Dehler-Holland Joris, Schumacher Kira, Fichtner Wolf
Institute for Industrial Production, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hertzstrasse 16, 76187 Karlsruhe, Germany.
French-German Institute for Environmental Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hertzstrasse 16, 76187 Karlsruhe, Germany.
Patterns (N Y). 2020 Dec 22;2(1):100169. doi: 10.1016/j.patter.2020.100169. eCollection 2021 Jan 8.
Renewable energy policies have been recognized as a cornerstone in the transition toward low-emission energy systems. Media reports are an important variable in the policy-making process, interrelating politicians and the public. To understand the changes in media framing of a pioneering renewable energy support act, we collected 6,645 articles from five Germany-wide newspapers between 2000 and 2017 on the German Renewable Energy Act. We developed a structural topic model based on a change-point analysis to assess the temporal patterns of newspaper coverage. We introduced the notion of topic sentiment to elucidate the emotional content of topics. The results show that after its enactment, optimism about renewable energies dominated the media agenda. After 2012, however, the Renewable Energy Act was more associated with its costs. Such shifts in renewable energy policy framing may limit political leverage to reach ambitious climate and energy targets.
可再生能源政策已被视为向低排放能源系统转型的基石。媒体报道是决策过程中的一个重要变量，它将政治家和公众联系起来。为了了解媒体对一项开创性的可再生能源支持法案的框架变化，我们在2000年至2017年间从五家德国全国性报纸上收集了6645篇关于《德国可再生能源法》的文章。我们基于变点分析开发了一个结构主题模型，以评估报纸报道的时间模式。我们引入了主题情感的概念来阐明主题的情感内容。结果表明，该法案颁布后，媒体议程上对可再生能源的乐观情绪占主导。然而，2012年之后，《可再生能源法》更多地与成本联系在一起。可再生能源政策框架的这种转变可能会限制实现雄心勃勃的气候和能源目标的政治影响力。
