Written Press’s Approach to Climate Change in the Autonomous Region of Madeira and the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands

Abstract

The Autonomous Region of Madeira and the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands belong to Macaronesia and are ultra-peripheral regions, being particularly vulnerable to climate change (CC). Due to their isolation and idiosyncratic characteristics, the written press has a decisive role in the context of the insular territories and on tackling CC, hence, the purpose of this paper is to assess the written press’ approach to CC in a ten-year interval. We used the descriptor ‘climate change’ to collect articles from two newspapers (Canarias 7 and Diário de Notícias da Madeira), comprising July 2008 and January 2009, as well as July 2018 and January 2019, gathering 170 news articles (in total). For further analysis, all the news articles were coded and categorised according to five major categories (scope, entities involved, topics related to CC, discourse content, and position on CC). Results confirmed the prevalence of news articles in Diário de Notícias da Madeira in both periods of analysis, but this does not necessarily mean that the stakeholders are more receptive or prepared to act in Madeira. The scope was broad, given the prevalence of regional level news in the two newspapers. On the entities involved, despite the large number and diversity of social actors depicted, a preponderance of political and institutional actors stood out. A wide variety of topics related to CC were reported, predominantly vulnerability, CC consequences, and CC policies (overall mitigation). Regarding content, the centre of attention was on informative/institutional, expert opinions and critical discourses. Lay rationalities, knowledge, and practices were virtually absent. As for the positioning on CC, most of the news evidenced the acceptance that it is an unavoidable problem and that possible solutions require structural transformations in the development model of current societies and a paradigm shift. Other narratives coexisted with this perspective (mainly in Diário de Notícias da Madeira), denoting manipulative discourses and greenwashing, along with the view of CC as opportunity. We argue that the media should extend the debate on environmental issues to all social actors, including local communities, bridge the gap between scientists, technicians and policy makers and society in general, and go beyond the mainstream approach to CC and the sensationalist trends to contribute to knowledge improvement, awareness-raising, and solution building, mostly at the regional/local level.