ISSN 2360-7963
Abstract
Accepted 17th July, 2017
This paper examines how effective and comprehensive climate change is reported by national newspapers in Kenya, and the general interest and satisfaction of newspaper readers in climate change stories carried in the newspapers. Through cross-sectional study design, the study involved library analysis of The Daily Nation, The Standard and The People newspapers published during the period January to December 2014. Through survey design, mixed questionnaires were administered to 324 public high school teachers out of the total population of 2003 in Nairobi County, selected from each Sub-County according to the ratio of Sub-County teacher numbers to the total population in the County, to represent newspaper readership. Results indicate that climate change reporting in the newspapers is not significant hence not effective in terms of numbers, sources and regions covered by the newspaper stories. Only the location of stories within newspaper segments is significantly effective. The reported stories are significantly incomprehensive in length and associated illustrations as most of the associated illustrations do not adequately expound on the reported issues. A significant number of newspaper readers are actually interested in climate change stories from the papers, yet the majority of these newspaper readers are not satisfied at all with the stories read while the minority only partially satisfied. These results point to the need by the media houses to improve the content, relevance, depth, simplicity and length of coverage to enhance visibility of climate change stories to enhance ease of understanding by the readers. To achieve comprehensive climate change reports in the newspapers, there is need for more publication of well researched stories with relevant pictorial illustrations for ease of correlation.
Keywords: Climate Change, Awareness, Stories, Newspapers, Readership