Publishing strategies and professional demarcations: Enacting media logic(s) in European academic climate communication through open letters

Mediatization and media logic(s): Towards enactment

Mediatization aims to describe the increasing importance of media in everyday life; this comprises social relations, working processes, the economy, political life, and democratic processes (Ergun and Nielsen, 2021; Krotz, 2017). Studies of mediatization have been undertaken on macrolevels as well as microlevels and are influenced by different epistemological understandings and research traditions (Andersson, 2017). Whether mediatization is one concept or many is up for debate: A constructionist and microlevel approach tends to reject the more deterministic and universal character of mediatization that a macrolevel approach adopts (Andersson, 2017; Brants and van Praag, 2015; Fredriksson and Pallas, 2020).

While media can be interpreted in many ways—communication technologies, mass media institutions, social media platforms, journalism, and media representations, for example—, in practice, mediatization is often used to refer to the mass media, journalism, and/or institutional digital media (see Andersson, 2017, p. 38). This is also reflected in the use of the concept media logic, which often implies that other institutions or practitioners have adopted the logic and workings of mass media and journalism (Hassler et al., 2014). Although this is debated, to many scholars, mediatization and media logic are synonymous; they encapsulate each other (see Altheide, 2011; Brants and van Praag, 2015; Ergun and Nielsen, 2021; Eskjaer, 2017). In this paper, I am particularly interested in exploring the concept of media logic and, more specifically, researchers’ potential use and understanding of the concept.

Media logic has been defined in a variety of ways, but a common point of departure is that it “refers to the assumptions and processes for constructing messages within a particular medium” (Altheide, 2016, p. 1). Yet, the question of what “media” actually means in the context of media logic has been debated. As an example, it has been claimed that social media present different logics to the news media and involve communication based on horizontal and interactive patterns (Johansson, 2019). Suggestions have thus emerged that researchers should allow for a multitude of media logics and explore how they are dispersed, intersected, and perceived among actors using the term (Ergun and Nielsen, 2021; Fredriksson and Pallas, 2020; Nölleke and Scheu, 2018). While these kinds of approaches allow for a variety of media logics, many still strive to attribute core characteristics to them or a lowest common denominator. In Plesner’s words, there is a tendency to see “media logic as an actually existing force and using this—often vague phenomenon—to explain relations, choices, changes or content in media production” (Plesner, 2010, p. 6). Instead, Plesner (2010) suggests that media logic(s) can be evoked and enacted; it is an articulation of agency and can be seen as “contextual relations” between actors that are used for various purposes.

While building on previous work and insights on media logic(s), this article shifts perspective and follows Plesner’s suggestion to investigate media logic(s) as it is enacted, performed, and understood by actors. Following this aim, I will use the term media logic(s) in the paper. The article addresses researchers’ “climate” communication, a field with a social and political life that may influence researchers’ evocations of media logic(s). In other words, media logic(s) can serve as an analytical device to explore the relations, agency, and rationales among actors in a specific communication context.

Climate communication: Media and the social context of climate change

In this section, I turn the lens toward how the epistemic content of communication and its surrounding discourse might be shaping climate communicators’ use and understanding of media. Indeed, climate communication is institutionally encouraged by political agencies (Corner et al., 2017) but fraught with tension at the same time (Serrao-Neumann et al., 2018). Political polarization, climate denialism, and policy disagreements are factors researchers need in order to take into consideration social and political discourse when communicating (Serrao-Neumann et al., 2018).

Climate communication is characterized by a plethora of communication practices used by researchers. These include storytelling, interpersonal communication, visuals, photography, videos, and TED Talks, to name but a few (Arnold, 2018; Corner et al., 2017). Social media has also emerged as a central tool in climate communication, and it is increasingly used by researchers in their professional lives (Schäfer, 2012). However, views regarding the efficacy of communicating via this medium differ; on the one hand, social media have been seen to emotionalize and politicize environmental issues (Bradshaw and Howard, 2018; Jacques et al., 2019), even while other scholars argue that social media can enhance users’ encounters with climate information since they are exposed to large flows of information (Huber et al., 2019).

The news media have long been prominent in mediating scientific information to the wider public (Rödder and Schäfer, 2010). In relation to climate change, the mediatization of climate science has been characterized by the increased media coverage of climate issues (see Tøsse, 2013). However, the role of the news media in the climate debate has been under criticism. Some researchers have pointed out that mainstream economics dominate climate discourse in the media. This involves, for example, the cost-benefit analyses of climate change which give economists a primary position in the climate debate (Serrao-Neumann et al., 2018). The type of language used in newspapers has been one source of contention, and the media are said to have propelled the view that there are two equal sides debating the existence of climate change by giving airtime to opposing views. A preference for covering conflict and drama has contributed to skewed reporting on climate change (Whibey and Ward, 2016). Likewise, scientists have perceived journalists as misconstruing their findings, thereby influencing the public in ways not in line with science (Tøsse, 2013). At the same time, it has been highlighted that media, in all forms, are part of any environmental action (Thorn et al., 2017), and so-called media events—events that draw considerable media attention—have also played a significant positive role in highlighting climate issues (Christensen et al., 2013).

All the aforementioned issues arguably influence the rationales of researchers when they engage in climate communication. As such, I argue that the enactment and use of media logic cannot be seen in isolation from the topic researchers communicate and how the topic has unfolded in different forms of media and in public discourse.

The feeling of not having a voice: The when and why of media logic(s)

Frustration. The frustration of not being heard and a sense of lacking a voice: This was a narrative emerging in the interviews. “You know”, said an initiator, “academics frequently feel like we are powerless, and our voices aren’t heard”. While scientists in general, and climate scientists in particular, enjoy relatively high levels of cultural authority, this assertion seems puzzling. In comparison to other groups in society, scientists are well – institutionalized and funded. Therefore, to understand my interlocutors’ ideas of powerlessness became an important starting point from which to explore open letter communication. And as it emerged, the powerlessness expressed could be understood in several ways.

For a start, the question of powerlessness is linked to different actors with whom the researchers compare themselves in the climate debate:

Large industries and professional NGOs have many resources to engage in this stuff. And (they also have) professional communication departments. Universities also have professional communication departments, but, at least from my perspective, it is much more difficult to mobilize those kinds of resources or those kinds of collaborations between scientists and university communication departments as NGOs, politicians, and industries are doing on a daily basis.

The interviewee positions scientists as a weak voice in society in comparison with “politicians, industries, and NGOs”. Although universities in principle have the same institutional backing as other actors, the initiator stresses that they cannot mobilize enough resources or trade on their profession to the same extent as the other actors. Indeed, part of the frustration and sense of marginalization that researchers have experienced may be influenced by what Väliverronen (2021) has identified as a source of contention in academia—communication practices that differ between communication departments and researchers.

The fact that different communication practices can increase feelings of powerlessness is an issue that the interlocutors brought up in relation to journalism:

I and my colleagues had our quotes in articles, on TV, and so forth. But we were frustrated that we didn’t sound right in some way. And this [name of person] is saying blah-blah-blah and loads of things, and we weren’t really given the space in the articles to explain ourselves completely.

In this case, their powerlessness was linked to not being in control of their own narrative, of being dependent on other actors whose practices, and perhaps motives, were different from theirs. An open letter, as another interlocutor described it, became a way to reclaim one’s voice:

We chose the open letter because we wanted to share our voice without having to get in touch with other interests and be restricted to say something or not to say some other things; we wanted to give voice to our perception of things as scientists without interference.

In this excerpt, open letters become ways to circumvent interference (although arguably only ideally), and by extension, a way to regain a form of power. Who gets to speak in the public arena emerged as a central issue when feelings of powerlessness were concerned:

And in the writing process, when we wanted to publish a letter, it was also quite obvious that if you are a minister and an economic scientist advising the government, you also have quite easy access to the media, and you are also perceived as an expert.

As the quote illustrates, access to the news media is perceived as uneven; a specific speaker may be able to access the news media more easily than others, irrespective of any institutional support. In this case, not only politicians are seen as advantaged but also specific academics, such as economists, which leads to the question of why my interlocutors hold these specific views. I suggest that the epistemic content of the letters, which is climate change, has influenced the interviewees’ view of which actors may be advantaged. Research has shown that mainstream economics dominates climate discourse in the media. Economists thereby become privileged actors in the climate debate (Serrao-Neumann et al., 2018). A similar idea is voiced in the quote above, namely a sense of being professionally marginalized in relation to other disciplines. Therefore, the powerlessness expressed by my interviewees needs to be understood in relation to how the discourse surrounding the topic of climate change has been played out in the media.

However, the news media are not the only option for researchers in public communication. Social media offer academics a range of ways of communicating outside the sphere of the news media (Johansson, 2019; Priem, 2013). Most of the researchers interviewed also used social media, and some even employed social media in their strategy to publish the open letters although they saw limitations to its usefulness. This is a typical quote conveying the researchers’ views of social media:

Initiator: All social media are extremely self-centered. You are only talking to people that agree with you on social media, whereas we wanted to reach further.

Carin: And then traditional news media are the better option?

Initiator: Yeah, for us, at that point. I mean, who can reach 200,000 people on social media, on Twitter? Ha-ha …

Carin: Ha-ha, well …

Initiator: Ha-ha, if I had known a YouTube star or, well, a huge … someone …

The lack of diversity among one’s social media followers and the fact that you already have to be well known in order to get attention are both acknowledged as obstacles to communicating science on social media. Researchers thus indicate that successful social media communication is not dependent on skills but rather on your identity and status. In fact, it is seemingly the same forces at play which determine successful social media and news media communication: your status and identity. Among my interlocutors, however, one medium is preferred over the other— news media. Researchers who used social media in their publishing strategy for the open letters spoke of social media as a matter of “trying” to reach out. Outside the open letter initiative, almost all the interviewees used social media to various degrees in their science communication efforts, be it through blogging, tweeting, or Facebook. But as the quote shows, they saw limits to its usefulness in matters of outreach. Additionally, some researchers saw social media as obstructing knowledge due to its fast-paced character, which turns information into “fast-food information” (Graminius, 2021). Interestingly, this contrasts with Oliveira’s (2018) suggestion that the media logics of social media have surpassed the dominance which academics once attributed to mass media in their professional lives. As the interlocutors stressed, social media can be used for self-promotion and research communication with peers. However, in matters of outreach, news media were still perceived as unparalleled in terms of impact and power, even if the same problem—that of the identity of the speaker—was recognized as a hindrance to successful communication both on social media and in the news media.

To explain this contradiction, I argue that it is in this setting that media logic(s) and the social context of climate communication enter the equation. On the one hand, the interlocutors view the power of the news media as intrinsic because they already have an established social position and have been mediating scientific voices about the climate for decades (Rödder and Schäfer, 2010; Whibey and Ward, 2016). On the other hand, the interlocutors also attributed a more flexible form of power to the news media: media logic(s). Media logic(s), as I will illustrate, was perceived as directing and governing the choices of editors and journalists; this hampered access to the news media and made the identity of the speaker important. However, media logic(s) also offered researchers a chance to enter the news media environment. In fact, researchers developed a strategy for manipulating media logic(s) to make their voices heard.

What is media logic(s)? Professional relations and publishing strategies

Media logic(s) is described as a contextual and multi-relational term that evades set definitions (Fredriksson and Pallas, 2020; Plesner, 2010) and can be used as an analytical device to explore relations, agency, and transitions (Plesner, 2010). I will use it as an analytical device and highlight four issues which the interlocutors perceived as media logic(s)—the celebrity issue, confrontation, catchiness, and timeliness—and I will discuss how these issues are linked to professional demarcations.

Firstly, what researchers perceive as media logic(s) relates to the question of who gets to speak. One researcher recalled earlier experiences of trying to publish open letters in the news media in which the newspapers instead picked a “celebrity scientist” who essentially communicated the same thing:

So, I think, in the end, it was easier for them to publish it than it was for us. Because in my experience, it is not necessarily about what you have to say, it is also about who says it … that is becoming very important in the newspapers.

The question of who says something, as the excerpt from the interview above illustrates, is part of what the researchers perceive as media logic(s) and an issue noncelebrity researchers have to circumvent.

Secondly, another component of media logic(s) frequently mentioned concerned “confrontation and style”, such as in the use of catchy lines. As such, a particular linguistic discourse is attributed to media logic(s), which overlaps findings related to both academics’ perception of social media (Oliveira, 2018) and descriptions of journalistic practices and news media logic(s) (Hassler et al., 2014). In scientific debates, uncertainty and longitudinal research topics were perceived as complete opposites to the news media environment:

But sometimes I feel like there is a tendency to, especially in relation to media and journalists, they want small catchy lines, limited information that basically can be tweeted or shouted out. And science doesn’t work like that. There is always a larger discussion to be had, right? And it is difficult, because the world is not really black and white, but newspapers often want black or white information, and the shades of grey disappear.

