The Climate Crisis and the Media: Examining the Representation of Extinction Rebellion in the UK

This research examines the impact of media perceptions and portrayal of environmental activism in the UK. News outlets and the way they portray environmental activism were examined, primarily using the environmental civil disobedience movement Extinction Rebellion ("XR") as a case study. The bulk of the data corpus includes media data from the “Top 10 News Outlets” (as defined by Ofcom in 2019) and XR press releases over the period of October 2018 to May 2020. Supplementary data from interviews with individuals that self-identify as members of XR, as well as transcripts from Television programmes, and some news coverage outside of the primary data collection period were also analysed. Findings include the contrast between news organisations and levels of reporting, that news organisations tend to be more favourable towards individual stories and more critical of mass protest and that their political affiliation / editorial stance has an impact on the narrative generated. The media focus from the sampling period is often on what the activist groups are doing as opposed to why they are doing it, however this is countered somewhat by the apparent more recent upward trend in news coverage of environmental issues in general. This leads to discussion around the value of news coverage and the impact on wider society. The findings have implications for not only environmental movements but for the wider presentation of activism in the UK media.