Hanna E. Morris is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto with expertise in climate change media and critical methods of cultural analysis. Her research concentrates on the climate-media-democracy nexus and explores questions of power, identity-formation, and meaning-making around climate change. She is the co-chair of the Critical Studies of Climate Media, Discourse, and Power Working Group a part of Brown University’s Climate Social Science Network (CSSN) and an appointed member of the Board of Directors for the International Environmental Communication Association (IECA).
She discusses her teaching and her newest book Apocalyptic Authoritarianism: Climate Crisis, Media, and Power (Oxford University Press, 2025). The book reveals how national anxieties following the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump have shaped American news coverage of climate change in ways that severely limit how it has come to be known, imagined, and contended with. Looking at climate change reporting across prominent and ideologically diverse U.S. newspapers and magazines over the past decade, the book traces how news media create an illusion of control in the present through nostalgic and heroic stories of the past.
Your new book Apocalyptic Authoritarianism: Climate Crisis, Media, and Power analyzes the complex intersection of climate journalism and politics in an age of increasing polarization, nationalism, and social unease. Can you briefly define your theory of “Apocalyptic Authoritarianism”?
Fundamentally, “apocalyptic authoritarianism” describes the reactionary posturing and political alignment of historically privileged figures, transcendent of the partisan center and right, who are united through a common enemy of the “new” New Left and a shared appeal to apocalyptic fears of “total crisis”/ the “collapse of Western civilization.” Fearmongering about a supposedly “uncivil” and “woke” contingent of leftist radicals (including climate justice advocates) who are threatening both national and world stability is precisely where apocalyptic authoritarianism hardens the line between “us” and “them.” There is little room for imagining dynamic subjectivities, identities, and alternative futures beyond the one supposedly “right” path that will “save” the nation/Western civilization as determined by just a few self-declared “visionary sages.” My book sheds light on how U.S. journalism, especially since the first election of Donald Trump in 2016, is bolstering the central tenets of apocalyptic authoritarianism as opposed to reckoning with its roots and ramifications.
You examine how national anxieties following the 2016 presidential election have shaped American news coverage of climate change in ways that severely limit how it has come to be known, imagined, and contended with. How are you feeling as we head into a second Trump administration? And what does it mean for the future of climate journalism?
Unfortunately, the patterns in journalistic reporting I identify in my book are continuing and to an even greater degree now that Trump is back. One of the central predicaments that my book illuminates is how the chaos that Trump brings with him can be so overwhelming that it often propagates a nostalgic search for “the good old days.” U.S. journalists have fallen into this trap of looking backwards and romanticizing the past, instead of fundamentally reckoning with how we got here. My book shows how this nostalgic longing for an imagined American “golden age” tends to be most pronounced among traditionally privileged groups, including traditional journalists. This closes off more transformative visions and proposals for how to respond—proposals that are better able to contend with, as opposed to ignore, the exclusions of the past. This backwards-looking nostalgia is an obstacle for climate politics because it casts progressive climate policy programs such as the Green New Deal (GND) as too “extreme.” Young climate justice activists who support the GND are, in turn, reported on and represented across the mainstream press from the centrist New York Times to the center-right Wall Street Journal to the far-right Fox News as a further threat to the stability of the nation. Notably, these young activists are predominantly women of color—a historically marginalized group in the U.S. Calls for the exclusion of these young women from official climate and national decision-making processes are problematically legitimized as necessary for “national stability” by U.S. news media as opposed to questioned.
In chapter three you write about the centrality of the trope of the visionary sage figure in U.S. climate journalism who is often wealthy, white, and male. “Consideration of more transformative and equitable responses to climate change that inherently question the unabridged authority of visionary sages are either ignored or reported on by traditional journalists as short-sighted, ill-informed, and dangerous.” Can you expand on this?
