Commercial news media organizations hold a unique and vital role in the climate crisis. As business organizations, they have a corporate responsibility to evaluate, report on, and minimize the environmental impact of their operations. As news organizations, they are often held accountable for the environmental impact they have through their journalism. A recent research article in the MedieKultur Special Issue “Media and the Environment” examines how these two different ways of addressing climate responsibilities are addressed in Nordic commercial news media organizations.
The climate impact of companies, both through their actions and their words, could not be more topical. Recent news have shown, for example, that 2024 was the hottest year ever recorded, while 2025 is set to be the second or third warmest year on record. Seven out of nine planetary boundaries, including climate change, have been crossed. The Earth has reached its first catastrophic tipping point linked to greenhouse gas emissions, with warm water coral reefs now facing a long-term decline, reports the Guardian. The climate crisis has been estimated to be more serious than previously predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Despite the alarming news, recent headlines have stated that “The front against climate change is faltering”.
During the Glasgow Climate Change Conference (COP26) in 2021, the Finnish public broadcasting company offered live updates from the event. This year’s 30th climate summit is characterized by alarming forecasts and “meager compromises”. A newspaper editorial states that “the coming years will tell whether humanity will suffer from the boiling frog syndrome. According to the story, the frog does not notice the water heating up until it is no longer able to jump out”. As the editorial states, now this ability to react is being measured. It is tested in climate summits, in governments, and in boardrooms.
Carbon Footprint and Carbon Handprint
News media organizations have a twofold climate impact: direct impact through reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and indirect impact through disseminating information in the democratic public sphere about the climate to enable collective sensemaking and mobilization in society.
News media organizations have a twofold climate impact: direct impact through reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and indirect impact through disseminating information in the democratic public sphere about the climate to enable collective sensemaking and mobilization in society.
In our recently published article in MedieKultur, we apply the concepts of carbon footprint and carbon handprint to capture the dual impact of news media organizations and observe their interplay in these organizations’ alleged climate actions and climate-change communication.
Contrary to the carbon footprint, which refers to the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted directly or indirectly by an organization, the term handprint has come to refer to the positive environmental impact an organization or activity has in reducing or offsetting carbon emissions. Leaning on the idea of the performative nature of communication, the carbon handprint refers to the greenhouse gas reductions a company can help its customers achieve.
The term carbon handprint can hence be understood as an analogy or a language game: It directly shifts attention to an alternative or additional way of understanding the carbon impact, which has long been measured through calculating the carbon footprint – that is, greenhouse gases generated by actions. Replacing “foot” with “hand”, the carbon handprint concept implies that organizations have a more immaterial climate impact beyond the measurable emissions. Specifically, the handprint concept suggests that organizations are able to influence others’ actions through their practices and communication.
Of course, journalism specifically distances itself from any form of social advocacy. However, media content, including journalism and entertainment, effectively makes climate change visible, particularly when it feels distant or invisible in people’s daily lives, through what is termed “constructive visibilism”. Hence, there is growing consensus that media representations of climate change truly matter.
In general, the dual climate impact of media organizations has also raised societal debates. Are entertainment programs based on air travel, such as Amazing Race, justified in today’s world, where climate change poses a significant threat to the planet? Who can legitimately function as a sponsor of a climate-themed television show? Is advertising carbon intensive products and lifestyles, such as air travel or ultra fast fashion, morally justified?
Making Use of the Carbon Footprint
The concepts of carbon footprint and carbon handprint (or alternatively, in the case of media, “brainprint”) have been used in organizational communication to understand, make sense of, improve, and measure the net impact of companies in the climate crisis. However, despite their impact, it is not evident that media companies have a “positive handprint” – they might even have a harmful impact.
Harmful impacts may occur either deliberately or inadvertently; actions such as refraining from a critical examination of green claims, or writing stories about carbon-intensive lifestyles, can simply result from a lack of climate awareness. At the same time, commercial news media organizations have been especially criticized for enabling fossil fuel advertising. Both types of actions, deliberate or not, can contribute negatively to our common climate targets.
Harmful impacts may occur either deliberately or inadvertently; actions such as refraining from a critical examination of green claims, or writing stories about carbon-intensive lifestyles, can simply result from a lack of climate awareness.
On the one hand, the term carbon handprint could center on broad and almost self-evident contributions, such as climate monitoring and increasing understanding and awareness about climate change. This first, broader understanding of the handprint of media becomes difficult or even impossible to assess.
On the other hand, it includes attention to communicative actions such as problematizing the visibility and platform given to, for example, carbon-intensive practices. Many news media companies have taken measures to address their climate impact seriously, and beyond minimum expectations. For instance, many have invested in high-profile climate journalism, some have allegedly problematized their relationship with overconsumption, and restricted advertising of high-carbon products and services.
Media companies have also taken the lead in assessing the growing significant climate impact of digital advertising and consumption in collaboration with stakeholders.
Many of these actions can indeed pave the way for reducing carbon emissions, as the handprint concept promises.
Frig, M., Jaakkola, M., & Olkkonen, L. (2025). The dual climate impact of news media: The carbon footprint-handprint challenges in Nordic commercial news media organizations. MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, 41(79), 70–91. https://doi.org/10.7146/mk.v41i79.152898