Klimawandel und Küstenschutz: Analyse der medialen Aufmerksamkeit in regionalen Tageszeitungen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (In German Only)

Climate change adaptation is a major challenge for countries around the world, with news media being an important source of information on the issue. To understand how and to what extent news media report on coastal climate change adaptation, this study compares coverage in two local newspapers in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania between 2005 and 2020. Measured in terms of the absolute number of all articles, which ranges between about 100,000 and 350,000 per year, only a vanishingly small proportion contain the keywords "climate change" and "coast", 501 articles for the period 2005 to 2020. The number of articles containing the keyword “coastal protection” or “dyke” is slightly larger (894 and 609, respectively), but still small compared to the total number of articles. The review of whether severe storm surges have led to an increase in articles between 2005 and 2020 has shown that the number of articles increases significantly shortly after the event, but this does not last. As a result, we can state that the hazard potential of climate change and the possible protective measures for adaptation at the coast (e.g. dikes, beach nourishment, dunes) do not result in considerable media attention in the two local newspapers we analysed. However, the number of articles mentioning climate change increased after the last severe storm surge in January 2019 compared to the storm surges in 2006 and 2017, albeit at a low level.