Paper short abstract:

Extinction Rebellion, a grassroots protest group demanding the UK acknowledge urgency of climate action, has drawn substantial media coverage in the year since it formed. We examine the nature of this coverage as a potential avenue for communication of novel ways of engaging with climate change.

Paper long abstract:

In the second half of 2018, grassroots activism on climate change proliferated globally. In the UK, a notable component of this movement has been 'Extinction Rebellion' ('XR'), an organisation that has protested to demand the UK Government recognise the urgency of climate action. Extinction Rebellion itself, and numerous scholars, have acknowledged that mass media portrayals notably affect perceptions of issues such as climate change. XR introduced new avenues for the media to explore climate issues, including a radical eco-centric set of principles and demands. Our research focuses on how key mass media outlets in the UK portray the XR movement, as well as policy and science on climate change, through coverage of XR (this could be called coverage of 'Extinction Rebellions'). We consider the ways and extent to which such media coverage of a protest group could present an avenue for the communication of novel ways of engaging with climate change. We analyse online coverage from UK newspapers The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph and the Daily Mail, which covers the political spectrum of Britain's high-circulation media - whilst providing a mix of broadsheets and tabloids. Survey data from a representative UK sample reveal that the readership of these news sources varies considerably on climate change beliefs. A theoretic approach adopted from Critical Discourse Analysis is used to investigate how the media have portrayed XR over 2018-2019. This information will be coupled with a classification of climate change storylines within each individual article, opening up various cross-sectional lanes of analysis.