Climatic Change https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02378-w

Missed opportunities: the absence of climate change in media coverage of forest fire events in

Debra J. Davidson1 & Anthony Fisher1 & Gwendolyn Blue2

Received: 21 August 2018 /Accepted: 16 January 2019/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2019

Abstract Extreme weather events that may be associated with climate change drivers offer valuable opportunities for public discussion of climate change. Such events tend to draw a high level of public attention, and they represent acute and personal impacts of climate change, unlike most climate-related information to which members of the public are exposed. Media coverage of such extreme events, however, appears to avoid linking such events to climate change. In one of few media analyses of the inclusion of climate change discussion in coverage of extreme events that are linked to climate change, we provide the results of an analysis of media coverage of climate-related threats to forests, including in particular forest fires in the Province of Alberta. This is a region in which forests, which are threatened by the impacts of climate change, are an important contributor to the regional economy, livelihoods, and lifestyles. Newspaper articles were collected from Alberta’s two largest regional papers, the and the . Our findings show that coverage of forest issues in the media is dominated by fires, while discussion of pest outbreaks and forest sustain- ability are far less prevalent. While climate change is a topic that is covered in these newspapers as frequently as forest-related issues, there is very little overlap in this coverage and the articles that do discuss both forests and climate change are not associated with extreme events. In subsequent thematic analysis, we find that forest fire coverage tends to be restricted to discussion of single themes, particularly, risk or the economy, while avoiding discussion of multiple themes and their interactions. Mention of the causes of climate change is rare in coverage of either of these forest- related issues. Possible explanations for avoidance of climate change discussion in forest fire media coverage are discussed.

* Debra J. Davidson [email protected]

1 Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, University of Alberta, 515 General Services Building, Edmonton, Alberta T6G2H1, Canada 2 Department of Geography, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada Climatic Change

