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.
