Tourism, Climate Change and the Mass Media: the representation of the issue in Spain

This paper sets out to analyse the information dedicated to climate change and tourism in the Spanish press in the Mediterranean region of the peninsula during the period 1990–2010. Specifically, it seeks to determine the quantitative evolution of media coverage of climate change and tourism and the importance given to this subject. Adequate media attention in both quantitative and qualitative terms could greatly influence public concern and contribute to the social mobilization that will be needed to negotiate/resist the phenomenon in a geographical area in which tourism is a major economic and territorial driver and which is particularly vulnerable to climate change. To construct the corpus, we undertook a systematic analysis of newspaper coverage of tourism and climate change in the media selected; and we carried out content analysis of the 1014 units identified. The results indicate that the coverage is outstanding in quantitative terms. However, the importance given to the subject is quite marginal.