To communicate in the news media environment did not only require researchers to navigate issues of who gets to speak, their strategies also needed the rationale on which they perceived news media to operate: edge, controversy, click-bait, and black-and-white stories. The tabloidization of climate science has been raised in previous studies (Tøsse, 2013), and similarly to my findings, scientists tend to consider this communication style as exaggerated and error prone (Tøsse, 2013).

Thirdly, there was the issue of timeliness. Timeliness is a well-established norm in the news media (Pepermans and Maeseele, 2017), and the researchers in this study also saw timeliness as a component of media logic(s) which hampered access to the news media: “… if you write an article, at least you can send it to another journal and work on it some more. Here you can’t. It is about timing. It is about timely topics.” As the quote illustrates, the researcher perceived timeliness as one of the differences between news media articles and academic journal articles.

What can be gathered from the researchers’ articulation of media logic(s) is the demarcation between professional fields: media logic(s) is seen as something that belongs to the news media and not to academia. However, these “logics” are also central to scholarly communication within the academic profession. For instance, timeliness—here expressed as the importance of being given priority for a claim through the mechanisms of publishing—is a central issue in scholarly communication. If a paper gets ‘stuck’ in a peer-review process, someone else might publish and be given priority for the claim, which makes timeliness central in academia (Halliday, 2001; Harley et al., 2010). Likewise, in a hierarchical environment like academia, status and fame are as much a part of the media environment. In fact, as far back as the 1970s, Merton (1973) had coined what he called the Matthew Effect, which described how already-acknowledged scholars get disproportionate visibility and credit for their work in comparison to unknown researchers. In short, academic celebrity culture is underpinned by specific institutional and organizational features within academia, including publication in high-ranking journals, professional titles as status markers, and the institutional ranking of the institution where the researcher is employed (Walsh and Lehmann, 2021). Fame and status are thus professional issues within academia and not only part of the media environment.

Regarding simple black-and-white narratives and catchiness, there are certainly instances where researchers exaggerate claims and massage data to exclude the shades of grey. This has been observed in studies where scholars try to reproduce experiments but get different results (Fidler and Wilcox, 2018). Although one might see these exaggerations as academic anomalies, the catchiness which researchers ascribe to media is increasingly a valued aspect in scholarly communication itself. There have been calls for a rejection of abstract, jargon-filled, and stringent scholarly writing in favor of more catchy and relatable writing styles (Alvesson et al., 2017). In this setting, media logic must be understood as an articulation of professional boundaries, a way to separate “we” from “them”, which also coincides with Plesner’s (2010) findings in her study on media logic(s) within academic settings. I suggest that the perceived need for professional demarcation might be accentuated in the context of climate change because media representations of climate issues have been a source of contention and controversy (Whibey and Ward, 2016). Separating oneself from this environment is thus important for professional reasons; it becomes a way to establish boundaries between what scientists say and what other actors say on the topic of climate change. But, as I will illustrate in the following section, this is only one aspect of the use of media logic(s) among my interlocutors.

Enacting media logic(s): The researchers’ publishing strategies

As established in the previous sections, the interlocutors perceived media logic as something external to academia and primarily linked to the news media. However, media logic(s) could be used and manipulated; it could be enacted to mitigate access to the news media. In line with Pallas et al. (2016), who stress the relational aspects of media logics, they became an expression of the relationship between academics and the news media and the perceived balance of power between the two. To a certain degree, this enactment also influenced the form of communication researchers chose to adopt: open letters. In particular, this was visible when the initiators’ open letters only targeted the news media as the prime site for publishing the letter.

To enter the news media environment, researchers first had to enact what they perceived as media logic(s). In one open letter, the interlocutors had some previous experience publishing in newspapers but were dissatisfied with the level of attention the articles had received:

We were discussing what would make us get the front page of the debate section, and the idea came up that if we had a number of significant signatories, then it would be interesting for [name of newspaper], and they would accept the text we write, basically just because of the signatories. So, we started to have this idea that we wanted to have prominent scientists criticizing politicians, especially the current government, and by using the letter form that we did, it was also acceptable to the [name of newspaper] and the way journalism works. Simply by the fact that if you have a lot of people that are well known in the public, they come out and … well, you know the role of scientists as the descriptor of society, and then, if scientists come out and criticize politicians, then that would be something extraordinary. And the newspaper would like to publish it.

