Climate Change, the Journalists and “the Engaged”: Reflections from South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya

Abstract

This paper explores the political dimension of mediated climate change communication and the role of climate journalists in it. While the increasing plurality of actors engaged in mediated ways of sensemaking around climate change is well documented, the role of journalists in facilitating engagement between actors is less clear, especially in Africa. Using an African relational framework (ARF) that emphasises inter-subjectivity and co-creative deliberation, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 journalists covering climate change in three African countries to gain insights into the political dimension of climate journalism. Results indicate that several interacting factors, clustered around the journalists’ role orientation, norm application and work environment, influence how climate journalism is practised in these African settings. One of such interactions relates to how the journalists’ “disseminator” role orientation, commitment to “objectivity” and “authority-order” norms, and resource deficits interact to orient the coverage of climate change in the cases towards elites and away from other subjectivities and place-based knowledge. Based on the insights from the relational media framework, the paper argues that climate journalism can benefit from a perspective grounded in the ability of people to “commune with”, rather than “communicate to” others.