The trouble with ‘quiet advocacy’: local journalism and reporting climate change in rural and regional Australia

Autor: Gabi Mocatta, Eve Mayes, Kristy Hess, Michael Everitt Hartup
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Media, Culture & Society. 45:157-177
ISSN: 1460-3675
0163-4437
DOI: 10.1177/01634437221104686
Popis: Climate activists and environmental communicators stress that addressing the climate crisis requires both global and local advocacy for transformational change-making. While journalists in small, rural communities are known to actively advocate on issues for the common good, there has been little investigation of local media advocacy on climate change in rural Australia: a region at the forefront of global heating. This paper analyses the accounts of local journalists of their media coverage of the School Strikes 4 Climate in rural and regional Australia, as an empirical entry point for a conceptual discussion of local media advocacy in reporting climate change. We find that normative ideas about journalism coupled with polarised community views on climate change hindered these journalists from taking an advocacy stance. We explore and critique the tacit ‘quiet advocacy’ practices used by these journalists reporting on climate in rural and regional Australia.
Databáze: OpenAIRE