Climate change must be considered one of the most critical issues of the coming decades that poten- tially poses foundational threats to human societies. Aviation has relatively little impact on green- house gas emissions globally, but this picture changes when focusing on emissions of rich industrial states. While being one of the foundations of the modern globalised world, present aviation growth trajectories are untenable. In this thesis, I investigated (a) how discourses about climate change are mediated, amplified and constructed by traditional mass media in Germany and (b) which de- bate configurations lead to political and civil society action on the issue. In particular, I highlighted the underlying ideological currents that influence how journalists discuss issues. This study uses a corpus-assisted approach to critical discourse studies, where statistical insights from large amounts of data are combined with a closer reading of text extracts. It is unique in its methodological breadth and the focus on a non-English-speaking country. The analysis is also angled differently compared to many previous studies insofar as I capture climate in relation to a different topic and not as the main issue. I reproduce previous findings of two periods of intense reporting on the issue with a period of disinterest in between and show that attitudes and ideologies of both the progressive and conservative media outlets have changed considerably over time. This change created a novel debate constellation that proved to be surprisingly robust in the woes of the coronavirus pandemic. Discus- sions moved from a dichotomy between effective climate and economic policy towards a narrative of economic transformation towards innovative industries and technologies. Meanwhile, there was also an increased focus on social consequences and questions of efficacy. The results expand on many of the earlier framing analyses and yield additional insight into effectively drafting and communicating climate policy to appeal to both progressive and conservative target groups. Creating climate poli- cies that are attractive to various strata in the population is essential to avoid polarised debates and assuage climate denialism, tendencies that can already be observed in a variety of countries.

In the field of public diplomacy, it has increasingly become relevant to develop analytical operations in order to gain knowledge on the perceptions of foreign publics and their attitudes towards countries – a construct known as the country image. In recent time, research on public diplomacy has been increasingly occupied with the impact of media on country images due to the continuous expansion and fragmentation of the hybrid media landscape. Academics and practitioners alike must navigate through large quantities of data and different choices regarding prioritization of sources and methods in order to find suitable analytical frameworks to properly investigate the country image as an analytical object. This thesis addresses these analytical challenges by developing a diachronic text mining analysis of the Swedish country image in the British newspaper the Guardian. Sweden has in recent years drawn attention from the international media, for example during the so-called refugee crisis of 2015 and during the covid-19 pandemic of 2020. In the extensive media coverage of these major events the Swedish course of action was met with a wide range approval and criticism. Using a mixed-method approach of distant and close reading, this thesis approaches the news coverage of Sweden in the Guardian through a content analysis designed in three analytical steps: topic modelling, collocation and concordance analysis, and diachronic corpus assisted discourse analysis. In each of these steps, the appearance of different dimensions of the country image was explored using a dimensional model for integrative country image analysis developed by Ingenhoff and Buhmann. The design of the mixed-method approach showcase how large quantities of textual data can be analyzed in a new diachronic approach, bringing strains of research from digital humanities to the field of public diplomacy.

The thesis deals with discourse surrounding the topic of the Greek debt crisis (GDC) in the online version of the British daily newspaper the Guardian (www.theguardian.com). The study builds on a bilateral division of the EU public discourse on the economic crisis, distinguishing between two opposing perspectives: "the Northern diagnosis" (DeGrauwe 2011: 5) prevailing in Germany and other creditor states, and 'the Southern opinion' on the situation held mainly by the debtor countries. The thesis examines the position of the Guardian in relation to this bilateral discourse framework. The Guardian represents a liberal, socially aware and traditionally EU-supportive newspaper that is published in a country which counts among the Europe's leading economic and political powers, a country that is also characterized by strong Eurosceptic tendencies. These aspects form a complex background with regard to the EEC/GDC discourse framework. There are factors supporting both "the Northern diagnosis" of the GDC and those suggesting inclination to 'the Southern opinion'. The analysis, dealing with a self-collected corpus (altogether 349 texts, 277 973 words) consisting of the Guardian online news on the GDC is situated - both theoretically and methodologically - in the field of Corpus- assisted discourse studies...

This study explores the evolution of discourse surrounding Donald Trump as depicted in The Washington Post, and examines potential biases in the newspaper's articles across two distinct periods: 2015-2017, from when Trump announced his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election until his inauguration, and 2022-2024, from when he announced his candidacy for the 2024 election until the data collection date. Using corpus-assisted discourse analysis, the study investigates keywords and their collocating adjectival modifiers within the two corpora to reveal patterns in the discourse and potential bias around Trump. The results show that during the 2015-2017 period, the discourse predominantly centered on Trump's rivalry with Hillary Clinton, characterized by personal attacks and recurring themes of corruption, authoritarianism, and widespread protests against his presidency. In contrast, the 2022-2024 period's discourse focused more on Trump's legal challenges, particularly regarding the mishandling of classified information and doubts about electoral integrity, indicating a shift in discourse. The findings do not explicitly demonstrate bias towards Trump. However, the discussion highlights the potential for bias to subtly manifest itself through language choices, issue framing, and narrative selection.