ABSTRACT
This chapter reports the results of interviews with alternative media journalists, editors and publishers, and leading environmental activists and advocates and exploring their perspectives on the relationship among news, politics and public engagement with climate change. The participants work within a diverse array of British Columbia (BC)-based alternative and independent media, political advocacy groups, environmental organizations and think tanks. British Columbia offers an ideal site for exploring the intersection of communication, efficacy and engagement around climate and energy politics. It embraces a radical role for journalism in which the critique of power, inequality and injustice – and the empowerment of citizens and social movements – mediates a more traditional emphasis upon neutrality and balance in the portrayal of conflict. The chapter focuses upon enlightening influentials also suggests an approach to social change which prioritizes getting useful information into the right hands over more confrontational strategies of political mobilization and activism.
