In this article, we call for a refocusing of research on citizens' political engagement with climate change. In doing so, we argue that communication practices not only help create the conditions for political engagement but they also comprise the modes of such engagement. Our argument proceeds in four steps. First, we review the literature on public engagement with climate change, concluding that there is a lack of attention to issues regarding the political. Consequently, we make the case for a refocusing of research on political engagement. Second, we explain how the notion of political subjectivity helps us to understand the relation between communication practices and engagement with the politics of climate change. Third, we discuss examples of dominant communication practices that constrain citizen political engagement by depoliticizing climate change, and alternative communication practices that have the potential to politicize. We end by outlining the many research questions that relate to the study of political engagement with climate change.

Media pluralism has become a buzzword in public, political, and academic discourses. However, it is generally unclear what is meant by referring to pluralistic media content or how pluralistic media should operate within democratic societies. The goal of this article is to distinguish between different conceptual and normative assumptions about media, pluralism, and democracy that demarcate the limits of analysis on media pluralism. Based on a discussion of three different schools of democracy with their corresponding media roles (the liberal, deliberative, and agonistic democracy schools), we derive two fault lines which allow us to distinguish four approaches to media pluralism. These approaches imply a different interpretation of its meaning and the standards by which it should be researched.

In the academic literature, two perspectives can be distinguished regarding the climate debate. The dominant consensus-building perspective problematizes the politicization of climate change as an important barrier to climate action and resultantly sets out to develop depoliticizing communication strategies which foster social consensus and public engagement. In contrast to this, the critical debate perspective problematizes climate change's capture in a depoliticized consensus and calls for its repoliticization to revive democratic debate and citizenship. The aim of this article is twofold. First, we will distinguish both perspectives on the basis of their diverging problem diagnoses and recommendations. Second, we will argue how only the critical debate perspective provides the tools for transformative socioecological change based on both democratic debate and democratic citizenship. We conclude by discussing how this divergence is reflective of a larger split in the social sciences between problem-solving and critical theory and how social scientists could contribute to democratic debate and citizenship.

Starting from a risk conflicts perspective, this article challenges two common assumptions of existing research on climate change in public and media discourses. It argues that the evaluation of these discourses on the extent to which these either accurately reflect a scientific consensus or contribute to achieving social consensus insufficiently takes account of the exclusionary mechanisms it starts from. A conceptual and empirical framework is subsequently put forward which allows one to evaluate mediated discourses in terms of the extent to which democratic debate and citizenship are encouraged. Such analysis can reveal the discursive strategies underlying processes of politicization and depoliticization. This perspective is illustrated by an analysis of a local case study: the "Sing for the Climate" campaign. We conclude by calling for a broad systematic research agenda revealing the extent to which de/politicizing discourses are found to influence public and media discourses.

ABSTRACT. Via a historical reconstruction, this paper primarily demonstrates how the societal debate on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) gradually extended in terms of actors involved and concerns reflected. It is argued that the implementation of recombinant DNA technology out of the laboratory and into civil society entailed a ''complex of concerns.'' In this complex, distinctions between environmental, agricultural, socio-economic, and ethical issues proved to be blurred. This fueled the confusion between the wider debate on genetic modification and the risk assessment of transgenic crops in the European Union. In this paper, the lasting skeptical and/or ambivalent attitude of Europeans towards agro-food biotechnology is interpreted as signaling an ongoing social request -and even a quest -for an evaluation of biotechnology with Sense and Sensibility. In this (re)quest, a broader-than-scientific dimension is sought for that allows addressing the GMO debate in a more ''sensible'' way, whilst making ''sense'' of the different stances taken in it. Here, the restyling of the European regulatory frame on transgenic agro-food products and of science communication models are discussed and taken to be indicative of the (re)quest to move from a merely scientific evaluation and risk-based policy towards a socially more robust evaluation that takes the ''non-scientific'' concerns at stake in the GMO debate seriously.

Mainstream news media have been criticized for serving as marketing agents of establishment ideas and elite voices. In response, this article introduces an analytical framework of agonistic media pluralism that enables an evaluation of media discourse on whether it opens or closes the space for a democratic debate about and beyond established social structures and ways of life. Theoretically, this framework draws from post-foundational political thought, agonistic democratic theory, and post-politics. Methodologically, it consists of a critical discourse analysis that combines four levels of analysis: the ideological conflict underlying a social issue, the scope and form of media discourse, the ideological culture of a media outlet, and the level of agonistic pluralism in a media landscape. Special attention is paid to how particular discursive strategies either open (i.e. cultivate or politicize) or close (i.e. depoliticize) a debate. It concludes by sketching some future research avenues.

This article starts from the observation that the concept of objectivity, along with its twin sentries ‘balance’ and ‘impartiality’, is generally regarded as a cornerstone of journalism and, consequently, of journalism research. The aim of this article is to show that the analytical ideal of objectivity, instead of enabling, in fact inhibits media pluralism research. The first section focuses on unveiling the ideological nature of this ideal by relating it both socio-historically and analytically to a post-ideological and consensual understanding of society. Since we find this ideal only allowing for the evaluation of journalism within the limits of social consensus (pluralism ‘within the box’), the second section seeks for alternative analytical concepts to evaluate journalism about and beyond the limits of social consensus (pluralism ‘outside the box’). To illustrate the difference between both approaches, the popular concept of partisan media bias is juxtaposed to the alternative framework of de/politicization.

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