Media Discourses and Communal Stances on Climate Change in Cameroon

Abstract

Climate change is arguably one of the most unforeseen threats of the 21^st century. More than ever before, national and international conferences are organised regularly with heated political debates on why, who, how and when to frame polices with eco-protective strategies.  In the face of these heated political debates, the role of the media in informing public opinion on the stakes of the crisis is indispensable. While the media mitigate and communicate climate change stories, there are observable discrepancies and diverse communal stances on the issue. The present study investigates the frequency and mitigation of media transmission of climate change realities in four leading Cameroonian newspapers and the stances of vulnerable locals towards the issue. From a corpus-based perspective, 30 editions of three Cameroonian leading newspapers published between the months of April and June 2018 were closely analysed to find out the frequency of publication and the degree of mitigation of climate change stories. Three publishers and 200 farmers were interviewed to ascertain their stances on the issue. The results revealed a relatively insignificant recurrence of climate change stories which stems from publishers’ subjective categorisation of “current” news in the country. Informed farmers perceived the issue as a distinct domestic phenomenon with a possible national effect, while their uninformed counterparts attributed the crisis to the natural order of climatic variation on planet earth. Such perceptions certainly inhibit against effective agencies to climate change solutions.

Keywords: Media Discourses, Communal Stances, Climate Change, Cameroon

DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/9-11-06

Publication date:June 30^th 2019