From air pollution to airing pollution news: multi-layer analysis of the representation of environmental news in Iranian newspapers

As the first-ever report in Iran, this paper explores the styles, tones, subjects, and patterns of the coverage of environmental news published in two Iranian newspapers. Involving certain initiatives and advantages in analysing newspapers, our research used the Structural Query Language (SQL) database management system to retrieve and manage data. A series of articles that covered environmental issues were collected and, based on 15 criteria, a database including 440 records and 6600 entries was formed. The analysis showed that titles and headlines of environmental issue articles were consistent with the contents and with the aims of news or events. However, environmental news was relegated to a small number of columns or spaces. The lowest number of news articles was related to education (9%) whereas the highest number was related to public awareness (56%). Regarding authorship, researchers had the lowest share at 10%, whereas officials and columnists contributed equally (45%) in writing environmental news. The highest (46%) and lowest (6%) proportions of environmental news were related to local and provincial news, respectively. We also revealed that Iranian environmental news is narrative and conservative with high reliance on non-scientific documents, interviews, and commentaries.