1 Introduction

TheFortMcMurrayfireinnorthernAlbertastartedMay1,2016,andovertheensuing 15 months, burned 5895km2 (McDermott 2017). For several weeks that Spring, Albertans were captivated by a barrage of dramatic television and print news media showing images of a giant wall of fire bearing down on a line of escapees on the two- lane highway out of town, and the anecdotes of devastated residents and exhausted and shell-shocked firefighters. The Premier declared a state of emergency, and Albertans donated money and opened their homes to the evacuees. Several years prior to that, to much less fanfare but packing a socioeconomic wallop on par with the fire, a mountain pine beetle outbreak affected some 180,000 km2 of forest in neighboring British Colum- bia, imposing an estimated loss of 752 million cubic meters, or 58% of merchantable pine by 2017 (Natural Resources Canada 2017). These pest populations are now pushing eastward into Alberta. Scientists anticipate increases in the frequency and intensity of both such events (Bentz et al. 2010;Kirchmeier-Youngetal.2017; Sambaraju et al. 2012), rendering Alberta’s vast forests acutely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and adaptation a high priority for forest management, given the likelihood for fire suppression capability to be surpassed (Cerezke 2009; Wotton et al. 2017). Making such projections in trends, however, is not equivalent to attributing a single event such as a forest fire to climate change. Climate scientists rather refer to the extent to which climate change increased the likelihood for the occurrence of such an event. Researchers in one study nonetheless do attempt to trace a direct connection between the Fort McMurray fire and climate forcing, noting that the extremely warm and dry seasonal conditions at the time were generated by increased variability in synoptic circulation patterns that produce dynamic and thermodynamic conditions favoring warmer and drier weather conditions, and this variability in circulation patterns is induced by anthropo- genic emissions (Tan et al. 2019). As with many policy domains, investments of public resources to support any new initiative require public support for those initiatives. The boreal forest covers 58% of Alberta, a number of Albertans live in forested communities, and the forest industry plays an important role in the provincial economy, yet with over 80% of residents living in cities, public attention to forests may be limited to dramatic but limited moments in time such as May 2016. Such moments might thus be particularly valuable opportunities to introduce public discussions about the threats posed to forests by climate change (see also Carmichael and Brulle 2016). And yet, there was a notable absence of discussion in the media of the role of climate change in producing the Fort McMurray fire and the mountain pine beetle has yet to grace the front page of any mainstream newspaper in the province. The challenges of garnering public support for climate change adaptation and mitiga- tion are certainly not limited to Alberta. Social science research has consistently observed a gap between the urgency expressed by climate scientists and the relative complacency of publics in places like Canada and the USA, many of whom rank other concerns of higher importance (Lorenzoni and Pidgeon 2006). Indeed, a small but notable minority continues to disagree with climate scientists and skepticism even appears to be on the rise in some places (Engels et al. 2013; Tranter and Booth 2015). Concern levels do vary; one consistent but modest indicator of concern is gender (McCright 2010; McCright and Dunlap 2011), and emerging as one of the strongest predictors over the past decade is Climatic Change political ideology (McCright and Dunlap 2011; Unsworth and Fielding 2014; Whitmarsh 2011), but by and large, most westerners feel they have more important things to worry about. The fact that most of us do not personally experience the impacts of climate change has been identified as a contributor to complacency (Spence et al. 2011). Anthony Giddens identifies this phenomenon as the Giddens’ Paradox (Giddens 2011). Personal experiences with changes in weather and extreme events have been observed to be associated with increased climate change concern in some studies (Egan and Mullin 2012; Lorenzoni and Pidgeon 2006; Spence et al. 2011). And yet, according to other studies, even personal experience with climate-related events like flooding fails to elicit higher levels of concern for climate change (Brulle et al. 2012; Whitmarsh 2008). One factor that also strongly shapes public discussions of climate change is the media, with increases in the level of media coverage of climate change being linked to increased public concern (Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui 2009). Across several studies, media coverage has been shown to influence the legitimacy of the issue of climate change among the public and the amount of coverage is positively associated with issue salience (Andrews and Caren 2010; Brulle et al. 2012; Carmichael and Brulle 2016; Gamson and Wolfsfield 1993; Greenberg et al. 2011). The influence of the media on public discussions of climate change has been extensively researched, for good reason. Media continue to have a prominent place in setting the agenda, if not the direction, of public opinion, particularly mainstream media, despite the rapid expansion of availability of alternative media through the internet (Boykoff and Yulsman 2013; Ford and King 2015;Kormos and Gifford 2014;McCombs2005; Sampei and Aoyagi-Usui 2009). Media coverage is a particularly important vehicle for shaping public understanding of scientific issues like climate change (Lidskog 2014; Schäfer and O’Neill 2017), and yet, climate change and other environmental issues are especially difficult for journalists to cover, given their complex and often uneventful character (Boykoff 2007;Yin1999). In an effort to capture readers, journalists prioritize stories that capture attention and tend to favor episodic events, with limited attention to the broader context and complexity of those events (de Vreese 2005; Iyengar 1991). As a result, Bushell et al. (2017)arguethat