Amazing study of the IPCC and media concludes: "…reception and coverage in the media has varied widely."

They forgot the frame
Bemusement

In my corner of the world (Canada), the overwhelmingly left-leaning media almost exclusively presents the IPCC “findings” as absolute truths. The existence of scientists who don’t agree with the IPCC is not mentioned. From this position, these media “presentations” veer off into tirades about the Canadian government inaction. Usually, these attacks will proceed through “interviews” with figureheads of the green movement, such as David Suzuki or Elizabeth May.
It is a simple recipe for propaganda aimed at brainwashing the public. As so many of my friends and relatives have condescendingly told me when I tried to talk a bit of sense into them: “Come on…Global Warming is undisputable: It’s all over the news”

They just can’t understand why nobody is buying what they’re selling.

Not the Geography I knew.
Dr Saffron O’Neill publications.
“Fear Won’t Do It” Promoting Positive Engagement With Climate Change Through Visual and Iconic Representation
Reorienting climate change communication for effective mitigation: forcing people to be green or fostering grass-roots engagement?
Is weather event attribution necessary for adaptation funding (With Mike Hulme!)
https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=ZKv0sHoAAAAJ&hl=en

Amazing the things one can get paid money for these days. I suspect that with the “creative distruction” of 90% of the jobs that existed 100 years ago by machines “creative employment” has been necessary to keep people busy in the capitalist system whilst we wait for more useful industries to be invented. It’s only a theory, but with the proper funding Im sure I could find more solid evidence for it. Send cheques to….

This paper is distinctly a case of Saffron Journalism presented as science. I’ll admit I’ve never heard of Dr. Saffron, but I am familiar with the fifth co-author, Maxwell Boykoff. He is the founding father of the “Balance is Bias” meme that attempts to justify and encourage censorship and suppression of “dissenting” opinions. You can read more about this guy’s approach in some favorable articles
http://www.brightsurf.com/news/headlines/52771/CU-Boulder_prof_speaks_on_mass_media_role_in_climate_change_skepticism.html and
http://www.fair.org/staging/index.php?page=7&issue_area_id=12 (if you’re OK giving those creeps your e-mail)
along with some critical articles at
http://educate-yourself.org/glw/goremediastudynotscientific02mar07.shtml and
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/balance-bias-when-reporting-global-warming-study-claims
His bio http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/max_boykoff/ says he’s not a climate scientist™ but has a degree in Psychology and is interested in “environmental governance”. Boykoff’s magnum opus, written with his brother Jules, “Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias: Creating controversy where science finds consensus.” claims “that when it comes to U.S. media coverage of global warming, superficial balance—telling “both” sides of the story—can actually be a form of informational bias.” He blames the misinformation on “conservative Think Tanks” (as opposed to the UN Stink Tank, I presume). The title of his panel talk (with Naomi Oreskes), “Exaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change” with the D-word applied to “outlier” views is an attempt to marginalize those who disagree with him using tactics (toned down for an academic audience) right out of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals #12: Destroy the Individual…. Pick the target, freeze, personalize, polarize, and isolate it.
Balance is Bias.– Boykoff Brothers, 2004
War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. Freedom is Slavery.– Big Brother, 1984

I understand the IPCC quite clearly-
IPCC-
“Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use”
they haven’t a clue either.

The study was funded through an ESRC Future Research Leader Award to Dr O’Neill, and through the University of Exeter Humanities and Social Sciences Strategic Fund.

Well, there’s your problem.

“We know that some of these frames are more engaging for audiences than others: for example, the Opportunity or Health frames …”
There’s plenty of nonsense here but on a shallow note, what is with using “frame” to mean reference frame? Is there an ink shortage at Exeter? Making a noun out of a transitive verb just sounds so pretentious. The content is bad enough but do they have to dress it up like so much academic baffle gab nonsense?
I’m not sure what annoys me more, academics who can’t think or academics who can’t write!

Since IPCC Assessment reports are not news, the natural reaction of the NEWS media would be to ignore them.

Amazing study of the IPCC and media concludes: “…reception and coverage in the media has varied widely.”
Comment by Jim Hutchison, Oz 27.03.15
I am beginning to feel sorry for the newly minted Dr Saffron. She is a geographer and makes no claim to be a climate scientist. She has learned to publish short articles in the correct journals and keeps careful track of the numbers of citations she generates. Thus she will make a rapid climb to the academic heights. The results of her work are really only a by-product of this climb – almost an unintended consequence. The relevance of her research to the real world ought to be, and apparently is, a secondary consideration.
Part of her PhD work, now published, was to solve the problem of assessing the future population of the Polar Bear – Ursus maritimus – when the current population data are incomplete and inadequate. The paper is:
Using expert knowledge to assess uncertainties in future polar bear populations under climate change
SJ O’Neill, TJ Osborn, M Hulme, I Lorenzoni… – Journal of Applied Ecology, 2008.
The methodology is neat. She found several Polar Bear experts and asked each one to separately estimate the future population of Polar Bears. This Delphi technique suggested to her that the population of the animal will decline in the future. Each of the experts was a member of the Species Survival Commission Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG). Now we know from previous posts at WUWT that this group was some years ago given the task of determining the current population of Polar Bears. We also know that this task has not been completed. Thus, ironically, the problem Ms Saffron had to solve arose partly from the failure of ‘her’ experts to carry out tasks which they had earlier been given.
Her conclusion is that the population of this iconic animal will decline in the future.
No doubt she deserved to be awarded her PhD. She would have satisfied her supervisor and examiners. Her writing style would have been correct One of these days she may become a useful researcher.
Of course her results are nonsense. Soundly based science suggests that it is unlikely that Ursus maritimus will be threatened in the foreseeable future by hunting as was the case in the past, or by climate change which is taking place at present.
Two documents throw light on the subject:
First, is the December 2012 issue of the Canadian Geographic Magazine for which the URL is:
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/dec12/polar_bears3.asp
Secondly, is a paper written by Susan Crockford who is the foremost
International expert on the Polar Bear. The URL for this paper is:
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2014/08/
healthy-polarbears.pdf
Her maps show the 19 subpopulation areas inhabited by the animal.
Of note, is the fact that no accurate (or any) population study, has
been undertaken over about half of the area of the subpopulations.
Conducting such population study work was one of the principal reasons
for the establishment of the PBSG.
Crockford discusses the controversial issue of the supposed detrimental
effect on Polar Bears of earlier melt dates of sea ice. This quote is taken
from page 9 of her paper:
“ … a journalist or a polar bear biologist might glibly say, as they
often do, that ‘polar bears need sea ice and the ice is melting’. But
when you know that only late summer ice has declined dramatically
and that spring and early summer ice is what polar bears really need
for survival – a point that is backed up by peer-reviewed research
and sea ice maps that you can download and examine yourself
– you won’t be fooled by such half-truths.”
This commenter’s opinion is that there are probably at least 35,000
polar bears wandering about in the Arctic. That number is increasing
because hunting is tightly controlled; also there is no evidence of an
adverse effect on Polar Bears arising from earlier melting dates of sea
ice.
The Polar Bear is in safe international hands. The likelihood that it
will go extinct from hunting or climate change is miniscule.
Churchill, Manitoba will remain a popular Polar Bear tourist destination
for many years to come.