How Does Regionality Influence Meaning Structures Concerning Peatland Rewetting in Germany?

Abstract This study presents an analysis of the German discourse on peatland rewetting based on a data corpus of 1,957 newspaper articles published between January 2019 and July 2023. Because of the large scope of the analysis, we used structural topic modeling (STM) to identify the regionality of discursive features and meaning structures. We divided the corpus into four discourse strands (national, northeast, northwest, south) and show that the distribution of topics differs significantly between these strands. However, we also present a hegemonic discourse pattern of peatland rewetting as a climate protection strategy. Moreover, we contribute to a deeper understanding of barriers to the large-scale rewetting of drained and agriculturally utilized peatlands in Germany by identifying two dispositives: the drainage dispositive and a nature conservation dispositive, shaping peatland-related practices and activities.