Paper short abstract:

The discourse analysis of a media corpus of 823 regional press articles brings us closer to understanding the change of hegemonic discourses experienced in a Spanish mining basin after the implementation of Just Transition policies and measures.

Paper long abstract:

In the context of the process of coal phase-out in Spain, the analysis of how the regional media have picked up the policies and measures of Just Transition (JT) can help to understand the process of (re)creation of discursive legitimacy experienced in regions historically dependent on coal. The aim of this paper is to analyse the change of discursive hegemony in a mining basin about energy transition, in the Spanish region of Aragon. A systematic search has been carried out in 12 regional newspapers (3 written press and 9 digital press) to generate a document corpus of 823 news published between 2010 and 2021; the corpus has been analysed by applying an argumentative discursive methodology (Hajer, 1995), with the support of MAXQDA software. The analysis indicates that: 1) the JT instruments of the Spanish government have been the main resource to generate discourses of hope in the territories with the promise of distributive and procedural justice; 2) the struggle of ideas, actors and discursive arguments has led to a change in the semantics and connections between the concepts of transition and justice; 3) the process is reflecting the hegemonic replacement of the coal regime discourse by the discourse of green technologies; and 4) the discourse of resistance is maintained and counter-hegemonic narratives persist with new argumentative forms: Communities that once mobilized in defence of coal are now mobilizing against renewable macro-projects, refusing to accept the scenarios of opportunity and hope based on green technologies (wind and solar) promised from the central government.