Water narratives in local newspapers within the United States

Abstract

Sustainable use of water resources continues to be a challenge across the globe. This is in part due to the complex set of physical and social behaviors that interact to influence water management from local to global scales. Analyses of water resources have been conducted using a variety of techniques, including qualitative evaluations of media narratives. This study aims to augment these methods by leveraging computational and quantitative techniques from the social sciences focused on text analyses. Specifically, we use natural language processing methods to investigate a large corpus (approx. 1.8M) of newspaper articles spanning approximately 35 years (1982–2017) for insights into human-nature interactions with water. Focusing on local and regional United States publications, our analysis demonstrates important dynamics in water-related dialogue about drinking water and pollution to other critical infrastructures, such as energy, across different parts of the country. Our assessment, which looks at water as a system, also highlights key actors and sentiments surrounding water. Extending these analytical methods could help us further improve our understanding of the complex roles of water in current society that should be considered in emerging activities to mitigate and respond to resource conflicts and climate change.

Are Transboundary Water Events Reported Differently in French and English News for Conflict and Cooperation Dynamics?

“…News media articles reflect and shape public opinion by defining and limiting public discourse around key events [17,18], accessing a wide range of viewpoints and perspectives, and contributing to the sense-making and informal learning of the community [19]. New articles are increasingly regarded as effective proxies for tracking societal values or public opinions on water issues [20][21][22][23][24][25] or other significant global issues [26][27][28][29][30], which are considered a powerful force for influencing public perceptions of risk [31]. Even though the news media may present different perspectives and biases, it is undeniable that the news media provides a rich and accessible repository of real-time data, offering a comprehensive snapshot of societal responses to water events.…”