A history of digital environmental journalism at the BBC and the Guardian

Abstract

Environmental and climate journalism is complex, data-heavy, and amenable to visualisation. The environmental beat was therefore well placed to take advantage of the affordances of emerging digital platforms for news from the late 1990s. This article presents a history of digital environmental journalism at two international and digitally innovative media organisations (the BBC and the Guardian), taking an affordances approach. It argues that the beat can be understood as having four distinct but overlapping phases: an initial phase in which journalists availed of the limitless carrying capacity of digital media; a second phase which maximised the use of blogs and user comments; a third, experimental phase involving digital video and online campaigns; and a fourth, mature phase in which both organisations became more strategic in their digital offerings.

Introduction

Digital journalism scholarship is preoccupied with current newsroom practices, or future technological developments which may “save” journalism from its economic challenges. There is a “contemporary bias” in the field, and a “risk that the things that do not change are neglected and that descriptions of change become more important than figuring out the deeper relations between journalism and society.” (Steensen et al., 2019: 324). Research into digital journalism “should have a stronger connection with the past in order to better understand the present and predict the future” (Ibid: 336-7). Furthermore, a focus on technological developments may become uncritical. Researchers should therefore “complicate the celebratory rhetoric surrounding them with a somewhat more sombre review of their limitations” (Zelizer, 2019: 346). This article attempts to answer these calls by presenting an analysis of the development of digital environmental journalism at two digitally innovative news organisations, the BBC and the Guardian, over a 15-year period. This analysis examines the extent to which each availed of the affordances of digital media during the evolution of the environmental beat on their digital platforms.

The concept of affordance was put forward by psychologist James Gibson as a way of understanding how animals interact with their environments (Gibson, 2014), and became an influential concept in design and technology (Norman, 1999), before being adapted to analyse how humans interact with technology (Wellman et al., 2003). It has become a key concept in digital media and digital journalism studies (Hopkins, 2016). In the scholarship of these disciplines, the evolution of news media since the mid-1990s to the present is perceived as a gradual transition from the dominance of so-called legacy media (print newspapers and linear television news), to a “hybrid media system” (Chadwick, 2017) in which both co-exist and influence each other, and towards a more completely online, digitally native media system (Harmer and Southern, 2020). In documenting, problematising, and theorising this process, particular attention has been paid to the affordances of digital media (Deuze, 2008; Schrock, 2015).

These affordances have been characterised as comprising several elements: firstly, an increased carrying capacity (Hilgartner and Bosk, 1988) whereby digital “space” was potentially infinite, and news organisations were no longer constrained by the physical limits of the printed newspaper. Second, interactivity, whereby audiences and journalists can interact with each other via blogs and user comments, and audiences can upload eye-witness reportage (Boczkowski, 2004), allowing them to become “pro-sumers” (Jenkins, 2006). Digital media also permits for interaction between users and content, via quizzes, interactive graphics, and searchable data-led content. Third, digital affordances permit the inclusion of multi-media elements such as digital video (Perreault and Ferrucci, 2020), and hyperlinks (Hindman, 2008). Fourth, digital media can reach audiences much more readily than legacy and analogue media, and this reach can be facilitated by sharing on social media. Overall, these affordances allow for innovation and adaptivity (Ogbebor and Carter, 2021).

Digital journalism

January 19, 1994 has been established as the date on which the first news publication - the Palo Alto Weekly – appeared on the World Wide Web (Carlson, 2003). Media organisations were quick to join the web, but responded with “measured innovation rather than any significant restructuring” (Weber, 2019: 86). Initially, digital publications used “shovelware” (Bardoel and Deuze, 2001) to repurpose content originally prepared for publication in print (Weber, 2019). Newsrooms began to “converge” in the early 2000s, when formerly separate media such as print and broadcast coalesced (Perreault and Ferrucci, 2020). Soon, digital journalism had become more sophisticated, involving multimedia elements and interactive data visualisations (Boczkowski, 2004). Reporters themselves noted three main characteristics of digital journalism: using technology to tell stories; speed in publishing stories; and a commercial focus on the audience. They also stressed the collaborative nature of digital journalism; they tended to work as a team rather than as a lone reporter (Perreault and Ferrucci, 2020: 1305–9), while others suggest they may be more comfortable adopting an advocacy stance (Eldridge and Franklin, 2019).

