Environmental Politics and Conflict in an Age of Digital Media
November 17-18 2011
University of Tasmania

We are living through a period of major transformation in environmental politics and conflict.  Web platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and mobile communications are changing the ‘rules of the game’ for activism and journalism, creating a genuinely multi-media environment alongside traditional print and broadcast mediums. 

These developments are critical in understanding changing norms of democratic practice and debate, especially during election campaigns and protest actions. 

The ‘Environmental Politics and Conflict in an Age of Digital Media’ symposium brought together academics and journalists from 14 countries to explore media roles and practices associated with environmental conflict, crises and change. The symposium, held at the University of Tasmania on 17-18 November 2011, was hosted by Libby Lester, of the Journalism, Media and Communications program at the University of Tasmania, and Brett Hutchins, of the Research Unit in Media Studies at Monash University. The symposium was part of their ARC-funded research project that began in 2010.

Keynote speakers included Professor Simon Cottle, of Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, and Senator Christine Milne, who traced her personal history of media-related environmental campaigning. Both speakers stressed the connections and flows between new and old media.

The symposium also included a panel discussion by journalists visiting Australia from Asia-Pacific countries, ‘picking up the bill’ (as Simon Cottle noted) on climate change. Part of a program hosted by the Asia Pacific Journalism Centre, the journalists – from countries including Timor Leste, Indonesia, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, West Papua and Fiji – discussed the reporting of climate change in their countries and the obstacles they faced in getting factual information to both their audiences and the outside world.

Participants in the symposium also included members of the Global Environmental Journalism Initiative, a staff and student exchange program funded by the EU-Australia Cooperation in Higher Education scheme. European universities involved in the program, which met in Hobart earlier in the week, are University of Helsinki, Danish School of Media and Journalism, University of Aristotle Thessaloniki, and City University London.

A selection of papers from the symposium will appear in Environmental Conflict and the Media, part of the Global Crises and the Media series edited by Simon Cottle and published by Peter Lang.