Now you can participate in KLIMAPRESS 2026 – an annual conference on climate journalism with a particular focus on the Nordic countries.
Read in Swedish: KLIMAPRESS 2026: Klimatjournalistik i Norden
Read in Danish: KLIMAPRESS 2026: Klimajournalistik i Norden
Read in Norwegian: KLIMAPRESS 2026: Klimajournalistikk i Norden
Climate is, and will remain, important for journalists to cover. Yet media coverage of climate has been pushed into the background in favor of war, armament and other global conflicts. How can we get climate back on the agenda? How do we cover the crisis in a more powerful, inspiring, and engaging way? What works, according to media research? And what role do actors such as companies and activists play in climate issues, and how do the media cover these aspects?
These are the key questions at KLIMAPRESS 2026 – a new Nordic conference on climate journalism.
Among the speakers are former EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard and George Marshall, founder of the British NGO Climate Outreach.
The conference took place for the first time in Oslo last year. Now it is Copenhagen’s turn, where the conference will be held on 22 and 23 October at DMJX’s campus and will feature keynote speakers, panel debates, and parallel sessions.
Aarhus University, the Danish School of Media and Journalism (DMJX), and Nordic Journalist Centre (NJC) are organizing and co-funding the conference and inviting journalists, editors, and media researchers to come together to develop climate journalism in the Nordic region.
At the conference, journalists and media researchers from across the Nordic region and beyond will share their experiences and discuss how climate issues can be covered at a time when international cooperation is under pressure – while the climate continues to break records.
As last year, a professional jury at the conference will award prizes for the best climate journalism in the Nordic region – nominate by 1 September at the latest.
Read more: Nominations for the KLIMAPRESS 2026 Award – Nordic climate journalism
Organizers: The Department of Media Studies and Journalism at Aarhus University, the Danish School of Media and Journalism, and the Nordic Journalist Centre
Program (in English)
Please note: Unless otherwise stated, all presentations in the program are in English
Thursday, October 22:
9:00 Arrival, coffee and small-talk
9:25 Conference Room 6.04A, Welcome by Julie Sommerlund, rector at The Danish School of Media and Journalism
9:40-10:40 Conference Room 6.04A, Plenary talk 1: What are major companies actually doing about climate change – and how do the media cover it? By Connie Hedegaard (board member of Danfoss, BBVA, the Villum Foundation, and several other organizations)
As the former European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard has insight into the climate initiatives and strategies of major international companies. She will discuss how companies approach climate action and the considerations behind their efforts, as well as offer her perspective on how the media cover climate issues.
Language: English
10:40 Break
11:00-12:00 Parallel Sessions:
Session 1, Room 3.08, Covering Energy Transitions in a European Context
Boris Schneider is European Programme Manager at Clean Energy Wire (CLEW), he is at the centre of the team’s international and cross-border activities: spotting new partnership opportunities across the continent, sharpening CLEW’s European portfolio, and coordinating the weekly flagship ‘Dispatch from…’ newsletter. He is going to discuss how CLEW’s approach of anticipating societal frictions informs their daily work – and how this helps to bridge gaps between scientific knowledge and public understanding, to build trust in the information ecosystem and to pre-bunk disinformation.
Language: English
Session 2, Conference Room 6.04A: Hidden success stories? Why some companies choose not to talk to the media about their climate efforts
Line Schmeltz is an Senior Associate Professor at the Danish School of Media and Journalism (DMJX). Drawing on her research, she will explore “greenhushing” – when companies deliberately avoid communicating their climate efforts in the media for fear of public backlash and accusations of greenwashing.
Anette Maria Christensen is an Executive ESG Advisor at Give Steel A/S, a Danish manufacturer of structural steel, operating on the European. The company considers itself a first mover on several ESG initiatives within their industry in Europe, and is continuously working on ESG initiatives across several areas. However, the company is cautious about communicating its efforts within sustainability in the media, as the complexity of the field can lead to errors and misunderstandings when the issues are reported and communicated in the medias. With new EU requirements on sustainability communication, this issue is more relevant than ever.
Language: English
Session 3, Room 4.01, Short inspirational local stories from climate journalist (former NJC participants) — led by Professor Andreas Ytterstad (Oslo Met University)
Elin Fjellman is a reporter at Sydsvenskan. She is trained as both a journalist and a political scientist, with a focus on climate change policy. Since 2021, she has covered climate and environmental issues from a south-western Skåne perspective. Among many other topics, she has reported on COP conferences, activism, coastal erosion along the Skåne coastline, water scarcity, and the impact of the fashion industry.
