기후위기 해결 담론의 권력 구조와 교착의 경로: <중앙일보>와 <경향신문> 보도 분석

초록

This study critically analyzes South Korea’s media coverage of climate crisis in two major daily newspapers JoongAng Ilbo and Kyunghyang Shinmun from 2022 to April 2025 by employing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). While the two papers vary in their support of nuclear power versus renewable energy according to their ideology, the publications nevertheless exhibit a fundamental ideological consensus that the crisis can be solved through technology and growth. We find that the superficial conflict depoliticizes the climate crisis and constrains the social imaginary regarding possible solutions. Our analysis also reveals the hierarchical structure in which legitimacy is granted to specific subjects and solutions through Bourdieu’s ‘symbolic power,’ and the mechanism of exclusion that constrains the possibility of solutions through Taylor’s ‘social imaginary’. JoongAng Ilbo represented corporations as competent saviors by highlighting ESG management, while Kyunghyang Shinmun, in the process of calling for more state responsibility, paradoxically produced a dual effect of reinforcing an imagination limited to state-centered solutions. This differential allocation of power makes it difficult to imagine alternatives beyond the dominant discourse. Notably, even at the critical juncture of the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the unconstitutionality of the Carbon Neutrality Act, this led to a ‘path of silence’ where key political issues, such as the younger generation’s core demand for strengthening the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), were excluded from the public sphere. Therefore, this study calls for the repoliticization of the climate crisis － achieved by dismantling this discursive deadlock and expanding the social imaginary － to return it to a matter of justice and responsibility.

키워드