Framing Kenyan Churches' Response to Climate Change: Content Analysis of Daily Nation and The Standard Newspapers.

Abstract

Scholars have pointed out that one of the pressing and threatening concerns in society today is climate change, causing temperature disparity, biodiversity loss, and ecological imbalance. This is affecting both social and environmental determinants in people’s lives. Various actors including Churches in Kenya are striving towards combating this menace. According to some scholars, Churches have played a part in the destruction of the environment, and they have not been actively taking care of the creation. In this regard, researchers have called for the media to increase its coverage to influence the public’s thinking and stimulate aggressive action in addressing climate change. Employing descriptive research design and framing theory, this study sought to gain insight into how the Daily Nation and The Standard Newspapers frame Kenyan Churches' response to climate change. The research focused on three main objectives: Identifying the sources for coverage, the frequency of coverage, and how the newspapers frame the Churches' responses to climate change. This research is for a period of four years from January 2020 to December 2023. Through the use of ‘The Meltwater Media monitoring software tool’ to mine stories, a quantitative content analysis method was used to collect data, and a total of 162 articles were accessed. 88 articles were from the Daily Nation and 74 articles were from The Standard newspaper. Based on the available data the study employed a census approach for all news items. The results evidenced that the media frame Churches as key pillars of moral obligations as most stories were framed on the social responsibility of the Church and their commitment to social justice and promoting compassion for others in society. The media also portrayed Churches to be dedicated to creating public awareness on the effects of climate change calling people to act through tree planting and supporting green innovation. However, the media did not rely much on government officials as significant sources. These leaders contributed very little to how Churches respond to climate change. This shows that there is minimal collaboration between religious and government leaders. Consequently, there is minimal coverage of Churches’ response to climate change, and the results evidenced that the two papers Daily Nation and The Standard newspapers did not have frequent coverage of Churches on this concern. In four years, only 162 stories were covered by the media. This study concludes that mainstream media in Kenya focus more on Churches’ response to climate change during floods and droughts when Churches’ are involved in social responsibility activities. The media do not concentrate much on mitigation and adaptation responses by Churches. The research recommends a comparative study on how broadcast and print media cover Churches' response to climate change. Other studies could explore Church media channels in Kenya and examine how they frame Churches' response to climate change as the current study focused on mainstream media