A history of digital environmental journalism at the BBC and the Guardian

Bibliographic Data

ID7477476
AuthorsDavid Robbins (0000-0002-2939-1573, Dublin City University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume25
Issue5
Pages1130-1147
Publication date2023-06-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournalism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-8849 • E-ISSN: 1741-3001
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14648849231179785
OpenAlexW4379386296
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited37

Environmental and climate journalism is complex, data-heavy, and amenable to visualisation. The environmental beat was therefore well placed to take advantage of the affordances of emerging digital platforms for news from the late 1990s. This article presents a history of digital environmental journalism at two international and digitally innovative media organisations (the BBC and the Guardian), taking an affordances approach. It argues that the beat can be understood as having four distinct but overlapping phases: an initial phase in which journalists availed of the limitless carrying capacity of digital media; a second phase which maximised the use of blogs and user comments; a third, experimental phase involving digital video and online campaigns; and a fourth, mature phase in which both organisations became more strategic in their digital offerings

Affordance · Digital media · Guardian · Human–computer interaction · Journalism · Media studies · Multimedia · New media · Political science · Sociology · World Wide Web · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Computer Science · Media Studies and Communication · Social Acceptance of Renewable Energy · Law

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