Mediating climate justice in food security

: a comparative analysis of British and Mexican news representation

Abstract

Climate change and food insecurity are two simultaneous global pressing issues. The impacts that climate change has on food security are a matter of justice as they will not be borne equally or fairly. Given that media reporting is key to society’s understanding of such climate change injustices, this thesis explores the news media representation of climate change and food insecurity from a climate justice perspective. The central questions that this thesis asks are: how does news media represent climate justice in relation to food security in the Global North and the Global South? And what are the possible implications of such representation for public perceptions of climate justice and food security? To answer these, this thesis draws on a combined methodological approach to explore, through quantitative content analysis and qualitative discourse analysis, news media representation of frames and discourses. The examination includes newspapers from Mexico and the UK, covering both broadsheets and tabloids from across the mainstream political spectrum over six-month period from August 2021 to January 2022.
The comparison of the findings shows unequivocally that in both countries, the news media do not portray the impacts of climate change on food security through a global justice lens, and coloniality perspectives remain prevalent. The main contributions of this thesis to the still limited body of literature on media and climate justice consist in establishing how news media: 1) Failed to distinguish the differentiated responsibilities for the climate crisis. 2) Constructed the Global South as necessarily dependent on external help and thus normalised the victimisation and dehumanisation of vulnerable and affected populations. 3) Failed to address the role of the power systems and their structures on the climate and food security crises. 4) Promoted solutions that do not question the existing systems, while depoliticising the Global South and disregarding their solutions. These news media representations have important implications for public perceptions of climate justice and food security. Overall, they benefit the Global North because they obscure the root causes of climate change and food security, uphold asymmetric power dynamics between individuals and nations by constructing a hierarchy of actors, hinder the allocation of responsibilities and burdens, and promote solutions that sustain the current status quo.

Date of Award	Mar 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton
Supervisor	Julie Doyle (Supervisor), Olu Jenzen (Supervisor) & Ryan Burns (Supervisor)