Histories of digital journalism have sometimes taken a chronological approach, suggesting two broad phases: the “early days” of 1990–2005 during which news organisations viewed the internet as a means for distributing existing newspaper content; and a “grown-up” phase of 2010–2015 during which online-only publications were established, traffic redirected from social media platforms became influential, and local news declined (Weber, 2019). Others believe there was a “consolidation” period from 1996 to 2002, followed by a breakthrough moment during the terrorist attacks in Madrid (2004) and London (2005) when “the frontier between journalists and audience disappeared” (Noci, 2013: 262, citing Fogel and Patiño, 2005) as eye witnesses supplied material for publication. Subsequently, the introduction of really simple syndication (RSS) feeds, blogs, podcasts, and video around 2006-2007 provided a “proper model” for digital journalism (Ibid.). Yet others have mapped a conceptual framework onto the chronology of digital journalism, arguing that it can best be understood in four discrete stages: repetition (“repeating” existing print content); enrichment (adding links and other rich text elements); renovation (a more complete reconfiguration of content); and innovation (the creation of new online genres) (Salaverría and Cores, 2005).

Environmental journalism

The environmental beat in Western newsrooms dates to the 1960s (Hansen, 2020). More precisely, it emerged during “the long 1960s”, the era between 1955 and 1975, during which the links between science and militarism, and between science and chemical pollution, came under scrutiny (Fahy, 2017). The emergence of a new concept of ecology also helped to create a space and an audience for environmental reporting. The rise of single-issue environmental campaign groups, particularly in the UK, persuaded many newsrooms that they needed a specialist correspondent to cover these developments. The New York Times hired its first environment correspondent in 1969, and other news organisations followed suit. The 1980s saw a series of environmental disasters which were covered in depth by the new cohort of specialist reporters (Neuzil, 2008, 2020).

Outside the US, it has been found that British environmental journalism historically focused on wildlife conservation and related concerns, before focusing on climate change in the late 1980s (Whitlock, 2020). Relatively scant attention has been paid to the development of environmental journalism in the Global South. In Latin America, environmental journalism is considered “investment journalism”, as it requires the investment of financial and journalistic resources that pay back over longer periods of time than breaking news journalism (González, 2007), while in Mexico, environmental journalism emerged from “the growing consequences of environmental damage” (Cid, 2020: 4). In South Africa, the difference in environmental content between print editions and digital media channels such as news blogs and twitter feeds was minimal, but the digital content has the potential to reach audiences more quickly and effectively (Bosch, 2012)

Scholars have also examined the history of environmental reporting, with a particular focus on the period after 1988, the year when climate change first became a prominent news topic, following the testimony of NASA scientist James Hansen to Congress in the US (Ungar, 1992). Global coverage levels have experienced dramatic peaks in coverage at the times of UN climate conferences and scientific reports, and steep declines between these events (MeCCO, 2023). Climate change was found to be a salient news topic in 27 countries studied from 1997 to 2009 (Schmidt et al., 2013). Studies focused on digital news coverage of climate negotiations have found that digital-born outlets publish lower levels of coverage, but focused their coverage on social justice, renewable energy, and civil society protests, while legacy digital media gave more attention to negotiation processes and outcomes (Painter et al., 2018).

