Oh, fantastic. Another unreadable study with a title so boring it might as well come with a pillow for nap breaks: Localizing (or Not) Climate Change in Spanish-Language Newspapers in the United States. Don’t let that faux-neutral title fool you. This paper is the academic equivalent of a toddler stomping its feet because it didn’t get its way. Spanish-language newspapers aren’t panicking enough about the climate? Time for a lecture!
ABSTRACT
Most research on climate change news coverage has examined individual countries or cross-national comparisons and has focused largely on mainstream news outlets. Scholars have not thoroughly examined ethnic media that serve as a main source of information for minoritized people, such as Latin American immigrants, the primary audience for Spanish-language publications in the United States. This study examines Spanish-language newspaper coverage of climate change in the United States using thematic analysis. Results show that news coverage during 2010 and 2013 was very limited, followed by a positive trend between 2014 and 2019. Coverage dipped in 2020 and 2021. Results show that the coverage resembles coverage in mainstream English-language media, and does not localize the issue for their audiences, which suggests a significant information gap for millions of immigrants.
…
The present study examines Spanish-language newspaper coverage of climate change in the United States using thematic analysis. Most past research on climate change news coverage has examined individual countries or cross-national comparisons (e.g. Hase et al., Citation2021). That research has mostly focused on mainstream news outlets, with a recent focus on specialized publications (e.g. Russell et al., Citation2023). Researchers have not examined ethnic or immigrant media that serve as a main source of information for minoritized people, such as Latin American immigrants, the primary audience for Spanish-language publications. This study examines the extent to which climate coverage in US Spanish-language media localize the issue – similar to other issues of importance to Spanish-language publications. Climate reporting poses challenges for immigrant media, which often prioritize content that supports community assimilation – such as local news, legal services, and health care – over specialized, technical topics that may seem less immediately relevant to their audience’s daily lives (Takahashi et al., Citation2015).
What follows is a tour de force of tone-deaf paternalism, packed with enough buzzwords and woke terminology to choke a climate-conscious electric vehicle. Let’s break it down.
The Paternalistic Tone
The authors Bruno Takahashi and María Fernanda Salas must have been wearing capes while writing this. You can almost hear them whispering, “Don’t worry, marginalized communities! We’ll show you the way!” This paper oozes the kind of elitist arrogance that assumes a Florida construction worker or California farmhand needs academics to teach them about the real dangers in their lives. Spoiler alert: they don’t.
The authors complain that Spanish-language newspapers like La Opinión and El Diario la Prensa aren’t sufficiently alarmist about climate change. Apparently, stories about hurricanes, wildfires, or the local impacts of rising temperatures aren’t “localized” enough. According to these ivory-tower heroes, these papers should be running wall-to-wall climate hysteria rather than focusing on things their audiences actually care about—like immigration policies, health concerns, and, you know, making rent.
Instead of recognizing that these newspapers prioritize content their communities find relevant, the authors swoop in with the grace of a malfunctioning drone to criticize. How dare these outlets focus on practical matters when there’s an abstract “climate crisis” to spotlight? Takahashi and Salas seem to believe that Spanish-speaking communities are just waiting to be enlightened by headlines about melting glaciers in Antarctica.
Offensive Jargon: “Latinx” and Friends
We have to talk about the linguistic crimes committed here, starting with “Latinx.” Despite the fact that 97% , (a real 97% btw) of Hispanic people have rejected this bizarre concoction, academics just won’t let it go. It’s like a bad fashion trend that no one asked for but keeps showing up on the runway. The authors sprinkle “Latinx” throughout the paper as if it’s universally embraced, blissfully unaware that most Spanish speakers consider it at best unnecessary and at worst offensive.
But wait—there’s more! Enter “minoritized,” a term that sounds like it was created in a college activism seminar after too many pumpkin spice lattes. “Minoritized” is supposed to be an upgrade from “marginalized,” because why use a perfectly good word when you can create a clunky replacement that makes you sound more important? This term gets deployed liberally to describe communities that, according to the authors, are victims of their own media’s failure to adequately fearmonger about the climate.
