| Summary: | This thesis focuses on climate change coverage on television news programmes in Spain and analyzes the role
of the images. Firstly, the complexity of the information relating to climate change is illustrated: the information is
often controversial, with both a scientific and a political dimension. These dimensions are presented in a
historical and geographical approach to the coverage of the topic. A variety of factors external and internal to the
media (economic, political and journalistic) affect the amount of coverage and the framing of climate change over
time.
On the other hand, this study reflects the importance of television as a main source of information for most
citizens. In this medium the news value of visual interest prevails and even relegates the emission of certain
information not captured in pictures. The work focuses on the significance of images in the communication of
climate change, for three reasons: the impact of the availability of images in the volume of coverage, the difficulty
of showing what cannot be seen or experienced in everyday life, when we talk about a process that differs in
time and whose cause, the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere, cannot be filmed, and,
finally, the potential impact on public perception of climate change as a result of the images used in the news.
A content analysis is made of the information offered by the six Spanish channels of nation-wide coverage with the largest audience, including coding of the images, shot by shot. The results are interpreted with the support of
semi-structured interviews with news producers, section heads and reporters from the television channels in the
study.
The main findings indicate that information on climate change is lacking, in part due to the difficulty of accessing
images on the subject. The visualization is presented, above all, with images of the impact of climate, often far removed from Spanish viewers, as with the most repeated image: the melting of polar ice and glaciers. Likewise, there is a shortage of images that could increase public awareness about people¿s individual responsibility and make them aware of practices that cause pollution. Furthermore, graphic design resources and computer animations are underused. Finally, we see a symbolic function of the images to show the causes of climate change and future projections.
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