CCF Database: A Machine-Learning-Annotated Corpus of 266,271 Canadian Climate Articles (1978–2024)

CCF Database: A Machine-Learning-Annotated Corpus of 266,271 Canadian Climate Articles (1978–2024) | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article CCF Database: A Machine-Learning-Annotated Corpus of 266,271 Canadian Climate Articles (1978–2024) Antoine Claude Lemor, Alizée Pillod, Matthew Taylor This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8525287/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Climate discourse does not merely mirror public debate around climate change, but actively shapes how societies perceive and respond to the crisis. Yet large-scale, fine-grained analysis of climate discourse remains hindered by fragmented corpora and ad hoc coding schemes. The Canadian Climate Framing (CCF) project, introduced in this article, releases a large-scale annotated database, a generalizable annotation framework, and accompanying training data to overcome these limitations. The CCF comprises 266,271 articles from 20 Canadian newspapers (1978–2024), processed into 9.2 million bilingual sentences (82.9% English, 17.1% French) with 65 hierarchical annotations: eight thematic frames, nine actor types, eight event categories, solution strategies, emotional tone, geographic focus, and named entities. Construction relied on transformer classifiers (BERT/CamemBERT) trained through human-in-the-loop iteration on 4,000+ expert-coded sentences, validated against a gold standard (F1=0.866) with confirmed intercoder reliability. Four analytical applications demonstrate the database’s research potential: quantifying associations between political actors and science skepticism, characterizing the structure of discursive polarization, modeling editorial prioritization of frames, and reconstructing networks of epistemic authority. Both the CCF and its underlying framework and training data are designed for replication across national and linguistic contexts. Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-8525287","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":576350960,"identity":"5ad0a07f-d783-4ac0-9dce-e730af7b55c0","order_by":0,"name":"Antoine Claude Lemor","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAABC0lEQVRIiWNgGAWjYLCCBCDmA7Mq4GIWeNQzQ7SwgTlnoCIMDBL4tTDAtDC2EaGFf3b/wQcPd9gwsLF3Jz6unHc4ml+6/9iHDzUSDPztB7BqkbhzmNkg8UwaAxvP2c2GZ7cdzp055zDzzBnHJBgkziRgt+ZGMptEYtthBjaJ3G2SjUAtG24kMzPzsEkwGDBg1yIP0fKfgU3+LVDLHKiWP/+AWvgfYNViANFyAGgLL1BLA1QLYxtQiwR2WwxvJBsbJLYl87Dx5G42bDiWnjtzRrIxY2+fBI/EDey2yN1IfPjwZ5udHD/72Y0PG2qsc/slEh8z/PhmI8ffj8P7UMBDhMgoGAWjYBSMAqIBAAQkV+PCJ8u3AAAAAElFTkSuQmCC","orcid":"","institution":"Université de Sherbrooke","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Antoine","middleName":"Claude","lastName":"Lemor","suffix":""},{"id":576350965,"identity":"0693b142-ec20-4a94-82a0-4cd863bb452a","order_by":1,"name":"Alizée Pillod","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Montreal","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Alizée","middleName":"","lastName":"Pillod","suffix":""},{"id":576350970,"identity":"93a5c5f4-10d4-4f31-a2f3-c582a9eaec34","order_by":2,"name":"Matthew Taylor","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Montreal","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Matthew","middleName":"","lastName":"Taylor","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2026-01-06 00:23:04","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8525287/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8525287/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":101297164,"identity":"253059d7-cb45-475b-9d83-c0de750c9107","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-01-28 09:25:46","extension":"pdf","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":4962396,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"submissionpackage.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8525287/v1_covered_10d0a042-cf6e-4608-b61e-1b58629bb1b9.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"CCF Database: A Machine-Learning-Annotated Corpus of 266,271 Canadian Climate Articles (1978–2024)","fulltext":[],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":false,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":true,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":true,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8525287/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8525287/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"Climate discourse does not merely mirror public debate around climate change, but actively shapes how societies perceive and respond to the crisis. 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