Sinking Strangers: Media Representations of Climate Refugees on the BBC and Al Jazeera

Abstract

This study seeks to investigate the media representations of climate refugees in two global media outlets: The BBC and Al Jazeera. An exhaustive sample of the online coverage from 2000 until 2017 has been gathered and examined through a content analysis guided by framing theory and multimodal critical discourse analysis. After reviewing the 29 news stories, this paper finds that climate refugees are framed in four ways: As victims, security threats, activists and abstractions. In both media outlets, climate refugees are aggregated, collectivized and made genericand their situation is deagentialized. The study concludes that the BBC mainly talks about climate refugees instead of talking to them, and that this has an impact on the climate refugees' depicted agency. Al Jazeera quotes more climate refugees in their journalistic coverage, and this allows the reader to understand and empathize. However, both media outlets tend to represent climate refugees as «third world others»: as sinking strangers.

Rebel with a cause: the framing of climate change and intergenerational justice in the German press treatment of the Fridays for Future protests

“…Climate change is a global threat that will affect all of us, but it will not affect everyone equally. Over the last few years, various studies (Høeg and Tulloch, 2018; Methmann, 2014; Methmann and Oels, 2015) have brought attention to the ‘geographical injustice of climate change’ (UNICEF UK, 2010), a concept which addresses the uneven distribution of climate change impacts caused by the global North-South divide. The climate injustice between generations however has remained largely invisible (Brown Weiss, 1992, Gossieres and Meyer, 2009; Guillemot and Burgess, 2018; Mintzer and Michel, 2001; O’Brien et al, 2018; UNICEF UK, 2010).…”

Injustice versus insecurity: Climate-induced displacement in the Fijian and New Zealand public discourses

“…These climate displacement discourses reinforced the views of critics who claimed that while the media emphasised the abstract issue, it failed to focus on any one affected individual, such as a displaced person. Some critics, who termed this omission a 'collective problematisation' or 'deagentalisation' (Farbotko, 2010;Hoeg & Tulloch, 2019), claimed that the problem was presented as broad and collective, obscuring the relevance of or consequences for individuals. This invisibility of affected persons is likely to perpetuate a certain direction for policy debates (Russell et al, 2016) related to critical climate displacement issues, such as the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage and ignores significant questions pertinent to the affected communities.…”

“…Social science and media studies scholars propose two strands of argument around climate justice and climate change. While some critics have identified the source of climate injustice in media content and meaning-making processes (e.g., Farbotko, 2010;Hoeg & Tulloch, 2019), others have directly intervened in issues of injustice identified by the media. On occasion, their proposed recommendations for mitigation have broad policy implications (Pham & Nash, 2017;Cass, 2018;Robie & Chand 2018).…”

Environmental Mobility in a Polarized World: Questioning the Pertinence of the “Climate Refugee” Label for Pacific Islanders

“…The second, the victim frame, engages the idea that climate change is unjustly affecting vulnerable populations that need “saving” (Herrmann 2017 ), an image widely rebutted by those Pacific Islanders it pertains to (McNamara and Gibson 2009 ; Dreher and Voyer 2015 ; McNamara and Farbotko 2017 ; Farbotko 2010 ). In essence, “When it comes to the media, climate refugees have mainly two roles: victims and security threats” (Høeg and Tulloch 2019 : 229). Depicted either as people to fear or to protect (Bettini 2013 ), “climate refugees” exist as rhetoric figures constructed through apocalyptic estimates of climate change-driven movements (Baldwin 2017 ).…”