기후변화 관련 어휘 사용 및 기후위기 담론의 전개 양상

Abstract

If there is a problem that has emerged as a global disaster along with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is climate change. This is why the discourse of “climate crisis” has been actively conducted from various angles in recent years. Based on these facts, this study focused on analyzing the use of words related to climate change and how the ideological tendencies pursued by media companies correlate with climate issues, especially the “climate crisis” reports that have been increasingly used recently. The results of the study are summarized as follows.
 First, based on data from BIGKinds, a news big data analysis service provided by the Korea Press Promotion Foundation, it was confirmed that relatively various language variations have been appearing in climate change-related terms over the past 30 years, such as “climate change,” “weather variation,” “abnormal climate,” “climate crisis,” “climate disaster,” and “extreme climate.” Second, in our society, the term “climate change” has been used more frequently since the 2000s instead of “weather change” over the climate issue, which is markedly different in nature from natural fluctuations in the past, and “climate change” has been the most frequently used to date.
 Third, “climate change” showed a sudden upward curve in contrast to other years by showing 15,455 times in 2009 and 26,945 times in 2021. It was confirmed that there is a close correlation between the climate change cause discourse of “global warming” in 2009 and the climate change response discourse of “greenhouse gas reduction” and “carbon neutrality” in 2021.
 Fourth, the second most frequent vocabulary after “climate change” is “climate crisis,” which has shown a total frequency of 33,827 over the past 30 years, and this phenomenon has appeared as a distinct trend, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
 Fifth, media reports that focus on highlighting the “climate crisis” issue have been confirmed to have a clear correlation with the ideological tendencies of media companies, and in newspaper editorials as well as general articles, liberal media companies are more actively approaching the “climate crisis” issue than conservative media companies.