Journalism as an advocate for social change and public engagement: Reporting environmental crisis in the Digital Era

Abstract

This chapter considers the impact of ongoing changes in the news media landscape on the ability of media to adequately report complex issues – the “big issues” of our time. It considers both the limitations and new opportunities that the digitisation of news content presents for the quality coverage of complex social and political issues, such as environmental crises. The Guardian’s “Keep it in the Ground” climate change campaign epitomises advocacy forms of journalism that are motivated by and designed to deliver social change. Communications stalwart James Carey delivered a useful assessment of the “communication revolution” in 1969, which at that time was comprised of the development of the telegraph and the growth of mass media. The rise of digital and social media – and their impacts on traditional media, forms of journalism, and public-to-polity interactions – are the focus of much current scholarship.