Noninformation and Nationalism: Coverage of Climate Change in Newspapers From the Five Largest Carbon-Emitting Nations

Portions of the public remain confused as to the cause, effect and responsible agent of climate change. Researchers have noted that ‘misinformation’ appears responsible for this confusion, but there continues to be a scarcity of research exploring this issue and what constitutes that ‘misinformation’. This research aims to explore information about climate change coverage in news from the top carbon-emitting countries: China, the United States, India, Russia, and Japan. A random sampling of 3,716 news articles from these five countries, were examined to determine if there was a cause of climate change that is connected to any of the top five sectors that actually create greenhouse gasses; if effects of climate change were stated; and if any responsible agents of climate change were mentioned. This study also explores if content varied when discussing climate change within the ‘home’ country or within any of the other countries sampled. Most coverage in this sample did not mention a cause of climate change, the effects of climate change or the responsibility for climate change. This ‘noninformation’ in coverage was also inherently nationalistic in approach, whereby causes and responsibilities for climate change, when found, were based in ‘other’ countries and the effects of climate change were at home. The focus in scholarly research has largely been on the misinformation and disinformation divide, but this study argues that this focus does not address news content that simply did not inform readers of fundamental climate change information.