Transitions in climate and energy discourse between Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy

TL;DR

This study examines how media discourse on climate and energy shifted from Hurricane Katrina to Sandy, revealing increased integration of climate change and energy topics in post-Sandy coverage.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of media discourse changes on climate and energy between two major hurricanes using topic modeling techniques.

Findings

Post-Katrina coverage lacked explicit climate change topics.

Post-Sandy coverage included prominent climate change and energy topics.

Media discourse shows increased integration of climate and energy issues after Sandy.

Abstract

Although climate change and energy are intricately linked, their explicit connection is not always prominent in public discourse and the media. Disruptive extreme weather events, including hurricanes, focus public attention in new and different ways, offering a unique window of opportunity to analyze how a focusing event influences public discourse. Media coverage of extreme weather events simultaneously shapes and reflects public discourse on climate issues. Here we analyze climate and energy newspaper coverage of Hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Sandy (2012) using topic models, mathematical techniques used to discover abstract topics within a set of documents. Our results demonstrate that post-Katrina media coverage does not contain a climate change topic, and the energy topic is limited to discussion of energy prices, markets, and the economy with almost no explicit linkages made between energy and climate change. In contrast, post-Sandy media coverage does contain a prominent climate change topic, a distinct energy topic, as well as integrated representation of climate change and energy, indicating a shift in climate and energy reporting between Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy.