How (Not) To Report On Climate Change in Mainstream Media

11/17/20223 min read

In this post I consider the potential consequences of certain approaches toward reporting climate change.

To summarize, mainstream approaches toward reporting on climate change appear to have a significant impact on the way the public perceives the desirability and feasibility of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Additionally, the adoption of certain media perspectives can have the effect of perpetuating injustice toward vulnerable populations. The media must take responsibility for the influence of their chosen approaches.

Impact on Public Perception on Mitigation

According to Stecula and Merkley (2019), when climate change is framed in a way which emphasizes economic cost of climate mitigation, public support for mitigation appears to reduce; conversely, frames emphasizing gains appear to enhance support for mitigation.

There is some evidence that “uncertainty frames confuse the public about the state of the science, and reduce their propensity to engage in mitigation behavior”, while “less polarizing climate change discourse may reduce Republican antipathy toward climate action” (Stecula and Merkley, 2019).

Impact on Vulnerable Populations

Saraswat and Kumar (2016) describe Indigenous people as “the most vulnerable group from the climate change impacts”.

In mainstream media narratives, “when Indigenous journalists aren't named opinion, they're often named 'advocacy journalists' or 'activists,' or told they are 'too biased' and unable to report with a degree of partiality, or without a conflict of interest, in order to uphold their objectivity” (Gilpin, 2018). These narratives result in the misrepresenting and under-representing of Indigenous communities by “reproducing stereotypes and deficit views of Indigenous people, ignoring Indigenous knowledge, erasing the ongoing impacts of colonialism, and/or framing Indigenous people as proxies, victims, or heroes when it comes to climate change” (Callisson, 2019). In my view the effect is the perpetuation and purported legitimisation of settler-colonialist and racist policies, and the continuation of not only political but environmental injustice.

In a 2021 interview with The Ecopolitics Podcast, Dr. Kyle Whyte, Professor of Environment and Sustainability at University of Michigan, and a citizen of the Potawatomi Nation, said:-

“[Environmental] injustice is often a fairly parasitic type of relationship and its ultimate goal, at least for the perpetrators of injustice, is to weaken the society that is experiencing the injustice to the point where it can no longer adapt to the threats of the society that's committing the injustice.

And so environmental injustice is not only a delivery of harms and violence, but it's also an attempt to weaken the capacity of the afflicted party to respond.”

Collectively through the massification of climate migrants, the portrayal of climate migrants as threats, the depiction of climate migrants as “climate refugees”, and the use of photographs of destruction and damage, the mainstream media narrative “fail to address the history of neglect and colonialism that had major impact on the socioeconomic status, making them more vulnerable to climate change. The media fails to acknowledge the Western involvement and instead focuses on representing refugees as helpless and Western society as being the saviours” (Waugh, 2022). Waugh (2022) argues that this approach dehumanises and removes agency from climate migrants.

A 2021 report by UNICEF highlighted the under-representation of children in the climate change narrative of mainstream media, by reason of “a combination of poor internet access, reduced capacity for travel to overseas conferences and events, low media coverage, and silencing from those in power” . Children are more vulnerable to climate-related hazards such as inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene; inadequate health and nutrition; inadequate education and learning; and poverty and the lack of social protections (UNICEF, 2021). In fact, they are said to be more vulnerable than adults to extreme climate variations because of their physical and physiological weaknesses and their higher risk of death from climate-related diseases, as well as the fact that “deprivation as a result of climate and environmental degradation at a young age can result in a lifetime of lost opportunity” (UNICEF, 2021).

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