Framing the 2026 European Heatwave as a Climate Change Crisis: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Newspaper Headlines

Abstract

The 2026 European heatwave emerged as one of the most severe climate-related events in recent years, intensifying public debate on climate change, environmental sustainability, and societal resilience. As news headlines constitute the first point of engagement with audiences, they play a significant role in shaping public understanding of environmental crises through selective framing and linguistic representation. This study examines how newspaper headlines construct the 2026 European heatwave as a climate change crisis. Adopting a qualitative research design, the study employs textual analysis as the research method, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the analytical approach, Fairclough’s (1992) Three-Dimensional Model as the analytical model, and Entman’s (1993) Framing Theory as the theoretical framework. The dataset comprises purposively selected headlines from two international newspapers reporting the 2026 European heatwave. The analysis reveals four dominant media frames: Climate Change Attribution, Government Response and Preparedness, Public Health, and Environmental Crisis. Critical examination of the textual, discursive, and social dimensions demonstrates that the headlines extend beyond reporting meteorological events by constructing extreme heat as a multidimensional crisis with profound environmental, social, and institutional implications. The findings further indicate that newspapers employ strategic lexical choices, metaphorical expressions, evidential markers, and evaluative language to legitimize scientific knowledge, assign responsibility, and shape public perceptions of climate risks. By integrating discourse analysis with framing theory, this study contributes to scholarship on climate communication by demonstrating how media discourse influences public understanding of environmental change, governance, and climate adaptation. The study also highlights the importance of responsible environmental journalism in promoting informed public engagement and policy responses to increasingly frequent climate-related disasters.