Universität zu Köln

Zhang, Mengrong ORCID: 0000-0002-9402-4980 (2026). Constructing Climate Realities: A Computational and Discursive Approach to Institutional Authority, Algorithmic Mediation, and Social-Psychological Identity Dynamics in Climate Communication. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

Climate change constitutes not only an environmental crisis but a fundamentally communicative phenomenon, whose meaning, urgency, and political salience are constructed through the discursive practices of heterogeneous media environments. This dissertation interrogates how climate dis- course is produced, circulated, and interpreted across institutional news media, digitally networked platforms, and online deliberative forums, organised along three analytically discrete dimensions— political, structural, and psychological—to provide a multi-level account of climate communica- tion in contemporary media ecologies. The first study employs critical discourse analysis of a cor- pus of 19,676 articles drawn from Chinese party-sponsored and non-party-sponsored newspapers spanning 2000 to 2020, drawing on a purposively sampled subset of 100 articles for close textual analysis, and demonstrates that institutional media systematically deployed discursive strategies— including expertise attribution, moralisation, and self-euphemization—to align coverage with state environmental policy and consolidate governmental hegemony across three temporally distinct phases. The second study draws on network analysis and Actor-Network Theory to examine Weibo discourse during the 2021 Henan floods, revealing a stratified and highly modular network architec- ture in which institutional actors consolidated narrative authority, grassroots participants achieved disproportionate engagement through content resonance, and algorithmic mediation produced asymmetries between structural centrality and interactional influence. The third study integrates latent Dirichlet allocation with compositional regression to analyse 10,401 Reddit comments across climate-focused subreddits, finding that evaluative bias is selectively activated in discursive layers characterised by instrumental and moralised comparison, while scientific and systemic framing functions to stabilise deliberation. By situating empirical investigation within environment-specific analytical frameworks, this dissertation advances climate communication scholarship through a rig- orously multi-dimensional account of how discursive authority, platform infrastructure, and social identity collectively shape the articulation and reception of climate change across contemporary media.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Zhang, Mengrong zhangmengrongivy@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9402-4980 UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-812591
Date:	2026
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Fächergruppe 4: Außereuropäische Sprachen, Kulturen und Gesellschaften > Ostasiatisches Seminar
Subjects:	News media, journalism, publishing Psychology Social sciences Political science
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language climate communication UNSPECIFIED critical discourse analysis UNSPECIFIED Actor-Network Theory UNSPECIFIED controversy mapping UNSPECIFIED topic modeling UNSPECIFIED algorithmic mediation UNSPECIFIED social identity UNSPECIFIED
Date of oral exam:	14 July 2026
Referee:	Name Academic Title Kramer, Stefan Prof. Dr. Walter, Stefanie Prof. Dr. Reiter, Nils Prof. Dr.
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/81259