The role of the media in spreading up climatic information:the El Niño of 1997-98

Authors

  • Lucí Hidalgo NUNES

Abstract

The media has dedicated regular attention to climatic information, but the public understanding of weather and climate information varies according to the individual interest and previous knowledge, so that the use of the same information can be quite different among distinct societal groups. Besides, precise and fast information can be transformed in economical profits or losses, or can even save lives. This study aimed to evaluate the role of the media in spreading climatic information up by analysing the El Niño event of 1997-1998, whose effects impacted many areas of the world, including South America. The analysis was carried out considering the news published in “O Estado de S.Paulo”, from May 1997 to May 1998. Aspects such as the importance of the matter in every newspaper issue (cover page, size of the information) the frequency of news and the ways in which the information was treated (how precise, complete etc) were considered. Results showed that the number of news related to El Niño were more concentrated from September 1997. The phenomenon was related to different themes (agriculture, tourism, economy, health) and while some of

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Issue

Vol. 32 No. 1 (2007)

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Article

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The authors maintain the copyright and grant GEOGRAFIA the right of first publication, with the articles simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 License, which allows sharing and adapting the articles for any purpose, as long as appropriate credits and provisions of image rights, privacy or moral rights. Other legal attributions can be accessed at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.en.

 

Geography, Rio Claro, SP, Brazil - eISSN 1983-8700 is licensed under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 License.