Despite mounting urgency to mitigate climate change, new coal mines have recently been approved in various countries, including in Southeast Asia and Australia. Adani’s Carmichael coal mine project in the Galilee Basin, Queensland (Australia), was approved in June 2019 after 9 years of political contestation. Counteracting global efforts to decarbonise energy systems, this mine will substantially increase Australia’s per capita CO₂ emissions, which are already among the highest in the world. Australia’s deepening carbon lock-in can be attributed to the essential economic role played by the coal industry, which gives it structural power to dominate political dynamics. Furthermore, tenacious networks among the traditional mass media, mining companies, and their shareholders have reinforced the politico-economic influence of the industry, allowing the mass media to provide a venue for the industry’s outside lobbying strategies as well as ample backing for its discursive legitimisation with pro-coal narratives. To investigate the enduring symbiosis between the coal industry, business interests, the Australian state, and mainstream media, we draw on natural language processing techniques and systematically study discourses about the coal mine in traditional and social media between 2017 and 2020. Our results indicate that while the mine’s approval was aided by the pro-coal narratives of Queensland’s main daily newspaper, the Courier-Mail, collective public sentiment on Twitter has diverged significantly from the newspaper’s stance. The rationale for the mine’s approval, notwithstanding increasing public contestation, lies in the enduring symbiosis between the traditional economic actors and the state; and yet, our results highlight a potential corner of the discursive battlefield favourable for hosting more diverse arguments.

尽管缓解气候变化的紧迫性越来越高，但最近在多个国家（包括东南亚和澳大利亚）批准了新煤矿。Adani在澳大利亚昆士兰加利利盆地的Carmichael煤矿项目，经过9年的政治角逐，于2019年6月获得批准。抵消全球努力脱碳能源系统，这个矿将大大增加，人均二氧化碳澳大利亚₂排放量已经位居世界前列。澳大利亚不断深化的碳锁定可归因于煤炭行业发挥的重要经济作用，这赋予了其主导政治动态的结构性权力。此外，传统大众媒体、矿业公司及其股东之间的牢固网络加强了该行业的政治经济影响力，使大众媒体为该行业的外部游说策略提供了场所，并为其话语合法化提供了充足的支持。与亲煤炭的叙述。调查煤炭行业、商业利益、澳大利亚政府和主流媒体之间的持久共生关系，据《信使邮报》报道，Twitter 上的集体公众情绪与该报的立场大相径庭。尽管公众的争议不断增加，但该矿获得批准的理由在于传统经济参与者与国家之间的持久共生；然而，我们的结果突出了话语战场的一个潜在角落，有利于举办更多样化的争论。