journalists have failed to articulate climate change and the necessary solutions in a compelling manner. In some ways, they may well do more damage than good, such as when journalists lend credence to climate skepticism by giving equal voice to its proponents, despite high levels of agreement in the climate science community (Boykoff 2011; Boykoff and Boykoff 2004; Brossard et al. 2004). To make matters worse, the challenges posed for journalists by the complexity of the issue itself have been further exacerbated by political economic pressures that have imposed upon journalists the need to Bdo more with less^ (Boykoff and Yulsman 2013). Other researchers have delved beyond quantifying climate change coverage to analyze the frames employed, or particular aspects of reality drawn upon subjectively to construct a particular interpretation of the definition and relevance of an issue (Gamson and Modigliani 1989; Gamson and Wolfsfield 1993; Schäfer and O’Neill 2017). According to Schäfer and O’Neill (2017), analyses of media framing of climate change coverage have illustrated the prevalence of a narrow spectrum of frames across many countries (e.g., scientific certainty), the absence of others (e.g., health), and the growing promi- nence of sociopolitical frames compared to scientific frames over time. As a result of framing selection processes, the media in the USA, for example, have done far more to Climatic Change obfuscate the issue than motivate constructive political responses (Hart et al. 2015; Jang and Hart 2015;Moser2016). Researchers focused on Canadian coverage find that climate change holds a more prominent place than it does in US coverage (Good 2008), but nonetheless, tends to be presented through a narrow range of dominant frames, which vary by news source and time period (e.g. (Stoddart and Tindall 2015; Young and Dugas 2012). Young and Dugas (2012) found that, compared to US news outlets, mainstream print media in Canada have generally supported the scientific consensus regarding climate change, but discussions of corporate, government, and citizen responsibilities for addressing climate change, and the association between climate change and extreme weather, are notably limited, while policy debates and proposed solutions dominate. Stoddart and Smith (2016)foundthat coverage of climate change in the Arctic is often framed through the lens of Canadian national interests, while indigenous and social justice issues associated with impacts already materializing are notably absent. The powerful filtering effects of framing in media should not be especially surprising. Journalists are people too after all, representing particular cultural and class positions and facing their own set of institu- tional pressures (Carvalho 2007). As such, the reproduction by journalists of even seemingly Bfactual^ scientific information on climate change in the news has been found to be deeply entangled by professional norms (Brüggemann and Engesser 2017). The role of political elites is also pronounced in media, and this is certainly the case for climate change coverage. Elites influence media coverage directly, through corporate ownership and control of media institutions, which can manifest in divergent ideological leanings across sources, which in turn shapes coverage of issues such as climate change (Carvalho 2007). Their influence is also indirect, however, as when journalists follow the cues of elites in their selection and representation of content (Brulle et al. 2012; Carmichael and Brulle 2016;Habel2012;Yin1999). Citizens have expressed a tendency to agree with those cues, even when they may be dubious (Darmofal 2005). To the extent that elite interests may be threatened by media frames attributing climate change to certain human activities, there is every reason to anticipate that such framing will be avoided (Good 2008). Elite cues are by no means the only factor directing the topics covered, or the framing of those topics. Of particular interest to the current study, previous research on the role of extreme weather events in climate change media coverage is mixed. Numerous studies have indicated that extreme events such as heat and flooding have motivated an increase in mentions of climate change in the media (Aykut et al. 2012; Carmichael and Brulle 2016; Corfee-Morlot et al. 2007; Gavin and Marshall 2011;Gordonetal.2010; Shanahan and Good 2000;Ungar 1992, 1999). However, these associations are modest, and in some studies, there is little to no indication of media discussion of the influence of climate change on extreme event occurrence (Carmichael and Brulle 2016;Good2008; Schäfer et al. 2013). On the other hand, studies of media coverage of the climate change–extreme weather link have been methodologically limited, tending to focus on media coverage of climate change and identifying mentions of extreme weather within those media samples. Very few studies do the reverse, focusing on media coverage of extreme weather and seeking mentions of climate change within that coverage (Gavin et al. 2011). There are several important reasons for doing so, however. First, as mentioned, the experience of extreme weather events that can be associated with climate change may offer valuable opportunities to generate constructive public discussion on a topic that is otherwise elusive for many. Second, given the salience Climatic Change of such events for citizens, and thus their likelihood for enhanced media attention during such events, how those events are covered and explained in the media may be particularly consequential. In our literature search, we identified just two published studies of news coverage of extreme events that include climate change. One earlier study of US television news coverage observed an increase in extreme weather coverage between 1968 and 1996, but the coverage did not associate those events with climate change (Ungar 1999). More recently, in an analysis of media coverage of flooding events in the UK between 2001 and 2007, Gavin et al. (2011) found very few references made to climate change at all, much less discussion of the potential attribution of climate change to those events. Far more attention was given to human interest stories and cost.

