Book launch: Media and the Politics of Arctic Climate Change

The Arctic sea ice reached record lows in 2007, and again in 2012. In the international news media, these moments were reflected via striking images of polar bears and crumbling ice chunks. At the same time, new story-lines emerged about new shipping routes across the North Pole, oil and gas exploration, and who would control access to these resources.

Media and the Politics of Arctic Climate Change: When the Ice Breaks, edited and co-authored by SEI Senior Research Fellow Annika E. Nilsson and Miyase Christensen and Nina Wormbs, of the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), examines how new narratives about the Arctic, climate change and uncertainty about the future have taken shape – and what is lost when complex, closely interrelated issues are reduced to a few simple story-lines.

Going beyond scientific accounts of the impacts of climate change in the Arctic, the authors explore how historical and contemporary mediations, scientific narratives and satellite technology simultaneously capture and reconstruct this new reality of the Anthropocene, where human activities shape the planet. The book invites discussion about the linkages between science, media, environmental change and geopolitics, and about what is local and what is global in today’s connected mediatized world.

This book launch/seminar, moderated by SEI Executive Director Johan L. Kuylenstierna, will features the three editors as well as some contributing authors. The event is free and open to the public, but space is limited, and pre-registration is requested.

Learn more about the book (external link to publisher)

Register online (deadline 20 Jan. 10am CET)

The Stockholm Arctic Seminar is a series arranged by the research project Assessing Arctic Futures: Voices, Resources and Governance, funded by the Mistra Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research as part of the foundation’s Arctic Futures programme (2011-2013). The project is based in the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, and is conducted in collaboration with SEI, the European University, St. Petersburg, and researchers in Europe.