Media and the Politics of Arctic Climate Change When the Ice Breaks

The Arctic sea-ice reached record lows in 2007, and again in 2012. In the international news media, these moments were reflected via striking images of polar bears, crumbling ice chunks and the use of more alarmist metaphors about global climate change. Through these narratives, and despite the periodic disappearance of climate change from media reports due to issue fatigue, a sharper narrative of climate change has entered public discourse: a new global reality where the future is no longer a given. Going beyond media studies as well as descriptive or highly scientific accounts of the impacts of climate change in the Arctic, this book explores how both historical and contemporary mediations, scientific narratives and satellite technology simultaneously capture and reconstruct this new reality of the Anthropocene, where human activities shape the planet. By highlighting the linkages between science, media, environmental change and geopolitics, the informed contributors to the volume invite the reader to reflect on what is local and what is global in today's connected mediatized world.

Miyase Christensen is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Stockholm University and Guest Professor at the Department of Philosophy and History, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden. Christensen is a co-editor of Popular Communication: the International Journal of Media and Culture, and the author/editor of numerous publications including Online Territories: Globalization, Mediated Practice and Social Space.

Annika E. Nilsson is Senior Research Fellow at Stockholm Environment Institute, Sweden. Before receiving her PhD in Environmental Science, she worked as a science writer for several Arctic assessment processes and for the Swedish national radio. Her research is about communication at the science-policy interface, with focus on the Arctic.

Nina Wormbs is Associate Professor at the Division of History of Science, Technology and the Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, and Head of Department. She has published on conflicts on technological change in media and take interest in how ideas on technology shape ideas of possible action.