Impactful, Negative, or Proximate Heatwaves?: News Values in Heatwave Reporting in the Journalistic Discourse of the United Kingdom and India
Heikkilä, Elisa (2024)
2024
Englannin kielen ja kirjallisuuden maisteriohjelma - Master's Programme in English Language and Literature
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2024-05-14
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202404234172
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202404234172
Tiivistelmä
This thesis aims to determine how heatwaves are represented and reported in news outlets of different political leanings in two target countries: the United Kingdom and India. Heatwaves have been called one of the most deadly and dangerous weather phenomena, and the frequency and intensity of them has increased due to climate change. As news media is one of the most used sources for information about climate change, it has immense responsibility and power over how climate change and its related phenomena, such as heatwaves, are understood by the public. News values are one way through which reporters choose what is “newsworthy” about a topic or event, and thus how to represent it.
The research questions of this thesis focus on how, and through which news values, are heatwaves reported in the target countries, and whether there are differences between the reporting of different political leanings or different nations. Four news outlets were chosen for analysis: one left-leaning and one right-leaning outlet from both target nations. These are The Guardian, the Daily Mail, The Times of India, and the Hindustan Times. The data for this thesis consists of news articles published in these outlets during the summer of 2023 in which at least one of the search terms heatwave, heat wave, heatwaves, and heat waves appears. Articles of each outlet were compiled into their own corpora, and the strongest collocates for the search terms were determined in each. The collocates were further connected to semantic categories, which were finally linked to news values to determine what representations and values were dominant in each corpus.
Previous research has described the news field in Britain as heavily politicised, which resulted in the hypotheses that there would be differences in reporting based on the outlet’s political leaning and the differences would be stronger in the British outlets than in the Indian ones. Additionally, common characteristics for heatwave and climate reporting in both nations have been introduced in previous research. The findings of this thesis were similar to the previous research. Differences were found between the reporting of the two nations and political leanings, the latter more distinct in the UK’s outlets. However, the news values emerging in all outlets were very similar. This suggests that there is some uniformity in heatwave reporting, even though differences do exist between the political leanings and nations.
The research questions of this thesis focus on how, and through which news values, are heatwaves reported in the target countries, and whether there are differences between the reporting of different political leanings or different nations. Four news outlets were chosen for analysis: one left-leaning and one right-leaning outlet from both target nations. These are The Guardian, the Daily Mail, The Times of India, and the Hindustan Times. The data for this thesis consists of news articles published in these outlets during the summer of 2023 in which at least one of the search terms heatwave, heat wave, heatwaves, and heat waves appears. Articles of each outlet were compiled into their own corpora, and the strongest collocates for the search terms were determined in each. The collocates were further connected to semantic categories, which were finally linked to news values to determine what representations and values were dominant in each corpus.
Previous research has described the news field in Britain as heavily politicised, which resulted in the hypotheses that there would be differences in reporting based on the outlet’s political leaning and the differences would be stronger in the British outlets than in the Indian ones. Additionally, common characteristics for heatwave and climate reporting in both nations have been introduced in previous research. The findings of this thesis were similar to the previous research. Differences were found between the reporting of the two nations and political leanings, the latter more distinct in the UK’s outlets. However, the news values emerging in all outlets were very similar. This suggests that there is some uniformity in heatwave reporting, even though differences do exist between the political leanings and nations.