ... .... (2014). Interests, ideology and climate. The opinion pages NYTimes. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/opinion/krugman-interests-ideology-and-climate.html Milfont, T. L. (2012). The Interplay Between Knowledge, Perceived Efficacy, and Concern About Global Warming and Climate Change: A One-Year Longitudinal Study. Risk Analysis: An International Journal, 32(6), 1003-1020. doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2012.01800.x Riebeek, H., (2010). Global warming. Feature articles. NASA Earth observatory. Retrieved from http://Earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/ Schuldt, J. P., Konrath, S. H., & Schwarz, N. (2011). “Global warming” or “climate change”?. Public Opinion Quarterly, 75(1), 115-124. Stossel, J. (2014). Let’s chill out about global warming. Retrieved from Retrieved from http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/01/22/let-chill-out-about-global-warming/

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