| 英文摘要: | In the light of its potential benefits, some scientists have been using the concept of risk to frame their discussions of climate change. At the moment, the media hardly pick up on risk language, so can anything be done to encourage them? Social and natural scientists have argued that there may be advantages in presenting the climate change challenge as one of managing risk in a context of uncertainty, at least for decision-makers and other target audiences1, 2, 3. Throughout his life, Professor Stephen Schneider regularly used the everyday concept of house insurance in communicating climate risks to the public, often via the media4. There is strong evidence that risk language and concepts are now being used more often in the dissemination of major science-based reports, and by politicians urging action on climate change5. No studies have been carried out to map the shifts over time in the relative presence of the language of risk compared with other discourses (such as disaster or uncertainty) in the framing of the climate change challenge by the IPCC. But simple metrics applied to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) published in 2014–2015 compared with those used in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) in 2007 do suggest that a shift is happening. The word 'risk' appeared more than 230 times in the 26-page Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) for the Working Group II (WGII) report in AR5, compared with 40 times in the 22-page SPM for the WGII report in AR4.
The specific concept of risk management was conspicuous in the communication of the AR5 WGII report. For example, Professor Chris Field, a co-chair of WGII, explicitly used a risk framing when referring to the future impacts of climate change and the solutions available to mitigate them. He gave two reasons why such a characterization is helpful6: “The first is the importance of considering the full range of possible outcomes, including not only high-probability outcomes. It also considers outcomes with much lower probabilities but much, much larger consequences. Second, characterizing climate change as a challenge in managing risks opens doors to a wide range of options for solutions.” The WGII SPM contained a risk chart illustrating high-probability outcomes such as threats to Arctic sea ice and coral reefs, and low-probability, high-impact outcomes such as large-scale, singular events like tipping points7. It also contained a long list of possible policy solutions to manage the risks, such as sea walls and coastal protection. In the IPCC press release for WGII, 'risk' was mentioned 22 times, and 'risk management' four times8. One veteran environment correspondent observed that the key message of WGII could “be summed up in one word that the overall report uses more than 5,000 times: risk”9. Risk is a concept used throughout the social sciences10. It can range in meaning from a more colloquial sense of a possible adverse impact, to the more technical sense of the likelihood of harm multiplied by the severity of the consequences; it can also refer to the practice of assigning probabilities or confidence levels to different outcomes. But journalists in print and broadcast mainstream media rarely seem to pick up on risk concepts, even if these are given to them in press releases and SPMs. This is important because despite the boom in niche online sites, blogs and social media, legacy media such as television and newspapers in print or online are still by far the most consulted and trusted in many countries for general science news11. A study of the IPCC's 2007 WGI and WGII reports analysed the content of around 150 print newspaper articles published in six countries covering the reports to assess, among other things, the presence of risk language5. The study measured the presence of the word 'risk', and measured where the odds or probabilities of something adverse happening were given, or where everyday concepts or language relating to insurance, betting or the precautionary principle were included. The 'likelihood' terminology used by the IPCC in phrases such as 'extremely likely' (together with the associated numeric probability, 95% in this case) was also considered an indicator of risk language. Even with such a comprehensive characterization of risk, the results showed that the 'explicit risk' language was present in only 35% of the articles, whereas the uncertainty or disaster/catastrophe languages were present in 80–90% of them. Research into the use by English-language media of the IPCC 'likelihood' terminology in the 2013 WGI report came to similar conclusions12. It found that although many of the 2,038 news items examined used the term 'extremely likely', just 55 “made only a passing reference to the IPCC definitions of 'extremely likely' and 'virtually certain'”. In a recent analysis of television coverage of all the 2013–2014 AR5 Working Group reports in six countries (Australia, Brazil, China, India, the United Kingdom and the United States), explicit risk language, compared with uncertainty, disaster and opportunity, was again the least present11. An extensive study of the dominant frames evident in legacy and social media coverage of the same IPCC reports did not include 'explicit risk' as one of its 13 frames13. The study concluded, however, that the opportunity and economic frames, where risk language would most likely be found, were far less prevalent than other frames such as settled science, disaster and uncertain science.
These studies of media coverage suggest that journalists did not pick up on the language of risk in a volume and detail commensurate with the degree to which it was being heavily sponsored by some IPCC co-chairs and lead authors. This may be in part because the concept of 'risk management' sounds like a specialist or jargon-ridden term, which most journalists find problematic. It is also a difficult one to explain visually for television. The disaster frame lends itself to a strong narrative and pictures, which television news needs, whereas explicit risk is more of an issue or concept than a story. Similarly, the idea of quantifying uncertainty through confidence and probability rankings is a complex one for all journalists, who may worry that their audience will find the concepts hard to understand. Survey work from the United States suggests that journalists covering environmental issues rarely adopt scientific concepts or assessments of risk as a basic news value, but instead follow traditional values of timeliness, proximity, human interest, prominence and consequence (or arresting visual images for television)14. For example, a survey of more than 600 environment reporters, carried out in the early 2000s, found that a risk assessment angle was the least likely storyline or framework of the nine examined15. Interviews with experienced environment journalists suggested mixed attitudes as to the helpfulness of risk language and IPCC concepts in communicating the climate challenge5. A common exception seems to be some business newspapers. Table 1 gives four examples from the Financial Times in the second half of 2014, where risk language was used in an editorial and in the commentaries of its senior column writer, Martin Wolf.
Thanks go to R. Black, K. de Meyer and S. O'Neill for comments on an earlier draft of this Commentary.
Affiliations
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James Painter is at the Reuters Institute, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, 13 Norham Gardens, Oxford OX2 6PS, UK
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