Page 185 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

14 JOURNALISM, CLIMATE COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA ALTERNATIVES 179

people who are getting involved, often successfully, against enormous odds.
And that is really inspiring. And it fits with people’s zeitgeist of the times,
which is that things are really wrong in ways that are hard to articulate, and
the levers of control of our society seem more and more distant. So where are
there people who are taking things into their own hands and being suc-
cessful? That is a much more motivating conflict story.

Indeed, Biggar argued that a ‘huge part’ of public engagement in climate
change ‘is figuring out what is an accessible conflict that you can get people
into in order to challenge and hopefully transform what is going on. And,
of course, the major answer to that is opposing pipeline projects, and other
forms of dirty energy projects, where there is a physical, concrete thing on
the ground that you can literally, physically stand up against and have a
whole bunch of levers for trying to stop’. In other words, rather than
dismiss all stories about conflict as alienating, one can distinguish between
the paralyzing, cynical conflict frames recycled by conventional news, and
the accessible, generative and mobilizing conflict narratives favoured by
social movements and activists.
This latter understanding of conflict frames, linked to a broader analysis
of power inequalities and of social movements as the engines of progressive
change in capitalist society, is expressed by, say, George Monbiot (2009) at
the Guardian, urging millions of people to take to the streets against
politicians’ inaction; Naomi Klein, author of a best-selling book subtitled
Capitalism versus the Climate (2014); and Bill McKibben, founder of 350.
org which is spearheading the fossil fuel divestment campaign. McKibben
(2012) famously attributed the environmental movement’s policy impo-
tence to a failure to identify and target the fossil fuel industry as a primary
enemy.
In evaluating frames, we do not mean to suggest that any one frame is
universally applicable. What ‘works’ is likely to vary with cultural and
political context, event and timing, and audience. Moreover, the ‘common
ground’ and ‘conflict’ oriented frames discussed above are not necessarily
mutually exclusive; even the former approach can lead to fundamental
critiques of existing policy and power structures. The point we make here is
that, while radical frames are obviously at odds with a media system
dominated by corporate ownership and commercial imperatives, even the
more modest frames and approaches do not mesh easily with the estab-
lished routines and professional ideologies of hegemonic journalism.
Calling on journalists to be more self-reflexive about the frames they adopt,