2 The study

What types of issues are presented in the media during those moments in which journalists are far more likely to have a captive audience than usual? When those moments of vivid hazard erupt, do discussions emerge of climate change, and its potential to pose increased threats to our ecosystems, and the people living in them? In the current study, we sought to identify the potential associations being made in the news media in Alberta between forest threats and climate change and to characterize the media coverage of forest threats more generally. Given the small sample of articles focused on pest outbreaks, we narrowed our analysis to focus on forest fire coverage. The print media are important conveyors of information about forestry issues, especially in urban centers (Cormier and Tindall 2005), where residents are less likely to have other more direct opportunities to be confronted with forest-related issues. The highly urbanized demographic character of Alberta certainly bears some influence on the sociopolitical context within which discussions of climate change occur. Other unique features of this province may hold greater weight, however, including its historical dependence upon fossil fuel extraction, famously including the Athabasca tar sands, which have received international prominence as Bdirty oil,^ so named due to the acute ecological impacts of its extraction, but also to the higher greenhouse gas intensity of this fuel, even in comparison to other oil sources (Davidson and Gismondi 2011). As such, not surpris- ingly perhaps, climate change skepticism is notably higher here than other regions (Ramsay 2018). The media analyst today has a wide variety of media sources and outlets to choose from, each with a different set of weaknesses and benefits. Notably, newspapers have lost a considerable degree of prominence with the rise of multiple online and cable media sources (Boykoff and Yulsman 2013). For the media analyst, newspapers may nonethe- less be advantageous because they tend to offer stories of greater depth (Driedger 2007). Further, for studies such as the present one, in which analysts seek to capture a specifically regional character of public attention, regional print media may be most appropriate given the non-regional character of most cable and online media. Newspaper articles were collected from Alberta’s two largest regional papers, the Edmonton Journal and the Calgary Herald, through the Canada Newsstream (ProQuest) searchable data- base, both of which are owned by the same media empire, Inc., as are half of the newspapers in the country. As such, both papers in this study can be expected to express similar ideological leanings, although the Edmonton Journal caters Climatic Change toamoreleft-leaningreadership.Thelatestyearforwhichwewereabletolocate circulation numbers is 2015, at which time the Edmonton Journal had an average daily readership of 92,542 and the Calgary Herald had 106,916 (News Media Canada 2015). Only articles from 2000 to 2017 were considered for analysis. We sought initially to characterize broad trends in media coverage of forest issues, and thus generated an initial dataset of articles with the term Bforest^ or Bclimate change^ and articles containing both terms. Next, we conducted a narrower search of articles with the term Bforest,^ using four more specific climate change-related search terms, including Bforest fire,^ Bforest and climate change,^ Bforest insect,^ and Bsustainable forest.^ For this second search, we used the Bnoft^ delimiter in Canada Newsstream, which limits the search to articles with titles or abstracts containing our search terms. This generated an initial sample of 2271 articles. After eliminating duplicate and erroneous articles, our final sample included 1498 articles, including 770 from the Edmonton Journal and 728 from the Calgary Herald. These were uploaded to NVivo 11, where articles were assigned attribute values based on their source, topic, and year published. Additionally, each article was delineated based on type (articles, opinions, letters, and editorials), determined by using the text search function in NVivo to find the document types which ProQuest allocates to each newspaper. We then conducted a content analysis of the articles. Content analysis, in contradistinction to and, often, as a precursor to discourse analysis, seeks to understand the meanings placed onto an issue by observing topical or thematic patterns in texts in a systematic and replicable manner, often through application of a pre-defined codebook delineating search method (Saraisky 2015). We do so by seeking to identify the prevalence of five key thematic frames, or frames that provide context for specific issues (Iyengar 1991), including ecology, economy, risk, manage- ment, and climate change cause. The first four themes are relevant in different ways to either or both the causes and impacts of natural disasters such as forest fires and were initially derived deductively among the authors, and confirmed through initial scan of a random sample of 20 articles. The latter refers specifically to articles that made reference to the anthropogenic causes of climate change, the observation of which describes our key motivation for this study. The authors then read through the 20 article sample to generate a list of search terms commonly associated with each thematic frame (see Appendix Table 2). The table below provides examples of each frame, with the search terms underlined (Table 1). Each article was then assigned one or

