Abstract
Climate change has a profound impact on global water resources, with local droughts and water scarcities across Europe serving as one prominent example. In Alpine regions, winter precipitation is particularly important for maintaining summer water availability, as snowmelt typically supports both local ecosystems and downstream areas. Local media play a critical role in shaping climate risk perceptions and in establishing connections between local extreme weather events, such as droughts, and broader climate-change processes. The objective of this research is to examine how local media in an Italian Alpine region present an ongoing winter drought through different framings. A multimodal framing analysis was conducted on 226 media contributions from local daily news broadcasts, online articles, and print mass media, focusing on water scarcity issues during the 2023 winter drought. The results indicate that the primary focus was on the weather, with the fatalization frame dominating media coverage, while the link between climate change and water scarcity was relegated to the background, alongside three other frames. These findings suggest that local media do not fully leverage their influential role in contextualizing global climate change within local realities.