LAUSR

Driven by climate change, extreme weather events are increasing worldwide. Through their reporting, news media can inform public understanding of this trend. However, it is not yet clear to what extent the media report on extreme weather events, how their reporting relates to actual weather conditions, and whether they address the connection to climate change in their coverage. We use automated content analysis to examine the coverage of heat, drought, and climate change in three major Swiss newspapers from 1998 to 2023 (n=43,779). Our results show that issue attention for heat, drought, and climate change has increased significantly over time. Within coverage of heat and drought, the context of climate change is addressed considerably more often in recent years. We find a significant relationship between issue attention for heat and temperature data as well as for drought and precipitation data, but only a partial correlation between issue attention for climate change and meteorological data.