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Media and the Politics of Arctic Climate Change: When the Ice Breaks
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... In the coverage, VK's journalist highlighted the praise the city received from a high official from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stating that "Umeå is a good example of a successful and innovative city in the Artic that has developed quickly in a positive way" (VK, 7 August 2019). 6 The place branding of Umeå as an Arctic town is relatively new and clearly associated with the growing importance of the Arctic as a geopolitical area of significance globally, not least due to the climate crisis (Christensen et al., 2013). ...
The climate crisis concerns the whole fabric of society. Local journalism can play a key role when cities are handling the problems. In this article, I analyse local media discourses on climate change in four Swedish cities that aim to be role models in the transition towards carbon neutrality. A discourse analysis of news articles and op-eds about the climate, combined with semi-structured interviews with journalists working at four different local newspapers, shows that the climate crisis is covered in all newspapers – even if the amount and ambition varies – including the ability to fill key roles as watchdog and educator. The newsrooms’ climate focus also had to give way when the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Local decisions about transportation, food, and urban development are common topics and often debated in the local press. However, the prize-winning cities’ ambitious green plans to become climate neutral already by 2030 remain vague for the journalists and probably also their readers.
... Another crucial issue for climate justice communication is how diverse geographical scales are connected, or disconnected, in media discourse. Christensen's (2013) seminal work recognizes how scalar transcendence has been increasingly applied in journalistic discourses on climate change in the Arctic. Building on this work, we have distinguished between scalar transcendence and what we term scalar integration (Roosvall, Tegelberg & Enghel 2020). ...
This chapter draws upon existing research on media and climate justice to outline an agenda for future research on climate justice communication. By focusing on the challenges faced particularly by Indigenous and other frontline communities around the world, we demonstrate that this agenda must pay close heed to geographical scales and how these are (dis)connected in climate change reporting. Drawing on Fraser (2014), we outline how diverse matters of justice (economic, cultural, political) interact as conditions for climate justice. By detailing key areas, concepts and analytical distinctions, we offer a way forward in terms of communicating climate justice as well as for researching climate change communication through a lens of justice theory and analysis. The chapter ultimately illuminates how the intersection between matters of justice, geographical scales and diverse media (local, national, transnational) make communicating demands for climate justice such a challenging task; yet one filled with opportunities.
Keywords: climate justice, geographical scales, communication, media, Indigenous peoples, journalism
... Arctic scholars have used these frames and methodologies to investigate media publications and political publications, speeches, and statements about the Arctic, with a focus on climate change as a catalyst of changing polar narrations. Recent literature has explored Arctic media and visuals through different Arctic national lenses like Russian and Canadian news reporting (Stoddart and Smith 2016;Wilson Rowe 2013;Gritsenko 2016); through the lens of securitization (Padrtova 2019); and through ice melt and climate change (Christensen et al. 2013;Bravo 2009;Klimenko et al. 2019). Hitherto, there has yet to be an investigation into Arctic Council visual narratives using the conceptual frameworks presented above: strategic narratives in communication; the esthetic turn of international relations; and critical geography of power-laden images. ...
This article aims to delve deeper in the underexplored but critical role Arctic Council representations and visual images have played over its first 20 years of existence. Through a visual discourse narrative of Arctic Council publications and media platforms, the article will explore how the Artic Council’s self-constructed visual narrative has evolved over the past two decades, moving from a primarily environmentally focused narrative in 1996 to one imbued with political legitimacy and power in 2016 through strategic communications. The research is multidisciplinary and lends its foundation to four areas of study: (i) international relations, power, and the esthetic turn; (ii) art history, identity, power, and iconography; (iii) the history and production of science visuals in the history and philosophy of science; and (iv) geography, imagined geographies, and border studies. While the research is positioned primarily in the first of these areas, the so-called Esthetic Turn of International Relations, its analysis rests at the nexus of all four. By offering an analysis of 20 years of the strategic visual communication of the Arctic Council, this article aims to fill a gap in current scholarship with a case study of strategic communication strategies in visual imagery and political iconography in perceptions of Northern governance.
... More recently, the sea-ice minimum of 2007 caught by surprise scientists and politician alike. It became a 'meta-event' that has influenced expectations regarding geopolitical developments, off-shore resources, and shipping in the polar region (Christensen, Nilsson, & Wormbs, 2013). A third example is the 2008 crash of the Icelandic economy, which led to a major restructuring of the economy where the failed financial sector has been replaced by fish export, renewable energy, and a rapidly growing tourism industry (Huijbens, Jóhannesson, & Jóhannesson, 2014). ...
Participatory scenario methodologies are increasingly used for studying possible future developments in the Arctic. They have the potential to contribute to several high-priority tasks for Arctic research, such as integration of indigenous and local knowledge in futures studies, providing a platform for activating Arctic youth in shaping their futures, identifying Arctic-relevant indicators for sustainable development, and supporting decision-making towards sustainable futures. Yet, to achieve this potential, several methodological challenges need to be addressed. These include attention to whose voices are amplified or silenced in participatory research practices, with special attention to diversification and the engagement of youth. Given the historic and potential future role of disruptive events for Arctic development trajectories, methods are needed in participatory scenario exercises to include attention to the dynamics and consequences of such events and regime shifts. Participatory scenarios can also be further improved through approaches that effectively combine qualitative and quantitative information. Finally, there is a need for systematic studies of how the results of scenario exercises influence decision-making processes. This article elaborates on ways in which attention to these aspects can help make scenarios more robust for assessing a diversity of potential Arctic futures in times of rapid environmental and social change.
