1988 - When climate change entered the political arena: A social representations analysis of British broadsheet coverage Rusi Jaspal, PhD; Brigitte Nerlich, DrPhil Institute for Science and Society, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham INTRODUCTION

CLIMATE CHANGE: A MULTI-FACETED THREAT

IMMINENT EXTINCTION

Public debates about climate change have been characterised by slow periods of consensus and concern but also by sudden peaks in attention and controversy (Nerlich, 2010). In Britain, climate change first made its transition from scientific discourse to the political and public domain in the summer of 1988. This transition was marked by inter alia the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s speech to the Royal Society in September 1988, which was supportive of action against ‘global warming’ and the surge in media representations of ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ following the setting up of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Hulme, 2009)

The vast majority of articles reproduced the social representation that the ‘greenhouse effect’ and ‘global warming’ constitute a threat:

Articles formulated the social representation of extinction as a potential consequence of global warming:

Social representations theory (SRT) can enhance our understanding of this transition from the scientific to the social and psychological domains. The theory conceptualises public understandings of novel scientific phenomena, focusing upon the ways in which these phenomena are anchored to existing linguistic categories in the socio-psychological domain and objectified in terms of a ‘concrete’ reality (Moscovici, 1988).

The act of burning is anchored to ‘global trouble’ through the construction of the ‘smouldering threat’:

ABSTRACT In Britain, climate change first made its transition from scientific discourse to the political and public domain in the summer of 1988. The present study sets out to examine the main social representations disseminated by the British broadsheet Press during the year of 1988. Qualitative thematic analysis was applied to 63 articles deemed to be of empirical and theoretical use to the study. The analysis was informed by social representations theory. The following themes were identified: (i) ‘climate change: a multi-faceted threat’; (ii) ‘climate change aggression’; and (iii) ‘imminent extinction. It is argued that the first theme represents the core of the dominant social representation concerning climate change, while the second and third themes refer to the peripheral elements of the representation. In unison, these elements give meaning to the over-arching social representation of climate change as a ‘multi-faceted threat to life’.

“The menace of the greenhouse effect…” (The Guardian, 13th February 1988) There is a tendency to juxtapose representations of ‘small’ change and ‘dramatic’ consequences, leading to representational conflation: “An average of small global warming could have dramatic effects” (The Guardian, 15th March 1988)

“The smouldering threat – When farmers burn off straw stubble they are stoking up global trouble” (The Guardian, 28th June 1988)

“Shifts in climatic zones could wipe out the coniferous forests of Canada and Northern Europe” (The Guardian, 13th February 1988) Use of the present continuous tense constructs the process of extinction as ongoing and in progress: ‘Trees – indeed whole forests – are dying. Lakes are becoming sterile” (The Guardian, 5th July 1988) The ‘end of world’ metaphor reinforces the representation of extinction: “Hello and welcome to the beginning of the end of world news” (The Guardian, 5th July 1988)

DISCUSSION • Climate change is socially represented in terms of ‘global warming’ and the ‘greenhouse effect’.

Using relevant strands of SRT, this study provides an indepth analysis of media representations of ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ in the 1988 British broadsheet Press. The aims of the study are two-fold, namely (i) to understand the ideological backdrop against which public understandings are formed; and (ii) to trace the emerging social representation of climate change.

• The central ‘core’ of the social representation is ‘climate change as a collective threat’ and the peripheral elements concern (ii) its ‘aggressive’ nature; and (ii) its ability to bring about extinction.

The Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies (CSET) Building, University of Nottingham, Ningbo Campus, China

CLIMATE CHANGE AGGRESSION

The dominance of this social representation in the British broadsheet Press in 1988 may explain enhanced public concern with climate change, manifested partly in the improved political performance of the UK Green Party in 1989. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project is funded by the ESRC/ORA fund. The University of Nottingham and the VU Amsterdam are the participating institutions.

CONTACT Dr Rusi Jaspal; Professor Brigitte Nerlich Institute for Science and Society, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK [email protected]; [email protected]

The objectification strategy of personalisation is employed - active, agentive and ‘human’ lexical items are attributed to the inanimate construct of ‘greenhouse effect’ and its climatic by-products:

Bio-domes at dusk, University of Nottingham, Sutton Bonington Campus

METHOD Using LexisNexis™, we conducted a search of British broadsheet newspaper articles published between 1st January 1988 and 31st December 1988, containing either of the two keywords ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’.

“The greenhouse effect is the remorseless build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere” (The Guardian, 13th February 1998) Having attributed human characteristics to climate change, the Press accenuates the social representation of climatic ‘aggression’ through the use of verbs of coercion and asphyxiation:

• This configuration of the core and peripheral elements of the social representation constructs climate change in terms of a ‘multifaceted danger to life’. • The dominance of this social representation may explain greater public concern surrounding climate change and social action, such as the strong performance of the UK Green Party in the 1989 European elections (Hulme & Turnpenny, 2004). REFERENCES •

Out of the 181 articles, 63 were identified as being empirically and theoretically insightful and selected for analysis, using a social constructionist variant of in-depth qualitative thematic analysis, incorporating strands of discursive psychology and metaphor analysis.

“The Earth’s atmosphere is being choked by pollution […] forcing the world into a ‘greenhouse effect’ of global warming” (The Times, 5th April 1988) This results in the construction of climate change as an aggressive threat

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Hulme, M. (2009). Why we disagree about climate change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hulme, M. & Turnpenny, J. (2004). Understanding and managing climate change: the UK experience. The Geographical Journal, 170(2), 105–115. Moscovici, S. (1988). "Notes towards a description of social representations". Journal of European Social Psychology 18 (3): 211–250 Nerlich, B. (2010). ‘Climategate': Paradoxical metaphors and political paralysis. Environmental Values, 19(4), 419-442.