Apocalyptic Authoritarianism: Climate Crisis, Media, and Power

Abstract

In Apocalyptic Authoritarianism: Climate Crisis, Media, and Power, media scholar Hanna E. Morris reveals how national anxieties following the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump have shaped American news coverage of climate change in ways that severely limit how it has come to be known, imagined, and contended with. Looking at climate change reporting across prominent and ideologically diverse U.S. newspapers and magazines over the past decade, the book traces how news media create an illusion of control in the present through nostalgic and heroic stories of the past. Morris identifies a new mode of reactionary politics called “apocalyptic authoritarianism” to describe the post-2016 alignment of historically privileged figures united by a common enemy of the “new” New Left and a shared appeal to fears of “total crisis.” Their antidemocratic paradigm portends national and planetary disarray if progressive social and climate justice “warriors” are not controlled at home and if “unruly masses” of climate migrants are not contained abroad. Ultimately, Morris calls for more transformative forms of climate journalism capable of facilitating—as opposed to impeding—robustly democratic responses to climate change.