Browsing by Author "Okoliko, Dominic Ayegba"

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    Media(ted) climate change in South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya : reimagining the public for engagement
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-12) Okoliko, Dominic Ayegba; De Wit, Martin; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. School of Public Leadership.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : Climate change is the defining challenge of our time. The rise in global temperature observed in recent decades poses high risks to social and natural systems. It also has exacerbating effects on existing social problems such as poverty, hunger, infrastructural deficit, and human security challenges. The situation is worse for poorer communities, the majority of whom live in the Global South, including Africa, where resilience levels are low. As the global community grapples with addressing the challenge through mitigation and adaptation measures, it is suggested that climate change is an all-encompassing and cross-sectional policy issue. A whole systems approach needed requires input from all relevant stakeholders and at multiple levels. Attention has generally turned to communicative actions as conduits of generating public perception, attitudes, and support for climate policy. Consequently, (mass) media representation of climate change – media(ted) climate change communication (CCC) – has gained attention in the policy corridors and among researchers as an important space where citizens make sense of climate issues. Scholarship in the subject area provides several contributions to our understanding of the role that media play regarding sense-making about climate change and the public. This study focuses on addressing two gaps in the media(ted) CCC literature. First, although, “the public” is featured in media(ted) CCC research as a significant audience, little attention has been given to problematising it as a category of actor constellations engaged in sense-making around climate change governance. Considering that sustainability transitions require an engaged public who are negotiating, endorsing, and legitimising policy options, this study (re)directs attention to how the processes of sense-making in media(ted) CCC reveal positionalities and material realities that condition the climate change discourse. Second, our understanding of how societies in the Global South engage in sense-making around climate change through the media is limited due to a paucity of research interest in the region. In this study, a case is made for media(ted) CCC in Africa whose climate vulnerability is well established and yet has received little scholarly attention. The purpose of this qualitative case study is therefore twofold: (1) to develop an African context-relevant theoretical framework for CCC, and (2) to utilise the same in the analysis of how specific occasions of media(ted) CCC from three African countries, South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya, (dis)enable public engagement. In the study, media(ted) CCC refers to the representation of climate change issues in six newspapers across South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya, and public engagement as the process by which various social actors enact subjectivities and conduct sense-making around climate change in the mediascapes. Triangulated data (comprising of relevant literature, 315 newspaper articles and 11 semi-structured interviews) were analysed employing conceptual, framing, and thematic analyses. While the conceptual exercises (in chapters two and three) tease out what constitutes a mediascape that is supportive of inclusive climate change coverage, the empirical research (in chapters four and five) describe and explain how and whether the cases examined illustrate the representation of inclusive subjectivities (diversity of actors) and the pluralities of ideas (frames diversity). The study concludes with discussions important for driving climate change governance through communicative actions.