The Idiocy of “Localization”
One of the authors’ main gripes is that Spanish-language newspapers fail to “localize” climate change coverage. Let’s unpack this nonsense. According to Takahashi and Salas, articles about hurricanes devastating Florida or wildfires scorching California aren’t localized enough because they don’t always connect these events explicitly to climate change. Apparently, describing the immediate impacts of natural disasters isn’t sufficient without a lecture about global carbon emissions.
Here’s an idea: maybe local audiences care more about finding resources to rebuild after a hurricane than about a report from the IPCC. But no, the authors insist that these newspapers are failing their communities by not sufficiently integrating climate science into their disaster reporting. It’s the academic version of yelling at someone for not reading the ingredients on a box of cereal while they’re starving.
“Raising Awareness” Is Not a Solution
As expected, the authors fall back on the tired cliché of “raising awareness.” You know, because if people just knew about the climate crisis, they’d stop driving cars, plant trees, and hold hands around a solar panel. The authors provide no evidence that more localized climate coverage would inspire meaningful change. They simply assume that Spanish-speaking communities would suddenly embrace Net Zero policies if their newspapers ran more articles blaming extreme weather on climate change.
This blind faith in the transformative power of awareness is painfully naive. If decades of mainstream media coverage haven’t moved the needle much, why would Spanish-language outlets suddenly change the game? But hey, when you live in a bubble of academic groupthink, facts don’t really matter.
The Paris Agreement: A Familiar Villain
A significant chunk of the paper’s analysis centers on coverage of the Paris Agreement, because nothing says “local news” like a global climate summit. The authors praise newspapers for increasing climate coverage during Trump’s presidency, attributing the spike to his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Of course, they can’t resist taking a swipe at Trump, framing his climate skepticism as uniquely dangerous. This narrative is so predictable it might as well come with its own theme music.
Meanwhile, the authors bemoan the dip in climate coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic. Imagine their dismay when newspapers prioritized, you know, a global health panic over their pet topic. But in the world of climate academia, nothing—not even the global pandemic coverage—should overshadow the climate crisis.
“Solutions” for Spanish-Language Media
The authors conclude with a list of “practical implications,” which boil down to telling Spanish-language media to copy-paste mainstream climate narratives. They suggest these outlets adopt “solutions journalism” and practice “solidarity journalism,” which are just fancy ways of saying, “Be less objective and push our agenda.” The paper also suggests that more training and resources be funneled into these newspapers so they can hire specialized climate reporters. Because what underserved communities really need is more articles about carbon sequestration and fewer about jobs or housing.
Final Thoughts
This paper is a masterclass in academic tone-deafness. It critiques Spanish-language media for failing to center climate change while ignoring the possibility that these outlets know their audiences better than a couple of researchers with word processors and a superiority complex.
Instead of chastising these newspapers for not toeing the climate line, perhaps the authors should spend more time addressing the actual priorities of the communities they claim to care about. Until then, they’ll continue producing unreadable studies filled with terms like “Latinx” and “minoritized” that serve no one but their own egos.
Here’s the harsh truth for Takahashi and Salas: Spanish-language newspapers don’t need your help. What they need is for you to stop treating their audiences like clueless pawns in your climate crusade.
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Chances are excellent that these authors, like many other academics, are much better at preaching climate crisis doctrine than actually fighting it. I wonder how many many pass up opportunities for free flights to climate conferences or have stopped flying altogether? How many are driving EVs and/or mainly utilizing mass transit? What about adopting vegan diets? Etc., etc. and that’s the reason only tiny minorities subscribe to their alarmism or even give them an ear. So it doesn’t make any difference of the ethnicity of these types. since they all have the same message that increasing numbers of the populace ignore.
I just received a solicitation from Physicians for Social Responsibility to make a donation to help them fund this kind of activity.
It began, Dear Scissor,
“I am a hospital-based internal medicine physician, and professor of medicine who teaches future physicians and resident trainees about environmental determinants of human health. I am writing to request your consideration and support in the fight for environmental justice. Compared with older individuals, today’s physician graduates are likely to personally experience higher temperatures and more extreme weather events. In their clinical practice, graduates must be better prepared to recognize, treat, and prevent heat-related illness, health effects of poor air quality, and the acute and chronic sequelae of hurricanes, floods, and wildfires, among other conditions. An essential step in prevention is eliminating climate-warming emissions generated by the U.S. healthcare sector itself, which contributed 8.5% of the total emissions produced by the U.S. at last assessment.