Table 1 Thematic frames and examples

Ecology B…current forestry practices may be flawed, potentially putting wildlife at risk, undermining efforts to stem the advance of climate change, and possibly altering the structure of the current mixed-forest ecosystem.^ (Edmonton Journal) Economy BAn estimated $23 billion of timber in Alberta is threatened by the bug, further endangering a struggling forest products industry.^ (Calgary Herald) Risk BWith the weather turning dry and hot, lightning has started a host of other fires -- and the situation in the forests is expected to be tense in the coming weeks as the fire danger rises.^ (Calgary Herald) Management BSmokey the Bear's "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires" message and other fire prevention programs were so effective the forests grew without major disruption.^ (Edmonton Journal) Climate change BIn fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that approximately 30 per cause cent of the total historic human-induced increase in GHG emissions is the result of deforestation and forest disturbance, and continues to account for approximately 18 per cent of annual GHG emissions.^ (Edmonton Journal) Climatic Change more frame attribute based on the presence of search terms. Results were generated using both the chart wizard and the case classification sheets in NVivo.

3 Findings

Between the years 2000 and 2017, there were a total of 24,708 mentions of the term Bforest^ in either the Calgary Herald or the Edmonton Journal, and 19,975 mentions of the term ‘climate change’ (Fig. 1). Bearing in mind that non-relevant and duplicate articles were not removed and thus the actual volume of relevant coverage will be lower, the patterns indicated are noteworthy. A very small minority of articles contain both terms, indicating that the relation- ship between climate change and Alberta’s forests has not generally been discussed in the regional mainstream media. Another point of note is the overall decline in media attention to forest issues over time, after a peak in 2007, coincidentally the same year that climate change coverage peaked. This general decline in climate change coverage over the past decade has also been observed in the US media (Boykoff and Yulsman 2013). We then narrowed our search to our four climate change-related forest topics. Figure 2 describes the aggregated dataset over time. The pattern of occurrence of this subset does not mirror precisely the pattern described in the previous graph covering the general topic of forest, although there are similarities in trends between years, including an increasing trend between 2000 and 2003, followed by a steep decline and a similar peak and decline from 2014 to 2017. Within this dataset, the occurrence of each of the four topics varies considerably, with forest fire coverage dominating by a wide margin and expressing a much higher variability (Fig. 3). There is relatively little coverage of forest insects, even though serious outbreaks have occurred and more are projected. This narrower search also produced a much smaller set of articles covering the topic Bclimate change and forest.^ A couple of points of note are, first, the peak year for forest fire topic coverage was 2003, a year in which particularly devastating fires occurred in British Columbia, that also happened to be one of the lowest years for climate

2500

2000

Forest 1500 Climate Change

1000 Forest and Climate Change NumberArcles of

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0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Year

Fig. 1 BClimate change^ and Bforest^ coverage in Alberta newspapers over time. Climatic Change

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100 NumberArcles of 50

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Year

Fig. 2 Topical coverage of forest issues over time change coverage. Forest fire coverage was even higher that year than for 2016, the year of the Fort McMurray fire, by a substantial margin. We then identified the occurrence of our five thematic frames of interest across the article sample and by topic (Fig. 4). None of the thematic frames of interest were expressed in 336 of the articles in our dataset, which primarily fell into the forest fire topic. In other words, a large minority of articles reportingonforestfiresfocusedsolelyonreporting of the event itself. The most prominent theme by a wide margin is risk; followed by economy, ecology, and management; and lastly, climate change cause. They were distributed similarly across the topic subsets, although not surprisingly, the theme of human causes of climate change was mentioned much more frequently in articles on the topic of climate change and forest, although remarkably, even among these articles, human causes only represented 19% of discussion themes, behind management (24%) and risk (22%).

