Reporting in a Warming World: A Media Review

Kaavya Pradeep Kumar | 2021

The media plays a critical role in terms of shaping public perceptions, but they have a task on their hands in terms of effectively communicating a subject as vast and complex as climate change. India is among the countries most affected and yet reporting on the subject has been episodic, with peaks around the time of climate summits and in the immediate aftermath of disasters such as cyclones, heatwaves and extreme rainfall events. Through a media review, undertaken as part of the Earth Journalism Network Asia-Pacific Media Grant, we sought to understand patterns of representation in news coverage about urban drought and extreme weather events – predicted to occur more frequently and intensely in a warming world. This report details the methodology we followed, our findings and analyses them in the context of other work done as part of the evolving field of climate change communication.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24943/RWWMR08.2021