…blah blah” …link for donation.
WOW! How irresponsible of them. !!
Spreading bogus lies and misinformation like that.
ps.. If you want help with a response, you probably better ask someone else 😉
Oh I wish some deluded idiot sent that drivel to me. My response would arrive in a smoking envelope!
So they are soliciting for money to pay for them soliciting for money.
Not to mention that “fighting it” in any manner you mentioned wouldn’t matter to the climate in reality anyway.
Actually, I have a longtime friend whose daughter in an ‘academic’ who drives an EV. The ‘academic is a typical bureaucrat in a university bureaucracy. She’s steeped in the details of her tall and narrow PhD, and pretty much ignorant, except for the lore among her compatriots, of technology outside of it.
For her, the EV is a perfect car. In her own words, “it’s ideal”. She drives alone in the carpool lanes, and then charges it for free at work. Then, whenever she needs a real car, she switches with her dad who only lives a couple of blocks away. That one even often comes with free gas.
“solidarity journalism” ? Whatever happened to the more informative phrase, “group think?”
“Solidarity journalism?” ‘Tis a euphemism, so it is. Like calling winos “homeless,” Nothing wrong with that, until you start believing their problem is actually having no shelter, and attack that “problem,” instead of the alcoholism, addiction, or mental illness. There’s a reason the problem persists, and it’s social services’ believing their own propaganda and putting their funding and effort where it can’t succeed. .
Latinx is screaming “I know no other language but English, and that badly”. English is an outlier in not having grammatical gender, and lefties are ignoring that. Latinx is an atrocity.
Academics say that deliberately mis-gendering someone is a terrible crime of bigotry.
Most Latinos do NOT want to be called Latinx. Therefore, anyone that calls Latinos by the wrong term is a bigot to the tune of at least 600 million people. QED
What’s the masculine form of “toaster” in Spanish?
An AK-47? 😎
“Academics say that deliberately mis-gendering someone is a terrible crime of bigotry.”
They say that even if it’s accidental.
Using rules of language that others don’t understand to beat them over the head with is a linguistic …”ism” we don’t have a name for yet.
If I’m not mistaken, in Spanish, the word for “toaster” is feminine, grammatically.
I study the Bible. Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic all had such designations associated with words and the words related to it in a sentence.
The English spoken at the time of King James paid more attention to things like that.
For example, all those “Thee”s and “Ye”s and “Thou”s and “You”s?
In the original languages all those “Thee”s and “Thou”s were 2nd person singular.
All the “Ye”s and “You”‘s were second person plural.
(Both were also subject or object.)
Modern English just says “you” for all 2nd person singular or plural, subject or object.
The impression I got was that “thee” and “thou” were informal, personal forms, and “you” was the formal form, used when addressing one’s superior.
English went for equality by upgrading everyone, using the former formal form for everyone. The Quakers failed in their attempt at equality, by using the informal for everyone.
That may have been your impression, (Thou’s impression? 😎 ) but that’s not correct.
Romans 10:9 is for the individual who reads it or hears it.
(True, there was the “royal “we”” but that has nothing to do this.)
The English language, over time, wasn’t going for equality. It just got sloppy.
Beaver’s Mom to the stewardess, “I speak Jive”. 😎
English is a mongrel language, not pretentious like French. But that’s good- it can grow and evolve.
And it can de-evolve. As when people say “could care less” when they mean “couldn’t care less”, but the former becomes acceptable. Or when Lectern and Podium become interchangeable. Or when “nucyuler” is considered an alternate pronunciation.
Or “try and” instead of “try to”
had go get in my own annoyance there 🙂
I’d prefer “eclectic” to “mongrel” – but I know what you mean.
“Thy impression” please!
or y’all 🙂
or “y’all’s”. Arrgh.
Aaaaaaack! Everyone knows that the plural of y’all is all y’all!
“Youse”.
Youts
I thought it was “all y’all”?edit: oops, totally missed the “all” in the last phrase!
Y’all clearly don’t know how to speak proper Texian.
