Learning from climate change news: Is the world on the same page?

Countries The model to distinguish countries scored an overall F1-score of 0.90. This was considered a trustworthy performance, thus feature analysis could proceed. Among these features, some keywords covered climate change directly. These are useful in answering the tertiary research question on countries (“What major topical and terminological differences can be found between countries and how could they be explained?”). For structure, four categories were defined, being the mere terminology to describe climate change, its impact, the causes and taken measures. It seems likely that these differences are meaningful and interesting. • Terminology Climate change may be a global problem, but it is not necessarily a global term. It turns out that the three countries use different terms to refer to the concept. This is in line with the findings from Grundmann and Scott [15]. Whereas climate is a characteristic term for the UK, greenhouse is more common in Australia. This can be augmented as greenhouse emis- sions, while this seems to be carbon emissions in the UK. In Canada, environmental is used, which is less specific. UK: climate, carbon emissions CA: environmental AU: greenhouse, greenhouse emissions • Effects The countries also describe different words that refer to the effects of climate change. While Australia seems to be worried about bushfires and drought, the UK takes on deforestation and wildlife. It appears Australia also considers longer-term effects such as asylum seekers and a

global financial crisis. At the same time, vacation could suggest what the Canadians fear. UK: deforestation, wildlife CA: vacation AU: bushfires, asylum, asylum seekers, global financial crisis, drought • Causes Various causes of climate change also came up. Australia speaks about mining, while Canada mentions oil sands and natural gas. The UK brings up flights. Canada also seems to link glob- alization to the topic. Australia is recognized by the absence of snow and oil, which therefore seem characteristic for the other countries. UK: flights CA: oil sands, natural gas, globalization, pipeline AU: mining UK/CA: oil, snow • Measures Lastly, there are different measures against climate change that characterize the countries. The UK speaks about low carbon, apparently leaving the means by which that must be achieved in the middle. Australia mentions uranium, a carbon-free form of energy produc- tion. This is likely related to Australia having the world’s largest resource of uranium, and being one of the largest exporters of uranium worldwide (world-nuclear.org/information- library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/australia.aspx). This shows that characteristics of coun- tries carry over into their national news coverage. The concept of a carbon tax is uncharacter- istic for the UK, hence it is apparently more of a discussion item in Canada and Australia. PLOS ONE Learning from climate change news PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297644 March 20, 2024 15 / 27