McGovern, Rhonda and Thorne, Peter (2020) Citizens assemble: a study on the impact of climatereporting in the Irish media‘before’,‘during’and‘after’theCitizens’Assemblyon‘how the state canmake Ireland a leader in tackling climate change’. Irish Political Studies. ISSN 0790-7184

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Abstract

TheCitizens' Assembly, a form of deliberative mini-public, tasked 99 ordinary Irish citizens with the responsibility of deliberating on five topics, after which they made recommendations to government. Throughout assembly meetings members were presented with up-to-date accurate information from experts. 'How the State can make Ireland a leader in tackling climate change' was considered third by the assembly over two weekends. On the final day the citizens voted on thirteen strongly endorsed recommendations for government to act on. The release of the final report in April 2018 saw a further four ancillary recommendations added. There was considerable media coverage surrounding theCitizens' Assemblyfor this topic. This research undertakes a content analysis of four national media sources over fifteen-months; theFarmers Journal, theIrish Independent, The Irish TimesandTheJournal.ie. We found that climate related reporting became more neutral in tone and more divergent in its relationship to evidence over the research period. There was a reflection of the key themes from theCitizens' Assemblyin each media source, and themes changed through time for each publication. Two of the media sources examined increased their overall levels of climate reporting while the other two decreased.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Citizens’Assembly; deliberative democracy; mini-publics; climate crisis; climate change;content analysis; media; adaptation;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units, ICARUS
Item ID:	13946
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1080/07907184.2020.1811970
Depositing User:	Peter Thorne
Date Deposited:	05 Feb 2021 12:48
Journal or Publication Title:	Irish Political Studies
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Refereed:	No
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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