What’s in the news? A multiscalar text analysis approach to exploring news media discourses for managing protected areas in Switzerland

Park management is often hampered where discourses – encompassing views, values and interests about parks - differ, emphasising the important role public engagement plays in park planning and management. News media are a promising source of unstructured text material for exploring environmental discourses. Here, we combine computational distant reading and close readings across temporal and thematic scales, with the overall aim of demonstrating how a multiscalar approach can be effectively used to explore discourses related to protected areas. We illustrate our aim through a case study in two Swiss Regional Parks with the objectives of a) computationally identifying emerging topics since the formation of the parks through distant reading and b) performing a detailed close reading exploring the discourses around two dominant topics. This multiscalar approach forms the cornerstone of our findings and allows us to explore different ways in which the two parks are valued and debated.