The propensity for negative media reporting of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in Australia
分析了2008至2022年间6694篇关于墨累-达令盆地计划的媒体报道，发现负面报道远超正面报道，农村媒体更倾向负面报道，环境议题讨论不足。
The Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) Plan, or simply ‘Basin Plan’, represents one of the world's largest returns from consumptive (irrigation) water extraction to environmental use. The Plan has been mired in controversy from when its first draft was burned by irrigators in 2010, and as such has been a source of extensive media reporting. Given the ability of journalism in both informing and influencing public debates, as well as the political deliberation process, we sought to understand the themes and representation of the Plan in media newspapers. This study analysed 6694 media articles referring to the Basin Plan, across 135 outlets, from 2008 to 2022. All articles were sentiment coded using four different natural language processing (NLP) models, with additional manual coding of randomly selected 552 articles. Three-quarters of the total articles were coded as negative using the best-fitting DistilBERT NLP sentiment analysis, while the manual coding suggested almost half were negative in tone. Both methods found that negative stories far outweighed positive stories, suggesting very little ‘balance’ in media Basin Plan reporting. A regression analysis found that rural media outlets were more likely to report negative MDB stories, and that the states of South Australia and Queensland were more likely to report positive stories. Themes of irrigator victimisation and community economic decline dominated news articles (especially negative stories); followed by Basin Plan process, outcomes and governance issues; fights between states; and environmental issues. Environmental themes were relatively less discussed, and Indigenous issues were only referred to in a tiny fraction of all media stories. The study's results provide evidence that the media plays critical roles in water policy debates, giving prominent coverage - with little critical discernment of actual economic impacts - to certain actors with clear ideological and vested interests in the outcomes. Far less media coverage was given to more complex issues such as climate change, long-term structural change for irrigation communities, ecological crises, and sharing water with those who have little. • Collected 6694 Australian media stories on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. • Machine learning natural language process and manual techniques coded sentiment. • Negative outweighed positive media stories almost three to one. • Ordered probit regression investigated factors associated with Plan media negativity. • Rural location and non-Aust Broadcasting Corp outlets associated with negativity.