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100 Climate Change

80 Forest Fire Forest Insect 60

NumberArcles of Sustainable Forest 40

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0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Year

Fig. 3 Occurrence of forest topics over time Climatic Change

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1200 Management

1000 Climate Change Cause

800 Risk Economy 600

NumberArcles of Ecology 400 Unassigned 200

0 Climate Change Forest Fire Forest Insect Sustainable Forest Topic Fig. 4 Article thematic frame occurrence by topic (articles may include more than one theme)

Looking more closely at forest fire coverage, 32% of thematic coverage was on risk, 20% on economy, 14% and 13% mentioned ecology and management, respectively, and just 2% mentioned human causes of climate change. In other words, economy was discussed ten times as frequently as the human causes of climate change. Ecology was a more prominent theme than economy among articles on the topic of forest insects, but the proportion of mentions of human causes of climate change was only slightly

Fig. 5 Co-occurrence of thematic frames with forest fire topic Climatic Change higher, representing 3% of occurrences. We also identified incidences of co-occurring themes, to evaluate the extent to which coverage delved more deeply into some of the complex interactions between themes. As can be seen in Fig. 5 below, the majority of articles only mentioned a single theme and a very small proportion, 11%, mentioned three or more. Among those that include more than one theme, climate change cause was included in just 27 of a total of 1168 articles.

4Discussion

In this study, one of few media analyses of the inclusion of climate change discussion in coverage of extreme events that are linked to climate change, a number of key findings emerge. First, forest-related issues do not get significant coverage in Alberta mainstream press, despite their ecological and economic importance. What coverage does exist is on the decline. When forests do make it in the news, it is often in relation to fires, a serious threat to Alberta’s forests. The boreal forest is a fire-prone ecosystem, but climate change projections suggest an increase in their frequency and intensity, along with droughts and pest outbreaks, posing significant threats to these ecosystems and their ability to provide everything from jobs to habitat to carbon sinks. Scientists have observed that emerging patterns of both fires and insect outbreaks in western Canadian forests can be attributed to climate change. Other topics relevant to climate change in relation to forestry, like pest outbreaks, rarely make it into the news at all, perhaps due to the decline in public attention to forest issues overall. The small number of articles covering forest fire events that take up the issue of climate change attribution indicates a glaring absence of discussion of climate change during coverage of the very extreme events that are expected to increase in frequency and intensity as a result of climate change. Instead, journalists focus on themes such as risk, economy, and ecosystems. We agree with Gavin et al. (2011)thatBthe public needs to be apprised of these dangerous realities, and … linking weather extremes to climate change is one means of bridging the gap between the scientific complexities of global warming, and something citizens can understand and relate to.^ Even though climate change coverage might not be driven by extreme events, one might expect that extreme event coverage would at least refer to the degree of attribution of climate change to those events, particularly in those cases in which the science is clear. As such, exploring this avoidance and the reasons behind it is an important area of scholarship. While our methods do not allow us to explain why this might be the case, we can rule out the explanation that climate change is not an issue at all in Alberta’s media. Since 2007, in fact, climate change is discussed more frequently than forests. This is not too surprising; in a large international comparative study, Schmidt et al. (2013) found that climate change coverage is higher in high-emitting countries with commitments under Kyoto than in other countries. We also do not claim that climate change news coverage in Alberta is dominated by Bdenial^ or Bskeptic^ framing. While a number of opinion pieces can still be found espousing skeptical views, such framing rarely enters news articles. The human causes of climate change and the impacts of climate change on forests do make it into the news. As early as 2001, an article in the Edmonton Journal, covering the recent release of the Third Assessment Report of the Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change, made specific mention of fire and insect threats to Alberta’s forests. Two years later, the Calgary Herald carried a story on recent research findings indicating climate change impacts on forests. But the reality is, people are far more likely to read an article covering a major forest fire in the region than they are an article reporting on recent scientific findings, international negotiations, or the release of the latest IPCC report. Climatic Change

