Climate change and the media: A comparative study of China and the United States 2009-2015.

摘要

This thesis argues that media from China and the United States during the years spanning 2009 to 2015 report climate change issues differently from each other in both report content and numbers. The thesis uses database Factiva to search the reports from selected media resources from both countries and collect number of reports in different categories. The findings of the thesis will let readers learn about how China and the U.S. report climate change. Furthermore, due to the finding that media from both countries present different facts and comments about climate change, people from China and the US might react differently to the problem.;After collecting and analyzing data from media resources, the work finds out that the U.S. media have more reports about climate change than Chinese media. From the year 2009 to 2015, the number of articles of climate change from both countries decline first and then increase. By the end of the study period, the numbers of articles from both countries increased above the 2009 numbers. As for the contents of articles about climate change, the media outlets from the US report differently from each other while the media outlets from China has similar attitude and prospective.;Based on the knowledge that media has significant influence on public opinion, we could predict that the majority people from both China and the United States know that the climate is changing, more specifically, the globe is warming. Moreover, climate change has bad influence on the environment and even threatens human beings. People should care about the problem and take actions in daily life to protect the planet. It is not easy to examine this assumption because people's opinion are not predictable after reading media reports. In future studies, surveys might help to collect people's ideas about the climate change issue.