10/05/2020

Media Data Shows Covid-19 Has Stolen Climate Change's Thunder

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

To get a sense how the impetus for action on climate change has been eclipsed by the COVID-19 pandemic, you only need to look at how the media’s interest on the matter has shifted.

From what looks like an all-time peak in Australia’s interest in a warming world during the bushfire crisis in January - with 4.5 per cent of articles about climate change - interest has since cratered to be less than 1 per cent, according to analysis from Streem, a media monitoring firm.

Stealing their thunder?: A climate change protester in Melbourne during the height of the bushfires. Credit: Chris Hopkins

By April, the number of articles given prominence on the homepage of 12 leading news sites that mentioned climate change in their first 100 words had dropped to 32 from 562 in January, when the bushfire inferno was at its worst.

COVID-19 counted 13,256 slots last month alone."Certainly coronavirus has reached unprecedented levels of media saturation, being mentioned in 80 per cent of stories some days," Conal Hanna, a Streem media analyst, said.

Interestingly, a similar pattern is evident in the United Kingdom, where interest in climate change tracked at levels close to Australia's even though the bushfires had no direct impact other than drawing the media's attention.

Less than one per cent of articles now mention climate change
Percentage of articles published in leading newspapers and websites
Source: Streem



The surge in coronavirus articles in Australia is notable, with four times more articles on the pandemic than all climate change-related news in the past year, Streem data showed.

Previous periods of relatively active interest in climate-related news, such as the address to the United Nations by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, were similarly dwarfed by articles about COVID-19.

Climate change coverage in April was 0.36% that of coronavirus
There were four times more COVID-19 stories in April
than climate change stories in the past year
Source: Streem




Bushfires devastated much of the forests of eastern Australia and elsewhere during the summer of 2019-20. Credit: Rob Blakers.

Mr Hanna said that while the pandemic was always going to dominate Australia's media landscape, other topics have been gaining reader interest in recent weeks.

"The George Pell verdict, the release of Malcolm Turnbull's memoir and the ongoing discussion about football season resumptions are all topics that have generated considerable prominence in the media despite the pandemic," he said.

How COVID-19 redefined 'blanket coverage'
The percentage of print and online news stories mentioning each topic
Source: Streem



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