The Centre for Climate Communication and Data Science (C3DS) and the Environment Agency have begun a new ACCESS-funded project in collaboration with the Environment Agency examining media coverage of bathing water discourse in online UK newspapers.
The project will provide insight into media narratives, debates and discourses surrounding outdoor swimming, with a particular focus on water-based risk, pollution and water quality.
C3DS will be using AI-assisted taxonomy tools they have developed to explore media content at scale, combining computational analysis and large-language model assisted methods with detailed qualitative analysis of themes.
C3DS will be working with partners at the Environment Agency to co-produce a report outlining lessons learned from the analysis and the potential for AI-assisted media monitoring to support environmental social scientists in government, civil society, and academia.
The project is led by Professor Travis Coan (Co-Director of C3DS) and Dr Anna Lorentzon (Principal Social Scientist at the Environment Agency).
Ranadheer (Ranu) Malla, Research Associate and PhD student at C3DS, will be conducting the AI analysis.
Dr Sylvia Hayes, Research Fellow at C3DS, will be conducting detailed, qualitative analysis of the key themes which emerge.
For more information about this project, contact Sylvia Hayes: S.Hayes3@exeter.ac.uk