Newspaper Coverage and Climate Change Legislative Activity across US States
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12097 |
| Published date | 01 September 2014 |
| Date | 01 September 2014 |
| Author | Kristen Houston,Nives Dolšak |
Newspaper Coverage and Climate Change
Legislative Activity across US States
Nives Dol
sak
University of Washington
Kristen Houston
The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology
Abstract
There has been no federal legislation in the US regarding global climate change. Yet, state-level and city governments
have exhibited policy leadership on this subject. How has this varied across states, specifically how has newspaper cov-
erage about global climate change influenced legislative activity across US states during the period 1998–2006? Draw-
ing insights from the literature on the impact of media on agenda setting, we employ regression analysis to
understand the impact of newspaper coverage on the introduction of global climate change bills across 17 US states.
Newspaper coverage is operationalized in two ways. First, we focus on the overall tone of the coverage: (1) negative,
anti-policy tone; (2) balanced tone; or (3) positive, pro-policy tone. We find that pro- policy narratives are associated
with increased legislative activity and balanced narratives are associated with fewer bills aiming at global climate
change mitigation. Second, we examine issues addressing: (1) the occurrence of global climate change; (2) its conse-
quences; and (3) global climate change policy solutions. We find that newspaper coverage focused on consequences
and policy solutions is associated with increases in the number of introduced bills whereas coverage focused on occur-
rence is associated with decreases in the number of introduced bills. This article highlights the need to understand the
role of subnational units in global public policy especially the implementation of global regimes. Second, we highlight
the important role of media in agenda setting and in influencing subnational policy processes.
Policy Implications
•Global climate change policy can benefit from studying subnational units due to their shared role in policy making
and implementation; the role of the media is especially important for this.
•The national media need to remind readers about climate governance policies that are being adopted and have
already been implemented.
•Policy makers should use widely reported extreme weather events as policy ‘windows’to form policy support,
rather than allowing them to ‘downgrade’the policy discourse to the problem.
•When the media report ‘both sides’of the story, they should also provide information that allows the reader to
understand prevalence of one or another side.
This article examines the domestic foundations of glo-
bal public policy. We focus on subnational policy
dynamics in the US in the realm of global warming in
the US. This is an interesting issue because the federal
government has not yet passed new statutes, or
imposed binding emission reduction targets. We exam-
ine how newspaper coverage on global climate change
has influenced legislative activity across US states dur-
ing the period 1998–2006. Arguably, such state-level ini-
tiatives cohere with the broader trend of states leading
policy innovation in environmental policy (Lester, 1994;
Rabe, 2004).
The global atmosphere is a common pool resource, rival
in consumption but potentially nonexcludable (Ostrom
et al. 2003). As the established literature on common pool
resources suggests (Ostrom, 1990), such resources are vul-
nerable to overuse and degradation. Benefits from mitigat-
ing global climate change are going to be appropriated by
everyone while the nontrivial costs of mitigation will be
concentrated on those actors who consciously seek to
curb the emission of greenhouse gases. Anticipating this
free rider problem, countries sought to enact an interna-
tional regime, the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change and a Kyoto Protocol to the convention
©2013 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2014) 5:3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12097
Global Policy Volume 5 . Issue 3 . September 2014
286
Research Article
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