Indian Media Discourse of Climate Change Policy Networks During the 2015 Paris Agreement

Media as a disseminator of information plays a significant role in shaping the discourse around any issue, event, or process of national and international importance. During the Paris Climate Conference 2015, India emerged as one of the key players in determining the outcomes of the policy-making process. Through Discourse Network Analysis (DNA) analysis of three Indian newspapers, the paper aims to highlight the dominant discursive themes as well as actors who shape the opinions and attitudes of the masses and the coalitions of Indian climate policy around the 2015 Paris agreement. The paper draws its theoretical insights from the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Fifty percent of randomly selected articles were chosen from September 2015 to January 2016. The selected articles are coded following the COMPON protocol. The preliminary findings suggest that the recognition of climate change strongly characterizes the Indian position as objective reality. It also exhibits that in India, climate change is a potential risk to the natural and social ecology and economy with a considerable emphasis on the expansion of renewable energy at the domestic level and common but differentiated responsibility at the global policy level. The media discourse also reflects a sentiment of distrust against the developed countries for their efforts on climate change mitigation. Themes and actors identified as the critical determinants of Indian policies on climate change through this study could further be used for in-depth investigations to understand the micro-dynamics of the various policy networks. Such reviews, together with the ones focusing on policy implementation at the ground zero, can help to bring together top-down and bottom-up approaches in order to formulate more inclusive and comprehensive policies.