Extreme weather events like the heat wave of 2018 reinforce public attention for climate change. Social media platforms facilitate, define and amplify debate about this topic. They give rise to counterpublic spaces through which counterpublics such as climate sceptics get a stage they would not easily get in mainstream media. Previous research suggests that sceptics use these spaces as safe havens, but also as bases for interventions in the hegemonic debate. Applying a multideterminant frame model, we analyse the Twitter debate among climate change 'sceptics' and 'believers'. We study all tweets in which the heat wave was related to climate change and which were shared by Dutch and Flemish users between 28 July 2018 and 4 August 2018. Laying bare the worldviews underlying the frames of sceptics and non-sceptics, we first demonstrate the diversity ofunilaterally interactingideological interests. Building upon this analysis of the scope of the debate and analysing its form, we show that both groups mostly use similar antagonistic strategies to delegitimize and denaturalize their out-groups. We argue that these interventions promote polarization rather than a constructive agonistic debate. As such, this study refutes previous studies that consider sceptic frames as deconstructive and nonsceptic frames as constructive.

Constructive journalism as a (news) philosophy and practice is gaining ground around the globe as both new journalistic ventures and legacy news media variously experiment with so-called ‘constructive’ approaches, and specialized (nonprofit) organizations and training programs have been established. While scholarly interest in the subject has steadily grown accordingly, constructive journalism as a research field in its own right is arguably still in need of further development. Therefore, we set out to explore, advance, and shape a research agenda, and to build a theoretical and empirical foundation for constructive journalism, providing a 360° view by bringing together an international body of scholarship approaching the topic and the issues raised through different disciplinary, conceptual, and methodological lenses. As such, we aim, first, to contribute to the conceptual development of constructive journalism by refining its roots in positive psychology and carefully delineating its position along related and divergent types of journalism, identifying its core values and principles, the lineages and digressions. Second, we seek to advance theory building in this nascent research domain based on empirical data and insights variously derived from quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches exploring, describing, and testing through large-scale or in-depth analyses, how constructive journalism can be interpreted and put in practice, how it materializes and with what effect. In doing so, we adopt an overall stance of ‘critical appreciation’ toward the subject, engaging in foundational thinking while not shying away from an assessment of the potential and effective critique or controversy stirred by this proliferating ‘alternative’ branch of journalism.

Climate change frames in the media affect the political and public debate (e.g., Entman et al. 2009;Graber 1988). However, focusing on the frames in texts, most framing research overlooks the factors which influence frame-building by reporters. However, this is crucial for a fuller understanding of the potential implications and meanings of frames. Besides, the existing frame-building research is exclusively engaged with mainstream media. Also, visual framebuilding is under-researched. Therefore, we have conducted interviews with 26 climate journalists, photo editors, chiefs and opinion-makers, working for three mainstream and two progressive alternative outlets in northern Belgium. The findings were combined with the outcome of a deductive framing analysis of 114 climate articles. The results show a strong overlap among journalist frames and news frames. Anthropocentric Subframes prevail in the mainstream news articles and among the reporters. A mixture of Biocentric and Anthropocentric Subframes was found in the context of the alternative outlets. We explain this presenting the studied mainstream newsrooms as machines and the (progressive) alternative newsrooms as organisms. We conclude that the mainstream journalists are guided towards Anthropocentric Subframes by various (internalised) pressures. The practices in the alternative media liberate reporters to introduce a broader variety of frames.

This paper introduces the Special Issue’s central theme of ‘hybridity and the news’, defining the scope and setting the scene for the multiple issues and debates covered by the individual contributions in this collection. Opposing both relativist positions that discard hybridity as an analytically useless concept, and preconceived notions that construe hybridity as intrinsically negative or positive, it is argued to move beyond binary thinking and to approach hybridity as a particularly rich site for the analysis of forms and processes of experimentation, innovation, deviation and transition in contemporary journalism. In order to profoundly understand these developments, which come in many forms, manifest themselves on different levels, and serve multiple purposes, a comprehensive, multi- and interdisciplinary perspective is needed. The Special Issue aims to contribute to this research agenda by looking closely into blending categories and interaction patterns in journalistic forms, genres, and practices, encompassing theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches from various disciplinary backgrounds including political and communication sciences, sociology, linguistics, cultural studies, and history. While taking different angles on the subject and being variously located on the macro and micro levels of analysis, the articles assembled here all engage in a careful assessment of ‘hybridity and the news’ through profound conceptualizations and empirical analyses, connecting with and shedding new light on long-standing debates about the nature and meaning of journalism.

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