This quote illustrates how the researchers enacted and traded on what they perceived to be media logic(s). Signatories became a substitute for the celebrity-problem, a way to improve their access to the media and attract attention. The researchers actively sought to take advantage of the confrontational style—which is how they perceived media to work. Two authoritative groups, scientists and politicians, are pitted against each other. Tensions between actors are not new in climate discussions; indeed, it has been a recurring feature of public debates (Serrao-Neumann et al., 2018), which could explain the researchers’ willingness to seek confrontation.

As to the celebrity issue, the quote above indicates that the problem was overcome by academic mass endorsement of the letter. The more signatories the better, and if well-known scientists got onboard, the celebrity aspect of media logic(s) was enacted. Consequently, signatories became one way to attract attention. In this case, the initiators underestimated how well it would work. The inclusion of signatories earned them both the front page of the debate section and the front page of the newspaper itself, which guaranteed visibility and attention. Thus, by enacting what they thought of as media logic, the initiators managed to navigate obstacles to participating in the public debate.

Although media logic(s) was especially linked to the news media, there were also instances when the use of social media played into what the researchers perceived as media logic(s). This was clear when the researchers used a mixed publishing strategy. One letter was initially published on social media, where it received an uncommonly high number of likes and shares; this caused the researchers to expect journalists to report on the letter. When this did not happen, they expressed surprise and disappointment. This example illustrates two issues. Firstly, social media can be seen as a type of substitute for the celebrity-problem, with like-buttons functioning in the same way as signatories. The use of social media to gain visibility was also perceived as a way to manipulate news media, wherein researchers enact certain perceived qualities of one medium to gain access to another. The strategy also echoes climate communication scholars who stress that social media increase the chances of users encountering climate information (Huber et al., 2019), and it reflects the academic setting, where social media are primarily used to make one’s research visible (Duffy and Pooley, 2017).

Secondly, the use of social media for the purpose of reaching news media points towards an understanding among my interlocutors of an integrated and connected media system. At the same time, the horizontal and interactive pattern, which social media are said to enhance (Johansson, 2019), is subordinate to the perceived workings of the news media—social media function as a substitute or a steppingstone to another more important arena. These examples illustrate a recognition among my interlocutors of a connected-yet-separate and task-based media system, which needs to be seen in relation to the topic communicated. To my interlocutors, the power within this system is not equally shared, especially when the topic of climate change is concerned. The news media’s biased representations of climate change and their subsequent cultivation of public understandings of climate change (Serrao-Neumann et al., 2018; Whibey and Ward, 2016) have arguably influenced the researchers’ perception of the news media as important. Specific media types are thus better suited for some tasks than for others.

When media logic(s) works against you: Performance becoming an existing force

When researchers enacted media logic(s) as a publishing strategy, they were also expressing some doubts about the longevity of this tactic: “There is going to come a time when press letters and open letters are … you know, we have to think beyond that. Like, ok, we have done the wake-up call, what next?”, said one researcher. Others stated that open letters were already not woke enough for the media, and new strategies to secure media attention were needed. In a sense, media logic(s) came into being as an existing force with a will of its own; it was fed and sustained by the academics enacting it. Indeed, this resonates with Plesner (2010), who states that actors involved in articulating media logic(s) also make it into an existing force.

The performative aspect of media logic(s) was apparent in one open letter in particular. Interviewees stressed that the news media used the logic of controversy to redirect and steer the subsequent discussions of their letter. Instead of writing articles on climate change, the newspaper initiated a debate which concerned researchers’ role in society. The fact that researchers had signed the letter with academic titles and affiliations became the hotly debated issue instead of the issue that the initiators wanted to raise, that of climate inaction. The interviewees attributed this specific turn in the debate to the media’s preference for controversy:

Well, yeah, journalists love these controversies. So, the minute there was this conflict and groupings within the academic community, they were going to jump on that, right? And it goes back to some larger systemic problems, like what is seen as news, how newspapers make their living, et cetera.

The newspaper was perceived as steering the debate by including the voices of critics within the academic community following the basis of one particular media logic(s): controversy. What might have worked for the researchers initially thus backfired at a later stage.