Page 190 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

184 R.A. HACKETT AND S. GUNSTER

multiple venues, but the barriers of constructing ‘peace’ as a compelling
and newsworthy narrative (Fawcett 2002).
Third, to varying degrees, CJ and PJ challenge the policy agendas and
even the ideologies of dominant economic and political elites, and thus, the
bureaucracy-and power-oriented “news net” (Tuchman 1978) of con-
ventional media. CJ calls for an infusion of popular voices to modify or
even challenge established political agendas. More radically, PJ explicitly
calls for deconstructing disinformation and war propaganda by states and
other powerful institutions.
In these respects—traditional professionalism, news routines, resources,
power—climate crisis journalism faces similar barriers, and could draw
lessons from how CJ and PJ have surmounted or them—or not. In the
meantime, there is are venues where such new ways of doing journalism are
being incubated and developed—precisely, alternative and independent
media, like thetyee.ca in Vancouver.

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA

Unlike Peace and Civic Journalism, alternative media comprise not so
much a coherent paradigm as a residual category: media that are ‘alter-
native’ to whatever media dominate the cultural and political “main-
stream”. In at least one sense, alternative journalism within such media is
inherently political, in that it is “always a reminder of what the dominant
forces in society are not providing, or are not able to provide” (Forde 2011,
p. 45; emphasis in original). The proliferation of labels indicates the vitality
and ferment in both practice and scholarship: alterative, alternative,
autonomous, citizens, community, critical, independent, native, participa-
tory, social movement and tactical media. Notwithstanding such diversity,
we suggest the following ‘ideal typical’ characteristics, many of which
resonate with practice and scholarship in environmental communication:

• oppositional or counter-hegemonic content (alternative frames; cov-
erage of issues, events, and perspectives that are marginalized or
ignored by hegemonic media; criteria of newsworthiness that
emphasize the threats that the established order poses to subaltern
groups, rather than vice versa);
• participatory production processes; horizontal communication both
within news organizations, and with readers and audiences—com-
municative relationships that both reduce the gap between producers