Page 192 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

186 R.A. HACKETT AND S. GUNSTER

affective spaces for climate politics produces an orientation that is simulta-
neously more critical and pessimistic about the limits of existing structures
and practices, yet also more optimistic about the opportunities for collective
political agency and intervention (Gunster 2011: 492–493).

More recent research in Australia supports these conclusions. By contrast
with the corporate press, independent and alternative media (such as
Crikey, New Matilda and the Guardian Australia) are more likely to
enunciate a clear commitment to addressing climate change, to critique
complicit and complacent governments and industry, to offer solutions,
and to encourage grassroots political protest and action. Alternative media
exhibited a different sourcing pattern—virtually no climate change deniers,
more environmental groups, more impacted but marginalized voices such
as Small Island Developing States (Foxwell-Norton 2017). Such media
evinced the facilitative role of journalism, particularly a conscious mission
to improve the quality of public life and to promote active citizenship
(Christians et al. 2009: 126). This sometimes shaded into the radical role
of supporting social movements representing disenfranchised groups, and
advocating more fundamental social change to eliminate concentrations of
power (Forde 2017).
How can this kind of journalism be scaled up to reach beyond the
mediascape’s margins, however vibrant they be? Our research suggests
potentially overlapping agendas between alternative media producers,
media reformers, and effective climate justice communication (Hackett
2017b). As suggested elsewhere in this book, democratic media reform
may be one of the most effective ways to create an enabling environment
for climate crisis mobilization. Think big. Think laterally.

Acknowledgements This chapter largely derives from Robert A. Hackett, Susan
Forde, Shane Gunster, and Kerrie Foxwell-Norton, Journalism and Climate Crisis:
Public Engagement, Media Alternatives (Routledge, 2017). We are grateful to
Routledge for permission to publish.