ABSTRACT

Drought risk is a complex phenomenon that leads to different interpretations, public understanding of causes, consequences and adaptation strategies and, therefore, different responses. To date, and despite the rise of social media, mass media are still the main way through which society receives information about drought, mainly owing to accessibility and periodicity. Media content analysis can be useful not only for identifying the relevant stakeholders in debates about definition and management but also for monitoring the evolution of key issues over time. This work presents a methodology to systematise drought-related media content analysis. The methodology has been tested in two widely different case studies: The Autonomous Community of Andalusia in Spain and the Metropolitan Area of São Paulo in Brazil, which were recently exposed to drought. Results show that the methodology is applicable to different settings, regardless of the number of media outlets and the news stories analysed. The paper incidentally also shows the resistance to the paradigm shift in terms of drought management measures, where in both cases traditional measures based on increasing water availability continue to predominate over the measures of risk planning and mitigation.

摘要

干旱风险是一种复杂的现象，它会导致不同的解释、公众对原因、后果和适应策略的理解，从而产生不同的反应。迄今为止，尽管社交媒体兴起，大众媒体仍然是社会接收有关干旱信息的主要方式，这主要是由于可访问性和周期性。媒体内容分析不仅可以用于识别有关定义和管理的辩论中的相关利益相关者，还可以用于监控关键问题随时间的演变。这项工作提出了一种系统化与干旱相关的媒体内容分析的方法。该方法已在两个截然不同的案例研究中进行了测试：西班牙的安达卢西亚自治区和巴西的圣保罗都市区，它们最近遭受了干旱。结果表明，该方法适用于不同的环境，无论媒体渠道的数量和分析的新闻报道如何。顺便说一句，该论文还显示了对干旱管理措施范式转变的抵制，在这两种情况下，基于增加水资源可用性的传统措施继续主导风险规划和缓解措施。