Water narratives in local newspapers within the United States

Sweitzer, Matthew Donald; Gunda, Thushara; Gilligan, Jonathan M.

doi:10.3389/fenvs.2023.1038904

Water narratives in local newspapers within the United States

Journal Article · Tue Feb 28 23:00:00 EST 2023 · Frontiers in Environmental Science

DOI:https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2023.1038904· OSTI ID:2311580

Sweitzer, Matthew Donald ^[1]; Gunda, Thushara ^[1]; Gilligan, Jonathan M. ^[2]

Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville, TN (United States)

Sustainable use of water resources continues to be a challenge across the globe. This is in part due to the complex set of physical and social behaviors that interact to influence water management from local to global scales. Analyses of water resources have been conducted using a variety of techniques, including qualitative evaluations of media narratives. This study aims to augment these methods by leveraging computational and quantitative techniques from the social sciences focused on text analyses. Specifically, we use natural language processing methods to investigate a large corpus (approx. 1.8M) of newspaper articles spanning approximately 35 years (1982–2017) for insights into human-nature interactions with water. Focusing on local and regional United States publications, our analysis demonstrates important dynamics in water-related dialogue about drinking water and pollution to other critical infrastructures, such as energy, across different parts of the country. Our assessment, which looks at water as a system, also highlights key actors and sentiments surrounding water. Extending these analytical methods could help us further improve our understanding of the complex roles of water in current society that should be considered in emerging activities to mitigate and respond to resource conflicts and climate change.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant/Contract Number:: NA0003525

OSTI ID:: 2311580

Report Number(s):: SAND--2023-00291J

Journal Information:: Frontiers in Environmental Science, Journal Name: Frontiers in Environmental Science Vol. 11; ISSN 2296-665X

Publisher:: Frontiers Research FoundationCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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