Citizen Journalism News Network: gender, environmental crisis and Cornish citizen journalists

Rogers, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9935-2879 (2025) Citizen Journalism News Network: gender, environmental crisis and Cornish citizen journalists. Journal of Environmental Media, N/A. ISSN 2632-2463 (In Press)

Other (This paper examines the intersections of climate change, gender, and media through evaluating data collected as part of a five-year-long participatory action research initiative in Cornwall, UK called the ‘Citizen Journalism News Network’ (CJNN) project.) Citizen Journalism News Network - gender environmental crisis and Cornish citizen journalists.pdf - Accepted Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 1 January 2099. Available under License All Rights Reserved. Download (330kB) | Request a copy

Abstract / Summary

This paper examines the intersections of climate change, gender, and media through evaluating data collected as part of a five-year-long participatory action research initiative in Cornwall, UK called the ‘Citizen Journalism News Network’ (CJNN) project. Set against the backdrop of declining regional news provision and the retreat of legacy media from local contexts, the project explored how citizen journalism achieved through the deployment of a co-designed digital social innovation (DSI) platform can be used to create new opportunities for marginalised coastal voices to contest dominant narratives. Quantitative and qualitative data from CJNN participants revealed that women, in particular, engaged with citizen journalism as a means to reframe and amplify underrepresented issues, most notably around the subjects of environmental conservation and climate crisis. Female participants reported on climate change from hyper-local perspectives, often employing evidence-based journalistic practices that challenged the inadequacy of mainstream media coverage. The paper argues that citizen journalism functions as both a corrective to the erosion of local media infrastructures and as a site of epistemological resistance to the gendered and commercial logics of mainstream reporting. In Cornwall, where environmental vulnerability is materially and culturally acute, women’s journalistic interventions tended to foreground the climate emergency as a lived, place-based issue that legacy media often mis-frames or marginalises. The findings highlight the democratic potential of citizen journalism to diversify climate narratives, counteract news avoidance, and re-situate media practices within community-driven and environmentally urgent frameworks.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© [Matthew Rogers, 2026]. The definitive, peer reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Journal of Environmental Media, volume tbc, issue tbc, pages tbc, 2026, DOI link tbc.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	climate crisis; citizen journalism; gender; media representation; environmental journalism; Cornwall; Participatory Action Research; hyper-local news
ISSN:	2632-2463
eISSN:	2632-2471
Subjects:	Communication > Journalism
Department:	School of Film & Television
Depositing User:	Matthew Rogers
Date Deposited:	11 Feb 2026 14:58
Last Modified:	11 Feb 2026 14:58
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/6341

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