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Climate Change as a Rhetorical Resource and Masterframe: An Analysis of the Daily Press Coverage and Public Opinion in Italy

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Rethinking the Public Sphere Through Transnationalizing Processes

Abstract

Public discourse and media coverage of environmental issues are often studied in terms of their potential to convey expert knowledge to a broader public or as a setting in which key stakeholders (for example, environmental movements and organizations, business actors) can state their positions (Hansen 1993). However, environmental issues also matter as powerful attractors of public attention and media salience. As such, they can constitute rhetorical resources available to multiple actors to support and position their claims. More broadly, as readily available (and in certain cases, undisputable) frames, they can be used to contextualize and give prominence and justification to a variety of other issues and themes.

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© 2013 Lorenzo Beltrame, Massimiano Bucchi, and Barbara Mattè

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Beltrame, L., Bucchi, M., Mattè, B. (2013). Climate Change as a Rhetorical Resource and Masterframe: An Analysis of the Daily Press Coverage and Public Opinion in Italy. In: Salvatore, A., Schmidtke, O., Trenz, HJ. (eds) Rethinking the Public Sphere Through Transnationalizing Processes. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283207_10

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