This study examines how English-language mass media frame climate hazards through lexical choice, grammatical agency, quantification, evaluation, and epistemic qualification. The corpus comprises 18 headlines published in 2024 by Reuters, the Associated Press, and The Guardian, with six items from each outlet. A mixed-methods approach combines framing analysis, critical discourse analysis, lexical frequency analysis, and binary coding across seven categories. Explicit climate attribution, severity/urgency, and quantification/evidence each occur in 12 of 18 headlines (66.7%), whereas preparedness/response appears in only three (16.7%), producing an attribution-response gap of 50 percentage points and an urgency-response ratio of 4.0. Reuters shows the strongest epistemic caution, the Associated Press emphasizes human-centred consequences, and The Guardian records the highest urgency-response ratio. Dominant frames remain relatively diverse (normalized Shannon entropy = 0.90), but response-oriented framing is weak. The findings support a cause-impact-response model linking climate attribution with vulnerability, institutional accountability, and feasible adaptation or mitigation measures.

Keywords: climate communication, climate hazards, critical discourse analysis, framing, media discourse, news headlines

REFERENCES

Antilla, L. (2005). Climate of scepticism: US newspaper coverage of the science of climate change. Global Environmental Change, 15(4), 338–352. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2005.08.003

Asadova, K.K., Mursal, N., Abdiyeva, R., Mammadova, A., & Aleskerov, S. (2026). Structure, species composition and diversity of Bothriochloa ischaemum (L.) Keng communities in steppe ecosystems of the south-eastern part of Azerbaijan. Acta Botanica Caucasica, 5(1), 44–51. https://doi.org/10.30546/abc.2026.1142

Bednarek, M., & Caple, H. (2017). The discourse of news values: How news organizations create newsworthiness. Oxford University Press.

Boykoff, M.T., & Boykoff, J.M. (2007). Climate change and journalistic norms: A case-study of US mass-media coverage. Geoforum, 38(6), 1190–1204. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.01.008

Carvalho, A. (2007). Ideological cultures and media discourses on scientific knowledge: Re-reading news on climate change. Public Understanding of Science, 16(2), 223–243. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662506066775

Dor, D. (2003). On newspaper headlines as relevance optimizers. Journal of Pragmatics, 35(5), 695–721. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00134-0

Entman, R.M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x

Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. Routledge.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2023). Climate change 2023: Synthesis report. https://doi.org/10.59327/IPCC/AR6-9789291691647

Jafarov, S. (2023). History and research of intonation in English and American linguistics. Revista de Investigaciones Universidad del Quindío, 35(1), 317–327. https://doi.org/10.33975/riuq.vol35n1.1192

Jafarov, S. (2024). Internationalisation and cultural aspects of online learning, training, and research. Pakistan Journal of Life and Social Sciences, 22(2), 6437–6452. https://doi.org/10.57239/PJLSS-2024-22.2.00486

Jafarov, S., Babashova, S., Dadashov, T., & Garibov, S. (2024). The influence of intonation on the interpretation of parenthetical clauses. Pakistan Journal of Life and Social Sciences, 22(2), 10722–10729. https://doi.org/10.57239/PJLSS-2024-22.2.00810

Nisbet, M. C. (2009). Communicating climate change: Why frames matter for public engagement. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 51(2), 12–23. https://doi.org/10.3200/ENVT.51.2.12-23

Painter, J. (2013). Climate change in the media: Reporting risk and uncertainty. I.B. Tauris.

Schäfer, M. S., & Schlichting, I. (2014). Media representations of climate change: A meta-analysis of the research field. Environmental Communication, 8(2), 142–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2014.914050

Vu, H.T., Jiang, L., Chacón, L.M.C., Riedl, M.J., Tran, D.V., & Bobkowski, P.S. (2019). Nationalizing a global phenomenon: A study of how the press in 45 countries and territories portrays climate change. Global Environmental Change, 58, Article 101942. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.101942

World Meteorological Organization. (2025). State of the global climate 2024 (WMO-No. 1368). https://wmo.int/publication-series/state-of-global-climate/state-of-global-climate-2024