The guardian and the BBC

The Guardian is a legacy media organisation that has reinvented itself as a global digital news platform. The “core elements” of its digital strategy have been identified as (i) making its news content available for free; (ii) expanding into markets outside the UK (with Guardian US and Guardian Australia); (iii) expansion over new platforms (video, podcasts, audience interaction, data visualisation); (iv) a commitment to serious journalism,; and (vi) its open approach to creating permeability between audiences and journalists (Küng, 2015: viii). It is considered a “pioneer in legacy reinvention” (Ibid.) which “arguably has been an important part of shaping the broader development of the delivery of online news” (Bødker and Brügger, 2018: 61). The Guardian has also pioneered the use of “big data” to generate news stories (Pavlik, 2013), and may even have invented the specialism of data journalism (Knight, 2015). The Guardian launched the Guardian.co.uk website in 1999. The Comment is Free section launched in 2006 (Gardiner, 2018). By 2000, the title of the main site had changed to Guardian Unlimited, under the direction of online editor Emily Bell. In 2011, a “digital first” strategy was announced. In 2012, Wolfgang Blau was recruited from Zeit Online to develop the online offering. By May 2013, it was the third most popular English language newspaper website in the world, behind the Daily Mail and the New York Times. In 2013, a new, global domain name – theGuardian.com – was launched. (Küng, 2015: 19). Digital editions for the US (2011) and Australia (2013), and an international edition followed (Murrell, 2016).

BBC News Online was launched in an internet café in London on Nov 4, 1997, having experimented with web-based coverage of the 1995 UK budget, the 1996 Olympic Games, and the 1997 funeral of Princess Diana. Even so, it was “widely perceived to be late on the scene” (Thorsen et al., 2010: 23), arriving long after commercial rivals had established their own online news offerings. The site got off to a rocky start because “the bloody thing kept crashing” (Eggington, 2007). The BBC was an early adapter of some digital affordances, such as blogs (related to the Newsround children’s news programme, in 2005) and reader forums. For instance, an early “Have Your Say” feature contained coverage of 53 topics across 68 pages, and attracted almost 8,000 comments (Thorsen et al., 2010). The BBC began publishing blogs around 2001, although there continued to be “unease [about blogs] at senior levels”, in particular a 2008 blog by business editor Robert Preston which unsettled the financial markets (Hermida, 2009: 7). Initially, the BBC’s online news site was run by a staff of 20 editorial and six technical members who shared a commitment to “making it up as we went along” (Allan and Thorsen, 2011). The BBC News Online site showed agility in adapting to breaking news, and innovation in incorporating user-generated content (UGC) into its offering, so that by 2009, convergence, “long a buzzword in BBC circles” was “rapidly becoming a reality” (Ibid: 36).

BBC News Online and the Guardian online are the two most visited news websites in the UK, according to the 2022 Reuters Digital News Report (Newman, 2022), with 43% of the UK population using the BBC website each week, and 18% accessing the Guardian site. The BBC has the highest trust score for news, (55%), while the Guardian scores highly (48%) (Ibid: 63). Indeed, the BBC is trusted more than its public service peers elsewhere and is the only UK news provider more widely used as a news source than either search engines or social media (Nielsen et al., 2020). Both organisations have devoted considerable resources to their environmental coverage, with the Guardian in particular deciding to make its coverage in this area a point of difference with its competitors. The selection of these two digitally innovative and globally recognised news organisations as case studies allows us to examine how environmental journalism developed in a legacy media organisation with its origins in print journalism, and a public service broadcaster which used its digital channels to expand its news offering.

Methods and approach

A mixed methods approach is adopted, with three types of data gathered and triangulated. Firstly, a descriptive analysis of the websites of the BBC and the Guardian was undertaken. Following Bødker and Brügger (2018), four periods for analysis were selected: early (2005-7), mid (2009–10), late (2013–14), and modern (2018–19). While following the sample principles of purposive sampling in discrete time periods, this analysis adopts a later start date, as the two news organisations under consideration, while early adopters of digital technologies, did not have a dedicated online environment section until the mid-2000s. This approach brings the analysis as up to date as possible, without being so contemporary as to undermine the intention to present a history, rather than an analysis of current practice, of digital environmental journalism in this article. For each year analysed, a purposive sample of three iterations of the news organisation’s website were analysed. Thus, a total of 24 pages from the BBC, and 24 from the Guardian were captured.

Secondly, coverage of three major IPCC reports by the BBC and the Guardian are analysed, again using an affordances approach (Schrock, 2015). Online articles relating to IPCC Fourth (2007) and Fifth (2013) Assessment Reports and the IPCC’s 1.5C Report (2018) were collected via a search of the websites of the two news outlets, supplemented by searches of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. The search terms used for the website searches were “IPCC Fourth Assessment Report”, “IPCC Fifth Assessment Report”, and “IPCC 1.5 degree report”. Supplementary searches using “AR4”, “AR5”, and “IPCC 1.5” were carried out. It is not possible to use search terms in the Wayback Machine, so archived webpages coinciding with the publication periods were searched. Links to “more on this story” on the retrieved web pages were followed and, where the target web page had also been archived, this content was included in the results. The MeCCO data relating the Guardian’s print news coverage of climate change was also consulted, and is referred to where relevant in the text (MeCCO, 2023). The digital search strategy returned a corpus of articles as follows: BBC n = 84, and Guardian n = 40.

Third, semi-structured interviews were carried out with BBC and Guardian journalists. The interview subjects were chosen because of their long experience of environmental journalism and their central involvement in the development of digital environmental coverage at their organisation. The four journalists interviewed were: Journalist A, environment journalist at the BBC; Journalist B, former BBC journalist and now environment journalist at the Guardian, Journalist C, digital production journalist at the Guardian, and Journalist D, environment journalist at the Guardian. The interviews were transcribed and a thematic analysis was carried out using the coding software Nvivo.

Research challenges and limitations

Certain limitations in the research methodology, particularly in relation to the archive searches, must be acknowledged. Firstly, the search functions at both the BBC and Guardian websites are not comprehensive. In the case of the BBC, irrespective of the search terms entered, precisely 29 pages of results are returned. Supplementary searches of particular dates in the Wayback Machine produced additional material. In the case of the Guardian, the low number of results returned by the Google site search function is striking, especially as others have established that the Guardian had “by far the greatest amount of print coverage” of AR5 among the titles studied (O’Neill et al., 2015).

The Wayback Machine also presents difficulties for researchers. The software randomly redirects to different URLs. For instance, a user may prompt it to search for archived pages from www.theguardian.co.uk and be redirected automatically to www.guardian.com or www.guardian.com/us. A further challenge is that the BBC’s online offering has been redesigned and re-organised several times since its first news content was made available on the web in 1997. Initially, the Wayback Machine archived only the home page of the bbc.co.uk site, and internal links did not function. From 2004, a separate URL (www.bbc.co.uk/sn) for a Science and Nature section appears, and it is this section that forms the subject of our analysis for the early years of the BBC’s digital environmental journalism. From November 2014, there were separate “science” and “nature” landing pages. For the purposes of this project, the content on the “science” landing page is analysed, as it contains more climate and environment-related content than the “nature” page. By 2018, there was a new “science and environment” section (www.bbc.co.uk/news/science_and_environment). At the Guardian, environmental coverage initially appeared in the Life section in early 2005, then in a Science section (late 2005 and 2006), and later in an Environment section (2009). It is clear that “the Internet Archive does not provide a representative sample of any given website throughout history, because “digital documents” can be fleeting or exist in “a constant state of mutation” (Noci, 2013: 256). Nevertheless, the Internet Archive is “the oldest and most comprehensive collection of archived web in the world” (Bødker and Brügger, 2018: 62). In summary, it is difficult to disagree with the statement that “[digital] journalism history is hard” (Birkner et al., 2018: 1121).

It should be noted that the four periods identified, while exhibiting differing digital characteristics, cannot be conceptualised as entirely segmented: news organisations do not change practices overnight. Indeed, they are often resistant to change, especially when it involves digital innovation (Hendrickx and Picone, 2020). Thus the four periods examined here are discrete yet overlapping to some extent.

Early period (2005-7): more is better, and the emergence of climate change

By early 1998, the BBC had established itself as the leading British internet content site, with over eight million page impressions in March of that year, and 140,000 pages of content, 61,000 of which were news. (Allan and Thorsen, 2011: 24). Alfred Hermida, output editor on the site in 1997, was aware of the opportunity to avail of the web’s almost limitless space to tell stories at greater length and in greater depth: “In radio you might be restricted to sending a three-minute package – here you cover every aspect of a story, take a story and it [sic] explore it from a number of angles…” (Hermida, quoted in Robins, 1999).

Looking more specifically at the online environmental coverage of the BBC, the landing page for its Science & Nature section (see Figure 1) offers a multitude of hyperlinks to related and archived coverage. There are four featured stories, six themed sub-sections, seven tabs at the top of the page, and multiple links to nature-related TV and radio programmes. BBC environment correspondent Journalist A supports the characterisation of the early years of the BBC website as being a time when space, and word-counts, seemed infinite:

“You’re talking about an organization that has started a website that didn't know what it was for. And only just saw it as a parking space for stuff that didn't make the prime outlets of radio and television. And that underlying feeling persisted a long time. So any old story will get on online, you know.”(Journalist A, interview)

Figure 1.

A section of the landing page for the BBC’s Science & Nature section, March 7, 2005.

At the Guardian, environmental coverage appeared in the print edition at the back of the Society supplement, as well as in the news pages, and would appear in the Society section online. Around 2005, a dedicated online environment section was suggested, and in 2006, more resources were devoted to this new online section (Journalist C, interview). At the outset, print journalists were enthusiastic about their ability to tell stories at greater length online:

“Some of the print writers realised that, if they wanted to do stuff for the website, they didn't have to stick to word counts. So the ones who were always getting cut for the paper liked it, because they could write 3,000 words, and for ages that went on.” (Ibid.)

The landing page of the Guardian’s Life section is long and features a bewildering number of hyperlinks. At the top of the page, there are nine tab links, three “skyline” blurb links, and three sidebar blurbs. It is notable that more recent content is simply added to the top of the page, with news of up to a week old featuring further down. There is a sense of a “put everything in” approach and there are links to 13 previous issues of the section. Both the Guardian and, to a slightly lesser extent the BBC, have taken advantage of the limitless capacity of the Web to present what amounts to a rolling archive of their environmental journalism. (See Figure 2).

In looking at the content of these early-period web pages of 2005–2007, there is a clear focus on animals, the natural world, and human health. It is perhaps understandable that the BBC, with a reputation for wildlife TV programmes, would seek to showcase their accomplishments in this area. The same emphasis can be seen in the Guardian, especially regarding human health. The Guardian also focuses on human psychology and space. By 2006 however, climate change, and concerns about the ozone layer have become more prominent in the Guardian’s coverage.

Likewise at the BBC: by February 2006, climate change is much more prominent, with two of the highlighted stories focused on the topic. In this early period, digital environmental journalism is beginning to differentiate itself from science journalism and nature journalism, and is finding a new focus on climate change. Yet there is little evidence that environmental reporters or editors availed of the capacity for interactivity permitted by digital technologies. While the BBC had set up a hub for user-generated content (UGC) in 2005, and was “at the forefront of digital collaboration with viewers/readers/users”, the hub was used to source stories and content rather than for participation and collaboration (Wardle and Williams, 2010).

The coverage of the IPCC’s AR4 (published in November, 2007) by the BBC is dominated by hard news-style coverage of the report’s contents, and reaction from the UK and around the world. The coverage is extensive, with explainers, guides to the IPCC process, and commentary articles, one of them by an IPCC working group co-chair. A feature of the coverage is the presence of two blogs from the Green Room, a weekly series of opinion articles on environmental issues which ran from 2007 to 2010 (BBC, 2007). At the Guardian, there is more commentary in the coverage mix, and promotion for a Guardian Climate Change Summit, an early trial of reader events as a form of interaction with the news organisation and its journalists. Journalists working in the two news organisations attest to the maximalist approach to digital environmental coverage at this time. At the BBC, there was a sense of freedom to “write any story they liked, as long as they liked” because environmental reporters were “untroubled by the powers that be at the BBC at the time”. The environmental sections had convened a specialist and well-informed audience who were comfortable reading long and detailed reports (Journalist A, interview).

Middle period (2009–10): more user comments and more climate change

By 2009 and 2010, digital environmental journalism had changed at both news organisations, but in different ways. At the BBC, the Science & Nature landing page features fewer links, and the initial enthusiasm for providing extensive content has faded. The BBC’s digital offering features less news, instead providing themed links to longer features and BBC nature, science, and environmental programming. The page showcases the extent of the BBC’s TV and radio coverage, and has a more corporate feel. Meanwhile at the Guardian, environmental journalism has moved away from the Life section and now appears in its own section. The potentially infinite space made available by digital technology is full availed of, with multiple links and a much larger page-size compared to the BBC. It is also notable that the Guardian had begun to campaign on environmental issues, launching a “Tread Lightly” campaign (Guardian, 2008), encouraging readers to reduce their environmental impact.

There is increased scope for interactivity on both the BBC and the Guardian web pages. The Guardian offers a “green” thread to its “comment is free” section featuring user comments, provides users with the opportunity to supply nature photography, and provides links to interactive quizzes. There is also a section in which users can “Ask Leo” about sustainable living. There are two other notable developments at the Guardian in this period: the increased use of visual resources, and the prominence of blogs. Coverage of a drought in Argentina, the impact of climate change on marine life, the sustainable clothing company Patagonia, and an outbreak of bushfires in Australia feature an “In Pictures” link to photographic slideshows related to the topics. Blogs on the environment, and ethical living, and a blog by long-standing Guardian writer George Monbiot, are featured on the environment landing page. The Guardian has also given more prominence to the facility whereby users can create an RSS feed of content that interests them, providing also an “explainer” about how to use this function. It is also notable that the Guardian began to adopt an aggregation and curation role with the launch of its Guardian Environmental Network (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/guardian-environment-network) in 2009. The feature collated environmental journalism from around the world, but ceased updating in 2018. (See Figure 3).

Figure 2.

The Guardian’s Life section landing page for February 23, 2005.

Figure 3.

Environment sections from the Guardian and the BBC, February, 2009.

Both environmental journalism teams increased their focus on climate change in this period. The Guardian leads with the headline: “The tropics on fire: scientists’ grim vision of global warming”, and features several other climate-related stories. The BBC Science and Nature web page promotes a regular feature offering a personal carbon calculator, plus a link to further climate coverage. In the web pages analysed, the BBC’s focus remains on the natural world, while the Guardian has widened its coverage to concentrate on climate science, and policy. The Guardian web page features polemical articles by NASA climate scientist James Hansen and controversial Danish writer Björn Lomborg. It is also notable that the Guardian featured an assessment of its own environmental performance (“Living Our Values: The Guardian’s Sustainability Report”, Feb 16, 2009).

Environmental reporters recall the 2009-10 period as one of expansion. This period covers COP15 at Copenhagen, a time when global climate change coverage reached a peak (MeCCO, 2023). More resources were devoted to the environment section at the Guardian:

“One of the weeks in Copenhagen, we had something like 100 stories go across the desk. We had like a live blog. This was early days of Twitter as well, so we had Twitter threads. It was all singing, all dancing. (Journalist C, interview).

During this period, the BBC occasionally presented sceptic or denier viewpoints in apparent compliance with their editorial guidelines on impartiality. This “balance as bias” approach was not limited to the BBC, and contributed to a “lost decade” of media coverage of climate change during which there was a journalistic focus on debating the reality of climate science (Boykoff, 2011: p. 129; see also Boykoff and Boykoff, 2004). In 2011, a review of this practice was carried out, noting that “The factual argument, even for activists, appears to be largely over but parts of the BBC are taking a long time to notice” (Jones, 2011). Although sceptic viewpoints continued to be represented on the BBC website (Harvey, 2013), nonetheless this constituted something of a watershed moment for the BBC’s digital environmental coverage, and its reporting ceased to enforce a “heavy-handed impartiality” and adopted “a more informed impartiality” (Journalist A, interview).

A notable development at the Guardian was the science blog network, which ran from 2010 to 2018 and incorporated a more short-lived environmental blog network. This initiative proved controversial, and the National Union of Journalists became involved in protests against the employment of non-journalists at such a scale. Bloggers were put on a retainer and sent a Guardian style guide and “left to their own devices”. There were legal issues with some blogs, and production staff were constantly forced to correct errors, and the environmental section was soon terminated (Journalist C, interview).

Late period (2013–14): more multimedia

In 2013, the BBC’s dedicated environmental journalism continued to be presented under the science and nature banner. Little had changed in the web design since 2009-10 period. However, in February, 2014, the BBC launched a beta version of a redesigned science page, with a bolder, more graphic design. Original content was foregrounded, and the links to BBC programming were de-emphasised. A new citizen science initiative was also featured. The scroll depth of the page increased, and there were more hyperlinks to other sections and articles. The BBC increased the volume of its environmental journalism in this late period. There was a new, geolocation-based feature – “find science activities near you” – whereby users could enter a postcode to find events in their locality. The Guardian’s coverage in this late period placed an emphasis on photography, and introduced a feature showing the number of comments made below the line on each article. There was also an increased use of video and audio reporting on the Guardian site during this period. However, by this stage, blogs had ceased to feature as an element of the Guardian’s coverage. In November 2014, the Guardian again redesigned its site, arriving at a look and layout which persists more or less unchanged to its current iteration.

In contrast to the Guardian, the BBC increased the number of blogs it published during this period, under the direction of James Harding, formerly of the Times newspaper, who became director of news at the BBC, and asked specialist correspondents to write blogs.

Everybody got a blog. I got a blog, but the problem with correspondents in the BBC is, they have nothing to say. We can’t all be Gary Lineker, you know. In fact, none of us wants to be Gary Lineker, and that’s the nature of the problem (Journalist A, interview).

Towards the end of this period, the editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, began to envisage an environmental campaign that he saw as a lasting legacy of his tenure. Keep It In The Ground was a multimedia campaign aimed at persuading two organisations – the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations – to divest from fossil fuels. The campaign was digitally innovative, incorporating podcasts, animations, videos, Minecraft games, and a digital design that showed oil dripping down the home page when readers visited the site. The campaign led to co-operation and collaboration across newsroom divides and silos, and collaborations with readers, but failed in its stated aims (Salvesen, 2018).

Both the Guardian and the BBC devoted extensive coverage to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, published in September, 2013. The use of multimedia elements is striking: the BBC live streamed the launch of the report, and their coverage featured several video elements, including a video explainer of the “pause” in warming at that time. The BBC’s main story on the report received over 2,000 user comments. The Guardian’s coverage also featured extensive multimedia elements, including a live blog, interactive graphics, and videos. The Guardian articles were also open for comment, with the live blog receiving a total of 1,159.

Mature period (2018–19): sticking with what works

In the period 2018–19, there were marked changes to the ways in which environmental journalism is presented on the dedicated environment sections of both news organisations. The BBC’s environmental journalism was re-organised in a new science and environment section, which was also more prominently branded as belonging to the BBC news operation. This was a significant change, bringing environmental coverage out of a context which emphasised the BBC’s programme-making, and into a new section which emphasises its relationship with the news division. Articles featured on the BBC science and environment landing page are now time-stamped, and the site includes features for receiving UGC: users could send their photos, comments, or feedback by SMS or email.

The Guardian’s environment news landing page became more design-led during this period, with each hyperlinked headline accompanied by an image. The rather packed design featuring multiple links which was a feature of previous iterations, has given way to a landing page with the familiar scroll depth, but with fewer links overall. There are multiple, colour-coded sections, but little in the way of interaction with users, multimedia elements, or interactivity.

In examining the coverage by both organisations of the IPCC 1.5 C report (November, 2018), it is clear that both the BBC and the Guardian are more strategic and assured in their use of digital tools. At the BBC, there is targeted use of digital video (by BBC science reporter Laura Foster), use of data visualisation as part of the Our Planet Now series, which aggregated climate coverage from multiple BBC platforms in one place, and extensive reporting on the findings of the report and reaction to it. At the Guardian, there was a reporting package, but also a backgrounder by Journalist D, an op-ed by former UNFCCC executive secretary Christina Figueres, information graphics, and a live blog of the report’s release.

