A Sea Change for Climate Refugees in the South Pacific: How Social Media – Not Journalism – Tells Their Real Story

ABSTRACT

The passing of the Paris Climate Agreement means that journalism must begin to portray the problem of climate change accurately. This study, which contributes to the literature on environmental communications in the South Pacific, observes how islanders use social media to fight global warming, thereby challenging biased representations of science and race in a portion of Australia’s media. In-depth interviews with journalists and activists in Fiji and the isolated island nation-state of Tuvalu explore how socially-mediated communication provides a novel forum for counter-hegemonic resistance. Social media has become the last Mayday of the so-called climate change refugee. As long as journalism misses their real story, Pacific Islanders will fight global warming themselves through Posts, Tweets and (Dis)likes.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change refugees
• social media
• Pacific Islands
• journalism
• counter hegemony

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).