Time and Climate Change: U.S. Media Representations of Climate Actions, Horizons, and Events (2000 to 2021)
American Sociological Review · 2026 · Oscar Stuhler、Iddo Tavory、Robin Erica Wagner-Pacifici
中文摘要
时间性是气候变化话语的核心问题：人们主要将气候变化视为正在当下发生的事件，还是视为未来才会发生的事情？我们必须在何时采取行动，以防止其最严重后果的出现？本文首次对2000至2021年间美国媒体关于气候变化讨论中所表达的时间性之结构与演变进行了大规模评估。为此，我们开发了一个新的计算框架，用于检测和解释文本数据中的时间表达。我们的分析得出三项主要发现：第一，自2000年以来，气候变化的时间视域持续收缩，平均而言稳定地指向2060年。然而，第二，尽管预期影响正日益临近，气候行动协调的时间视域却保持高度稳定，在任何给定时间点平均约为未来16年。第三，与明确表述的视域之稳定性形成对照，我们发现一种急剧扩张的紧迫性话语，其呈现出紧迫性爆发的模式：在2020年加州野火等事件期间，要求立即行动的呼声或对气候变化毁灭性后果的警告突然激增。通过揭示不同时间性形式之间的这种脱节，我们阐明了气候变化辩论的一个关键面向，为事件的社会学理论作出贡献，并识别了气候不作为背后的一些条件。
Abstract
Questions of temporality are at the heart of climate change discourse: Does one think of climate change primarily as an event happening in the present, or as something that will take place in the future? By when must we take action to prevent its worst consequences? This article presents the first large-scale assessment of the structure and evolution of temporalities expressed in U.S. media discussions on climate change (2000 to 2021). To do so, we developed a novel computational framework for detecting and interpreting temporal expressions in textual data. Our analyses yield three main findings: First, temporal horizons for climate change have continuously shrunk since 2000, stably targeting, on average, the year 2060. However, second, while anticipated effects are getting closer, horizons for the coordination of climate action have remained highly stable, averaging around 16 years into the future at any given time. Third, contrasting the stability of explicitly stated horizons, we find a sharply expanding discourse of urgency patterned by outbursts of urgency: sudden surges in calls for immediate action or warnings against climate change’s devastating consequences during events like the 2020 California wildfires. By uncovering this disjuncture of different forms of temporality, we illuminate a crucial aspect of the climate change debate, contribute to the sociological theory of events, and identify some of the conditions underlying climate inaction.