Exploring climate journalism from globalized perspectives - An IAMCR pre-conference

Description

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of the age. While journalists prime the publics’ interest toward the issue (Brüggemann and Engesser 2017; Thiel and Lin 2022; Painter et. al 2022), politicians and corporate giants use the media to manipulate as well as influence public discourse (Al Rawi et al 2021). Disinformation continues to spread (D'I. Treen et al 2020) in various spheres, including social media platforms and credible, impartial and accurate information on the climate change issue remains in short supply. In response, this IAMCR preconference call seeks to uncover the role that climate journalism (Schäfer and Painter 2020) is playing presently in mediating this most persistent and significant issue.

Researchers and affiliates associated with the Global Risk Journalism Hub, an international research network of journalism scholars from the Global South and Global North have spent the last two years investigating the dynamics of risk journalism in a rapidly changing world. These risks have been explored from a wide range of geographical, methodological, theoretical as well as empirical perspectives. In expanding this focus, the Global Risk Journalism Hub is currently engaged in research that seeks to probe the role that journalism is playing in shaping climate change discourse.

This preconference therefore offers an opportunity to present and discuss findings ahead of a second edited collection focused on journalism and climate change reporting.

The preconference invites papers that focus on the following questions (alongside other matters) related to climate reporting:

How is the climate crisis being reported?
When should reporting move beyond stating facts?
What roles can sources, other than those of climate experts, play in reporting?
Who should be a climate journalist (under which conditions and whose determination)?
What role can debate play in reporting?
What role is climate change reporting playing in shaping and influencing public discourse and attitudes to climate change?
Possible comparative patterns of climate change reporting between regions or Global North & Global South