Pressure Group Direct Action on Climate Change: The Role of the Media and the Web in Britain—A Case Study

This article addresses prominent, disruptive direct action around the climate change issue, in the context of comparable activity across a range of political groupings. It exposes the processes by which such activities are refracted through the conventional media and the web, in a way that comparable studies fail to do. Results suggest they garner significant but unflattering attention from the former, partly as a consequence of the persistent pressures and imperatives that drive conventional journalism. Moreover, they put a question mark against the notion of the web as an egalitarian, democratised, alternative and separate avenue of communication for the otherwise disadvantaged. The conclusions question the viability of direct action activity and the unforeseen consequences that follow, as well as the overall balance of forces in the pressure group domain.