The purpose of this study was to explore how the Ugandan newspapers, The New Vision and The Daily Monitor frame climate change to become a familiar concept or topic that can be well understood by the public. The term framing in this context does not refer to the ideology of the frame analysis theory but rather defined in simple terms to put a concept into words that convey meaning. The study also examined how journalists present climate change during an interview that was conducted.The study answered the following research questions: (1.) How is the issue of climate change presented in the Ugandan press? (2.) How are the mechanisms of anchoring and objectification used in news reporting of climate change? (3.) How is domestication achieved in the news about climate change? (4.) How do the environment journalists represent the climate issue to become meaningful to the audience? (5.) What challenges do journalists face in reporting climate change?The thesis conducted the theory of social representations to help me understand how news about climate change is constructed in the press and by the journalists. The theory posits two communication mechanisms anchoring and objectification which were shown in the news texts and in the accounts provided by the environment journalists interviewed. The communication mechanisms in this study used representations to turn the abstract and complicated concept of climate change by either placing it in earlier representations or attaching it (climate change) to a concrete or visible object to become familiar. Domestication as a concept in media studies was employed to analyse how the media present climate change news into a local perspective.The study conducted a qualitative analysis in the Uganda elite English newspapers The New Vision and The Daily Monitor which are also confirmed to have the highest readership and the largest circulation.The study employed a methodological approach known as the lexical choices or style one of the linguistic tools of Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the hidden meaning in texts. The method was used together with the theory of social representations in particular anchoring and objectification mechanisms that turn abstract, unfamiliar ideas and concepts familiar.vThe second qualitative method employed in the study were the in-depth interviews that analyzed how the mechanisms of anchoring and objectification were visible in the reasoning provided by the environment journalists in presenting climate change. In other words, how is climate change presented by the journalists to become a meaningful topic or concept for public perception?The media represented climate change in a way which evoked emotions because it is argued that emotions ‘push’ an individual to react towards a situation. Climate change was represented in emotions of fear, threat, anger, helplessness, blame, worry, defiance, grief, compassion, hope and nostalgia, as well as in distinctions, metaphors and objectification through personification focusing in particular on the people facing the risks of climate change.The results of this study have shown that media depiction of climate change in Uganda was linked to the ordinary people facing the risks of climate change, in comparison to the previous studies carried out in the European media, the perception of climate change was linked to the elite and well known people such as celebrities, key political figures that have been used as spokes persons for understanding climate change.Climate change as a global event was presented into a local perspective through local voices of the ordinary people and domestic sources, nationalisation, national interests, the anchoring in distinctions of ‘Us’ (the developing, non industrialised countries) ‘suffering’ the impacts of climate change against the ‘Them’ (the developed and industrialised nations causing global pollution and hesitant to reduce the green house emissions). Anchoring in distinctions of the ‘Us’ against ‘Them’ the media showed that developed countries are largely responsible for the cause of climate change.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:oru-22963 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Kiingi, Alice |
| Publisher | Örebro universitet, Institutionen för humaniora, utbildnings- och samhällsvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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