Climate change risks and global warming dangers: a field analysis of online US news media

Studies have shown that contrasting understandings of climate change (CC) and global warming (GW) are associated with political identities in the US, however, less is understood about how these differences are represented in news media. This study examines how the problem names CC and GW are associated with risk-related keywords in a field of online US news media. Results show that the contrast between CC and GW corresponds with a distinction between risk and danger, with newspapers and left/liberal media linking risk with CC and cable news and right/conservative media linking danger with GW. A secondary contrast between mainstream and alternative media shows mainstream news sites connecting both CC and GW to risk-related knowledge (uncertain, probability) while alternative left- and right-wing sites connect CC and GW to risk-related action (endanger, threaten). This study contributes to the understanding of climate risk by identifying how CC and GW are framed and politicized in the media through the use of risk-related keywords. These findings can inform how climate communicators and researchers engage with diverse and divergent audiences.