... Climate-centered historical studies, many of which include compelling case studies appear from virtually all corners of the world. The Arctic and the North Atlantic have become hotspots of climate change science and meteorology since the late nineteenth century, thanks to the work of the Bergen school of meteorology and comprehensive studies of glaciers and sea ice measurements (Friedman 1989, Sörlin 2009a, Christensen et al. 2013. We ...
This introduction to a special issue of Climatic Change argues that it is timely and welcome to intensify historical research into climate change and climate as factors of history. This is also already an ongoing trend in many disciplines. The article identifies two main strands in historical work on climate change, both multi-disciplinary: one that looks for it as a driver of historical change in human societies, the other that analyzes the intellectual and scientific roots of the climate system and its changes. In presenting the five papers in this special issue the introduction argues that it is becoming increasingly important to also situate “historicizing climate change” within the history of thought and practice in wider fields, as a matter of intellectual, political, and social history and theory. The five papers all serve as examples of intellectual, political, and social responses to climate-related phenomena and their consequences (ones that have manifested themselves relatively recently and are predominantly attributable to anthropogenic climate change). The historicizing work that these papers perform lies in the analysis of issues that are rising in societies related to climate change in its modern anthropogenic version. The history here is not so much about past climates, although climate change itself is always directly or indirectly present in the story, but rather about history as the social space where encounters take place and where new conditions for humans and societies and their companion species and their life worlds in natures and environments are unfolding and negotiated. With climate change as a growing phenomenon historicizing climate change in this version will become increasingly relevant.
The modernist narrative of human progress noticeably shifted under the climate change paradigm, which brought into the Arctic discourse both slow long-term processes resulting in shifting biophysical properties of the entire planet and rapid tipping events and their effects onto its nature and people. While literature abounds with images of mythical opposition between the Arctic nature and the industrial advances of the increasingly resource-dependent world, the lessons learned from the decades of exploration are often taken matter-of-factly. This chapter explores the modern environmental history of polar exploitation and probes for ways in which changing representations of the Arctic environment have shaped our interactions with it. While taking stock of regulatory, political and attitudinal shifts is an important thought experiment, the overall lesson is that the ‘catching-up’, action-before-knowledge approach may not hold up in the future.
This chapter explores how Arctic boundaries are being reconceived by external states claiming a stake in the region’s future. The telecoupling concept is employed to analyse multiple inter-latitudinal linkages that non-Arctic states mobilize in stakeholder narratives intended to legitimate their participation in Arctic governance and development. Through analysis of government documents and public pronouncements of non-Arctic states seeking to remain or become Arctic Council observers, the stakeholder narratives’ constituent elements—termed “legitimizers”—are identified, categorized and compared within and between European and Asian states. Reminiscent of Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s “polar Mediterranean” metaphor, the region that emerges from these narratives is characterized by telecouplings that legitimate and link mid-latitude states to the Far North, suggesting a Telecoupled Arctic extending far beyond traditional geographic conceptions of the Arctic.
This chapter provides an analysis of the discourses that shaped the international cooperation in the Arctic Council when it consolidated its role as an organization at the centre of Arctic governance. With an empirical focus on how Arctic national strategies and Arctic Council documents discuss “security” and “sustainable development,” the chapter highlights a shift away from an environmental focus to increasing emphasis on how to best support economic development. This shift is mirrored in the Arctic Council’s Kiruna Vision from 2013, where a “safe Arctic” with peace, stability and cooperation is assumed to spur economic development. Paraphrasing the idea that political ambitions relating to environmental change should focus on ensuring safe operating space for humanity, this chapter summarizes the development as creating a safe operating space for business.
High mountains, polar expanses, volcanic peaks are exciting and special environments. 13 leading international geographers explore different aspects of these environments - disorientation, exploration, native knowledge, polar research. This is the first book to do this.High places - be they mountain peaks or the vast expanses of the polar latitudes - have always captured the human imagination. Inaccessible, extreme, they are commonly invested with awe and reverence, as places of physical challenge, intense experience. Increasingly, they are also treated as unique locations for science."High Places" explores the fascinating geographies of these special environments, revealing how senses are challenged, objectivities exposed, cultural assumptions laid bare. Whether walking the summit of Pico de Orizaba, the fourth highest volcano in the northern hemisphere; recounting the tale of the American explorer Charles Wilkes, charged with 'immoral mapping' in Antarctica; or exploring the 200,000 year old Greenland ice core; the international contributors reveal the richness and significance of these unique locations. Embracing Europe, Asia, North and Central America, Antarctica and the Arctic, "High Places" will interest geographers, historians of science, and those interested in polar/mountain studies, landscape, culture and environment.
Nationally representative surveys conducted in 2008 and 2009 found significant declines in Americans’ climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and trust in scientists. Several potential explanations for the declines are explored, including the poor state of the economy, a new administration and Congress, diminishing media attention, and abnormal weather. The analysis also specifically examines the impact of Climategate – an international scandal resulting from the unauthorized release of emails between climate scientists in England and United States. The results demonstrate that Climategate had a significant effect on public beliefs in global warming and trust in scientists. The loss of trust in scientists, however, was primarily among individuals with a strongly individualistic worldview or politically conservative ideology. Nonetheless, Americans overall continue to trust scientists more than other sources of information about global warming.