2011 Volume 9 Pages 70-83
This paper analyzes how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is portrayed in three major Japanese newspapers by employing framing analysis, and what the social implications are. To conduct a systematic and comprehensive analysis for this purpose, we employed Pan and Kosicki’s framing devices and applied them to articles which refer directly to “IPCC” during the period of 1988 to 2007 (we analyzed a total of 1206 articles). From the results we found that the IPCC is portrayed as a “value-free,” “apolitical,” and “rational” scientific assessment body which alarms society with its predictions of disastrous climate change impacts. We also found that all three major Japanese newspapers portray the IPCC almost identically. The social implications of this IPCC portrayal to Japanese society are: 1. Considering Japan’s current level of greenhouse gas emissions and the status of proposed climate policy implementation, the portrayal of the IPCC as described above may not have been a factor influencing Japanese climate policies; 2. This IPCC portrayal may prevent rich understanding of IPCC’s climate science in Japanese society because it emphasizes only scientific aspects and totally ignores the ethical and/or political aspects of the IPCC and its reports.
