From climate scepticism to discourses of delay in UK editorials.

Abstract

News media has long been recognised for its important role in shaping public discourse and socio-political action relating to climate change. This is particularly true of opinion journalism, which reflects elite voices. Within the climate change communications literature, an important shift marks a turn away from outright denial of the existence of climate change towards delaying narratives. In this paper, we use a longitudinal mixed-methods analysis to chart 'discourses of delay' in editorials relating not only directly to climate change but to the closely connected issue of energy transitions across seventeen UK daily and weekly newspapers over the period 2011-2021. Though we find both a trend away from outright denial of climate change and an identifiable increase in support for climate action even among right-leaning editorials over this period, we also show that narratives are characterised by multiple discourses of delay across both climate change and various energy narratives.