Mission Statement

Climatematters.de strives to become your companion to research and commentary concerning media debates about climate change and ecology.

Starting as a climate debate Watchblog around the climate summit in Paris in 2015 (November 30 – December 12 2015), Climate Matters later evolved to cover ecological questions more broadly and follow the debates around socio-ecological transformations towards more sustainable societies.

We look at these debates through a lens of academic observers from social and climate sciences. Our blog posts—unlike research papers—also express opinions, personal values and broader ideas. Nevertheless, we draw our conclusions based on research related to climate journalism, social media debates, and public discourses on climate protests and climate justice.

We strive for utmost accuracy in our presentation of facts and research results. At the same time, however, the blog is also a forum for opinion that is by definition not value neutral. We openly support the protection of Earth’s ecosystems, the preservation of species, as well as the prosperity of human life—in future generations and across the globe. This blog is thus our contribution to the public debate, informed by our own and other people’s research.

The editorial team of this blog is convinced that the ecological question (the sum of ecological challenges like climate change, sea level rise, water scarcity, air pollution, extinction of species etc.) is key to the future well-being of humanity. It is therefore more important than many of the other issues that make headlines, which, in our view, divert public attention away from the most relevant challenges of our times.

The blog is hosted and edited at the Chair of Climate Communication held by Michael Brüggemann at the University of Hamburg. The authors of the blog go beyond the small editorial team and include academics in the fields of climate change, communication and journalism research, as well as advanced students of climate change and surrounding debates. The blog also features contributions from guest authors who are not affiliated with Universität Hamburg.

The point of the blog is not to bash climate communicators nor the media; covering climate change and other ecological issues is a demanding challenge for journalists and we do not pretend that we could provide better coverage than journalists do. Yet, as readers, observers and researchers, we hope to add new perspectives—on how the debate is presented, which tendencies are effective, what may be lacking—and provide some food for thought.

The blog is (mostly) in English to allow international audiences and students to contribute and participate. However, for certain topics that primarily concern Germany, we also publish some posts in German. All blog entries represent the personal opinions and observations of the respective blog authors and are neither official statements by the University of Hamburg, nor by the hosts of the blog.