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dc.contributor.authorWessler, H
dc.contributor.authorLück, J
dc.contributor.authorWozniak, A
dc.date.accessioned2017-05-03T09:04:20Z
dc.date.issued2017-04-01
dc.description.abstractThe annual United Nations Climate Change Conferences, officially called Conferences of the Parties (COPs), are the main drivers of media attention to climate change around the world. Even more so than the Rio and Rio+20 “Earth Summits” (1992 and 2012) and the meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the COPs offer multiple access points for the communicative engagement of all kinds of stakeholders. COPs convene up to 20,000 people in one place for two weeks, including national delegations, civil society and business representatives, scientific organizations, representatives from other international organizations, as well as journalists from around the world. While intergovernmental negotiation under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) constitutes the core of COP business, these multifunctional events also offer arenas for civil society mobilization, economic lobbying, as well as expert communication and knowledge transfer. The media image of the COPs emerges as a product of distinct networks of coproduction constituted by journalists, professional communicators from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and national delegations. Production structures at the COPs are relatively globalized with uniform access rules for journalists from all over the world, a few transnational news agencies dominating distribution of both basic information and news visuals, and dense localized interaction between public relations (PR) professionals and journalists. Photo opportunities created by globally coordinated environmental NGOs meet the selection of journalists much better than the visual strategies pursued by delegation spokespeople. This gives NGOs the upper hand in the visual framing contest, whereas in textual framing NGOs are sidelined and national politicians clearly dominate media coverage. The globalized production environment leads to relatively similar patterns of basic news framing in national media coverage of the COPs that reflect overarching ways of approaching the topic: through a focus on problems and victims; a perspective on civil society demands and solutions; an emphasis on conflict in negotiations; or a focus on the benefits of clean energy production. News narratives, on the other hand, give journalists from different countries more leeway in adapting COP news to national audiences’ presumed interests and preoccupations. Even after the adoption of a new global treaty at COP21 in Paris in 2015 that specifies emission reduction targets for all participating countries, the annual UN Climate Change Conferences are likely to remain in the media spotlight. Future research could look more systematically at the impact of global civil society and media in monitoring the national contributions to climate change mitigation introduced in the Paris Agreement and shoring up even more ambitious commitments needed to reach the goal of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius as compared to pre-industrial levels.en_GB
dc.identifier.citationIn: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Scienceen_GB
dc.identifier.doi10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.406
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10871/27356
dc.language.isoenen_GB
dc.publisherOxford University Pressen_GB
dc.rights.embargoreasonPublisher policyen_GB
dc.rightsCopyright © 2017 Oxford University Press. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Pressen_GB
dc.subjectUnited Nationsen_GB
dc.subjectConference of the Partiesen_GB
dc.subjectMedia eventsen_GB
dc.subjectStrategic communicationen_GB
dc.subjectGlobal public sphereen_GB
dc.subjectNon-governmental organisationen_GB
dc.subjectJournalisten_GB
dc.subjectCoproductionen_GB
dc.subjectMedia framingen_GB
dc.subjectPhoto opportunityen_GB
dc.subjectNews narrativeen_GB
dc.titleCommunication, Negotiation, and Influence at International Climate Change Meetings and Summitsen_GB
dc.typeBook chapteren_GB
dc.contributor.editorNisbet, MCen_GB
dc.relation.isPartOfOxford Encyclopedia of Climate Change Communicationen_GB
dc.descriptionThis is the final version of the article. Available from Oxford University Press via the DOI in this record.en_GB


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