A decade of degrowth discourse in written news media: quantitative indicators and thematic composition of the coverage

Degrowth–a call for a selective and socially just reduction of production/consumption levels to reverse the ecological breakdown and ensure a good life for all–has gained traction in sustainability science over the last two decades. Recently, degrowth scholars have been turning to strategic questions to identify pathways for putting this transformative agenda into practice. Despite this focus, however, the question of how degrowth is represented in the media has so far received very limited attention. This problem matters, though, as the ability of degrowth to challenge the discursive hegemony of pro-growth sustainability narratives depends in a large part on its media representation. In this paper, we fill this research gap by providing a characterization of degrowth coverage in written news media based on a sample of 3,002 Anglophonic articles published between January 2014 and June 2023. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines descriptive statistics and topic modeling, we assess the quantity and thematic composition of the coverage. Our results show that, first, the quantity of degrowth coverage has been increasing rapidly since 2018, with the covid-19 pandemic providing an additional but temporary boost to this process; and second, most elements of the degrowth narrative(s) are reflected in the coverage but societal outcomes, the multidimensionality of social-ecological crises and some philosophical aspects are underrepresented. Additionally, we show how some corporate fashion actors conflate degrowth with the notion of decoupling and the broader concept of green growth. While our results point to an ongoing dissemination of the degrowth narrative in the media, further research is needed to assess whether this trend will persist.