When the present is represented as a “total crisis” with no clear understanding of how we got here while at the same time, pro-democracy progressives who advocate for comprehensive climate policies are positioned as a threat to “national stability,” visionary sage figures are centered and celebrated as God-sent heroes. The claim that just one or a few “very smart” men are capable of “saving” the nation/“Western civilization” is not a very democratic idea. My book shows how despite this, visionary sage figures are a central character in climate news stories. This celebration of Earth-saving heroes may provide a sense of comfort during overwhelming times, but it even further closes off already highly exclusionary decision-making processes.
Can you tell us about Social Media and Environmentalism (ENV361) and Communicating Climate Change (ENV464), the undergraduate courses you developed. What are some of the learning outcomes and the real-world applications?
In my undergrad courses, we learn about how these exclusionary patterns in journalism and politics have come to be and how they can be different. A central learning goal is therefore for students to understand historical context and to see the importance of knowing about the past. In learning how we got here, we can more clearly see how things can change. I try to foster a real sense of community in my classes through collaborative assignments that grapple with the past in order to imagine a better future. The goal here is for students to experience the power of collectives and collective action themselves, as opposed to just reading about it in theory. This, I hope, shows students that change is indeed possible. We can respond to climate change in a comprehensive and just manner if we value—as opposed to fearmonger about—different perspectives, identities, and knowledges.
What does the recent announcement by Meta that it, like X, will remove filters and fact-checking, mean for the future of climate activism? Is leaving these platforms a realistic option?
This is actually the focus of my next book project that I’m working on now, tentatively titled Tool and Terrain: Media Histories and Futures of the Progressive Climate Left. I’m looking at how progressive climate justice activists (i.e., the “climate left”) are responding to today’s reactionary political turn both offline where there is a spike in policing of young progressives and online where there is an uptick in hate speech, trolling, and the enclosure of digital spaces that were previously central for progressive movement-building in the 2010s (as seen with the transformation of Twitter into “X” following Elon Musk’s 2022 takeover, for instance).
Through a digital ethnography and historical accounting of the climate left’s perception and use of social media since the 2010s, I’m looking at how climate justice activists are retreating (or not) from big, commercialized social media platforms and co-building alternative online and offline spaces for their collectivities and movements. This retreat is proving very challenging because of the concentration of ownership where just a few Big Tech companies currently monopolize the internet, but it is not impossible—something I’m specifically exploring with graduate students this winter in my new course called Media, Democracy, and Climate Justice (ENV1202).
The exodus to Bluesky from X following Musk’s takeover and Trump’s election is one encouraging example of this. In talking with activists, I’m seeing that there is also a renewed focus on strengthening offline communities through in-person gatherings as opposed to engaging with an increasingly hostile and hate-filled metaverse. This rebuilding of social ties is so crucial, especially after such an alienating set of pandemic years. In my new book, I’m focusing on how to think about media (broadly understood, from traditional to digital and from textual to visual) as a collective terrain for listening, learning, and building coalitions across difference as opposed to a utilitarian tool for individual ends (such as securing a large “following” or attaining the most “likes” on a post).
Because of the nature of your teaching and research you can’t not engage with the media environment. What do you do protect your mental health?
Yes, this is the problem: my research requires constant engagement with the news, which is difficult because I can never just “unplug” and turn off my devices for very long. What I’ve been trying to do a lot more of recently is to connect with fellow academic friends who are doing similar research as me. For the past couple of years, I’ve been doing weekly virtual writing groups with friends from grad school to vent a bit and grieve and then turn our angst into energy for our research and writing. It’s been working so far! This sense of community is important for both my mental well-being and for building a sense of solidarity and comradery across borders and institutions—something that is especially needed right now.
Where are you finding joy?
My personal relationships with friends and family, and also a good film! I deeply admire and enjoy a powerful film that is able to tap into and explore the different emotions of people—and the complexity and unpredictability of these emotions. There’s just something so amazing about being pulled into a story and taken along with it. A really great film makes me feel a little less alone and a little more hopeful that I’m not the only one trying to navigate the uncertainty of the present in the best way I can.