A Frame Analysis On The Climate Policy Coverage In Mainstream Media

Climate change is one of the core issues in current global governance.As a responsible great power,China not only plays an active role in multilateral cooperation on climate governance on the international stage,but has also proposed a‘Dual Carbon’ target aimed at achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality at home.This is the solemn promise made by our country to forwardly combat global climate change and take part in global climate governance as well as our country’s focus in quite a long time in the future.Moreover,it is also a national-wide ‘sweeping and profound systematic change’.In addition to the initial establishment of ‘Dual Carbon’ policy system which provide the guidance for all industries,departments and institutions to carry out the ’Dual Carbon’ work,as an important channel for policy communication,the mainstream media is also crucial to the promotion and implementation of these policies: it not only plays a pivotal part in helping the public to correctly understand climate policy,but it also has a positive impact on the development and improvement of climate policy at the same time.Therefore,we selected the largest and most authoritative largest newspaper in China,The People’s Daily,as the object of the study,examining how the ‘Dual Carbon’ policy was presented and constructed in this press in two years from 22 September 2020 to 21 September 2022.To answer the research question,we discussed the ‘Dual Carbon’ related coverage of The People’s Daily from three aspects: coverage characteristics,discourse framework and case study.It was found that in terms of coverage characteristics,the number of ‘Dual Carbon’ coverage in The People’s Daily was stable basically with small fluctuations,and the coverage layouts and perspectives were relatively rich,among which,the top-rated news,ecological sections and economic sections were the majority;the coverage were of various genres which consisted largely of messages,newsletters,special reports and reviews;and finally the coverage forms were characterized by text-based and pictures as complementary,these pictures depicted the natural scenery,the industry and engineering,figures,conferences and forums,visualized data,and etc.Overall,most of the coverage tended to be positive and neutral.Furthermore,in terms of discourse framework,the coverage in The People’s daily on the ‘Dual Carbon’ policy used the responsibility framework,the development and transformation framework,the change-focused framework,the collective action framework and the long-termism framework.By using the method of interpretive packages to analyze these frameworks,we found that they were consistent with the development and reality of climate governance in China,and also matched with the traditional Chinese values,with multi-dimensional and multi-level characteristics.Based on the case study of policy coverage in The People’s daily,it was ultimately believed that the mainstream media coverage on climate policy has some shortcomings,such as the effects of the framework remained to be considered,the lack of long-term reports,the weak supervision of public opinions and the readability remained to be improved.Therefore,we suggested that the mainstream media should adhere to a climate policy coverage framework with Chinese characteristics,paying attention to long-term reporting and bringing into full play of the positive value of negative coverage and eventually improving the readability of climate policy coverage.