The representation of future generations in newspaper coverage of climate change: A study of the UK press

Abstract

Climate change will rob future generations—today's children and those yet to be born—of the stable climate that previous generations have enjoyed. The article explores how future generations are represented in climate change coverage in the UK national press. We examine the ‘popular’ (Mail, Mirror) and ‘quality’ (Guardian, Telegraph) press from 2010 to March 2019. We found that little attention was given to future generations; young people rarely spoke and, along with those yet to be born, were represented in ways that obscured the temporal and social inequalities that are built into climate change.