Except Australian English (aka ‘Strine’), where people happily use “youse” for 2nd person plural 🙄
In certain parts of the British Isles there’s a distinction between “you” (singular) and “yous” (plural).
Yes I’ve often thought, with a smirk on my face, about the mental gymnastics ‘non-binary’ individuals must go through when deciding whether to apply masculine or feminine versions of words in reference to themselves in many languages.
Some that have masculine or feminine versions also have a neuter form.
(Or should that be “neutered”?) 😎
Do “climate science” degree courses at universities these days include compulsory studies units of “Advanced Propaganda”?
(or is “climate science” really academia-ese for “propaganda”?)
Yes
Minoritize? Is that a real word?
Makes it sound like somebody came along with a magic wand. Poof, you’re now a minority.
“Poof, you’re now a minority.”
Poofs have always been a small minority ! 😉
Apparently you have never been to Hollywood!
Where they are a larger, but quite vocal, minority.
I love it when people named Takehashi from MIchigan tell Latinos what they should think.
It was nice of him to get a Spanish speaking co-author though, shows class.
Latino name, but I doubt anyone fluent (or ever bad) in Spanish would use Latinx.
I hate it when Eco-Nazis of any stripe try to bamboozle people with bullshit to make them think as Eco-Nazis do.
Modern Academic Journalism..
Neither academic, nor journalism. ! Pure mindless activism.
Most non-English language communities have not been subjected to the wall-to-wall propaganda in support of /Global Warming/ that English-speaking communities have. The former is more able to think clearly these days and see real problems before invented problems and the Tooth Fairy.
Well, the French and the Germans certainly have.
Yet more evidence that climatology is a liberal art.
I just got a request for money from a university to “help launch the next great scientific discovery.” However, they bragged about getting 25 million in research grants to “conduct public impact research and enhance experience for students.” They also bragged about publishing in “Nature Communications.” Used to be academics knew, without charge, how to interact with the public, including student relatives, and similarly no extra charge for the experience, except that they had to provide for their own food during field trips. No categorizing, including “minoritized and marginalized,” except for grades.
“In 2020, the Hispanic population in the United States surpassed 62 million people. This means Hispanics account for 19% of the American population and make up the second-largest ethnic or racial group in the country (U.S. Census Bureau, Citation2018).” Minority,? guess they don’t know how to count.
Never heard of the journal “Environmental Communication.” Checked this paper [Shifting Social Representations of Orcas: Content and Prototypical Analysis], guess they didn’t care that they were called “killer whales” for a reason and in Spain it was well known (our son just took a sailboat through there) that ships have to modify their rudders to save the ship. Works better than abstracts. Please translate. Paper costs $53.From their abstract.
“Study 1 indicates that following the onset of this new behavioral pattern, online information about wild orcas increased significantly and became more negative and abstract. Study 2 shows that conflict-related evocations are absent from the core of orcas’ social representations but appear in peripheric dimensions, with aware participants describing orcas with conflict-related words (e.g., attack) to convey their perception of these animals as perpetrators.”
“minoritized people”
A dumb term only an academic could dream up. Why don’t they get back to plain English which is all that is necessary to explain almost anything.
““minoritized people””
That would be Democrat voters, wouldn’t it 😉
The reason is simple: the vacuity and worthlessness of their work would be exposed if they did.
Why Is It Called ‘Latin’ America?
Similar language and not English or German. And I thought of Italy. 😏
Clearly Bruno and Maria have to jump on Joe Rogan to get their dooming message out there to the masses if they’re to save the planet in time.
New York Times reports:
China Bans Rare Mineral Exports to the U.S.The move escalates supply chain warfare and comes a day after the Biden administration expanded curbs on the sale of advanced American technology to China.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/03/world/asia/china-minerals-semiconductors.html
There goes my main source for neodymium refigerator magnets.
Just buy them in their cars-
MG outsells Tesla for first time as Australian EV sales stagnate, despite price war
and wind turbines-
“Not always a great quality:” Leading wind developer may switch from western to Chinese turbines | RenewEconomy
LOL if the Chinese want to stop selling the US windmills and solar panels, GOOD.
We need to stop building that worse-than-useless crap here anyway.
