Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This study of contemporary political communication focuses on what is widely considered to be the most important environmental and political problem of our time: climate change. Its principal objective is to explore the transformations which politics has undergone in recent decades through the mediation of environmental discourse and, in so doing, to advance current understandings of environmental advocacy and contemporary Western political culture.
Climate change is increasingly understood as a post-political issue, widely seen as cutting across conventional left and right wing concerns perhaps even beyond any need for democratic deliberation and debate. Examining the communications strategies of diverse climate change campaigners, from mainstream politicians to celebrities and online activists, Media, Emotion and Climate Change explores how the issue is used by elites as potentially offering a sense of purpose or mission in the absence of political visions of the future; and how it provides a focus for much broader anxieties about a loss of modernist political agency and meaning.
Drawing on a wide range of literature and case studies, and taking a critical and contextual approach to the analysis of climate change communication in mediatised society, the book:
- Investigates emotive and therapeutic discourse and emotional appeals in environmentalism
- Assesses and explains the extent to which climate change is understood as a post-political, moral issue and how this may affect levels of support and action
- Evaluates and develops the psycho-cultural approach to political communications and popular media culture
- Provides a critical assessment of environmental discourse which can inform future political actors in their efforts to communicate politics effectively
- Explores the similarities and contrasts between different political actors, working across different media forms and genres but concerned with the same issue
Media, Emotion and Climate Change offers a truly original understanding of the contemporary framework of political and media communications, particularly because the topic of climate change is one of the most critical socio-scientific issues facing our global society. The book should be a valuable resource for students and scholars of environmental studies, communication studies and media and film studies.
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Synopsis
For many years, the objective of environmental campaigners was to push climate change on to the agenda of political leaders and to encourage media attention to the issue. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, it appeared that their efforts had been spectacularly successful. Yet just at the moment when the campaigners' goals were being achieved, it seemed that the idea of getting the issue into mainstream discussion had been mistaken all along; that the consensus-building approach produced little or no meaningful action. That is the problem of climate change as a 'post-political' issue, which is the subject of this book.
Examining how climate change is communicated in politics, news media and celebrity culture, Climate Change and Post-Political Communication explores how the issue has been taken up by elites as potentially offering a sense of purpose or mission in the absence of political visions of the future, and considers the ways in which it provides a focus for much broader anxieties about a loss of modernist political agency and meaning. Drawing on a wide range of literature and case studies, and taking a critical and contextual approach to the analysis of climate change communication, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of environmental studies, communication studies, and media and film studies.