"Klimatångest" i svenska medier - ett "tecken" i tiden
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54807/kp.v33.18319Keywords:
climate anxiety, media, medicalization, neoliberalism, therapy culture, individualizationAbstract
Climate change and its effects on humans and animals and their living conditions are increasingly debated phenomena. As a result of climate change, the media emphasize that more and more people suffer from climate anxiety, which symptoms can range from mild to quite severe. In this paper, we focus on how climate anxiety is presented in the Swedish media. The purpose is to map and problematize how climate anxiety is represented by showing how this phenomenon is connected to certain ideas and descriptions. We also want to highlight the political consequences media representations of climate anxiety can have, and what they can tell us about contemporary Sweden. The survey is based on 346 articles available in the Retriver. se database. Climate anxiety was used as search term, and the search covered the time period 1 July 2022 to the end of December 2022. The findings show that climate anxiety is articulated in different and partly contradictory ways, at the same time as the material reproduces four contemporary cultural tendencies; medicalization, neoliberalism, therapy culture and individualization, which can be counterproductive with respect to both climate anxiety and climate measures in general. The fact that climate anxiety is primarily made into an individual problem may possibly work against the interest in a collective political commitment to the climate issue.
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