The coronavirus crisis as tipping point: communicating the environment in a time of pandemic

This essay examines media and environment during the pandemic through the conceptual lens of environmental communication. We take the pulse of environmental communication under COVID-19, noting that while the quantity of media coverage on key environmental issues has fallen during the blanket coverage of the pandemic, COVID-19 has acted on multiple levels as a moment of discursive change in environmental communication. We contend that mediatised discourse on the environment during the pandemic has offered new insights, and an opportunity for a reset in environmental understandings, including a new consciousness of global connectedness in environmental responsibility, and an opportunity to improve publics’ environmental literacy.

*** This essay is intended for the extraordinary issue, on Coronavirus, Crisis and Communication ***