A Shift Away From Causes To Solutions In The News Framing On Climate Change

The present paper researches the current trends on reporting climate change in the news published by three large news portals in China, namely Xinhua.cn, Sohu.com and Sina.com.cn. According to past researches, the Chinese press presents a discourse of western responsibility and Chinese partisan and wait-and-see attitude. This research tries to expose the most up-to-date situation of climate change coverage in the Chinese language coverage regarding the most important framings:The area focus, the editorial line, the chosen topic. More specifically, it seeks to assess the scope and redundancy of topics related to climate change in these 3 portals. Through a content analysis conducted on a sample of 109 articles collected during the month of March 2010, six variables have been coded and analyzed to give an accurate picture of reporting made about climate change. The peculiar situation of media in China will shortly be addressed as well, and what it means for the communication on climate change in this country, as compared with others. This paper concludes that despite being largely positive, a larger proportion of the critical reporting still concerns the international situation, which might indicate a partisan bias. But more importantly, this paper argues that the discourse in these three large news portals has shifted away from the wait-and-see attitude, focusing now on a domestic political solution. It is potentially the first stage of what could become an environmental modernization conducted by China.