Transformative journalisms and the seductive power of imagery in digital climate niche journalism

Recent debates around “transformative journalisms” in climate journalism present emerging ways to renegotiate the traditional norm of journalistic objectivity by blurring the boundaries between science, advocacy, and journalism. This paper draws similarity between the seductive powers of journalistic objectivity and of naturalism in news photography, exploring the ways these collide and interact when brought together in the context of image selection and engagement at one niche climate journalism organisation. Using a hybrid ethnographic approach between 2021 and 2023, this research addresses the question of what the engagement with imagery at one specialist climate organisation, Carbon Brief, can tell us about the shifting norms of objectivity and advocacy in climate journalism. Findings explore first the specific understanding of journalistic objectivity being performed by Carbon Brief through their policy-neutral tone, and the multiple ways this is manifest in image use. Second, this paper demonstrates how through their discussions around and engagement with photographic imagery, Carbon Brief are blurring, stretching, and transgressing the boundaries between neutrality and advocacy in climate journalism, as well as the line between naturalism and symbolism in photography. Fundamentally, this paper highlights the contradictory and complex assumptions within both climate journalism’s and news photography’s commitment to versions of objectivity, and argues that transformative journalisms provides a useful concept to understand the plurality, fluidity, and transgression which is often already present at climate-specific journalistic organisations.