This study seeks to investigate the media representations of climate refugees in two
global media outlets: The BBC and Al Jazeera. An exhaustive sample of the online
coverage from 2000 until 2017 has been gathered and examined through a content
analysis guided by framing theory and multimodal critical discourse analysis. After
reviewing the 29 news stories, this article finds that climate refugees are framed in
four ways: as victims, security threats, activists, and abstractions. In both media
outlets, ...
This study seeks to investigate the media representations of climate refugees in two
global media outlets: The BBC and Al Jazeera. An exhaustive sample of the online
coverage from 2000 until 2017 has been gathered and examined through a content
analysis guided by framing theory and multimodal critical discourse analysis. After
reviewing the 29 news stories, this article finds that climate refugees are framed in
four ways: as victims, security threats, activists, and abstractions. In both media
outlets, climate refugees are aggregated, collectivized, and made generic—and
their situation is deagentialized. The study concludes that the BBC mainly talks
about climate refugees instead of talking to them and that this has an impact on
the climate refugees’ depicted agency. Al Jazeera quotes more climate refugees in
their journalistic coverage, and this allows the reader to understand and empathize.
However, both media outlets tend to represent climate refugees as “third world
others”: as sinking strangers.
+
