In Rome we are discussing how to talk about the transition just as the numbers show a very concrete picture: the environment has now entered the Italian media permanently, but it does so with very different weights. In 2025, social innovation and the climate crisis both exceed one million mentions in the monitored schedules, while transport remains last, with just over 217 thousand occurrences. A disproportion that explains the problem well: we know how to talk about climate when it becomes emergency, economy, energy, business. We struggle even more when the conversation comes down to the ground, between buses, daily mobility, cities and real habits.
The Eco Media Report 2025 photographs precisely this gap: environmental information grows, expands, remains present all year round. Some themes, however, continue to travel in the background. The monitoring examines the period between 1 January and 31 December 2025 and looks at the press, web, radio, TV and social networks. By “citation” we mean the presence of keywords attributable to the different environmental clusters in articles, online content, television and radio transcripts. This grid includes biodiversity, crisis, economy and circular economy, energy, institutions and society, resources, transport, social innovation, sustainable finance and responsible economy. Therefore, more than an impression, it is a snapshot of how the Italian media have distributed attention, space and frequency on environmental issues.
Climate and innovation run ahead
The strongest data concerns social innovation, which in 2025 reaches 1,373,770 citations between articles, television reports and radio broadcasts. Immediately after is the crisis, with 1,013,566 citations, including climate change, climate crisis, pollution, drought, floods, hydrogeological instability and other signs that are now all too familiar. In third place is the economy, including the circular one, with 935,528 contents. This is followed by energy with 782,583 citations, resources with 775,957, biodiversity with 724,861, institutions and societies with 412,031, sustainable finance with 348,831 and, last but not least, transport with 217,920.
The ranking says a lot even without shouting. The environment is talked about above all when it intersects with businesses, work, innovation, climate emergencies, economy, energy. Mobility, however, remains weaker. Yet, we talk about cars, public transport, traffic, cities, the air we breathe every day. Sidewalk stuff, not conference stuff. The fact that transport closes the ranking shows a disproportion: we talk a lot about the environment when it becomes a broad scenario, less when it concerns the practical organization of our days.
Even the monthly trend has its own quite human rhythm. In the summer months, citations drop, especially in August, when journalistic production slows down. From September to November, however, attention increases again, also due to the COP30 effect. The peaks are distributed differently: social innovation and economics reach the maximum in October, with 173,354 and 102,347 citations respectively; the crisis peaks in July with 105,950; energy in June with 84,225; resources in October with 77,590; biodiversity in May with 67,449; transport in September with 25,295.
Words that make news
Within the crisis cluster, the most recurring word is pollution, with 254,216 occurrences. Climate change follows closely behind, with 250,679 citations. Then come flood, with 109,588 occurrences, drought with 107,144, landfill with 94,574, climate crisis with 86,501, global warming with 50,737, while floods and desertification are both around 48 thousand mentions. Hydrogeological instability and pesticides close the top part of the ranking, with 38,103 and 34,020 respectively.
Here we can clearly see how Italian environmental information remains very tied to what we see and experience: the water that invades, the soil that gives way, the dirty air, the waste, the drought. Climate change enters the public narrative also through concrete words, because theory alone holds little. The news, however, arrives with wet shoes.
In energy, gas still dominates: 419,565 occurrences, much ahead of energy efficiency, which reaches 155,589, crisis with 145,488, renewable sources with 112,295 and hydrogen with 103,346. Here too the lexicon tells of a country that talks about transition while still keeping its eyes fixed on fossil fuels, on costs, on the security of supplies. The transition is there, of course. But the gas continues to take up half the room.
Biodiversity, on the other hand, shows an almost brutal dynamic in its simplicity: the symbolic animals win. In 2025 the most present word is bear, with 433,344 occurrences, while the plural “bears” has 226,082. Followed by wolf with 240,577 and wolves with 165,818. “National park” reaches 106,928 mentions, “protected areas” 38,835, while “biodiversity conservation” appears just 59 times.
It is a small figure only in appearance. He says that biodiversity manages to pierce the noise when it has a snout, a paw, a controversy, a fear, a photo to relaunch. Conservation, the slow, technical, daily one, remains much more fragile in the story. The bear makes the news. The habitat much less.
Mobility lags behind
The case of transport is perhaps the most interesting, precisely because it is at the bottom. In 2025 the cluster collects 217,920 citations overall, less than all the others. The distribution follows the usual law of the web: 163,702 mentions, equal to 75% of the total, come from online sources, excluding aggregators. The press accounts for 16%, TV for 8%, radio for just 1%.
When the media talk about transport from an environmental perspective, they do so above all with the formula sustainable mobility, which totals 163,182 mentions. Electric mobility is much further behind, with 44,852 occurrences, then car sharing with 11,440, sustainable transport with 6,419 and shared mobility with 4,041.
The distance is quite obvious. “Sustainable mobility” functions as a big, clean, spendable label. Inside, however, the individual pieces of change seem to weigh less: electric cars, sharing, public transport, urban habits. And here environmental information risks remaining broad, correct, even elegant, without really reaching the point where people wait for a bus that skips two trips or take the car because the alternative is simply missing.
COP30 makes noise, then disappears
On social media, monitoring looks at COP30, the Conference of the Parties on climate which took place in Belém, Brazil, from 10 to 21 November 2025. On Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and interactions.
Almost all the attention is focused on November: 13,073 mentions in the month of the Conference, with a peak in the week from 10 to 16 November, when the mentions reach 6,177. Engagement also follows the same trend: November produces 577,689 interactions, i.e. 69% of the entire year, and 474,768 interactions are concentrated in the peak week alone.
Sentiment is largely neutral, at 94%. Critical contents are 4%, positive contents are 2%. The criticisms focus above all on the perception of hypocrisy around the Conference, also for the infrastructural works carried out in the host country and for the feeling of still insufficient efforts, especially on an economic level.
It’s the usual fate of big climate conferences: for a few days they become everywhere, then they shrink. They pass through press releases, posts, photos, videos, indignant comments. They remain long enough to generate engagement, rarely enough to change the way the conversation is kept open after the spotlight goes out.
Overall, 2025 shows more present, more continuous environmental information, less confined to the niche. However, it also shows a precise hierarchy: what produces emergency, conflict, enterprise, energy and symbolic animals takes space; what concerns the slow maintenance of cities, transport, ecosystems and daily choices is more difficult. The environment has entered the Italian media. Now he has to stop coming in only when it makes noise.
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