Ulrika Olausson

Global warming—global responsibility? Media frames of collective action and scientific certainty

The increasing interconnectedness of the world that characterizes the process of globalization compels us to interlink local, national, and transnational phenomena, such as environmental risks, in both journalistic and academic discourse. Among environmental risks of global scope climate change is probably the one receiving the most attention at present, not least in the media. Globalization notwithstanding, national media are still dominated by a national logic in the presentation of news, and tensions arise between this media logic and the transnational character of environmental risks that call for a collective responsibility transcending the borders of the nation-states. This article presents results from studies of the construction of global climate change in three Swedish newspapers. It discusses the medias attribution of responsibility for collective action along an axis ranging from local to national to transnational, and highlights the medias reluctance to display any kind of scientific uncertainty that would undermine the demand for collective action. The results underline the medias responsiveness to the political setting in which they operate and the growing relevance of the transnational political realm of Europe for the construction of news frames on global climate change in European national media.

Towards a European identity? The news media and the case of climate change

Much research on the discursive construction of Europe in national news media has quantitatively focused on the presence of ‘EU topics’. The more frequently EU topics appear, the better the breeding-ground for a sense of European community, it is argued. This article tackles the question of a European identity from a different angle. Guided by theories on collective identity and power, and utilizing qualitative discourse analysis of the reporting on climate change in a tabloid newspaper and public service television news in Sweden, this article discerns a budding European political identity, discursively embedded and ‘hidden’ in the reporting as the natural order of things. When turned into common-sense knowledge, the European realm as a representative of ‘Us’ is accorded spontaneous legitimacy as a relevant political power in the making of meaning on climate change.

The Diversified Nature of “Domesticated” News Discourse: The case of climate change in national news media

Several studies have concluded that foreign news in national media is characterized by a national logic largely caused by so-called “domestication,” i.e. the adaptation of news from “outside” to a perceived national audience. The domesticated news discourse counteracts discursive constructions of the global, reinforcing instead nation-state discourse and identity. However, this paper argues that we need to take the search for constructions of the transnational beyond the genre of foreign news. The deterritorialized nature of todays globalized risks and crises, such as climate change, blurs the boundaries between the domestic and foreign, and renders the distinction between domestic and foreign news more or less obsolete. This, in turn, requires us to revisit the concept and practice of “domestication” using context-sensitive analytical approaches to capture its discursive constitution. Guided by the theoretical and methodological framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA), this paper aims to analyze and de-construct news discourses of “domestication” by studying the reporting on climate change in Indian, Swedish, and US newspapers. It identifies three discursive modes of domestication: (1) introverted domestication, which disconnects the domestic from the global; (2) extroverted domestication, which interconnects the domestic and the global; and (3) counter-domestication, a deterritorialized mode of reporting that lacks any domestic epicenter.

The post-political condition of climate change : an ideology approach

Scholars have argued that environmental discourse in general and climate change discourse in particular have contributed to a post-politicization of the public sphere, meaning there is now an absence of deeper conflicting viewpoints about the future direction of society; capitalism has been naturalized as the only conceivable option for the organization of socio-political-ecological life. The aim of the study is to empirically explore the ways in which the post-political condition of climate change is established in public discourse. Applying an ideology-theoretical approach to a focus-group study with Swedish citizens, the article analyzes how the post-politicization of the climate issue is shaped by 1) belief in a “climate threat,” 2) personal experiences of a “climate threat,” and 3) integration of a “climate threat” into everyday practices. We conclude that the post-politicization of climate change could be explained by a consensual discourse constituted by the particularization of climate change causes, a lack of passionate emotions, and “neurotic” micro-political action.

The Reinvented Journalist: The discursive construction of professional identity on Twitter

Today, there is much academic discussion about how journalism and journalists are affected by rapid change and convergence in the work context. Considering the fundamental transformations of the media ecology brought about by digitization and the advent of social media, it has been assumed that journalists are more or less compelled to reinvent their professional role and identity. We know a good deal about how social media is adopted by journalists, mostly through survey and interview studies investigating self-perceptions of identity in terms of norms and values. There are also some case studies, predominantly in the form of (quantitative) content analyses, exploring the (innovative) uses of Twitter. However, we still have little knowledge about how the professional identity of journalists is discursively constructed—how, in specific detail, traditional norms and ideals are discursively reinforced or challenged—in the Twitter flow. With a discourse theoretical and methodological approach, this article aims to contribute to our understanding of the discursive construction of professional identity on Twitter by qualitatively analyzing tweets from the most widely followed journalist in Sweden. The analysis of the most active j-tweeter can yield important clues as to what journalism may be in the process of becoming. The article identifies discourses that (1) reinforce the watchdog identity, (2) challenge the watchdog identity, (3) reinforce the disseminator/explicator identity, and (4) reinforce transparency but challenge professional identity. It concludes that the reinvented journalistic identity includes discursive processes that both shape and are shaped by Twitter in a dialectical relationship.

