Journalism, STS and the Anthropocene

Abstract

This will be a roundtable discussion panel, including the organizer, Kim Fortun, and invited journalists.

Analysts have pointed to the deep representational, coordination and political challenges of the Anthropocene. In this panel, we’ll bring journalists together with STS scholars (sometimes in the same person) to consider the journalistic challenges ahead and ways STS scholars and organizations (including 4S) could better collaborate with journalists and their organizations (such as the Society for Environmental Journalists and ProPublica).

Journalists we have invited to participate included Ken Ward, an award-winning environmental reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail and recent recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship; Erin Jordan, a reporter at the Gazette of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who is researching and reporting on progress reducing the flow of nitrate and phosphorus into the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico (with part of the story about Louisiana and the Atchafalaya Delta, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico); and Andrew Rivkin, New York Times journalist and Dot Earth blog author..

The panel will extend from on-STS scholars’s work within The Mississippi: An Anthropocene River, a project organized and funded by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Germany’s national center for contemporary arts.

Session Organizer

• Scott Knowles, Drexel University