Medium‐term evolution in French national newspaper coverage of the interrelations between biodiversity and agriculture

Abstract : Agricultural landscapes are sites of difficult trade-offs between conservation and production objectives. The media play a part in shaping public opinion and policies and vice-versa. In line with the constructionist approach to public problems, we analyzed the role of media in the problem-framing of interrelations between biodiversity and agriculture. We investigated the medium-term evolution in French national newspaper coverage of these interrelations using a content and time analysis over a 19-year period (1999–2017). We applied a statistical method using IRaMuTeQ (interface of R) on seven daily newspapers (Le Monde, Libération, La Croix, Les Échos, Le Figaro, L'Humanité, and La Tribune; N = 2,547). Our results reveal the growing importance of agriculture in the public problem of biodiversity loss. The increase of agriculture/biodiversity coverage is driven by environmental issues and specific political events. However, the number of articles focused on biodiversity/agriculture dynamics remains low. Around 2007, the articles shifted from an international speciescentered view to a national and local human-centered view. These evolutions in media-coverage create a space for ecologists, social scientists, and agronomists to combine their approaches and to develop and communicate on new actions in favor of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes.