A sustained erosion since 2018 crosses for the first time in 2026: the energy-security frame displaces the climate one and turns oil from problem into necessity. COP31 can consolidate or reverse the crossing.
The NDI measures, for each concept and year, which actor manages to define its meaning in the press: the climate movement (−1) or the fossil industry (+1). Unlike analyses that study activist, corporate or media discourse in isolation, the NDI triangulates the frames produced independently by movement and industry with their relative prevalence in press coverage. To the best of our literature review, it is the first longitudinal measure that tracks this dominance, concept by concept, over time. It turns a question that was hard to measure —who gets to define the meaning— into an observable series.
The NDI does not measure how much each actor talks. It measures which frame the press moves toward.
The Narrative Dominance Index (NDI) measures who defines the oil frame in the press — −1 the movement, +1 the industry. This is no swing: it is a sustained erosion that in 2026 crosses in the industry's favour (+0.28; 95% CI [+0.07, +0.47]).
Big Oil does not need to conquer a frame the movement leaves empty. Oil changes hands because the master frame of the conversation changes.
When climate crisis yields to energy security, oil stops entering the conversation mainly as a cause and re-enters as a necessity.
For the first time since 2018, the frame that wins the contest over oil in the press is the industry's: necessity and energy security displace climate blame. The term has flipped.
The loss does not come from a better pro-oil argument: it comes from a master-frame shift. After the war in Ukraine (2022) and, this year, the Middle East conflict, the press frames energy less and less as a climate problem and more as a security and supply one — the terrain where the fossil industry always wins. The collapse of the climate frame in the media is measurable:
In 2019, climate was the master frame through which energy was read. In 2026 that frame has been displaced by security, supply and energy crisis. That shift structurally changes the narrative advantage: within the climate frame fossil fuels appear as the problem; within energy security they can reappear as the solution.
In 2026 the climate angle within climate-and-energy coverage falls to its lowest — less than half of 2019. Climate is vanishing from the media just as it worsens.
Prior research by Díaz-Pérez showed that the new climate movement's prognosis gap persisted between 2018 and 2023, while Big Oil filled that space with gas, hydrogen, CCS and other solutions compatible with its business model.
That asymmetry is no longer only in the actors' communications: it can now be observed in the battle to define the concepts in the press.
The loss is not only in the media: the movement itself activates the climate frame less and less. In its own discourse, climate falls from 35% (2019) to 25.7% (2026) — its lowest. And its positive proposal weakens: renewables-as-solution drops from 12.5% (2023) to 6.1% (2025) (a partial recovery to 8.8% in 2026). Meanwhile the movement questions renewables from within — not on intermittency, but on green extractivism and justice:
The climate movement has left the solutions narrative deserted. The industry has moved into that vacuum — casting gas, CCS and hydrogen as 'the answer'.
Oil is the most contested front — the one that can still change hands. Elsewhere the dominance is clearer: the industry already leads gas, CCS and hydrogen; renewables the movement wins in the press, though it questions them from within. None is settled — all remain battlegrounds that matter.
| Concept | 24–25 | 2026 | Dominance 2026 | Strategic status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oil | −0.67 | +0.28 | Industry | Contested · crossing |
| Gas | +0.73 | +1.00 | Industry | Industry held |
| CCS | +0.84 | · | Industry | Industry held |
| Hydrogen | +0.99 | +0.99 | Industry | Industry lock-in |
| Renewables | −0.75 | −0.95 | Movement | Movement held · vulnerable within |
On gas, the press had already crossed to the industry frame earlier than on oil: from +0.31 before the war in Ukraine to +0.73 in 2024–25 —LNG and energy security— and in 2026 it consolidates on the industry side (+1.00).
If the energy crisis organises the conversation, the movement need not convince the media to abandon that frame. It needs to redefine what it means: fossil dependence = vulnerability; renewables = security, stability and autonomy. The Pakistan, WindEurope and Yale examples are not scattered cases: they are evidence that the counter-frame is already culturally available in the press.
Mobilisation is not just a pressure tactic: it is an infrastructure of narrative amplification. The 2019 wave combined a highly resonant frame, mass mobilisation and the peak presence of the climate frame in our media series (74%). The later loss of mobilisation and frame coherence coincides with its continued retreat.
The movement has built the diagnosis —problem and culprits— far more strongly than a prognosis able to define what comes next. RELAT calls that asymmetry the prognosis gap. The industry has compensated for it by promoting gas, CCS and hydrogen as "the answer"; 2026's data show the consequence: it now dominates precisely those concepts in the press.
Do not abandon energy security: contest it. It is the other face of the counter-frame — renewables are security; oil dependence is insecurity. A double frame for oil: keep tying it to the blame for climate change as climate momentum returns, and frame it as the cause of the energy crisis itself, not its solution.
Precisely because 2026 is provisional, COP31 works as a natural test of the diagnosis. A COP that re-anchors the conversation in climate can reverse the crossing; one captured by energy security consolidates it. The window is now.
COP31 can reverse this. But the movement has to seduce and mobilise again as it did in 2019 — when the streets put climate back on the front pages.
Full report — the complete analysis: outlet-by-outlet scorecard (who moves where), per-concept and per-actor series, and the dataset — plus a live briefing and Q&A session with your organisation to read the findings together.
Narrative Audit — scoped to your region, organisation or battleground: the strategic diagnostic tailored to what matters to you.
Climate research has extensively measured the frames of movements, companies and media. But those spaces have largely been studied separately or in pairs. The NDI closes the loop:
It does not measure who talks most. It measures who gets to define what things mean.
RELAT builds on Díaz-Pérez's peer-reviewed research programme on frame construction, resonance, prognosis gaps, frame compensation and corporate collective action frames.
GDELT corpus of climate-and-energy coverage · 56 outlets · 2018–2026 · 2026 year-to-date · indices with 95% confidence intervals.