The IKETIS project concerns the mediation of climate change-induced migration and the implications for meaningful media discourse and empowerment of key intermediaries to raise public awareness.
Ideas and narratives about climate change are increasingly playing a structuring role in the broader social and political sphere and mass media are important forums for the application of these ideas and narratives to the political and economic status quo. Yet, whilst climate change has gained news coverage in the UK, it is still largely seen as an environmental or political issue, with little discussion in UK news media of the social aspects of climate change such as migration.
As climate change is likely to become the most significant cause of population displacement in the coming years, the IKETIS project will seek to influence the media agenda to more meaningfully engage with this issue.
The IKETIS project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions initiative. Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) provide grants for all stages of researchers' careers and encourage transnational, intersectoral and interdisciplinary mobility. The MSCA enable research-focused organisations to host talented foreign researchers and to create strategic partnerships with leading institutions worldwide. Dr Maria Sakellari is supported as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow to complete this project.
This project has received funding from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Individual Fellows (IF) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no 748295.
The research project commences in April 2017 and will end in April 2019.
The IKETIS project will seek to raise public and policy awareness in the UK of the need for concerted action to understand and address climate change induced migration through a focus upon the mediation of climate refugees and migration within online UK news media and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) campaigns – both key elements in the mediation of climate change-induced migration between lay public and the political sphere.
The first aim of the IKETIS project is to understand and compare the representational practices that shape media and NGOs discourses and frames about climate refugees and migration.
The second aim will use these findings to build capacity of journalists, NGOs and policymakers, critical intermediaries in the mediation of climate change refugees and distant suffering, to help raise public and policy awareness in the UK of climate-induced migration.
Together, both aims contribute to the transformation of how climate change induced migration is perceived and provide new patterns of critical thinking and civic engagement.
Detailed objectives of the project are:
Slowly but steadily migration emerges as a climate change adaptation strategy, as policy documents such as the UK’s Government Office for Science Foresight project report and the European Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change specifically document, but the UK public is more concerned by and opposed to migration than publics in Europe and North America, as represented by the recent Brexit decision.
The IKETIS project will provide a more nuanced and complex understanding of how climate change will have human impact within Europe and thus place important focus upon an under-researched area that has material effects on people’s lives. Analysing the representational practices that shape the discourse about climate change-induced migration:
Research team
Dr Maria Sakellari, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow
Professor Julie Doyle, Supervisor
Dr Frauke Behrendt, Co-supervisor
Output
Partners