Welcome to the nineteenth OneOcean briefing, and our second briefing of 2021! This briefing looks at legacy media coverage and social media conversation over February 1-14. The briefing analyses coverage of the ocean, the climate and biodiversity and compares the effectiveness of these issues in permeating mainstream media.
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Summary of findings
Although the climate crisis continued to dominate in terms of volume of coverage across the briefing period, the single story to gain the most traction had a biodiversity focus – the publication of the Dasgupta Review on the economics of biodiversity. Commissioned by the UK Treasury, this review assigning economic value to nature received coverage far beyond UK borders, likely benefiting from zeitgeist conversations around sustainable COVID-19 economic recovery across the world.
Beyond the Dasgupta Review, coverage of the ocean, climate and biodiversity featured a broad range of topics. Climate crisis articles continued to have a strong human impact angle, with a notable number of articles on risks to human health. In ocean coverage, impact articles tended to be species specific, with a focus on sharks and the impact of sound pollution on marine life.
Other general communication trends the data highlighted this week were the effectiveness of networks in climate communication – from faith networks, to K-Pop fans – which has prompted our consideration of what non-ocean networks we might have access to as the OneOcean Flotilla.
On social media, the key story was the Indian farmers’ protest, an issue that has been considerably elevated by celebrity voices and climate activists.