The Impact of Climate Change on Lifestyle Journalism

How do journalists conceive of covering climate change from a lifestyle perspective? Do they think reporting on climate and lifestyle should provide their audiences with advice and solutions for how to make climate friendly choices? We address these questions through a survey among Norwegian journalists and editors with questions about their experience with reporting on climate and lifestyles, their evaluation of the importance of journalism on climate and lifestyle, and what role they see for constructive journalism in the coverage of climate and lifestyle issues. We provide evidence that issues of climate change and lifestyles to some extent are covered by journalists within a range of journalistic beats reflecting that climate change affects lifestyle choices in complex ways. A central idea in our argument is that there is a close conceptual connection between lifestyle journalism and constructive journalism, and we show that there is a systematic relationship between evaluations of the importance of lifestyle journalism and of the role constructive journalism should have in the coverage of climate and lifestyles. We also chart the nature and extent of the disagreement around the role of constructive journalism in the coverage of this issue.