The growing presence of climate change in Swedish media has given the Sweden Democrats a new focus. The rapid escalation of this problem, and the way it is portrayed as a fear-inducing crisis, is reflected in a conservative narrative of nostalgia for a past when things were less complicated.
Similarly, in Denmark, the topic became more popular in the media after 2015, and a similar pattern continued thereafter. But views on climate change and environmental policy in Denmark have avoided becoming a new confluence of opposition and media-skeptical far-right groups.
Rather than being a frightening reality that is difficult to visualize, climate change has become a call to action and national pride. Yet activists are calling for tougher media discourse on climate change, as media coverage of the issue is often described as tepid and not reflecting the urgency of the situation.
The cases of Denmark and Sweden serve as two different examples of how the media is failing to address the environmental crisis.
Swedish media: feeding the crisis-hungry far right
In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats’ popularity began to soar, thanks to anti-immigration policies that followed a wave of large-scale immigration in the 2010s. But as that issue began to fade from the political agenda, a new issue rose to the forefront: climate change.
This phenomenon began to receive frequent coverage in the Swedish media in 2015. In 2019, this topic had the highest presence ever and received the most coverage of the year. “What happened in the summer of 2018 was that climate change was felt in Sweden with record heatwaves and severe forest fires,” says Chalmers University PhD student specializing in media and climate change. student Kel Vores explains. Although an elusive concept, people felt its direct impact.
In the same year, teenage activist Greta Thunberg became a leader in the climate movement in Sweden and around the world. All this happened in an election year in Sweden. The topic quickly moved to the center of the legacy media agenda. They began reporting on issues such as corporate accountability and corporate conduct.
But the central issue was climate change activism. This has given the far right a new front from which to build an anti-establishment discourse and win new supporters. “The far right made immigration the first big polarizing issue, now climate change is the issue, echoing the anti-establishment rhetoric of globalist elites who want to change our way of life. ” said Vowles.
Five years after the 2020 pandemic knocked climate change off the top of the media agenda, climate change is still covered in the media, if not to the same extent. Nevertheless, “polarization around climate change is becoming increasingly evident,” Vowles said.
The rapid rise of climate change and its focus on activism in mainstream media has paved the way for the presentation of the issue in alternative far-right media. Before Greta Thunberg, climate change almost didn’t exist. She became an easy target for the far right and the Sweden Democrats. They argued that Swedish politics was being infantilized by following the statements of a 15-year-old girl rather than an expert on the issue. Essentially, their argument was that “Sweden is moving from a rational society to an emotional society,” says Vohles.
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Vølles acknowledges that this new alternative media was central to Sweden’s growing polarization on climate change, but legacy media also contributed to this polarization. They gave activists extensive coverage and presented the issue in an alarming way rather than focusing on the science and what to do next, resulting in a huge backlash caused by oversaturation of the issue and fear. caused.
What did Danish politics do right and what did the media do wrong?
Trends in climate change reporting in Denmark are similar to those in Sweden. This problem reached its peak in 2018. Activists took to the streets that year to put significant political pressure on the 2019 elections, while the media continued to report on the issue. However, this did not provoke a backlash from the far right, nor did it become a polarizing issue.
A 2022 survey by Danish green think tank CONCITO found that 88% of Danes consider climate change to be a serious problem. Similarly, “66% say politicians’ efforts to address climate change will influence who they vote for in the next general election.”
Mads Eising, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Applied Thinking at the University of Copenhagen who specializes in environmental policy, explains that there are two reasons why Danes in general care about climate change. The first is education that focuses on environmental issues.
The second is how resource and climate policies have been developed. Tackling climate change in Denmark began in his 1990s with the introduction of wind turbines and new types of renewable energy. Rural areas, where far-right conservatism and climate change denialism tend to be on the rise, also benefited from these changes, bringing significant income to these areas.
Climate change has been part of the Danish political landscape for more than 30 years, impacting all sectors of society both positively and negatively. The debate around this issue is not only rooted in typical urban conversations, but also calls for action in other areas of society. This would not only unite the Danish people, but also avoid creating the classic discourse adopted by far-right parties, which sees climate change as a problem created by elites.
Ejsing explains that the media plays a role in keeping climate change at the forefront of Danes’ agenda, and it is brought up more often than in other countries. Despite this, he believes that coverage of the climate crisis in Denmark has been relatively tame and that movements and activists are not promoting these conversations as much as they have in the past. Movements such as Fridays for the Future, Extinction Rebellion, and the Green Youth Movement have been key to making the Danish public aware of the scale of the environmental crisis.
After the 2019 election and the 2020 pandemic, the climate conversation subsided and was replaced by other trending topics. However, the interim goal of reducing emissions by 2025 has not been achieved, and there is currently a sense of crisis. Furthermore, in a society where climate change denial is stigmatized, other forms of climate inaction are also becoming tolerated. “Climate change skepticism is unpopular, but discourse about slowing climate change is popular. It puts goals on the back burner and takes away the sense of urgency,” Ezishin said.
Activists are beginning to look for ways to hold markets accountable for failing to meet these goals, and are pressuring the media to portray climate change as a crisis and emergency. A movement called “Clear the Agenda” is rallying to change media coverage of global warming from mostly bland reporting to something that actually shows the seriousness and urgency of the situation.
Ejsing added: “I think a lot of people are concerned about this issue. [climate change] But that’s not the same as supporting the kind of climate change policies we need. And that is different from understanding and feeling the urgency of our situation. ”
Media needs to understand the situation
Climate change and environmental policy will be at the forefront of the European elections in 2024. This could be a make-or-break moment for the environment, not only in Europe but also in other parts of the world. Sweden and Denmark are perfect, albeit disparate, case studies of how the media is failing to address the environment and climate change.
The sudden and rapid rise in the topic of climate change in Swedish media in 2018 and 2019 automatically led to a backlash. Framing the problem as a terrible, all-encompassing crisis and focusing primarily on activists and movements, at a time when conservative ideology is so popular, has not helped solve environmental problems. The media is to blame for this act of intimidation, giving activists more prominence than those responsible, and unwittingly influencing far-right rhetoric and supporters in Sweden.
At a time when far-right parties are gaining ground in Europe and climate change skepticism is at an all-time high, Denmark is an outlier. The far-right Danish People’s Party has lost support, and most people support climate action. However, rather boring and ineffective discourse in the media is not driving the changes people want.
The idea of delaying climate action is becoming increasingly popular, and Denmark’s 2025 goals are still a long way off. Danish media does not take advantage of Denmark’s advantage that people want to be aware of changes in their environment and use science and evidence to demand stronger changes in society.