Polarised Media Framing of Climate Protests

Paper presented by Katharina Esau at the ICA 2024 conference, 1 June 2024.

1. Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane The New Institute/University of Hamburg, Hamburg GESIS - Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences, Cologne Katharina Esau, Hendrik Meyer, Mike Farjam, Helena Rauxloh, Axel Bruns, Michael Brüggemann Polarised Media Framing of Climate Protests: A Comparative Mixed-Methods Analysis of Australia and Germany

2. Media Frames & Frame Elements Media influence on perceptions of events; on public opinion and policy makers and vice versa (CNN vs. indexing hypothesis)​ Media content & esp. media frames provide orientation for public opinion formation ​ Frames as interpretive patterns set "boundaries of discourse" ( Entman 1993: 55)​ Frame elements: problem, cause, blame, solution, addressee ( Jecker 2014; Esau et al. 2024; Lichtenstein & Esau 2016) Government Political Elites Media Media Frames Public Opinion Figure 1. Cascading Network Activation (Entman 2004)

3. News Polarisation Image: Midjourney

4. ?

5. Divergent frames may point to discursive polarisation (Brüggemann & Meyer, 2023) Need to investigate 1) content and 2) networked interactions regarding both political issues and social identity formation See: Brüggemann & Meyer (2023) — https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtad012 Polarisation is not per se a destructive process; we need to work towards determining when it is: breakdown of communication discrediting and dismissing of information erasure of complexities exacerbated attention and space for extreme voices exclusion through emotions See: Esau et al. (2023) — https://eprints.qut.edu.au/238775/ Discursive and Destructive Polarisation

6. Data: news articles from Factiva + web scraping (for fringe outlets) Method: computational content analysis – BERT-based classifiers & Word2Vec German ​component of the analysis previously published in: Meyer, H., Farjam, M., H., Rauxloh, & Brüggemann, M. (2023, November 27). From Disruptive Protests to Disruptive Framing? Comparing German News on Fridays for Future and Letzte Generation. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/jkaw8 Data & Method Australia Germany Media outlets 19 21 Timeframe 1 Jan 2019 - 30 Sept 2023​ 1 Jan 2022 - 30 Sept 2023​ Search terms “Fridays for Future” OR “School Strike 4 Climate” OR “School Strike for Climate” OR “Extinction Rebellion”​ “Fridays for Future” OR “Letzte Generation”​ Number of news articles, N= 3,183 6,632

7. Top 20 Words for German Media Outlets German Media Outlets, N = 6,632 Top 20 words most closely associated with... ... FFF ... LG local group climate justice lehrt wülfrath spin-off haan students for future climate strike friday participation local parents for future joint region solidarity peace forum mobilize call current extremist militant prison highway blockade radical activist climate protector gluing meanwhile agitation extinction rebellion glue file charges agitate form of action chaos/troublemaker current expose rebellion illegal Note : words ordered in terms of cosine similarity. Words had to appear at least 30 times to be included in the list Australian Media Outlets, N = 3,183 Top 20 words most closely associated with... ... FFF/SS4C ... XR strike organise student-led student walkout teaching doha in-person inspire school age movement castlemaine unionist action vigil brisbane glenunga year-old thunberg solidarity anti-adani year-old fire proof ratbag antifa disturbance visibility activist flyer die-hard attention-seeking ragtag beemergency disrupter arrestable headache uprising viciously graffities guerilla

8. Toxicity & Anger in Media Coverage of Climate Protests, Germany N=6,632 News articles, 1. January 2022 - 30 September 2023

9. Toxicity & Anger in Media Coverage of Climate Protests, Australia N=3,182 News articles 1. Januar y 2019 - 30 September 2023

10. Frames in Media Coverage of Climate Protests, Germany Crime & Legal Extremism Global Climate Justice prison radical solidarity illegal militant climate justice prison sentence chaos/troublemaker global security agency uprising worldwide sabotage extremist climate protection court storming international raids radicalisation humanity lawyer violence justice search and seizure terrorist future law terror nature protection Note: For each frame, the 10 most common words were identified in German and then translated into English

11. Frames in Media Coverage of Climate Protests, Australia Crime & Legal Extremism Global Climate Justice law marxist solidarity trespass extremist international unlawful antifa unity guilty terrorist wealth defendant hard left nations court eco fascist unions arrest militant apartheid disturb raucous indigenous block vandal elder hinder anarchist treaty Note: Identified frames in Australian media and, for each frame, the 10 most common words

12. Broadly similar patterns of coverage in both countries: XR / LG covered with anger and some toxicity, and framed as extreme FFF / S4C covered neutrally and climate justice frame, toxicity only from (far-)right outlets Stronger focus on political labels for extremists in Australia (‘Marxist’, ‘Antifa’, ‘hard left’) References to Indigenous rights in climate justice frame in Australia Next steps: Revisiting frame theory: are these genuine frames, or just collections of keywords? Enhancing methods: can we use LLMs for coding larger datasets on broader topics? Theorising polarisation: do divergent frames indicate polarisation? Is this a problem? Discussion

13. Corresponding author: Katharina Esau, @kathaesa Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology Contact: [email protected] Thank you! Questions?

14. This research is supported by the ARC Laureate Fellowship project “Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate” and by The New Institute in Hamburg through the 2023/24 program “Depolarizing Public Debates: Developing Tools for Transformative Communication.” The first author held a Research Fellowship from Sept 2023 to Jan 2024 as part of this program. Acknowledgment