Mediating Public Science: Experts, Politics, and Climate Change in the News Media in Canada
MEDIATING PUBLIC SCIENCE: EXPERTS, POLITICS, AND CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE NEWS MEDIA IN CANADA BERNHARD ISOPP A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO October 2018 © Bernhard Isopp, 2018 Abstract This project offers a reconstructionist science and technology studies (STS) analysis of climate change coverage in three Canadian newspapers, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the Toronto Star from 2006 to 2013. It employs a combination of framing, critical discourse, and philosophical analyses to address two core questions: (1) Why has climate change been represented in these newspapers in the ways it has? (2) What effects have these newspapers had in shaping issues of climate change? These broad inquiries are organised by a set of six more specific conceptual concerns stemming from STS: i) How do scientists relate, engage, and compete with other actors in influencing climate change coverage? ii) To what extent can these newspapers be understood as a site of scientific practice, communication, and knowledge production? iii) What broader social, political, and economic factors are linked to the competing representations of climate change and actor coalitions that emerge in these newspapers? iv) What broader images, ideologies, and philosophies of science and scientists shape and emerge from these media discourses? v) What do STS conceptions of scientific rhetoric suggest about these discourses? vi) How is the authority of science and scientists established, affected, challenged, and undermined through and by all these interacting influences and processes? While the answers to these questions are multifaceted, the authority of science is a culminating theme.
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