What are the factors that lead to peaks and troughs in newspapers´ coverage of climate change?

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Environmental Sciences, grade: 71, University of Southampton, language: English, abstract: According to Ereaut and Segnit (2006), climate change is one of the greatest challenges during this century. Its consequences concern the global population. It stands to reason that newspapers regularly cover it. In the United Kingdom, there is now more coverage of climate science and governance than ever before (Ereaut & Segnit, 2006, p.7). But there have always been considerable fluctuations in the coverage of climate change in the newspapers that lead to peaks and troughs. Ungar argues, that the public relies on the media for information about scientific issues (Ungar, 2010). That shows the high importance of media coverage on certain topics. This essay attempts to give some explanations why there are peaks and troughs in the coverage and tries to investigate the factors that cause this volatility.