Analysis of the representation of social actors in 3 media texts on COP 29

In our last podcast episode, I spoke about an analysis of the representation of social actors that I had done of the 3 media texts we focused on in that episode. In this post, I share the results tables from that analysis and give a further, brief, discussion of that analysis.

This is, first off, a pretty basic analysis. I simply identified each instance of a social actor being represented in each text, put these representations in a table, and grouped those which used the same, or very similar phrasing.

In the episode, we suggested that the media articles seemed much more interested in the personality politics and geo-politics of COP 29 than the negotiation process - so, the front stage, rather than back stage.

We can see this in tables 1 & 2 which show the representations from the CNN text.For the most part, the social actors are named politicians (Aliyev, Trump etc.), people identified by their government or institutional role (climate leaders, a source in President Javier Milei’s government etc.), or as geopolitical entities (France, the Netherlands etc.)

But ‘1700 fossil fuel lobbyists’ are also there - coming in a quote in the text. It’s here that we get a tantalising glimpse of of what might be happening ‘back stage’ in the COP - and, as I mentioned in the episode, to me this is the more compelling story. Were there 1700 people lobbying for the fossil fuel industry at COP 29? If so, what were they lobbying for and how successfully?

Table 1: showing top part of a list of the phrases used to represent social actors in the CNN article

Table 2: showing top part of a list of the phrases used to represent social actors in the CNN article

Analysis of the BBC article, written long in advance of COP 29, shows a slightly different type of story on COP. Here, we have almost no representations of social actors as nations (contrasting with France, the Netherlands etc in the CNN article).

There are representations of social actors by governement role (e.g.environment minister), but there also seem to be far more representations of social actor by diplomatic/COP roles than I’d noticed before we recorded the episode: climate diplomats, experienced negotiators, former lead negotiator Kaveh Guilanpour etc.).

There are also references to the personnel and positions of the previous COP (Sultan al-Jaber).

So we do seem to have an article which is somewhat concerned with the COP diplomacy, and with the ‘oil industry’.

Table 3: showing a list of the phrases used to represent social actors in the BBC article

Finally, the analyse of the NYT article shows yet another take on COP 29. We’re back on to a story which conceptualises COP 29 as in geopolitical terms, with a prevalence of social actors represented by the names of nation-state, but this time the nation state actors include new actors (Russia, Armenia, Bulgaria, Moldova, and ‘most former Soviet states’, for example).

And whereas the CNN article (and the BBC one) also included fossil fuel industry actors, this one does not. So a story which really emphasises international relations and geopolitics above the both the ‘back stage’ diplomacy of COP and the corporate intents we see in the other articles.

Table 4: showing a list of the phrases used to represent social actors in the NYT article

So, three media articles, three different ‘takes’ or conceptualisations of COP 29 and how to see it.

Taking the NYT stance, I wonder why Putin would prefer Ajerbeijan as host? To distract from the negotiations? If so, successfully?