Content Analysis in the Research Field of Environmental & Climate Change Coverage

In the study of climate and environmental communication, content analysis—in all its many facets—has been used numerous times and in various ways. This chapter provides an overview of common research designs and (combinations of) methods, showing that a variety of approaches have been applied, ranging from qualitative, to quantitative, to automated content analyses. In addition, we identify the main constructs employed in media content analyses—with issue attention, actors and sources, framing, uncertainty, or visual representations being of primary concern. Finally, we outline research desiderata that should be considered in future studie

Simulation of the ABL over the North Water polynya and comparison with aircraft data

Simulations for Greenland with focus on the wind regime are presented using the high-resolution non-hydrostatic model COSMO (Consortium for Small scale modeling). The simulations are performed at 15 km, 5.5 km and 1.3 km resolution for the time period of June 2010. The Nares Strait, including the North Water (NOW) polynya, in northwest Greenland was selected as focus of the simulations, since comprehensive measurements of the structure of the boundary layer are available from an aircraft study. The observations on four different days show a shallow stable boundary layer over the polynya and a pronounced low-level jet associated with the flow channeling in the Nares Strait, particularly at Smith Sound. The reproduction of the vertical patterns of wind and temperature by the simulations is realistic at all resolutions and best results are found for 5.5 km and 1.3 km resolution. A vertical displacement of the patterns and an overestimation of the temperature was found. The measured low-level inversion is not simulated well, but overall the vertical structures of the simulation and observation correlate highly. Thus, the model is well suited for simulations in particular for the situation of flow channeling in a topographically complex area. The analysis of the synoptic situations associated with channeled flow through the Nares Strait shows that the wind speed increases with higher pressure difference between the Lincoln Sea and Baffin Bay. Channeling effects lead to a prevailing flow direction towards Baffin Bay. A strong increase of the wind speed occurs at Smith Sound, where the flow also passes over mountains of the Greenland coast. The wind maximum is found downstream of Smith Sound, and typical low-level jets with wind speeds of around 20 m/s occur at a height of 100 m

Expert voices in South African mass media during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scientists increasingly recognise that media visibility allows them to gain influence in public and policy spheres. However, some scientists shy away from publicity and journalists are purposefully selective when they seek out experts to interview. This may result in a skewed representation of scientists in the mass media. In this study, we explored which South African scientific experts at the academic rank of ‘professor’ were quoted in the local mass media during the initial 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis of 1164 media articles related to COVID-19 showed that, as far as gender is concerned, men dominated as expert sources, with women accounting for only 30% of quoted professors. In terms of research field, most experts were from the broad field of health and medicine, with an underrepresentation of social scientists. We reflect on the implications and consequences of a skewed media representation of scientific expertise, as well as some of the options to remedy these imbalances.Significance:• This is the first study to identify the most visible science experts in the mass media in South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic.• We recommend options for institutions, researchers, media editors and journalists to help diversify expert sources that are featured or quoted in the mass media

Noise Pollution: A Multi-Step Approach to Assessing the Consequences of (Not) Validating Search Terms on Automated Content Analyses

Advances in analytical methodologies and an avalanche of digitized data have opened new avenues for (digital) journalism research—and with it, new challenges. One of these challenges concerns the sampling and evaluation of data using (non-validated) search terms in combination with automated content analyses. This challenge has largely been neglected by research, which is surprising, considering that noise slipping in during the process of data collection can generate great methodological concerns. To address this gap, we first offer a systematic interdisciplinary literature review, revealing that the validation of search terms is far from acknowledged as a required standard procedure, both in and beyond journalism research. Second, we assess the consequences of validating search terms, using a multi-step approach and investigating common research topics from the field of (digital) journalism research. Our findings show that careless application of non-validated search terms has its pitfalls: while scattershot search terms can make sense in initial data exploration, final inferences based on insufficiently validated search terms are at higher risk of being obscured by noise. Consequently, we provide a step-by-step recommendation for developing and validating search terms

Impact of coastal polynyas on dense shelf water formation in the Weddell Sea

Dense shelf water is an essential ingredient to the formation of Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW). It is formed on the continental shelves surrounding Antarctica, when freezing rates are sufficiently high to push ocean salinity to values of 34.65 and higher. Coastal polynyas, where the ice is driven away from the coastline, maintain the highest freezing rates in Antarctic winter. Since theWeddell Sea is considered the most productive source region of AABW, we investigate the dense water formation on the continental shelves of the southwestern Weddell Sea, with a focus on the role of coastal polynyas, using the Finite Element Sea ice-Ocean Model (FESOM), a primitive-equation, hydrostatic ocean model coupled with a dynamic-thermodynamic sea ice model. The horizontal resolution of the global, unstructured mesh is up to 3 km at the southwestern Weddell Sea coastline; in vertical direction the mesh features 37 depth levels (resolution increases toward the surface). The model was initialized on 01/01/1980 with data from the Polar Hydrographic Climatology and forced with NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis data. The 20-year period 1990-2009 is used for analysis. Our results indicate that in an average year, the polynya freezing rates of 9 cm d--1 (corresponding to a salt input of 2.5 kg m--2d--1) cause a seasonal variation in salinity of 0.3 psu under the Ronne polynya and result in the production of 5.10-4 km-3 dense shelf water, which leaves the continental shelf (outlined by the 700 m isobath in this study) at a long-term mean volume flux of 5.2 Sv. Some of this water contributes to the formation of Weddell Sea Deep/BottomWater, but a large fraction is diluted by mixing with ambient water and leaves the Weddell Sea at intermediate levels

Positive but not uncritical: Perceptions of science and technology amongst South African online users

