Media coverage of climate change and global warming en El País, El Mundo y La Vanguardia

Abstract

Introduction. This article deals with the media coverage of climate change and global warming in Spain by screening the presence of these two topics within El País, El Mundo and La Vanguardia from January 2000 until November 2014. Method. A comparative analysis of media and public agenda are completed using data coming from both the University of Colorado and Google Trends. Results. The Spanish press coverage follows a similar trend to the one described by the international Western newspapers, albeit one can also find some differentiating episodes. The main milestones were related with international political events, international agreements, scientific reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and with the documentary An inconvenient truth. Discussion and Conclusions. The international agenda is setting the national agenda. The general context is returning a decline of the presence of climate change in newspapers, although there is growing empirical evidence about the environmental risk.