Learning from climate change news: Is the world on the same page?

Area of Science:

• Environmental science
• Media studies
• Computational linguistics

Background:

• Climate change is a global challenge, with news media significantly influencing public perception.
• Understanding how different countries and political leanings portray climate change in media is crucial for global awareness.
• Previous research has not comprehensively analyzed cross-national and political differences in climate change news reporting.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate topical and terminological differences in climate change news articles across countries.
• To analyze how political orientation and international climate conferences (COP meetings) influence media reporting on climate change.
• To identify global trends and variations in the linguistic approach to climate change in newspapers.

Main Methods:

• Utilized supervised machine learning to analyze an original dataset of climate change articles.
• The dataset comprised articles from 7 newspapers across 3 countries, published during 26 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings.
• Articles were discriminated based on country of origin, political orientation, and the specific COP meeting they covered.

Main Results:

• Significant differences were found in how newspaper articles approach climate change globally.
• Left-oriented newspapers demonstrated a higher prevalence of climate change-related terminology compared to right-oriented newspapers.
• Analysis revealed an evolution in newspaper terminology over time, increasingly conveying a greater sense of urgency regarding climate change.

Conclusions:

• Cross-national and political factors demonstrably shape the discourse on climate change in news media.
• The evolution of terminology suggests a growing media recognition of climate change urgency.
• Findings highlight the need for nuanced media analysis to understand global climate change communication.