Communicating change, transition, and transformation for adaptation in agriculture: a comparative analysis of climate change communication in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

Effective communication is a key enabler of climate change adaptation in agricultural systems. However, different actors frame adaptation, transition, and transformation in varied ways, influencing how change is understood and acted upon. This study uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning to analyse how climate adaptation is communicated across five actor groups in Aotearoa New Zealand: media, farm advisory services, researchers, Indigenous Māori, and government. We apply topic modelling, sentiment analysis, collocation network analysis, and word embedding models to five purpose-built corpora to identify dominant themes, emotional tones, and framings of responsibility and agency. This methodological approach enables systematic, large-scale comparison of discourses, offering insights into how adaptation narratives evolve and diverge across sectors. Our findings highlight both overlaps and tensions in how different actors communicate about climate risks and responses. For example, while some narratives emphasise innovation and opportunity, others centre on uncertainty or systems-level transformation. These differences have practical implications for how messages are received, interpreted, and acted upon by farmers and stakeholders. By identifying areas of alignment and dissonance, we show how NLP tools can support the design of more targeted and effective communication strategies. This contributes to methodological innovation in climate communication research and offers practical value for policymakers, advisors, and communicators seeking to accelerate adaptation through more resonant messaging. Our study demonstrates the potential of data-driven discourse analysis to support climate-resilient agricultural futures.

Original languageEnglish
Article number97
JournalRegional Environmental Change
Volume25
Issue number3
Number of pages16
ISSN1436-3798
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 09.2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2025.

    Research areas

  • Agricultural change, Aotearoa New Zealand, Climate change adaptation, Climate change communication, Corpus analysis, NLP
  • Sustainability Governance

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. The hidden hand that shapes conceptual understanding: Choosing effective representations for teaching cell division and climate change
  2. Amtsmenschen
  3. Watch out, pothole! Featuring Road Damage Detection in an End-to-end System for Autonomous Driving
  4. Differenz und Alterität im Ritual
  5. Toward supervised anomaly detection
  6. Mach mal: Oder Produktion ist anderswo
  7. It's Not What You Know, It's How You Use It
  8. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
  9. Die vertrackte Urteilsform
  10. Causal Inference in Educational Research
  11. Calibration of the Chemcatcher ® passive sampler for monitoring selected polar and semi-polar pesticides in surface water
  12. Grundlagentraining - Sprung : Die Gretchenfrage: Flop oder Schere?
  13. Efficacy and cost-effectiveness of a web-based intervention with mobile phone support to treat depressive symptoms in adults with diabetes mellitus type 1 and type 2
  14. Fatigue Life Extension of AA2024 Specimens and Integral Structures by Laser Shock Peening
  15. Soil carbon, multiple benefits
  16. What Autism can tell us about the Link between Empathy and Moral reasoning?
  17. The impact of digitisation and big data analysis on the sustainable development of tourism and its environmental impact
  18. DeFacto - Temporal and multilingual deep fact validation
  19. Integrierte Mikrodatenfiles
  20. Examining the quality of the ‘Healthy Eating and Physical Activity in Schools’ (HEPS) quality checklist
  21. Paul A. Erickson & Liam D. Murphy. A history of anthropological theory (Fourth edition). Toronto: Univ. Press, 2013
  22. Adopters build bridges: Changing the institutional logic for more sustainable cities
  23. Phonographic work
  24. Längsschnittdaten und Mehrebenenanalyse
  25. The Influence of National Culture on Business Students' Career Attitudes
  26. Komplexe Verhältnisse
  27. Positive psychology interventions
  28. Kant - oder wie zur Freiheit erzogen werden kann
  29. Pricing decisions in peer-to-peer and prosumer-centred electricity markets