Green Lifestyle Journalism

Abstract

This chapter outlines the scope and meanings of green lifestyle journalism where environmentalism, sustainability, and individual everyday life practices are explored. The chapter discusses the genre of green lifestyle journalism where public and global issues of climate change and environmental politics are considered in a form of journalism where individual consumption and social status are often privileged. The chapter locates green lifestyle journalism within academic debates on issues such as the value and efficacy of ethical consumption. It also considers the terrain of green lifestyle journalism, noting it can span news stories that explore individual lifestyle practices as manifestations of environmental public policy, advice columns on sustainable living, and television documentary-style programmes. This chapter provides an overview of research on green lifestyle journalism, noting it is a field that requires more extensive exploration. This chapter is based upon an understanding of lifestyles as individual embodied responses to broader social contexts and, as such, sustainable lifestyles can be viewed as necessary and important responses to the climate emergency. It is argued in conclusion that green lifestyle journalism needs to have a more prominent and comprehensive presence in the schedules and output of contemporary news and media services.