Exploring catastrophic language use in climate journalism: A corpus-based study of articles published by <i>The Guardian</i>

Psychological research has increasingly highlighted a correlation between media representations of climate change and rising levels of ecoanxiety, particularly among younger generations. Some studies suggest that extreme media language may even contribute to post-traumatic stress, depression, or a sense of helplessness in the face of global environmental challenges. Prominent figures such as Sir Jim Skea, the current chair of the IPCC, have also warned that “apocalyptic” language in climate journalism may inadvertently promote widespread disengagement and apathy. Well-intended language choices by journalists and news providers may therefore be unwittingly contributing towards wider issues. Despite such concerns, there remains a lack of systematic research into the specific language choices employed in UK climate reporting, particularly when it comes to newspapers which adopt a campaigning stance. This article presents a corpus-based analysis of 4000 news articles published by The Guardian between 2021 and 2024, all explicitly focused on climate change. Comparing this dataset with the British National Corpus, we examine the frequency and context of what we term “catastrophic” language – lexical items semantically aligned with notions of collapse, destruction, and apocalypse. Findings indicate that such language appears in 49.7% of climate-focused Guardian articles, compared to just 6.1% of general news articles, raising important questions about the psychological and rhetorical impact of this lexical framing.