“Our House Is on Fire” : A discourse analysis of the climate change discourse in news articles about natural disasters.

Abstract: Climate change is affecting every country on every continent and weather events are becoming more extreme. Natural disasters are three times more frequent today than they were 50 years ago, and natural disasters are more intense and complex. An important aspect of climate change and natural disasters is journalism, as it is partly the one that reports on these events and informs society. This study examines the discourses represented in articles about natural disasters from two different years - 2009 and 2018 - and in two different geographical locations - Australia and Sweden. It also examines whether climate change discourse is present, and if so, how it was then represented. In this paper, the analytical method of discourse analysis was used along with media logic and the psychological climate paradox. The study concludes that the three most common discourses in the sample are natural disaster discourse, climate change discourse and security discourse. The climate change discourse was neither the most nor the least present discourse. The most striking similarities between 2009 and 2018 in terms of climate change discourse is that the discourse was not more present in either the 2009 or 2018 material, the amount was the same. The most striking difference was that in the 2018 material, climate change discourse was present throughout the text, whereas in the 2009 material it was only present in certain parts, for example in a graphic element.