Return to ‘a new normal’: Discourses of resilience to natural disasters in Australian newspapers 2006–2010

•Resilience, as a concept that conceptualises response to change, is gaining currency in the public discourse.•Analysis of media discourse during natural disasters can illuminate what is the public understanding of the concept of resilience and how this converges and diverges from academic understandings.•Our results highlight how resilience can be undermined by use of the term resilience as an empty rhetorical device or if it results in lack of support for disaster affected communities.