The fate of bitumen: an exploratory study of national newspaper coverage of Alberta's bitumen industry during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic presented a complex scenario for climate change mitigation. While reduced economic activity led to decreased emissions, the subsequent economic downturn prompted government subsidies for fossil fuel industries, potentially hindering the transition to a low-carbon future. Canada's approach exemplifies this dilemma, with the federal government pledging net-zero emissions by 2050 but simultaneously providing subsidies to the oil and gas sector, the country's largest GHG emitter. This ambivalence highlights a broader global challenge: balancing economic recovery with decarbonization efforts. Furthermore, the pandemic has seen a rise in climate delay discourses, which downplay the urgency of climate action in favor of economic priorities. This study investigates the public discourse surrounding Canada's oil-dependent economy, focusing on the coverage of Alberta's bitumen sector in major Canadian newspapers during 2020. It explores the interplay between climate change, storytelling, and political polarization in shaping public perception of the climate emergency.

Canadian media coverage of climate change and the oil and gas sector has been intertwined, exhibiting peaks and troughs corresponding to major policy and scientific developments. While thematic frames such as science, policy, and economics remain prominent, political contention surrounding decarbonization's impact on the oil and gas sector has intensified. Public controversies surrounding major fossil fuel projects have demonstrated how different news outlets reflect competing stakeholder concerns, often prioritizing local impacts over the broader climate implications. Regional disparities also exist, with sustained climate change health coverage limited to Canada's Northern Territories, while Anglophone and Francophone media differ in their breadth and thematic depth. The urgency of fossil fuel phase-out is a highly divisive issue, evident in reactions to COP26. The Canadian government's commitment to net-zero emissions and reduced oil and gas emissions contrasts with its reluctance to curb bitumen industry expansion. This has led to criticism from environmental organizations, while Alberta's government defends the bitumen industry, reflecting a broader politicization of climate change. This politicization is further fueled by climate delay rhetoric, which downplays the need for immediate and significant action. This 'climate change denialism 2.0' advocates for non-transformative solutions and casts doubt on the feasibility of rapid decarbonization. The study uses the 2020 context of the pandemic and its economic impact on the bitumen industry as a case study for analyzing whether this climate delay rhetoric is being used to justify continued investment in the sector.

This study employed a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative topic modeling with qualitative discourse analysis. The dataset consisted of 685 bitumen-related articles from three major Canadian newspapers (Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, National Post) collected from Factiva during 2020. The articles were preprocessed by extracting headlines and lead paragraphs, removing stop words, punctuation, and numbers. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling was then used to identify word clusters, with a 12-topic model selected based on its coherence score. The identified word clusters were further analyzed using the keyword-in-context (KWIC) method. The analysis aimed to answer two research questions: RQ1: How did major national newspapers in Canada report on Alberta bitumen throughout 2020? RQ2: What overarching narratives concerning the future of Alberta bitumen emerged from these newspapers' reporting? The LDA topic modeling, supplemented by LDAvis for enhanced keyword selection, identified twelve topics. These topics were then qualitatively analyzed to identify overarching themes and to ascertain how the newspapers presented different viewpoints on the bitumen industry. Term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) scores were calculated to assess the importance of keywords in the corpus.

The analysis revealed four main themes: contention over bitumen infrastructure, economic challenges for the bitumen industry, political divide over the future of bitumen, and the environmental impacts of the industry. **Contention over bitumen infrastructure:** Coverage focused on projects like the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion and the Frontier Oil Sands Mine, with significant attention given to the perspectives of Alberta politicians, bitumen advocates, and corporate representatives who framed the industry as negatively impacted by market volatility, regulations, and environmental opposition. The withdrawal of Teck Resources' Frontier Oil Sands Mine proposal, for example, was framed by some as symbolic of the government's negative impact on the economy. **Economic challenges for the bitumen industry:** The pandemic-induced market slump intensified discussions about government intervention and subsidies. The importance of the industry for employment opportunities was frequently used to justify public funding. The study cited the testimony of a heavy equipment operator who experienced economic hardship to illustrate this point. **Political divide over the future of bitumen:** The study focused on the policy disputes between the federal government (advocating a balanced approach) and Alberta's petro-bloc (seeking delays in regulations). The discussion included Alberta Premier Jason Kenney's acknowledgment of the industry's eventual decline while advocating for continued production in the near term. This reflects the climate delay rhetoric that prioritized economic considerations over immediate decarbonization efforts. Critiques of the federal carbon pricing plan by the petro-bloc highlighted the perceived negative impact on businesses and competitiveness. The federal government's position on energy transition remained strategically ambiguous. **The bitumen industry's environmental impacts:** The study noted the contrasting viewpoints of environmentalists and the petro-bloc. Environmentalists argued that the crisis highlighted the vulnerabilities of Canada's resource-dependent economy, advocating for a green economy transition, whereas the petro-bloc attacked environmental perspectives, as seen in their response to Elizabeth May's statement that "oil is dead." The National Post used strategies common in pro-bitumen discourse to frame fossil fuel consumption as essential and to emphasize energy self-sufficiency. The TF-IDF analysis indicated that words such as "oil," "Alberta," "energy," and "oil sands" were prominent, reflecting the corpus' focus. Other important keywords included those related to specific projects ("pipeline," "project," "Teck," "frontier," "mine") and political divisions ("climate," "federal," "Trudeau," "Ottawa," "Kenney"). Notably, "COVID" ranked relatively low, suggesting the pandemic's influence on the discourse was less direct than might be expected.

The findings show that while the pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in Canada's resource-dependent economy, mainstream media coverage largely prioritized the economic interests of the bitumen industry, downplaying calls for immediate decarbonization. Pro-bitumen narratives dominated, particularly in the Globe and Mail and the National Post, often presenting climate action as secondary to economic recovery. This aligns with prior research on media issue attention cycles, where prominent events often divert public attention from climate change issues. The study points to the persistence of climate delay rhetoric, using economic arguments to justify continued fossil fuel reliance. The strategic ambiguity of the federal government's position on energy transition further contributes to this narrative. The marginalization of environmental voices, particularly in business-focused sections, suggests a potential bias in media reporting, leading to a limited public engagement with alternative narratives promoting a green economy transition.

This study provides insights into the ongoing discursive struggle surrounding Canada's energy transition. The dominance of pro-bitumen narratives in major Canadian newspapers highlights the need for environmental groups to explore alternative communication strategies to effectively engage the public with narratives about the green economy's potential. Future research could explore the potential of new media platforms to facilitate public conversations on decarbonization. The study's methodology demonstrates the utility of topic modeling in identifying key themes and facilitating in-depth qualitative analysis of media discourse.

The study's reliance on an abridged corpus (headlines and lead paragraphs only) might limit the depth of analysis. A more detailed examination of a smaller subset of articles could provide a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of the discourse. The focus on three national newspapers might not fully represent the diversity of opinions across all Canadian media outlets. Future research could expand the scope to encompass a wider range of media sources.