The November article by Trish Audette-Longo from Carleton University looked at how journalists utilized their bodies and drew from their senses in climate reporting published in Canada between 2019 and 2024 using the conceptual framework of “bodying the journalist” by C. Francoeur (2021).

Although it is rare for journalists to share bodily experiences, because the body is juxtaposed against reason, rationality, and objectivity (Francoeur 2021: 203), it still does happen. An example of this is the Toronto Star’s Marco Chown Oved discusses the heat wave in Montreal. In the story, Oved is pictured wearing gym shorts and a sleeveless top, and hooked up in sensors that monitor the effect of the heat chamber on his body. He then juxtaposes the scientific findings with his experiences. 

The materials for this study were 51 climate stories, which included stories from newspaper stories, current affairs programmes and podcasts, online news websites, and magazines produced in Canada between 2019 and 2024. They were all in English. Discourse analysis (Gill 2000) was the method. 

There were four categories that the author identified. First, there were the stories where the journalists used their bodies as information-gathering devices to convey and verify climate change. Second, the stories where the journalists relied on the interviewees’ accounts to convey bodily senses and experiences by sharing observed details, including anecdotes of sensory experiences.

Third, there are stories where the journalists’ bodies are visible and heard, but their own senses are not discussed – they are seen or heard on the scene with community members. Then, as the fourth category were stories absent of the journalists’ bodies or sensory accounts.

All in all, this study offers insights in how to read, see, and listen for journalists’ bodies and senses in work and how to identify and analyse discursive characteristics in embodied journalism. The author acknowledges that the paper is limited by its methodology: discourse analysis is qualitative and focused on characteristics of published storytelling.

The article “Making Sense of Climate Change: The Challenges and Promises of Embodied Climate Journalism” by Trish Audette-Longo is in Journalism Studies. (Free abstract).

Picture: wooden human model poses on the table

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