Dataset of News Media Coverage and Facebook Comments on South Africa’s COP26 Just Energy Transition Deal

<p dir="ltr">This dataset documents public conversations on South Africa’s energy transition policies and initiatives, with a particular focus on the COP26 Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). It supports research aimed at understanding the social and communicative dynamics involved in transforming South Africa’s coal-dependent energy system toward cleaner energy sources. Given the intersection of energy infrastructure with socio-economic and political systems, communication research offers a critical lens for examining how publics frame and contest visions of future energy transitions.</p><p dir="ltr">The dataset extends earlier work exploring how South African publics received and responded to the COP26 coal phase-out deal on Facebook (Okoliko and de Wit, 2024), available at: <a href="https://doi.org/10.25413/sun.24297940.v1" rel="noopener" target="_new">https://doi.org/10.25413/sun.24297940.v1</a>. For the current dataset, additional content from mainstream news media was curated to enable comparative analysis of platform-specific framings—mainstream news media versus Facebook comments. The analysis examines whether and how justice imaginaries shape discourse on the JETP, drawing on the four pillars of a Just Energy Transition: procedural, distributive, recognition, and restorative justice.</p><p dir="ltr">A two-stage sampling approach was employed. First, news items published by South African media discussing the COP26 JETP deal were purposively targeted, regardless of format. Materials were sourced from the LexisNexis database and a previously archived dataset on SUNScholarData (Okoliko and de Wit, 2024). A LexisNexis search was conducted on February 2, 2025, using the terms <i>COP26</i>, <i>$8.5 billion</i>, <i>energy</i>, <i>transition</i>, and <i>South Africa</i>. The search—limited to November 1, 2021–January 31, 2022, and filtered for South Africa–based publications—yielded 402 records. After screening for relevance and removing duplicates, 90 articles directly addressing the JETP deal were retained. Excluded items included articles that mentioned climate transitions, COP26, or financing without specific reference to South Africa’s JETP.</p><p dir="ltr">The Facebook dataset comprises 3,980 comments responding to 31 news posts by South African media outlets (see Okoliko and de Wit, 2024, for methodological details). To supplement the mainstream media dataset, 20 additional news publications shared on Facebook were added. Nine of the 31 records were excluded due to duplication or unavailability, resulting in 110 relevant media items. Facebook comments were further screened for analytical relevance, excluding entries with minimal content (e.g., “that’s true,” “of course”), reducing the total to 3,668 substantive comments.</p><p dir="ltr">The dataset is organized as follows:</p><ul><li><b>News Media Complete Dataset:</b> Screened LexisNexis-sourced records</li><li><b>LexisNexis Search Output Report</b></li><li><b>News Media Subsets Analysed:</b></li><li><ul><li>News Media subset</li><li>Subset of full Facebook post texts shared by media outlets</li></ul></li><li><b>Facebook Data Subset Analysed:</b> (see Okoliko, 2025, for the complete dataset)</li><li><b>Gephi Project File:</b> Actor–justice dimension analysis</li><li><b>ATLAS.ti Project File</b></li></ul><p dir="ltr">Details of the analytical framework, methods, and findings are reported in the associated publication:<br><i>“‘Watershed Moment’ or ‘More Money to Steal’? South Africa’s COP26 Just Energy Transition Deal in News Media vs. Facebook Comments”</i> (currently under peer review with <i>Frontiers in Communication</i>).</p><p dir="ltr"><br></p><p><br></p>