CLIMATE CRISES IN THE AGE OF CORPORATE MEDIA: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER REPRESENTATION

Abstract

The climate crises unfold not only through spectacular disasters but also through what Rob Nixon terms slow violence – gradual, delayed, and often invisible forms of environmental harm that disproportionately affect vulnerable populations. In the age of corporate media, however, such protracted ecological crises pose fundamental challenges to dominant news values shaped by immediacy, spectacle, and commercial imperatives. This paper critically examines how corporate media represents environmental disasters and slow-onset climate impacts, interrogating the narrative, visual, and temporal frameworks through which climate catastrophe is made visible – or rendered invisible. It argues that event-driven news cycles, market-driven pressures, audience fatigue, limited visual immediacy, and the growing circulation of misinformation significantly constrain sustained and structural engagement with the climate crisis. Situating media practices within the political economy of corporate journalism, the study highlights the ethical and representational responsibilities of the media to move beyond episodic disaster reporting, amplify marginalised voices, and contextualise long-term ecological risks within broader socio-economic structures. Through a critical analysis of media practices and selected case illustrations, the paper ultimately calls for more nuanced, long-form, empathetic, and solutions-oriented modes of climate storytelling capable of representing slow violence and fostering deeper public engagement in an era of ecological precarity.