Media coverage of climate change: an international comparison

We present an international comparison of broadsheet newspaper coverage of climate change. We employ two complementary theoretical lenses, multiple streams theory and institutional theory, to explore why climate change has become headline news in some countries but has received comparatively little coverage in others. The study utilises a worldwide sample across 41 different countries for the year 2008, covering 113 leading national broadsheet newspapers. A cross-sectional regression model is used to identify whether and how a range of contextual factors impact coverage of climate change. To a certain extent, a country’s direct exposure to climate change and the measures that have been taken to combat global warming influence the position of climate change on the media agenda. Crucially, however, we identify a number of contextual factors that impact climate change-related media coverage in different national contexts. In particular, we find a significantly positive relationship between regulatory quality and levels of media coverage. At the same time, unemployment trends are significantly negatively related to media attention to climate change. Gross domestic product per capita does not help to explain levels of climate change-related media coverage. In other words, climate change appears to have moved beyond simply being a ‘rich country issue’

Loss-of-Function Mutations in FRRS1L Lead to an Epileptic-Dyskinetic Encephalopathy

Glutamatergic neurotransmission governs excitatory signaling in the mammalian brain, and abnormalities of glutamate signaling have been shown to contribute to both epilepsy and hyperkinetic movement disorders. The etiology of many severe childhood movement disorders and epilepsies remains uncharacterized. We describe a neurological disorder with epilepsy and prominent choreoathetosis caused by biallelic pathogenic variants in FRRS1L, which encodes an AMPA receptor outer-core protein. Loss of FRRS1L function attenuates AMPA-mediated currents, implicating chronic abnormalities of glutamatergic neurotransmission in this monogenic neurological disease of childhood

Creating Local Government Innovation : Lessons Learned From An Institutional Theory Perspective

The public sector is facing an equation that cannot be solved by continuingdoing business as usual. External demands of availability, quality andresilience of services, as well as internal demands of resource efficiency, areputting pressure on the public sector to seek for innovation. In this study, wefocus on local government innovation where high expectations are set on betterutilisation of employees’ creativity and innovative capacity. Based on a qualitativecase study of an innovation programme in a Swedish local governmentorganisation, this study applies institutional theory as a theoretical lens tofurther investigate and analyse the relationship between formal and informalstructures of local government innovation. The institutional structures related tonorms and values, legitimacy and decoupling as well as digital artefacts as institutionalcarriers are discussed. Implications for practice show that formal structures,processes and digital artefacts to support local government innovation areimportant in this work. However, to achieve government innovation, equal attentionshould also be given to informal institutional structures of innovation.For research, this implies that government innovation studies can benefit froman institutional theory perspective to develop a better understanding of how informalstructures affect related processes. We conclude by arguing that theneeded change towards the innovative bureaucracy is a transformative innovationin itself that needs to be acknowledged