Who Captures the Voice of the Climate? Policy Networks and the Political Role of Media in Australia, France and Japan

Climate change is by some scholars labelled a “wicked problem”, with no single problem definition and hence no ultimate solution. Such wickedness makes climate change policy-making dependent on complex networks of actors with specific interests and resources, so-called ‘policy networks’. From the perspective of policy networks, in this chapter we compare voice representation in the IPCC AR5 coverage across three countries, Australia, France and Japan. Understanding who is selected by media to speak about climate change assists in building knowledge of how media operate in climate policy networks. Our aim was to understand how news coverage is constructed in local political cultures, but also to address questions about the media’s role in the complex nexus of science–policy–media networks in different countries. To conclude, based on the findings and our analysis, we suggest that a new role of broker-journalism would aid navigation of the heavily politicised and ideologically driven discourse about climate change.