Divergences between mainstream and social media discourses after COP26, and why they matter

UN climate conferences (COPs) have become powerful opportunities for driving public attention to climate issues and raising awareness via mainstream and social media coverage. While there is an abundance of studies examining various elements of the media arenas separately, there are currently no comparative analyses of how mainstream media outlets and social media opinion leaders react to and thereby shape discourses around COPs. Using Bourdieu’s field theory to conceptualize agents in the two arenas as ‘adversaries’, we use manual content analysis to compare reactions to the 2021 Glasgow climate conference (COP26) across the five top English-language online newspapers in Australia, India, the UK and the USA with those of prominent users and organizations on Facebook and Instagram. We find entirely different appraisals of the conference between the two arenas: Where the mainstream media outlets highlighted the progress of the summit, social media leaders were eager to criticize its failures and those of world leaders to take sufficient action. We discuss the implications of this divergence, specifically (i) the extent to which it hinders the cultivation of cohesive narratives about critical climate issues, and (ii) how the failure frame advocated by social media opinion leaders may de-legitimize international policy initiatives and undercut public support for and engagement with these efforts.