Money and Meaning in the Climate Change Debate: Organizational Power, Cultural Resonance, and the Shaping of American Media Discourse

Abstract

The author investigates why some framings of climate change are publicized in American mainstream media while others are not, examining organizational power and cultural resonance as two paths through which messages may gain visibility. First, she uses automated text analysis to identify climate change frames in interest groups’ press releases (N=1,768), coding frames for features believed to heighten cultural resonance. Then, she uses plagiarism-detection software to identify which messages were publicized in three major newspapers, 1985–2014. She finds that policy messages from structurally powerful interest groups such as business coalitions have received disproportionate media attention in the US climate debate. However, organizational resources alone are not determinative of messages’ success. Political messages are also more likely to receive visibility when they leverage sources of cultural power, such as by appealing to the latent worldviews of American audiences or their pragmatic concerns at particular historical moments. Results suggest both cultural and organizational power have shaped the perspectives given visibility in the American climate change debate, while also describing limits on either form of power to determine media discourse.