News Media Coverage of India's National River Linking Program (2004-2022): A Case Study of the Ken-Betwa Link using Topic Modeling

Keywords: India, River Linking, Water, Infrastucture, Topic Modeling
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Largescale water infrastructure is on the rise globally. These projects are promoted as a supply-side solution to the growing problem of water scarcity and climate variability, but they are also heavily contested by those concerned with potential negative social and ecological outcomes. News media reporting of infrastructure development both reflects and influences public opinion. In this paper, we draw on a case of India’s National River Linking Program (INRLP) to examine news media representation of large-scale water infrastructure. The INRLP is a multi-decadal surface water project that seeks to transfer water from so-called water surplus to deficit regions. In this study, we examine one inter-basin water transfer project called the Ken-Betwa link by applying Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling to a corpus of seven English language newspapers circulated in India. We aim to answer the following questions to determine salient themes associated with the “Ken-Betwa” link: 1) Which topics related to river linking can be identified from news media coverage; 2) How prevalent are these topics over time; 3) How are these topics related to each other? We categorize the coverage into 23 different topics and three overarching themes: “INRLP Comparative Perspective", “Environmental Conservation Perspective”, and “Government Policy Perspective”. This paper contributes to topic modeling by demonstrating how specific topics evolve and reflect public opinion. We conclude with a discussion about the implications of shifting media discourses and how future research is needed to disentangle the role of news media in both generating and reflecting public perceptions.