Climate Change Narratives: An Ecolinguistics Analysis and Insights from Punch Newspapers

The media plays an essential role in shaping how environmental issues are understood. This study examines how The Punch newspaper frames climate change, identifies paramount narratives that shape public discourse, and reflects on how these narratives correspond with ecological values. Grounded on Ecolinguistics and Framing Theory, the study leverages a qualitative description design, adopting a content analysis to examine selected news reports published between 2024 and 2025. Findings discover that climate change is predominantly framed as a crisis through disaster-oriented narratives that buttress urgency, destruction, and visible consequences such as flooding, food insecurity, and displacement. Although these problem-narrative frames effectively grab attention, it limits long term engagement and fails to merge social, economic, and everyday life facets of climate change. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates that solution-oriented and justice-based narratives remain underreported, thereby delimiting public understanding and constructive dialogue. The study finalizes that, to enhance sustained climate awareness, Nigerian newspapers should equilibrate alarmist frames with inclusive and solution-driven narratives that represents the interrelatedness of human and ecological well-being.