Media coverage of climate change and newsroom politics : the case of Montenegro

Ružić, Nataša (author), Pušnik, Maruša (author), Kečina, Jovana (author), Kovačević Babić, Aleksandra (author)

Climate change is one of the most important global topics of public interest. Consequently, the role of the media is crucial to inform citizens about it and to raise public awareness. This paper is devoted to an analysis of the reporting methods of the most visited Montenegrin web portals regarding the topic. We also aim to determine how media workers and political agents cover this topic. Since 2007, Montenegro has been constitutionally represented as an ecological state, which has an excellent legislative framework but also numerous environmental problems. Bearing these facts in mind, we investigate this topic through the content and discourse analysis of 268 media texts on web portals in the period from October 21 to November 22, 2021 (UN Climate Change Glasgow Conference) and in-depth semi-structured interviews with seven important people covering this topic in Montenegro. We conclude that Montenegrin society is environmentally illiterate, although young people are more aware of the threat posed by climate change. The apathy of Montenegrin citizens can partly be attributed to the influence of media that superficially report on this issue and make no effort to educate the population or raise awareness about environmental protection and climate change.

• Language: English
• Keywords: climate change, Montenegrin portals, media practices, newsroom politics, Glasgow Summit
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2023
• Number of pages: Str. 44-73
• Numbering: Vol. 29, no. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-151271
• UDC: 070:551.583(497.16)
• ISSN on article: 1408-032X
• DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8346670
• COBISS.SI-ID: 164564227
• Publication date in RUL: 03.10.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Anthropological notebooks
• Shortened title: Anthropol. noteb.
• Publisher: Društvo antropologov Slovenije = Slovene Anthropological Society
• ISSN: 1408-032X
• COBISS.SI-ID: 62755072

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian

Abstract

Podnebne spremembe so ena najpomembnejših globalnih tem javnega interesa. Zato je vloga medijev ključna pri obveščanju državljanov o tem in ozaveščanju javnosti. Članek je posvečen analizi načinov poročanja o tej temi na najbolj obiskanih črnogorskih spletnih portalih. Prav tako pa želimo ugotoviti, kako medijski delavci in politični akterji pokrivajo te teme. Črna gora je od leta 2007 ustavno zastopana kot ekološka država, ki ima odličen zakonodajni okvir, a tudi številne okoljske probleme. Ob upoštevanju teh dejstev to tematiko raziskujemo prek vsebinske in diskurzivne analize 268 medijskih prispevkov na spletnih portalih v obdobju od 21. oktobra do 22. novembra 2021 (konferenca ZN o podnebnih spremembah v Glasgowu) in prek poglobljenih polstrukturiranih intervjujih s sedmimi pomembnimi akterji, ki pokrivajo te teme v Črni gori. Ugotavljamo, da je črnogorska družba okoljsko nepismena, čeprav se mladi bolj zavedajo nevarnosti podnebnih sprememb. Apatijo črnogorskih državljanov lahko delno pripišemo tudi vplivu medijev, ki površno poročajo o tej problematiki in se ne trudijo izobraževati prebivalstva ali ga ozaveščati o varstvu okolja in o podnebnih spremembah.

• Keywords: podnebne spremembe, mediji, poročanje (novinarstvo), Črna gora, črnogorski spletni portali, medijske prakse, uredniška politika, podnebni vrh v Glasgowu