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How do the journals Nature and Science represent climate change?
15 June 2018
New open access resources available on-line
Dr Sam Randalls聽and Noam Obermeister (MSc Environment, Politics and Society, 2016-7) are co-authors, with colleagues at Cambridge and Kings College London, of a recent paper in聽Nature Climate Change聽which explores the editorial representations of climate change in two leading science journals between 1966 and 2016,聽Nature聽and聽Science.
Among the key findings is that the US-based聽Science聽initially framed climate change relatively narrowly, as a science and technology challenge聽while the UK鈥檚聽Nature聽always recognised its broader institutional and political dimensions.
Both journals have聽recognised the growing urgency of climate change, but聽Science聽editorials have increasingly seen it as a public communication challenge聽while聽Nature聽has been more willing to comment on climate policies.
More broadly, the paper shows how editorials respond to societal events, and can also be driven by the views of individual editors. Nevertheless, the centripetal pull of the journals鈥� different national institutional histories and political geographies still suggests that:
鈥�"... place matters in the making and interpreting of scientific knowledge"聽(p. 520).
Read the paper: