Climate and Media: an efficient and original training for journalists

During the COP21 which took place in Paris, many climate researchers enhanced their interactions with different population sectors, to explain future and past climate changes.

Our group organized a seminar in one of the most prestigious journalist school (ESJ in Lille). Researchers on modelling and documenting past and future climate changes, as well as researchers from human and social sciences, provided a series of seminars. After the session devoted to questions from the audience, journalists and professors of the ESJ came down from the amphitheater. They emphasized the idea that our responsibility as researchers was also to teach journalists the different aspects / impacts of climate change. Their main point was to argue that it was in fact pivotal to get a better understanding of climate issues from the population.

This event was the onset of a big project that officially begun in 2016. We took some time to finally build an original training course. The novelty of this formation is based on 3 major ideas:

• Co-construction of the formation by experts and journalists. For each issue of this training (past and future climate changes, biodiversity, justice, social impacts, economy, energy…), the courses were delivered by two teachers; one scientific expert and one journalist.
• The structuration in different themes. Indeed, in most media, there is only one journalist that is responsible for climate and environment. Now that climate changes have modified many aspects of life in general, it is necessary to take them into account.
• The accessibility. We decided to train through online-only courses at the level of a Master’s degree. For this first step, we used the large network of ESJ Lille and a collaboration with French-speaking countries to deliver all the lessons in French. This strategy allows students and journalists from more than 20 countries to gain access to this training. For instance, we have students from Haiti, Cameroon, Senegal, Algeria, Ivory Coast, Vietnam, Cambodia, Belgium…

 

The present evolution of this training is as followed:

• Thematic evolution. We are now building new teaching modules that are not based on large issues, but rather on regions which allow us to tackle all the associated impacts. The first one has been finished last year on the Mediterranean basin; and a new one will be developed on the polar region.
• Audience evolution. At the beginning, we only had 15 students, most of them being master degree’s students. Now, we have more than 55 students (and more than 150 applications per year), mostly journalists and continuing-education profiles.

The next step, and the main reason for this talk, is to push for similar trainings in different countries. We already have a relationship with South Korea, and would like to provide an English version of our training to share our experience with other scientists and journalists from different countries.