Media Coverage of El Nino: The Rise of a Signal Event

.This study is based on a content analysis of news coverage of the 1997-98 El Nino in a diverse group of American newspapers and on American network television. At the beginning of the study period news articles focused almost exclusively on the science of the prediction and the complexity of the process. By November a different narrative emerged. While climatologists would certainly assert that winter is the rainy season in the west and that it is extraordinarily difficult to link an extra inch of rain on any given day to El Nino, this sense of bounded uncertainty failed to permeate news reports. In terms of narrative structure of news, El Nino, in the space of four months, had shifted from a prediction worthy of scientific study and re-evaluation to climatological fact.

In addition, mention of and concern with El Nino also permeated the popular culture. Because popular culture spans issues of fact and fiction, El Nino became imbedded with cultural meaning –a lose metaphor for events beyond individual control and with a variety of consequences, almost all of them bad. A study focusing exclusively on news coverage thus under-reports the number of mentions of El Nino in the media, many of them poorly anchored in the actual science of the event.

Risk communication scholars have noted that some events take on a life of their own. Phrased most simply, a "signal event" is a symbolic interpretation of an actual instance of risk that takes on a meaning which has cultural as well as scientific overtones (Anderson, 1997). Signal events are symbolically charged. They become, in a cultural and political sense, larger than the original occurrence.

While a firm conclusion necessitates the passage of some time, it is the contention of this paper that media coverage of the 1997-98 El Nino represents a political and cultural signal, but not of the regular warming of the oceans. Instead, media coverage of El Nino became a signal for the warming of the globe which, while scientifically inaccurate, still provide important political and cultural cues for how American society may attempt to cope with global climate change