Although the evidence is still limited, a growing body of research suggests music may have beneficial effects for diseases such as Parkinson’s.
Image credit: Shutterstock/agsandrew.
New Research In
Physical Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
Biological Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
Edited by Arild Underdal, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, and approved June 12, 2020 (received for review December 9, 2019)
Significance
Scholars and political commentators have often argued that business interests have privileged status in policy debates, particularly around questions of environmental degradation. However, few studies have been able to systematically compare business and advocacy organizations’ successful and unsuccessful attempts to influence political discourse, a key marker of interest group status. This study uses computational text analysis to fill this gap in the literature, examining the news coverage given to over 1,700 press releases about climate change from different types of organizations over an almost 30-y period. These results shed light on the social processes shaping the climate change debate in particular, while speaking to broader questions of how power is distributed in American democracy.
Abstract
Whose voices are most likely to receive news coverage in the US debate about climate change? Elite cues embedded in mainstream media can influence public opinion on climate change, so it is important to understand whose perspectives are most likely to be represented. Here, I use plagiarism-detection software to analyze the media coverage of a large random sample of business, government, and social advocacy organizations’ press releases about climate change (n = 1,768), examining which messages are cited in all articles published about climate change in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today from 1985 to 2014 (n = 34,948). I find that press releases opposing action to address climate change are about twice as likely to be cited in national newspapers as are press releases advocating for climate action. In addition, messages from business coalitions and very large businesses are more likely than those from other types of organizations to receive coverage. Surprisingly, press releases from organizations providing scientific and technical services are less likely to receive news coverage than are other press releases in my sample, suggesting that messages from organizations with greater scientific expertise receive less media attention. These findings support previous scholars’ claims that journalistic norms of balance and objectivity have distorted the public debate around climate change, while providing evidence that the structural power of business interests lends them heightened visibility in policy debates.
Footnotes
- ↵1Email: rachel_wetts{at}brown.edu.
Author contributions: R.W. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper.
The author declares no competing interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Data deposition: The database of press releases and Stata code for replicating the analyses have been deposited in the openICPSR Repository (accession no. 116561).
This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1921526117/-/DCSupplemental.
Published under the PNAS license.
References
Log in using your username and password
Log in through your institution
You may be able to gain access using your login credentials for your institution. Contact your library if you do not have a username and password.
If your organization uses OpenAthens, you can log in using your OpenAthens username and password. To check if your institution is supported, please see this list. Contact your library for more details.
Purchase access
You may purchase access to this article. This will require you to create an account if you don't already have one.
In climate news, statements from large businesses and opponents of climate action receive heightened visibility
Sign up for Article Alerts
Article Classifications
- Social Sciences
- Political Sciences
- Sustainability Science
Jump to section
You May Also be Interested in
Astronomers thought they’d finally figured out where gold and other heavy elements in the universe came from. In light of recent results, they’re not so sure.
Image credit: Science Source/Tom McHugh.
Researchers are still trying to understand what causes this strong correlation between neural and social networks.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Yeongsik Im.
Aleix Martinez explains why facial expressions often are not accurate indicators of emotion.
CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing can improve the effectiveness of spermatogonial stem cell transplantation in mice and livestock, a study finds.
Image credit: Jon M. Oatley.