Public perceptions of science and technology (S&T) have been measured globally since the 1970s. While there are initial findings for South Africans’ general and specific perceptions of S&T, we aimed to give an update on those perceptions, and account for the recent rise of digital media and broad public discussions on S&T-related issues (e.g. COVID-19) that might have affected public perceptions of S&T. We conducted an online survey with a sample of South African online users, quoted for sociodemographic characteristics, in November/December 2020 (n=1624). The findings show that, even with the rise of digital media and during the pandemic, a majority of respondents in this sample agreed that S&T holds promise, and they supported governmental funding of science. However, some reservations persisted. Gender and education did not affect these attitudes. It was rather age, location, degree of religiosity, interest, knowledge, use of sources of information, online engagement, and trust in science that were linked with these attitudes. In this sample, agreement to public funding of science correlated with beliefs in the promises associated with S&T as well as with having reservations about S&T. Significance: Our sample of South African online users agreed more to promises associated with S&T than they had reservations about S&T. Attitudes regarding S&T-related promises and reservations varied by age and location, and showed links with the interest in, knowledge about, use of sources of information on, and online engagement with S&T. Having reservations about S&T was nonetheless linked with support for governmental funding of science. The findings also indicate that social media were highly relevant sources of information about science for this sample of South African online users, who generally had high levels of interest in, knowledge about, and trust in science

Science communication as a field of research : identifying trends, challenges and gaps by analysing research papers

CITATION: Guenther, L. & Joubert, M. 2017. Science communication as a field of research : identifying trends, challenges and gaps by analysing research papers. JCOM: Journal of Science Communication, 16(02):1-19, doi:10.22323/2.16020202.The original publication is available at https://jcom.sissa.itResearch in the field of science communication started emerging about 50 years ago and has since then matured as a field of academic enquiry. Early findings about research-active authors and countries reveal that scholarly activity in the field has traditionally been dominated by male authors from English-speaking countries in the West. The current study is a systematic, bibliographic analysis of a full sample of research papers that were published in the three most prominent journals in the field from 1979 to 2016. The findings reveal that early inequities remain prevalent, but also that there are indications that recent increases in research outputs and trends in authorship patterns ― for example the growth in female authorship ― are beginning to correct some of these imbalances. Furthermore, the current study verifies earlier indications that science communication research is becoming increasingly institutionalised and internationalised, as demonstrated by an upward trend in papers reflecting cross-institutional collaboration and the diversity of countries where authors are based.https://jcom.sissa.it/archive/16/02/JCOM_1602_2017_A02Publisher's versio

“Science is Everywhere, but No One Knows It”: Assessing the Cultural Distance to Science of Rural South African Publics

Guenther L, Weingart P, Meyer C. “Science is Everywhere, but No One Knows It”: Assessing the Cultural Distance to Science of Rural South African Publics. Environmental Communication. 2018;12(8):1-16

Between Calls for Action and Narratives of Denial: Climate Change Attention Structures on Twitter

The threats posed to society by climate change often fail to become priorities for voters and policymakers. Nevertheless, it has been shown that merely paying online attention to climate change can increase the perceived severity of the associated risks and thus encourage climate action. Therefore, we focus on public discourse on Twitter to explore the interplay of “triggers” and discursive features that stimulate attention to climate change. We collected data from 2017 to 2021, identified each year’s top five “peak” events of climate attention, and applied manual content (N = 2,500) and automated network analyses (N = ~17,000,000). The results show that while specific events and actors may not trigger and maintain attention permanently, there are discursive features (types of domains, discourses, users, and networks) that continuously shape attention to climate change. Debates are highly politicized and often call for action, criticize administrations, stress negative future scenarios, and controversially debate over the reality of climate change. Attention thereby is amplified within hybrid discourses which merge different triggers, being dominated by political, cultural, and journalistic media accounts: Political events trigger posts that stress the reality of climate change, whereas tweets on protests and cultural events are amplified if they call for action. However, antagonism and backlashes to such posts are essential features of the peaks investigated. Accordingly, attention is often connected to controversial debates regarding focusing events, polarizing figures (such as Greta Thunberg or Donald Trump), and the formation of counter-public networks. Which content is amplified highly depends on the subnetworks that users are situated in

A ‘fuzzy clustering’ approach to conceptual confusion: how to classify natural ecological associations

The concept of the marine ecological community has recently experienced renewed attention, mainly owing to a shift in conservation policies from targeting single and specific objec- tives (e.g. species) towards more integrated approaches. Despite the value of communities as dis- tinct entities, e.g. for conservation purposes, there is still an ongoing debate on the nature of spe- cies associations. They are seen either as communities, cohesive units of non-randomly associated and interacting members, or as assemblages, groups of species that are randomly associated. We investigated such dualism using fuzzy logic applied to a large dataset in the German Bight (south- eastern North Sea). Fuzzy logic provides the flexibility needed to describe complex patterns of natural systems. Assigning objects to more than one class, it enables the depiction of transitions, avoiding the rigid division into communities or assemblages. Therefore we identified areas with either structured or random species associations and mapped boundaries between communities or assemblages in this more natural way. We then described the impact of the chosen sampling design on the community identification. Four communities, their core areas and probability of occurrence were identified in the German Bight: AMPHIURA-FILIFORMIS, BATHYPOREIA-TELLINA, GONIADELLA-SPISULA, and PHORONIS. They were assessed by estimating overlap and compactness and supported by analysis of beta-diversity. Overall, 62% of the study area was characterized by high species turnover and instability. These areas are very relevant for conservation issues, but become undetectable when studies choose sampling designs with little information or at small spatial scales