Enemies in war, allies in survival: comparative climate change coverage in two South Asian archrivals

This study analyzes Indian and Pakistani English language print media coverage of climate change (2004–2024) using Hallin’s Spheres of Consensus, Legitimate Controversy, and Deviance. A dataset of 16,694 complete news articles was extracted from Nexis Uni, filtering from headlines mentioning “climate change.” Cosine similarity identified shared articles before Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) extracted common themes, while Euclidean distance separated divergent articles before applying Contrastive LDA (cLDA) to detect distinct national narratives. An informativeness index assessed media emphasis on climate causes, effects, and solutions. Findings show thematic overlap in scientific research, disaster preparedness, and institutional policies. However, Indian media prioritizes renewable energy, climate diplomacy, urban sustainability, and climate related public engagement, while Pakistani media focuses on economic vulnerabilities, aid dependency, institutional inefficiencies, and health crises. Climate effects are widely accepted, but causes remain contested, particularly regarding industrial accountability. Regression analysis shows solutions based coverage enhances informativeness, though with differing national emphases. The study provides a comparative framework for understanding climate discourse in politically adversarial nations, highlighting implications for public engagement, policy formation, and regional climate cooperation in South Asia.