Climate Change and Popular Culture

This book examines how the climate change debate is represented, dealt with, narrated and more generally plays out within the field, texts and genres of the commercial media. Understanding the importance of environmental representations, narratives and discourses for our perceptions of the environment is a vital part of explaining the evolution of political responses to climate change. Popular culture specifically, rather than being mere distraction, opens up connections between the formal spaces of climate science, policy and politics with the spaces of everyday life. The book gives an account of the sciences’ attempts at communicating climate change to the public, as well as of the relationship between media representations of climate change issues and how this might tie in to or inform political action.

Angi Buettner is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand