Uncovering opinions on the unfamiliar: Investigating the attitude atmosphere around CCUS through media discourses

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies are expected to contribute significantly to climate abatement, but the technologies have not been widely adopted and remain relatively unfamiliar to the public. Public opinions and attitudes can contribute significantly to the deployment of technologies and can be studied through discourses. Discourses can reveal underlying attitudes from widespread narratives. This paper investigates the attitude atmosphere around CCUS technologies through Finnish media discourses, building on 51 articles from 13 different national newspapers or news media sites. The findings of this research confirm that CCUS technologies are fairly unfamiliar to the public but indicate positive attitudes particularly towards carbon capture and utilization (CCU) technologies. However, information provision to the public does not necessarily translate towards increasingly positive attitudes. Communication should be genuine and focused on interaction instead of persuading the public of the benefits of the technologies. Methodologically, this paper points out that media discourses can provide possibilities to assess attitude atmospheres around unfamiliar technologies, such as CCUS.