Imagine being an immigrant in California and you drive a truck and rent your home. You pay $1 more for the fuel you buy so rich people can get subsidies on their electric car. You pay the highest electrical rates in the nation so homeowners get subsidies on their electric bill. Food is expensive because farmers are denied water to irrigate crops. The state wants you to convert your truck to an electric model that will force you to recharge its batteries at least once daily during you shift, cutting your productivity by a quarter to a third.
Will that immigrant truck driver be more worried about climate change or the climate policies that are sapping his income and buying power at every turn?
My wife and I visited Yosemite in September. A really basic hotel on the park’s east side (the night before we entered the park) was $265. There was no hot water till I complained. When the manager turned it on for us, I complained about the price. He explained that we had to pay extra for a travel agent when we booked online in advance. Normally the price is $200. I pushed my luck and asked for a partial refund. He refused, saying, “This is California. We have a higher cost of living.”
I remember when hole-in-the wall motels like that one in other states across the West and Midwest
were $60 – $80 / night.
Today’s crummy jobs report is “good news” for inflation, so the markets are up. Go figure.
You need a dictionary/glossary when reading this garbage (in no particular order):
Coverage – Propaganda.
Localizing climate change: Spreading climate propaganda.
Climate change news coverage – Climate propaganda.
Minoritized people – People insufficiently saturated in climate propaganda.
Audience – Targets for climate propaganda.
Limited – Insufficient climate propaganda to satisfy Eco-Nazis.
Positive trend – Increased climate propaganda.
Climate change news – Climate propaganda.
Scholars – Eco-Nazis.
Research – Search by Eco-Nazis for climate propaganda.
Examined – Scoured by Eco-Nazis searching for climate propaganda.
Mainstream news outlets – Organizations already marching in goose-step with Eco-Nazis.
Climate change – Fictitious human induced crisis.
Study – Taxpayer funded propaganda.
News coverage – Propaganda.
Thematic analysis – Eco-Nazis searching for climate propaganda.
Coverage of climate change – Propaganda.
Coverage dipped – Reduction in climate propaganda.
Thoroughly examined – Scrutinized in search for climate propaganda.
Source of information – Potential conduit for climate propaganda.
Results – Complaints about the lack of sufficient climate propaganda by Eco-Nazis.
Localize – Propagandize weather events via false connection to “climate change.”
Information gap – Insufficient saturation of climate propaganda.
Past research – Previous search by Eco-Nazis for climate propaganda.
Researchers – Eco-Nazis.
Climate reporting – Climate propaganda.
Other issues of importance – ACTUAL issues of importance.
Poses challenges – Climate propaganda lacks sufficient importance to crowd out meaningful reporting.
Specialized, technical topics – Propaganda.
May seem less immediately relevant – Are IRRELEVANT.
Raising awareness – Misinforming with propaganda.
Solutions journalism – Propaganda.
Solidarity journalism – Propaganda.
You get the idea.
I have lived all my life around Mexicans and, lately, Central Americans. It amuses me that the Democrat Party thinks these folks belong to them because, well, they’re oppressed and they’re brown, and don’t all brown people think alike?
Leftists don’t realize that the average “Latinx” actually, viscerally hates much of what the Left stands for, starting with that idiotic label. They are overwhelmingly culturally conservative, and really don’t GAS about climate change, which they dismiss as Gringo hysteria. They live in the real world with real problems and have no time for luxury fixations. Their views on Blue hot-button issues are also generally antithetical to the orthodoxy.
But Leftists are as clueless as they are didactic, so they don’t get this. Hispanic folks are not going to join a party that thinks of them as pets. And if they were to actually do so, they would shift the party in ways that the authors of this nitwit study would mos’ def not like.
So they are pushing advocacy journalism rather than the tried and proven objective journalism
Identity politics.
The beatings will continue until moral improves.
The insanity will continue until excessive damage is inflictted.
“immigrant media”. Ugh. How….. racist?
In brief this is an exercise in propaganda, not an objective study of how real science is covered in media. Real science has absolutely nothing to do with this. If media only covered real science in an objective manner this issue of worrying about people not worrying enough about a non-existent climate threat would not be a thing. Here’s a thought – why don’t we stop people from being rewarded for lying to us every single day?