What is it about?
Theories the policy process are often underpinned by concepts emerging from media studies research. These theories presume that public attention to extreme weather events results in an increased likelihood of policy action. However, another possibility suggests that the increasing frequency, expanded range and extended duration of climate disasters could result in the normalization of extreme weather events. By integrating more recent media studies concepts associated with citizen journalism, image events and upward activation into theories of the policy process, this review identifies new areas of interdisciplinary collaboration.
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Why is it important?
Despite increasing news coverage of heatwaves, supercell tornados, record wildfires and 1000-year weather events, existing points of partisan policy resistance have hardened to dull pathways for policy change. This review also examines how new forms of mobile media can be used to perform climate services and encourage policy action in the wake of ongoing and recurring extreme weather events.
Perspectives
My research confirms the importance of support for expanding media’s function as a ‘climate service’. This helps with the activation of public attention to climate change attributions; the introduction of new stakeholder perspectives in climate policy considerations; and, lastly, the visual representation of changes in proximity, frequency and duration associated with the anthropogenic origins of extreme weather events.
Stephen Groff
Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Integrating media studies concepts into theories of the policy process: Enhancing the role of media as a climate service in the wake of recurring extreme weather events, Journal of Environmental Media, December 2022, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/jem_00088_1.
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