Young climate activists in television news: An analysis of multimodal constructions of voice, political recognition, and co-optation

ABSTRACT

Young climate activists around the globe have been raising their voices against the inadequate response of world leaders to climate change. Mainstream media have an important role in bringing young people’s concerns to the public, but research has shown that, in some countries, news outlets have failed to adequately represent their political voice. In view of a prevailing depoliticization of climate change, this study focuses on Portugal’s television news reporting and examines whether and how youth climate activists are constructed as recognized actors in the politics of climate change. To explore the mechanisms of voice, we conduct a multimodal analysis of material from three open access channels: RTP1, SIC, and TVI. By analyzing 230 news pieces from 2018 to 2021 on youth climate activism, we investigate the different ways in which the youth are given voice and the specific settings in which they are presented. Findings reveal that while they are given voice, the dynamics that grant them recognition in various settings, such as street protests and institutional venues, also contribute to the recasting of their claims within the existing depoliticized agenda. As a result, in-depth discussions about their proposals for transformative change are hindered.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• multimodal constructions
• television
• voice
• youth climate activism

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ While not exclusively led by young people, these initiatives have played a crucial role in mobilizing the youth and fostering their engagement in the climate movement in Portugal.

² We are thankful to the e-TELENEWS MediaMonitor/Marktest, and MediaLab-Iscte’s Barómetro de Notícias for the help in collection of the corpora.

³ climate (as a noun), climatic (as a feminine and masculine adjective), student (as an adjective), activists (in two different orthographies), Fridays, or Thunberg.

⁴ From website https://endfossil.com

Additional information

Funding

We gratefully ackowledge funding from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia for the research project Climate futures and just transformations: Young people’s narratives and political imaginaries via grant [PTDC/COM-OUT/7669/2020].