From the perspectives of digital environmental reporters, they have seen their organisations experiment with different digital affordances, particularly the expanded use of blogs, digital video, and user forums and comments. By this period, they have accumulated data on what attracts and engages readers. Journalist A notes that the BBC experimented with embedding digital video in news articles, and then presenting them in a “10 to watch” video gallery, neither of which was successful. Likewise, they experimented with the broad use of reader comments but found that opening the comments for climate and environment coverage led to “massive bunfights between climate deniers and climate believers” and have now reduced the number of articles on which readers can comment. Only one article from the BBC’s coverage of the IPCC 1.5 C report was open for comments, and none in the sample from the Guardian was.

Discussion and conclusion

This article provides a history of digital environmental journalism in two major, digitally innovative news organisations over a 15-year period, from 2005 to 2019. Its analysis of the dedicated websites of the Guardian and the BBC, together with analysis of coverage of IPCC reports, and interviews with journalists working at both organisations during these periods, provides evidence to support a framework in which the development of digital environmental journalism can be conceptualised as having four broad phases: an early period characterised by expanding, almost unrestrained coverage, which took advantage of the increasing carrying capacity of digital platforms; a middle period in which coverage expanded greatly around COP15 in Copenhagen, and blogs and user comments came to the fore; a late period during which there was some experimentation with multimedia; and a mature period during which the results of previous experimentation led to a more restrained, strategic, and targeted use of the affordances of digital media.

There are a number of other findings: the Guardian appeared more nimble and adaptive, changing the design and online organisation of its environmental journalism often and availing of the affordances of digital media more readily than the BBC. The Guardian was more ready to be polemical and host comment articles and blogs, and throughout the 15 years of coverage examined, maintained a more news-led approach. The BBC, perhaps wary of entering into political debates given its public service remit and the scrutiny which accompanies this status (Nielsen et al., 2020), was slower to avail of differing digital affordances.

From the perspective of digital environmental journalists, the development of their specialism on digital platforms has been a story of ever-increasing salience. Journalist A speaks of a journey from the late 1990s, when environmental coverage found a niche audience, to the present when climate and environment are ever-present in the BBC’s online news coverage. Journalist D of the Guardian notes that climate change coverage now has a permanent section on the home page of the main Guardian website. Journalist B notes that “expansion” is the word that resonates most when considering a chronology of digital environmental coverage at the Guardian, not only in staff and resources, but also in the range of topics coveraged (Journalist B, interview).

One of the affordances of digital media not evident from the website and coverage analysis was reach. Other researchers have noted that the Guardian deliberately “went after scale” (Küng, 2015: 10) by launching several editions and mobile apps. The digital “magnifies the reach of journalistic practices and output” (Zelizer, 2019: 344), and the global reach of both the BBC and the Guardian “matches well the global scale of many environmental issues” (Journalist B, interview).

In the case of the BBC, interview data suggests that digital environmental journalism remained somewhat in the shadow of linear TV and radio broadcasting. The daily news and TV bulletins have more resources, power, and prestige than the online news division. Although the online and legacy broadcasting operations are much more integrated, the BBC is “still dealing with the primacy of television” and “the residual power of traditional forms of broadcasting” resulting in a situation in which the BBC “is still transitioning from an analogue past to a digital future” (Journalist A, interview).

There are certain limitations to this study, quite apart from the difficulties with archive searches mentioned above. Other digital affordances, such as podcasting, were not examined, and could be the exclusive focus of further research. Presenting a history of digital environmental journalism inevitably involves considerations relating to digital journalism in general, and environmental journalism in general too. This crossover resonates with key debates in digital journalism studies, and centres on the question of how much to focus on the journalism, and how much on the platforms, affordances, and technology. This study presents an analysis from an affordances approach, but often from the perspective of the journalists making use of them. Other perspectives, focused on technology, or a uses and gratifications approach, could yield other insights. In presenting a broad sweep over 15 years, a certain granularity is lost, and key moments and episodes are folded into the larger narrative. Research examining the texts of environmental coverage on digital platforms could uncover power dynamics, sourcing practices, and framings, which lie outside the scope of this study.