Climate Change on German Television
The primary source of information for the German population regarding climate change, particularly climate policy, is public television, as our surveys from the "D2Earth" project demonstrate. But what role does the coverage of climate change, climate protection, and climate policy play in German television programming? How do the various news formats differ from each other? How does news programming differ from entertainment programming, and does climate change receive adequate coverage during prime time?
Public broadcasters are often criticized for not giving this topic the attention it deserves in talk shows, prime time slots, and even within the evening news, considering its societal relevance. Our project, "Climate Change on German Television," aims to provide the facts to enable an informed judgment on whether or not this is the case. The project is scientifically relevant because television coverage of the topic has hardly been examined so far, while we already have a good understanding of print and online media.
An initial analysis of the 8 p.m. "Tagesschau" program since 2007, as well as of the frequency of climate reporting overall in the programs "Das Erste"/ARD, ZDF, and WDR, was published in "Media Perspektiven" at the end of 2022. The data underlying the analysis can be found here.
For the related subproject "Greenwashing the prime-time? A content analysis on green advertisements and climate-related content on Germany’s public television," additional funds were raised by R. Roloff through the "Climate Social Science Network" at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
R. Roloff will lead the research in this area.
Data Collection:
Program content from ARD, ZDF, WDR, and RTL throughout the day from 2021
Data Analysis:
Automated and qualitative content analyses
The project participants are:
Prof. Dr. Michael Brüggemann (Projektlead)
Rahel Roloff (Projektlead "Greenwashing...")
Dr. Robin Tschötschel
Dr. Norman Schumann (Data Scientist)
- Duration: 2022 to 2025
- Project lead: Prof. Dr. Michael Brüggemann
- Sponsor: Climate Change Solutions Network at Brown University, RI