Despite the IPCC report and the Supremes, global warming accounted for only 5% of total news index

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Back in February, I chronicled the problems that the year's first IPCC report had in achieving wider media and public attention. In response, I argued that in today's fragmented media system, relying on traditional news coverage to attract the attention of the wider public just wasn't good enough.

As alternatives, I suggested recruiting and training a national system of opinion-leaders or "science navigators" to connect to fellow citizens on the topic, while also harnessing the power of entertainment media and celebrity culture to reach the massive audience of Americans who pay little or no attention to news about either science or public affairs.

Last week it was a new IPCC release, but similar story when it came to its media impact.

According to the latest Pew analysis, global warming only accounted for roughly 5% of the total news hole, far short of the combined attention to Iran, the 2008 Horse Race, and Iraq.

Even the partisan split at the Supreme Court on the EPA's regulation of greenhouse gases didn't elevate news attention to the issue much. In absolute terms, global warming is enjoying record amounts of news attention, yet it still doesn't register as prominent on the overall news agenda. Indeed, last week was only the third week all year where the issue broke into the top ten of news agenda items as tracked by Pew.

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In part you are correct. What connects these agenda items is a common frame: a focus on public accountability. Who's going to hold accountable the president in power for trading ideology and dogma for evidence and science?
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Wasn't Iran more about the human interest with the hostages and not public accountability? That is what I took away especially with the sexist preoccupation on the woman soldier captured. Regardless of the "frame" the US administration is viewed through, the human frame would have dominated.

I wonder -- keep in mind this is coming from a scientist, not a media observor -- but is this result a reflection of global warming's lack of heft as a news item, or on how the US public is fed up with the Bush Administration? Or both? The four other top stories are related, some very closely, to public opinion of the direction of the US and its place in the world... though one might also include global warming in that list?

Simon,
In part you are correct. What connects these agenda items is a common frame: a focus on public accountability. Who's going to hold accountable the president in power for trading ideology and dogma for evidence and science?

See the other examples of the public accountability frame at work across science and political issues that I have documented at this blog:

http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/frame_public_accountability/

Coturnix, exactly. I suppose it's because they are scientists and as you know all science workshops, conferences, etc. have to end on a Friday. Man, talk about obsessive-complusive.... Doesn't matter that it is well known that Friday is the day you release bad news so it is lost in the weekend blackhole. We're scientists and we end our sessions on Friday.

In the breakdown at the link Matt provides, newspapers have given the most coverage to global warming and on-line media the least.