Browsing by Subject "Greenhouse Effect"

This thesis examines the relationship between the state’s climate policy position and media coverage of anthropogenic climate change in Russia. It achieves this by applying Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s Dominant Ideology theory (Propaganda Model) (1988) to the Russian media. The Propaganda Model argues that media coverage stays within the boundaries defined by ‘elite’s’ interests. Through a critical discourse analysis, this thesis has found that in the Russian case, there seems to be very little difference in the coverage of climate change throughout several critical discourse moments, and that coverage does not seem to differ based on ownership structure or dependence on advertising. The newspapers analysed in this thesis mostly rely on Russian officials as sources of information, articles tend to publish the states position without any criticism and do not question Russian climate change policy or Russia’s contribution to global levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, the analysis concludes that in the Russian case, there is a clear omission of climate change issues in media discourse and the overall number of articles published which discuss climate change decreases as time goes on, despite the government admitting the anthropogenic character of climate change. It is argued that due to Russia’s unique vulnerabilities towards climate change the issue will become a more prevalent policy agenda for the Russian government in the near future, and therefore a more widely covered topic by the media. The Propaganda Model will provide a useful theory for explaining media communication of climate change risks.