ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 (“Climate of Interpretation: Australia and Bangladesh”) compares the patterns of editorial opinions pertaining to climate change across the four newspapers. Drawing on Fairclough (2003) and van Dijk’s (1993) discourse analysis and Beck’s concept of risk, it also discusses the presence and absence of topics related to climate change in both countries. The chapter interprets the findings through qualitative case analyses of editorial columns. It shows that the news media in Bangladesh tend to portray the country as an adaptive and innovative nation and dispute “Western ecological neo-imperialism” (Giddens 2011). In contrast, Australian news media tackle acute partisanship in climate policy debate, which is heavily influenced by a coal industry that is the third biggest exporter in the world. The comparison between 2009 and 2015 shows the traces of political cosmopolitanism emanating from two discursive positions: economic rationality and ecological vulnerability.
