[Commlist] Call for Papers: Media, Conflict and the Climate Crisis

*Call for Papers*
*
*


  100 Seconds to Midnight: Media, Conflict and the Climate Crisis

In January 2020, the Doomsday Clock moved to 100 seconds to midnight - a 
stark warning that the world is closer than it has ever been to 
cataclysmic devastation.  The accompanying statement in the Bulletin of 
Atomic Scientists identifies nuclear weapons, misuse of information 
technologies and climate change as the three most critical threats to 
the planet. As the Bulletin implies, conflict, media and climate change 
are at the epicentre of the current crisis, highlighted by events in 
Ukraine, yet the entanglements between these three elements have never 
been fully explored.  This is an urgent call to address that gap.

There have, of course, been investigations into aspects of various 
combinations of relationships between these three elements.  News media 
around the globe have been addressing climate change in various ways 
since the middle of the last century and how news media address, or fail 
to address, the climate crisis has been the focus of much academic 
attention (Boykoff 2008, 2009; Lester and Cottle 2009).  There has been 
interest in how the climate crisis is playing out in documentary films 
(Hughes 2012; Aaltonen 2014; Huggan 2015; Bieniek-Tobasco et al 2019), 
and the role played by fiction film in representing climate issues has 
also received some attention (von Burg 2011; Skallari 2015;  Manzo 
2017).  However, investigations into how the relationship between 
violence and climate change has been represented in film are thin on the 
ground (Hobbs-Morgan 2017), and more research is needed into how 
videogames are responding to the intersections between conflict and 
climate change, and into how televisual narratives are engaging with 
these issues.

Meanwhile Defence Departments around the world – in the U.S., the U.K., 
India, France, New Zealand and China, to name a few – have all 
identified climate change as a non-traditional security challenge and 
are in the process of developing strategies and measures to address it.  
  Much of the discourse around climate change and armed conflict, 
however, in academia and in the military, is concerned with attempting 
to prove, or disprove, causal links between the two (Hsiang et al 2013; 
Selby et al 2017; Adams et al 2018; Nordqvist and Krampe 2018) or with 
identifying climate change as a threat multiplier (Brown, Hammill, 
MCleman 2007 Huntjens and Nachbar 2015).  How conflict itself has 
contributed to climate change, not only through the damage caused by 
armed engagements past and present, but also through the carbon 
bootprint of military activities, has received less attention in the 
media and in academia.  Other forms of conflict emerging from climate 
change - such as that between human and non-human for resources, for 
example – and their relationship to media, have also not been fully 
investigated.

This special journal edition addresses the urgent need to investigate 
the intersections between media, conflict and climate change, and the 
challenges and/or opportunities that emerge from their entanglements.  
Potential topics include, but are not restricted to, the following:

ØWhat are the implications and extent of the use of martial terms in the 
discourse in relation to climate – eg. “war on the planet”, 
#waronourfuture, “climate wars”

ØHow are different forms of conflict related to climate change reported 
and represented in both traditional forms of media and other media forms 
around the world?

ØIn what ways do the media of different countries address 
climate-related migrations and their relationship to conflict?

ØIn what ways do non-fictional media forms (film, television, digital 
games) inflect the understanding of the relationship between conflict 
and climate change?

ØHow has the coverage of war (such as the recent war in Ukraine) 
represented/obscured the environmental cost of warfare?

ØWhat media strategies are militaries around the world adopting in 
relation to their role in responding to the climate crisis?

ØHow is the impact of the climate crisis on the international security 
landscape playing out in media?

ØHow have the long-term environmental legacies of conflict been 
addressed or ignored in media?

ØAre some countries able to negotiate climate change without conflict?  
What role does media play in such countries?   What can be learned from 
them?

ØHow are environmental wars mis/understood and represented in media?

ØWhy has Hollywood ignored climate change?

ØIn what ways are video games, especially those with war-themed 
settings, addressing the relationship between conflict and climate?

ØHow are other forms of conflict and their relationship to climate 
change – between human and non-human, for example – being ignored or 
addressed in media?

We particularly welcome papers that cover previously under-represented 
countries and regions in debates about these issues – Pakistan, Myanmar 
and Afghanistan, South Asia, South East Asia, for example – as well as 
papers addressing the recent war in the Ukraine.

Please send abstracts of 200-300 words for articles of 8,000 words to:

Dr. Debra Ramsay : (d.ramsay /at/ exeter.ac.uk) <mailto:(d.ramsay /at/ exeter.ac.uk)>

Dr. Martin Robson: (m.robson /at/ exeter.ac.uk) <mailto:(m.robson /at/ exeter.ac.uk)>

*Please use the subject line: 100 Sec to Midnight Abstract*

*Deadline for submission of abstracts: 30 April 2023*


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