Mittuniversitetet

Eco-anxiety is a recognised psychological anxiety disorder characterised by a feeling of helplessness and fear of overwhelming and potential environmental disaster. As an anxiety disorder, it is exacerbated by uncertainty and confusion as well as an absence of a strategy to manage it.

Previous research recognises that the media’s role in presenting climate change influences people’s perception of events and influences mental health. As noted in 2.1, newspaper journalism has been a focus of some research into how the negative representation of climate change influences readers’ conceptualisation of natural catastrophes.

Evaluation of language choice in newspaper journalism as a contributing factor increating eco-anxiety is a relatively new area of investigation. This analysis aimed to evaluate whether discursive choices in a selection of six recent articles about environmental issues published in UK newspapers contributed to creating eco-anxiety or exacerbating an existinge co-anxiety. In order to evaluate the reportage as widely as possible, articles from both national broadsheet newspapers and national tabloid newspapers were analysed. A CDA makes clear that language choice in all six articles creates or exacerbates eco-anxiety. Based on this restricted analysis, I conclude that some UK newspaper reporting on climate change and environmental issues is creating or exacerbating eco-anxiety.