Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Weather Events (The political (in)significance of extreme weather events)
Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2024-08-31
Climate change is a very urgent problem, which threatens many societies across the globe – and in the coming decades will be doing even more so. However, while the wide majority of climate scientists agree on the urgency of the problem, it turns out to be very difficult to tackle it: to come up with political agreements to do so, and let governments and citizens live up to them.
A main reason for these difficulties, seems to be that the problems of climate change are for many people currently too abstract and far way. But when, in the next decades, they will become more concrete, it will be too late. This is called the “Giddens’ Paradox”.
Extreme weather events might be opportunities to overcome this paradox, as they – in the form of floodings, heatwaves, droughts, et cetera – provide very concrete insights on what might be the status quo in term of climate change, if no actions will be taken.
The aim of this Marie Curie project is to see to what extent extreme weather events indeed bring about opportunities for the introduction of sustainable policies and actions. It does so by making analyses of the impact of extreme weather within national public spheres (media, parliamentary debates, election programs) over the last decades, by using a mixed methods perspective of content analyses.
Concretely the project has four key objectives:
1. To better understand the relationship between extreme weather and climate crisis politics
2. To develop more knowledge on the sociological dimensions of the climate crisis
3. To further our understandings of impact of events on social life more generally
4. To develop a mixed methods content analyses approach for researching events
A main reason for these difficulties, seems to be that the problems of climate change are for many people currently too abstract and far way. But when, in the next decades, they will become more concrete, it will be too late. This is called the “Giddens’ Paradox”.
Extreme weather events might be opportunities to overcome this paradox, as they – in the form of floodings, heatwaves, droughts, et cetera – provide very concrete insights on what might be the status quo in term of climate change, if no actions will be taken.
The aim of this Marie Curie project is to see to what extent extreme weather events indeed bring about opportunities for the introduction of sustainable policies and actions. It does so by making analyses of the impact of extreme weather within national public spheres (media, parliamentary debates, election programs) over the last decades, by using a mixed methods perspective of content analyses.
Concretely the project has four key objectives:
1. To better understand the relationship between extreme weather and climate crisis politics
2. To develop more knowledge on the sociological dimensions of the climate crisis
3. To further our understandings of impact of events on social life more generally
4. To develop a mixed methods content analyses approach for researching events
Two main studies have been conducted to reach the research objectives. First of all, an analysis (together with one colleague) was made on the framing of British heatwaves from the 1980s until today, in national newspapers. This was done to see whether the ways in which public sphere actors (journalists, politicians, others who give their opinion in media) discuss heatwaves (in particular in relation to the climate crisis) have changed over the years. A mixed methods perspective was taken here: a topic modeling analysis (computational method) of around 30.000 newspaper articles on heatwaves in combination with a qualitative content analysis on some key articles. The findings showed that whereas in the 1980s the heatwave in Britain was a reason for joy and happiness (going to the beach and/or on holidays) in combination with a reason for worry (for instance about health), today it is mostly seen as a reason for worry – and this is mostly related to the problem of the climate crisis. This shows that over the years, British public sphere actors have related the problem of the climate crisis more and more to heatwaves. We explain this shift as the consequence of a combination of the success of climate change activism and climate science plus responses to earlier extreme weather events.
A second study concerned the linking of Covid and the climate crisis during national elections within four countries (the U.S. Canada, the Netherlands and Lithuania) in the midst of the pandemic (2020-2021). Together with three colleagues, I analyzed the number of links that were made, which issues they were linked to, what kind of argumentative strategies were put forward for making them, and on what political level (local, national, international) this happened. We used a mixed methods perspective of quantitative and qualitative content analysis to do so. We found a remarkable amount of similarities across the country cases. In each of them: 1) leftist parties made more links then rightist; 2) far rightist denied the existence of both crises; 3) most links evolved around economic issues; 4) most connections were made on the supra national levels (EU, UN, et cetera).
