Young vs old? Truancy or new radical politics? Journalistic discourses about social protests in relation to the climate crisis

Abstract

The aim of this critical discourse analysis is to examine how the agenda and actions of the global protest movement ‘Youth for Climate’ are understood and constructed in Swedish mainstream press and to highlight how the journalistic recontextualization contributes to empowering and disempowering the critical voices and their demands. The article problematizes the journalistic ideal of objectivity in the case of the climate crisis and adds to discussions about the role of media and journalism in the political dynamics surrounding various responses and solutions to the crisis. It suggests that journalism’s objectivity claim hampers the journalistic coverage–what stories can be told and how. This suggestion is based on findings that show how journalism neutralizes conflict and social critique by emptying it of its political content and incorporating it into consensus discourses as well as by focusing on a moral pseudo-struggle that allows journalism to cover conflict without acknowledging real political controversies. It is argued here that journalism contributes to disempowering the climate protests by means of evasive, transformative and emptying discursive strategies.