While the issue of climate change is known to be a global environmental problem, the impacts of climate change are disproportionately burdening a small group of people, especially indigenous people living in vulnerable regions such as the Arctic. Nevertheless, in prevalent climate change communication indigenous people and their precarious situations are barely included. This study investigates how the NGO Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) represents the topic and Inuit through narratives in their communication while comparing it to the representation of Canadian news media. Here, a strategic content analysis of speeches and press releases from the NGO compares articles covering the COP1 summit from CBC. The hereby used methodology is based on Fløttum’s approach to narrative theory and Hall’s representation theory.
The study shows that the ICC is presenting climate change through different narratives, therefore uses two different communicational strategies and either presents Inuit as victims or as holders of valuable knowledge, depending on the aim and the context of its communication. The CBC focuses mainly on climate change issues in the context of Canada, but fails here to include and present the case of its indigenous Arctic people meaningfully, instead simply depicts them in the one-sided way of climate change victims.
Although both parties contribute to the Canadian climate change discourse by presenting their narratives, the analysis shows that only few parallels occur between the two. While the ICC’s objective is to get governments and policy-makers to listen and therefore changes its mode of speaking according to its objectives, the CBC communicates to the public and is obliged to provide a wide range of information to reflect Canada holistically.