Climate change discourse and the shaping of meanings in Lithuanian mass media

Abstract

The article follows the worldwide tradition of research on media discourses on climate change. The aim is to analyse the meanings of climate change that are being constructed in Lithuanian most popular daily newspapers and to deconstruct the various images of climate change with the help of discourse analysis. The article presents the results based on empirical research data. These results are part of the scientific research project RINOVA. As the data show, climate change is defined as something that is really going on; its causes are constructed as those of anthropogenic nature; there is only a narrow discussion of the anthropogenic versus the natural causes of climate change. Climate change is presented as posing a global threat, but as having a low impact on national or local environments. Thus, as is argued in the article, climate change issues are discursively neutralized, and readers feel that this is a distanced problem.