Next to these studies that were directly related to the objectives of the Marie Curie project, I also worked on two side projects, which also helped me to add to objectives 3 and 4. Together with three colleagues, I introduced the concept of “recurrent events”, as occurrences that can change social life because they are planned and happen with a known frequency. These stand in opposition to “unexpected events”, which have so far mostly been studied in sociology. We applied this concept to the relationship between lyrics performed in Eurovision and attitudes on homosexuality and national identity participating countries, from the 1980s until today.
Another side project concerned the concept of “repertoires of comparison”. Together with two colleagues, I figured that a lot the significant comparisons that people make during their lives happen with a recurring frequency and are often very much institutionalized. For instance, newly occurring events are often seen in the light of responses to former big event cases (e.g. Hurricane Katrina). However, we lack clear theorizations of such comparisons. This is what we aimed for in writing this rather theoretical/conceptual paper: showing why people draw recurring comparisons, how they emerge, why they change, et cetera.
A second study concerned the linking of Covid and the climate crisis during national elections within four countries (the U.S. Canada, the Netherlands and Lithuania) in the midst of the pandemic (2020-2021). Together with three colleagues, I analyzed the number of links that were made, which issues they were linked to, what kind of argumentative strategies were put forward for making them, and on what political level (local, national, international) this happened. We used a mixed methods perspective of quantitative and qualitative content analysis to do so. We found a remarkable amount of similarities across the country cases. In each of them: 1) leftist parties made more links then rightist; 2) far rightist denied the existence of both crises; 3) most links evolved around economic issues; 4) most connections were made on the supra national levels (EU, UN, et cetera).
Next to these studies that were directly related to the objectives of the Marie Curie project, I also worked on two side projects, which also helped me to add to objectives 3 and 4. Together with three colleagues, I introduced the concept of “recurrent events”, as occurrences that can change social life because they are planned and happen with a known frequency. These stand in opposition to “unexpected events”, which have so far mostly been studied in sociology. We applied this concept to the relationship between lyrics performed in Eurovision and attitudes on homosexuality and national identity participating countries, from the 1980s until today.
Another side project concerned the concept of “repertoires of comparison”. Together with two colleagues, I figured that a lot the significant comparisons that people make during their lives happen with a recurring frequency and are often very much institutionalized. For instance, newly occurring events are often seen in the light of responses to former big event cases (e.g. Hurricane Katrina). However, we lack clear theorizations of such comparisons. This is what we aimed for in writing this rather theoretical/conceptual paper: showing why people draw recurring comparisons, how they emerge, why they change, et cetera.
Especially the results of the first two studies help us to go beyond the state of the art. The study on heatwaves first of all presents us with a method that is new and replicable for other cases of extreme weather events. Furthermore, the study shows that, indeed, extreme weather events can become catalysts to discuss climate change, if climate change is understood widely enough as a big problem (which is the case today in Britain). Whether this is the case in other country contexts, for other extreme weather events and, most importantly, if relating heatwaves to climate change also leads to a shift of climate change actions, are questions that are still up for future research.
The study on linking crises also provides an approach that could be used by other researchers, namely seeing how crises are used to inform interpretations of other crises: by looking at the links between them. Also, this study brings up the remarkable result that the links between the crises very much similar across our four country cases of analysis. For other events and crises, it has often been a key finding that variations between country contexts are rather big: countries often have their “own” events or crises framings. This result might have something to do with the specific crises of study here: Covid and climate change. Both framings of the two crises are very much created within international organizations, such as the IPCC and the WHO. It might be that this is the key for why we found so much cross-national similarities. But this is also up for future research.
The study on linking crises also provides an approach that could be used by other researchers, namely seeing how crises are used to inform interpretations of other crises: by looking at the links between them. Also, this study brings up the remarkable result that the links between the crises very much similar across our four country cases of analysis. For other events and crises, it has often been a key finding that variations between country contexts are rather big: countries often have their “own” events or crises framings. This result might have something to do with the specific crises of study here: Covid and climate change. Both framings of the two crises are very much created within international organizations, such as the IPCC and the WHO. It might be that this is the key for why we found so much cross-national similarities. But this is also up for future research.