Media and Climate Change: Four Long-standing Research Challenges Revisited

This paper suggests some further avenues of empirical and theoretical investigation for media research on climate change. “Old” suggestions, whose significance, as we see it, needs to be further reinforced, are included, as are “new” ones, which we hope will generate innovative research questions. In order to integrate the analysis with knowledge generated by media research at large, we revisit four research challenges that media scholars have long grappled with in the investigation of journalism: (1) the discursive challenge, i.e. the production, content and reception of media discourse; (2) the interdisciplinary challenge, i.e. how media research might engage in productive collaboration with other disciplines; (3) the international challenge, i.e. how to achieve a more diverse and complex understanding of news reporting globally; and (4) the practical challenge, i.e. how to reduce the theory–practice divide in media research.

Intentional and unintentional transnationalism: Two political identities repressed by national identity in the news media

This article explores how the powerful mechanisms of nation-state discourse in the news media obscure emerging constructions of transnational political thought and action. With the aid of empirical examples from qualitative media studies on critical events extensively covered by the news media, the article demonstrates how national identity in the news media represses transnational political identities of the intentional as well as the unintentional kind.

The Enrollment of Nature in Tourist Information: Framing Urban Nature as “the Other”

This article is based on the assumption that nature inevitably plays a role in urban place-making. Today, cities worldwide are engaged in place promotion in which nature is constructed as a commodity to consume. This article explores the enrollment of nature in tourist information with a specific analytical focus on the relationship between nature and culture. Guided by framing theory and citing the case of tourist information in Stockholm, the article empirically demonstrates how nature is enrolled in tourist information and turned into a commodity through three distinct but related frames that, in various ways, construct nature as “other”: nature as the familiar other, nature as the exotic other, and pristine nature. The article concludes that the enrollment of nature in city marketing reproduces the modern nature–culture divide, which enables the commodification of nature and helps conceal the environmental consequences of increased urban density.

The Celebrified Journalist: Journalistic self-promotion and branding in celebrity constructions on Twitter

Ongoing transformations of the media ecology in the direction of greater digitization have increasingly blurred the boundaries between professional journalists and other information brokers; the former now must work hard to distinguish themselves from the latter. Notable among these developments is a shift towards the individualization of journalism, with journalists seeming to spend more time building personal brands, for instance on Twitter, than on building organizational ones. Within journalism research there is a growing interest in the use of Twitter for journalistic self-promotion and branding, but studies are still scarce, and the ways in which journalistic self-promotion is discursively constituted need further empirical and theoretical attention. By means of a critical discourse analysis of the tweets of a widely followed journalist in Sweden, and through the theoretical lens of celebrity, this study aims to contribute knowledge about how journalistic self-promotion discourses evolving in the digitized media setting are constituted. The article identifies discourses that construct celebrity through (1) “fame by association,” (2) asymmetrical communication, and (3) “lifestreaming.” It concludes by discussing “celebrification” as a vital component of journalistic self-promotion discourses as well as the power aspects of ubiquitous self-promotional discourses, which are deeply embedded in the general structures of society.

Media Research on Climate Change: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Heading?

There is no doubt that research on media coverage of climate change, as a particular subfield of environmental communication research, has proliferated over the past decade. However, this is a mixed blessing. Climate change may very well be the greatest environmental challenge of our time, but as such it also risks obscuring other important environmental issues. Notwithstanding this, the idea behind this special issue was our belief that it is time to make some kind of reckoning as regards the development of this particular subfield. Accordingly, this issue sets out to consider what conclusions can be drawn in light of the existing body of work, what lessons can be learnt, what are the challenges to be met, and what are the directions to be taken in order to further develop media research on climate change. The mixture of articles in this special issue serve well to illustrate the range of empirical, theoretical, and methodological approaches subsumed under the broad heading of “media studies on climate change.” Some contributions focus on the past—how the subfield has developed and what we can learn from that—and some look toward the future. Either way, all the authors share the ambition to suggest important avenues of research, be they centered on media, context, applicability of results, or theoretical advancement. As such they make a valuable contribution to identifying important directions for future research on the role of the media in communicating climate change. In the opening article, Schäfer and Schlichting provide a convincing large-scale meta-analysis of existing research on media representations of climate change in order to identify its main characteristics. The analysis demonstrates a rapid expansion of studies of media representations, an ongoing diversification of the field, a strong bias toward European and North American countries (though interest in Asian, Latin American, and African countries is increasing), an evident analytical focus on print media, and a broad set of applied methodologies and research designs. Based on this analysis the authors argue that there is a need for more variation in terms of countries studied—in particular those countries most vulnerable to climate change—as well as types of media. Environmental Communication, 2014 Vol. 8, No. 2, 139–141, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2014.910330