Climate Communication as Statecraft: A Content Analysis of Climate Change Communication from Caribbean Governments and Press

There is a need to study the communication context of climate-vulnerable societies built by the communicative actors in those societies. We present the results of a human-and-computer-coded content analysis of climate messages from the governments of two climate-vulnerable Caribbean nations, Barbados and Guyana, from the beginning of 2021 to mid-2024, as well as news publications based in these countries. To understand the climate communication strategies that these countries may or may not signal in official communications, and news publications may mirror, we used a coding scheme that draws on public diplomacy, public relations, and science communication theory. Barbados and Guyana discussed climate change in a way that is mostly consistent with the public diplomacy and public relations functions of strategic communication about other topics, and rarely discussed it as a science issue. However we find some evidence that news stories discuss climate change primarily as a science issue.