Reference for editorial verification. Defines the metric and its formula, the three corpora, the coding, the validation and the limits of the Climate Brief Pre-COP 31.
01 · What is measured
Narrative Dominance Index (NDI)
The NDI measures, by concept (oil, gas, CCS, hydrogen, renewables) and by year, which of the concept's two opposing frames dominates in the press: the climate movement's (−1) or the fossil industry's (+1). It is a normalised balance between the two poles:
NDI = (Pind − Pmov) / (Pind + Pmov + ε)Pind = % of headlines carrying the concept's industry pole frame · Pmov = % carrying the movement pole · ε = 0.001 (avoids division by zero). Range −1 … +1; tie band |NDI| < 0.05.
Worked example (oil, 2026): the necessity frame appears in 2.12% of headlines and the blame frame in 1.19% → NDI = (2.12 − 1.19) / (2.12 + 1.19) = +0.28.
The NDI compares the two poles against each other, not against total coverage. Only ~3.3% of oil headlines carry either frame in 2026; the crossing means that, among those, the industry pole moves ahead — not that most coverage frames oil as a necessity. It measures relative dominance, not share of voice.
FCI — a separate index
The FCI (frame-conflict intensity) is distinct from the NDI and is not part of its computation: FCI = (Smov + Sind) · (1 + Pind + Pmov), where S is the concept's prevalence in each actor's corpus. It measures how contested the concept is (actors + press) and is used to rank battlegrounds, not to decide who wins.
02 · The data
Three corpora
Press
64,057 headlines on climate and energy (GDELT title field; median 69 characters — headlines, not full body), 56 outlets, 2018 → 15 Sep 2026. Tier 1: 26,741 · Tier 2: 37,316.
Movement
44,774 posts from new-climate-movement accounts — X (42,442) + Bluesky (2,332). Anchors the movement pole.
Industry
16,428 posts from 10 accounts of the fossil industry: 6 majors (ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, bp, TotalEnergies, Eni) + 4 associations (API, FuelsEurope, OGCI, GasNaturally). Anchors the industry pole.
Outlet coverage. The 56 outlets are predominantly US and UK, with European presence (El País, Le Monde, DW, Euractiv, Politico Europe) and some international (Al Jazeera, SCMP, Sydney Morning Herald). It is an international, English-language-predominant sample — which is why the brief says "international", not "global".
The movement and industry corpora anchor the poles (which frame each actor produces); the NDI is computed on the press. That is the triangulation.
03 · The coding
How frames are built and detected
Codebook construction. The poles are not assigned a priori from generic categories. They are derived and calibrated on the two actors' real communication (the movement's and the industry's codebooks), following the framing procedure of Díaz-Pérez's peer-reviewed research, then applied symmetrically to the press corpus.
Detection. Each concept has two opposing poles — e.g. oil: necessity (energy solution) vs. blame (cause of climate change). A frame only counts when the entity (oil, Shell, fracking…) and the valence (necessity vs. blame) co-occur in the same headline within a bounded context window. "Energy crisis" alone does not trigger the oil-necessity frame. Patterns use word boundaries.
04 · Validation
How firm the signal is
Uncertainty (bootstrap). Every reported NDI carries a 95% CI from 2,000 bootstrap replications, resampling headlines within each concept-year. Reproducible: oil 2026 = +0.28, 95% CI [+0.07, +0.47] (excludes 0).
Coding validation · precision. On a stratified sample of 227 flagged headlines (up to 25 per pole), overall precision was 80%. The noisiest poles —RenewablesDoubt 43%, HydrogenDoubt 69%, GasSolution 76%, GasBlame 84%, which flagged favourable or market headlines as doubt/solution— were fixed in the codebook (v3) → all four at 100% on re-test (with the production function), no true positives lost. Overall precision after the fixes: ~91% on the tuning sample, and ~89% on a held-out test of unseen headlines (out-of-sample) — the codebook generalises, it is not overfit. The poles behind the oil finding are solid: blame 96%, necessity 76% — and 100% in 2026; necessity false positives cluster in 2020–2023, not 2026, so they do not manufacture the crossing. Recall: on 150 random headlines the codebook flags 3.3% (= the base rate, no over-flagging); it catches clear frames and misses some implicit ones (recall ~57% on a small base). Because the NDI is a ratio of two poles measured with the same conservative bar, this recall level does not bias the crossing. Model-assisted coding, backed by an independent human spot-check (40 headlines: 88% agreement, Cohen's κ=0.73 · substantial; disagreements on ambiguous cases).
05 · What 74→24 means
The collapse of the climate angle
Within climate-and-energy coverage, the share of headlines framed through climate falls from 74% (2019) to 26% (2026). It is a year-by-year share, not an absolute count: it measures what fraction of the energy-climate debate is told as a climate story. 2019 is the peak of the series; 2026, though a partial year, is the low.
06 · What it does NOT claim
Limits
It is not a prediction. It describes observed framing, not the outcome of COP31.
It attributes no intent. It measures how the debate is framed in the press, not whether there is coordination behind it.
It does not measure the physical reality of climate. For temperature data, cite WMO / Copernicus, not this brief.
English-predominant sample. It does not extrapolate to regions not covered by the 56 outlets.
07 · Authorship & access
Contact
Methodology by Sílvia Díaz-Pérez (PhD) — RELAT Narrative Engineering, building on her peer-reviewed research programme (frame construction, resonance, prognosis gap, frame compensation, corporate counter-framing).
Full technical specification — codebook definitions, the NDI v1.0 freeze, coding validation and outlet-level results — available for editorial verification under embargo at relat.cat.