The return of resource nationalism? A multilingual topic analysis of news coverage on critical minerals across 16 countries (2015 – 2025)

• BERTopic analyses reveal diverging media topics across states on critical mineral. • Core countries shift from market-centric topics to geopolitical securitisation. • Semi-peripheral media legitimise Resource Nationalism 2.0 as state-led sovereignty. The global energy transition, coupled with the rapid expansion of Artificial Intelligence, has elevated critical minerals to the status of key geostrategic resources. While prior research has predominantly focused on market mechanisms and policy instruments, relatively little attention has been paid to how news media shape public discourse around critical minerals. This study applies the ecological imperialism perspective to examine news topics across 16 countries from 2015 to 2025 using semi-supervised BERTopic modelling. Results revealed a marked structural divergence in relevant topics. In semi-peripheral countries, media narratives align with a “Resource Nationalism 2.0″ paradigm, portraying minerals as tools of national sovereignty and modernisation. By contrast, core countries exhibit a “financialisation” of critical minerals, emphasising corporate performance and market fluctuations. Temporal analysis further identified a critical “securitisation” shift within core countries: As states move away from neoliberal market reliance toward more interventionist policies, geopolitics increasingly overshadow domestic industrial policy. Peripheral countries showed a sustained rise in the national strategy topic, reflecting an inward-oriented effort to build state capacity amid structural constraints. By applying world-systems theory, this study offers an empirically grounded account of how media discourse both mirrors and reinforces the evolving political economy of the global energy transition.