How to Communicate Climate Change in a World That Only Cares About Cats

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The climate is changing. And so are the ways the media tries to coverย it.

In a world of fake news, โ€˜post-truthโ€™ and lies, new media organisations are critical to communicating an issue that should be everyoneโ€™sย concern.

โ€œMany television producers see climate change as too niche or for fanatics. It’s too remote, it’s too boring, it’s too consistently depressing, it’s too alarmingโ€, said James Painter, author of a new bookย from Oxford University’s Reuters Institute on climate change reporting, at its launch in central London lastย night.

That creates a space for new media organisations โ€“ online outlets like Buzzfeed, Vice News,ย the Huffington Post and more, including DeSmogย โ€“ with fresh ideas and identities to stepย in.

โ€œThese new players are really doing a good job of trying to find new ways to cover it,โ€ Painterย said.

We are living in an era of climate silence, Painter said. But itโ€™s not just bombs falling in Aleppo, tales of economic woe, and the latest electoral shock that knock climate off the mediaโ€™sย agenda.

Itโ€™s Kanye and Kim, food porn, andย cats.

Itโ€™s a crowded space. And climate change coverage is being suffocated in theย squeeze.

Across three hours of presidential debates this autumn, two minutes and and 27 seconds were given to discussing climate change, according to Grist.

A Loughborough University study likewise found that in the six weeks prior to the Brexit referendum, only 0.5 percent of traditional newspaper coverage referenced environmental issues, despite much of the UKโ€™s clean air, water and emissions regulations stemming fromย Europe.

TV news didnโ€™t give a single second to theย issue.

How the media covers climate change is irrelevant if itโ€™s not covered atย all.

Thatโ€™s why new media organisations with high content turnover and overt commitments to big social issues such as climate change โ€“ as well as cats โ€“ are increasingly important, Painterย said.

โ€œOf course traditional media do some great coverage but these new players provide additional material that raises the profile of climate change in the publicย sphere.โ€

โ€œThese are important additions at a time when the media is struggling with this issue of climateย silence.โ€

One problem is that climate change is always happening, so itโ€™s neverย news.

That means traditional news editors are liable to shrug when stories are offered up, explained Fiona Harvey, Guardian environment correspondent, speaking on a panel at the bookย launch.

โ€œThe fundamental underlying story of climate change is not news so we need to find new ways of telling it, and that is a challenge forย everyone.โ€

So how are these new players approaching the issueย differently?

Painter and his team analysed over 500 articles on the Paris climate change conference to try and findย out.

To start with, new mediaโ€™s focus is completely different. Internet-embedded and social-media savvy, they tend to speak a visual language rather than relying on reams of text to communicate a point, Painterย said.

Theyโ€™re also very different inย tone.

โ€œMeet The People Trolling The Fuck Out Of The Paris Climate Talksโ€, ran one Buzzfeed article covering theย negotiations.

A Times headline, it isย not.

But this mixture of humour and irreverence is critical to engaging an audience beyond the small circle of policy wonks that normally follow the issue, Painterย said.

And the differences arenโ€™t superficial. The substance of the articles is also significantlyย different.

New media tended to focus on human interest stories and events happening around the edges of the conference, Painter found, leaving the minutiae of the UN proceedings to traditional outlets established on theย beat.

They also approach the problem in a different way, using more โ€œimmersiveโ€ techniques, Painterย said.

In many videos or stories in new media outlets, the journalist puts themselves front and centre, where they directly addressย the viewer and sayย โ€œcome with me on a journey. Come with me and see what’s happening. They do not stand in the way of the viewer, they take them onย journey.โ€

This personalised approach resonates with a broader audience than articles that focus on the political process, which serve communities already engaged in theย issue.

The differences also extend to new mediaโ€™s coverage of climateย science.

Traditional media outlets are often accused of engineering a false balance when it comes to the science of climate change, inviting a climate denier to speak alongside an authoritative scientificย voice.

For new media, thatโ€™s a fiction. As Kelly Oakes, Buzzfeedโ€™s science editor told the audience, โ€œwe’re not going to argue about the science on climate, because we know the science of climate isย thereโ€.

And Buzzfeed simply wouldnโ€™t get away with portraying a false balance, as its young, informed, impassioned audience would see throughย it.

Instead of manufacturing conflict, new media tries to appeal to peopleโ€™s sense of curiosity and compassion. โ€œI think our audience or our editors don’t necessarily care about the news angle so long as it told in an interesting wayโ€, Oakes said. โ€œWe try and get theย second-dayย story, but get itย todayโ€.

This frees the new media from the traditional constraint of a news cycle, and allows journalists to explore the human angle, the story behind theย story.

But emotive reportingย also has its dangers, Harvey pointsย out.

โ€œWe need to appeal to people emotionally to get climate change across but the problem with emotions is they flip. If the environment isn’t an emotional issue it’s nothing. But at the same time we need to be very wary of appealing to emotions because it’s veryย dangerous.โ€

โ€œYou also have to have the fundamental facts there asย well.โ€

Thereโ€™s a big difference between solid, well-researched, passionate reporting and the clickbait that fake news sites have been so successful at peddling in recentย months.

The critical consideration, Harvey argued, is between deciding if what matters is enthusiastic and solid reporting, or if โ€œwhat matters is appealing to people’s emotions to get them to come to your site, whether they are fact based or not, whether they are true or post-ย truthโ€.

Beyond carving a space for climate news in a noisy world, that is now the challenge journalists face. The challenge of reaching a wide audience, without surrendering to the forces driving fakeย news.

As Harvey said, โ€œat heart, all the best stories are environmentย storiesโ€.

Climate change is no longer an item on a list of issues that needs covering. It is increasingly the context for stories about social change, political progress, and economicย recovery.

In an era of Trump, Brexit and fake news, media players old and new need to find fresh ways to tellย them.

Main image credit: Wesley Fryer via Flickr CCBY

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Mat was DeSmog's Special Projects and Investigations Editor, and Operations Director of DeSmog UK Ltd. He was DeSmog UKโ€™s Editor from October 2017 to March 2021, having previously been an editor at Nature Climate Change and analyst at Carbon Brief.

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