Western media coverage has been criticized by analysts for failing to convey climate change in a manner that would induce greater levels of understanding and policy support (Moser 2016). Explanations for this include a tendency to minimize complexity (Young and Dugas 2012), uncritical analysis (Hart et al. 2015;JangandHart2015), and alignment with neoliberal ideology (Carvalho 2007). We postulate two other possibilities in the case of extreme event coverage in particular, which pertain to journalistic norms. First, climate change has become such a politicized topic in some regions that to raise it in the context of human tragedy, which forest fires certainly are, may be considered insensitive, amounting to capitalizing on human tragedy to achieve political ends and leading to strong personal attacks on that journalist. In other words, one of the many ways that the politicization of climate change has become a deleterious process may be the avoidance of discussion of climate change during moments that might otherwise be seen as perfect opportunities to do so. This could certainly be the case for Alberta, in which climate politics has taken on a particularly acerbic tone, because of the province’s other primary industry, fossil fuels (Tranter and Booth 2015). In an analogous study of responses to a severe flood in 2013 in Calgary—an urban center that is home to the headquarters of a number of oil and gas companies operating in Alberta—Milnes and Haney (2017) found a hesitancy among residents, and men in particular, to revise their views about climate change after the flood. The second possibility may entail a desire to avoid criticism of a different sort. Drawing a link to climate change in coverage of a single event runs the risk of exaggerating our scientific ability to attribute a single event to climate change. As scientists have been wont to point out, climate is not weather and constitutes a pattern of events. In one of the few articles on forest fires that mention climate change (Edmonton 2016), an editorial offered by two scientists on exactly this point is noteworthy: Asking if this fire was caused by climate change is the wrong question. We know the things that influence fire, including weather and climate. We know that, as the climate changes over the next century, fuels will be drier and weather will be more conducive to fire ignition and spread. Was this fire the result of climate change? It doesn't matter. Alberta's, and Canada's, future environment will be shaped by climate change. The important question is, how do we continue to live with fire. Ironically, just 2 years later, as the northern hemisphere experienced a record-breaking heat wave, another climate scientist was recorded stating the exact same question, but offering a completely different answer, perhaps harkening a change in the media weather, as it were. According to Michael Mann, quoted in the Guardian (Carrington 2018), BThe relevant question is: ‘Is climate change impacting these events and making them more extreme?’, and we can say with great confidence that it is.^ The limitations of this study raise several possibilities for future research. First, the digital revolution has transpired into a far more complex information environment, with high degrees of variation in media content, and by extension the explosion of choice among publics. The general- izability of a study that relies on a small set of sources, as this study does, is therefore limited. On the other hand, this complexity also creates opportunities for exploring comparative analyses and connections across media forms. Many social media discussions, for example, are initiated by the sharingofalinktoastoryinthemainstreampress.Social media may also be a particularly fruitful place to observe public discussions in response to extreme events, without the mediation of journalists and their employers. As residents of Alberta, the authors can attest to the lively social media discussions that took place after the Fort McMurray fire; in fact, social networking services such as Facebook became important forms of communication for victims and first responders. Climatic Change

Appendix

Table 2 A list of search terms associated with each thematic frame

Keyword Frequencya Number of casesb Number of cases with < 3 reference terms

Ecology Habitat 223 102 73 Wildlife 298 148 123 Caribou 156 38 28 Ecosystem 120 66 50 Wilderness 172 101 88 Biological 67 44 40 Diversity 63 42 39 Grizzly 152 31 22 Air quality 282 81 48 Birds 119 46 31 Economy Jobs 106 72 64 Forest products 211 93 63 Trade 80 51 46 Market 146 73 56 Budget 249 100 71 Cost 300 180 154 Financial 131 89 82 Money 283 181 162 Risk Threat 295 211 201 Disaster 384 194 153 Safe 208 129 113 Extreme 314 184 139 Danger 217 143 126 Harmful 7 6 6 Catastrophic 100 60 52 Destruction 125 86 77 Vulnerable 98 62 55 Climate change cause Human-induced 11 7 7 Anthropogenic 1 1 1 Emissions 485 130 73 Management Adaptation 39 24 19 Adapt 37 29 27 Science 193 113 95 Technology 109 66 57 Sustainability 80 39 31 Steward 3 2 2 Logging practices 8 7 7 Deforestation 50 23 19 Fire Smart 119 38 24 Prevention 191 87 62 Suppression 96 58 49 Prescribed burns 70 37 28 Thinning 50 28 21 a The number of times the key term is mentioned b The number of articles in which the key term is referenced Climatic Change

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