Following the COVID-19 Discourse – Using Text Mining to Analyse the Debate on Sustainability Transformations in Times of Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought vast changes to many areas of social life and will most likely continue to do so for years. The daily amount of information produced on the disease and the transformations accompanying it is staggering. The high output of contributions in the press and social media, by policy makers, journalists and scientists, poses an important question for researchers: How can timely responses to developments in the COVID-19 discourse be achieved in fast-moving situations? In this presentation, we want to outline a promising approach to monitor the COVID-19 discourse based on text-mining, topic modelling and quantitative content analysis. We designed a monitoring tool that allows the processing of large amounts of articles, reports or policy documents. It enables the identification of theme coverage ,within the data and provides insights into discursive change both in time and space. For the discussions on COVID-19 we can apply topic modelling to reveal thematic clusters and use text classification to follow streams within the discourse. To illustrate the research options and operating principles of the monitor we present an analysis of the discussions on sustainability in Germany between March and June 2020. An emphasis is given to aspects related to sustainability transformations, following the European Green Deal framework as well as the Sustainable Development Goals related to ecological sustainability. For this task we have created a data corpus of more than 80.000 articles on the COVID-19 pandemic published in regional and nationwide daily newspapers. We analyse how sustainability measures are discussed in relation to the crisis and aim, among others, to understand if the pandemic is perceived as a chance or an obstacle for sustainability transformations. This question is highly important since it is connected to discussions about recovery from the economic impacts of the pandemic. Currently, this debate sways between an emphasis on quick economic recovery that should not be hampered by ecological concerns and a demand to consider sustainability goals during this process. Based on previous research on other crises (see for example 1, 2), we employ media data to follow shifts of political claims towards sustainability within the public discourse. By including nationwide and regional newspapers we are able to account for discourse variations between federal states (for instance connected to socio-economic differences) and to follow overarching issues. This also reflects the structure of COVID-19 measures and regulations in Germany, which are partly introduced on a national level and specified by federal states. Our results provide valuable insights for environmental policy and governmental regulations in times of crisis and they are the start of continuous research that follows the pandemic and its impacts on society as the situation evolves. References: 1. C. Lahusen et al., “Political Claims and Discourse Formations: A Comparative Account on Germany and Greece in the Eurozone Crisis” Politics & Policy, 44, 3, (2016). 2. P. Moodley, S. S. Lesage, “A Discourse Analysis of Ebola in South African Newspapers (2014–2015)”, South African Journal of Psychology, doi: 10.1177/0081246319868656.