The representation of climate change: A retrospective newspaper analysis

This paper presents the results of an in-depth analysis aimed to identifyclimate change representations in four major Italian newspapers over 11years. The objectives of the study were to map the prevailing themes, to examinethe underlying semantic structures that shape the content of thesethemes, and to investigate the way they have evolved. To this end, the studyused the Automated Co-occurrence Analysis for Semantic Mapping(ACASM) procedure applied to a text corpus consisting of the journal articles.The results highlight four distinctive themes based on two basic structuresthrough which climate change is represented in the Italian media. Additionally, the study revealed significant temporal variability in the use ofthe themes during the period examined. Drawing on the framework of SemioticCultural Psychology theory, the implications of the findings are discussed,offering valuable insights into the perception and social representationof climate change in the Italian media landscape.