| dc.description.abstract | The last few years have seen an increase of media attention regarding climate change and energy issues. The objective of this paper is to detect advocacy bias in mass media towards low carbon energy sources (wind, solar and nuclear) and towards climate change. The topic is highly relevant because society is moving towards a major energy transition with limited knowledge of magnitude and extent of the change. It would be important to understand if mass media bias was constraining the public’s appreciation of the full capacity of available policy choices. We conducted a qualitative content analysis on 182 Norwegian and UK mass media news articles over a two month time period in order to answer a research question(s) for each topic (CC, RES, nuclear) discussed: What proportion of media coverage reports on negative elements of X relative to the proportion that reports on positive elements of X? The study relied on pre-determined categories to assess presence of bias, with degree measured by frequency occurrences. Presence and degree of media advocacy bias were also compared between the two countries to determine if any significant differences existed between the two countries. We detected media bias in all cases, although in varying strengths. Media bias was overwhelming in the case of climate change, strong towards renewable energy sources, and mixed in the case of nuclear. Different degrees of media bias were observed between Norway and the UK, reflecting the two countries different energy mixes and economic conditions. | |