CSTPR Seminar

Monday, October 7 at 3:00 PM
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research
1333 Grandview Avenue | Map

Climate Change Policy in the Media: Between Hegemony and Good Sense

by Andreas Ytterstad
Institute of Journalism and the Media
Oslo and Akershus University College, Norway

Media represents global warming and climate change policies in contradictory ways. In this talk Andreas Ytterstad builds upon and extends the insight of Antonio Gramsci to explain such contradictions. He argues that hegemonic relations and good sense form the two main sources of 'common sense' in the media - what most people take for granted. The hegemony school of media and journalism studies, associated with people like Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams and Todd Gitlin, has largely ignored the concept of good sense. By inserting good sense into media studies, Ytterstad suggests a more optimistic, less deterministic, way of analyzing the media and journalism.

Biography: Andreas Ytterstad is Associate Professor of the Institute of Journalism and the Media, at Oslo and Akershus University College, Norway. He wrote his doctoral thesis on Norwegian Climate Change Policy in the media and is currently doing post-doctoral research on the morals of Climate Change journalism.

His research interests center on the battle over common sense in the media. Employing the Gramscian concepts of hegemony and good sense, he has analyzed the Norwegian blogosphere on global warming (and soccer!), different aspects of journalistic objectivity, and media coverage of Climate Summits. Amongst his more recent publications is a critique of the framing paradigm within research on global warming communication in the media.

As board member of Concerned Scientists Norway, he has given numerous invited talks and tutorials, particularly after the publication of his book 100 000 Climate and Green Jobs Now! For A Climate Solution from Below (Ytterstad 2013). The book was endorsed by three national unions, the environmental movement and the Norwegian Church and included a foreword by Dr. James Hansen. He also sits on the executive committee of Climate Election 2013 Alliance, supported by more than 100 Civil Society Organizations in Norway.