Sofia Bergström Nielsen is a reporter at Trelleborgs Allehanda, where she partly covers climate and environmental issues. She will discuss the challenges of reporting on these topics in local media. To capture readers’ interest, she reports on issues such as car dependency in small towns, green hydrogen, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and coastal property insurance. She has also written a master’s thesis on Swedes’ experiences of flood catastrophes.
Language: Swedish and Norwegian
12:00 Lunch in Conference Room 6.04B
13:15-14:00 Conference Room 6.04A, Plenary Panel: Meet New Researchers — led by Associate Professor Henrik Bødker (Aarhus University)
Sophie Ysholt Hansen is a PhD student at the University of Southern, Denmark) and will speeak on green narratives: Potentials and Pitfalls in Constructive Narrative Climate Journalism. Climate change challenges traditional journalistic logics. It is abstract, complex, and marked by uncertainty, while coverage is often bleak, conflict-driven, and sensational. Drawing on her project on constructive narrative climate journalism, she will explore how narrative elements such as proximity, immersion, and identification can interact with constructive perspectives and pathways for action to foster motivation and engagement. And what pitfalls arise if problems are oversimplified, or does journalism lose its critical edge?
Ingerid Salvesen is a PhD student at Oslo Met University, Norway and will speak on how to engage young audiences. Ingerids current research examines whether and how news media shape engagement with and public connection to climate change among Norwegian youth. Combining different mediated public connection frameworks, her study shows why news media often fail to connect young people to climate change as a public issue. She also proposes practice-oriented recommendations.
Nelli Jäntti-Tuominen is a PhD student at Tampere University, Finland and will talk on Newsworthiness and Media Framing of Climate Protests. Climate protests have had to conform to the newsworthiness criteria of journalism by creating spectacles that attract coverage. In the case of disruptive protests, this has often resulted in negative attention and focus on confrontations with the police. This presentation presents findings of her research on the framing of climate protests in Finland, the use of sources in news coverage, and the kinds of actions that have attracted positive portrayals.
Language: English
14:00 Break
14:20-15:05 Parallel Sessions:
Session 1, Room 4.01, Crafting Future Narratives
Sofie Hviid is a journalist at Klimajournalisterne. In this session she will – together with her colleague Søren Bjørn-Hansen – discuss how to craft a narrative about the future using journalistic methods. And to what journalists can tell stories about uncertain future scenarios without compromising their journalistic ethics. These questions are explored based on Sofie and Bjørn’s experiences from making their recent future-focused podcast Domino Effekten.
Language: English
Session 2, Conference Room 6.04A, Working with constructive journalism
Gerd Maria May is a Danish journalist, author and founder of Room of Solutions. She works with media organisations, public institutions, municipalities and other organisations on strategic development, with a particular focus on constructive journalism, audience engagement and climate communication.
Gerd will share insights from a three-year research project on constructive climate journalism, conducted in collaboration between the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), TV 2 Fyn and Fyens Stiftstidende, with Gerd as the project’s practical lead. She will take participants through how the project – and the journalism – has developed over the three years: how researchers and journalists have worked together, how new journalistic approaches and formats have been tested and refined, and how knowledge about audiences has influenced the journalism. As the project approaches its conclusion, she will also share key findings and results – including what the team has learned about engaging people who tend to avoid climate news and what makes climate journalism feel relevant and worth engaging with.
Language: Danish
Session 3, Room 3.08, How to cover COP31 in Turkey in November
Otto Lerche from Dagbladet Information shares his experiences of covering COP26 and COP27. He also provides examples of stories from genres beyond traditional news journalism, such as reportage. Participants in the session who also have experience covering COP conferences are very welcome to contribute advice, as well as tips and tricks.
Language: English
15:05 Break
15:30-16:30 Conference Room 6.04A, Plenary talk 2: Climate change journalism as and beyond science communication – by Sabrina Vitting-Seerup (Assistant Professor Copenhagen University):
Sabrina Vitting-Seerup is assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen. She will discuss how climate journalism usually is filed under one of two headings: Science reporting or political coverage. But what if it could do more? Climate journalism can help us imagine the futures we are heading towards, and the ones we could still choose. It can show what sustainable lives actually look like, without drowning audiences in sustainability fatigue or feeding them infantilising hope. Drawing on science communication research and constructive journalism, this keynote explores how climate journalism can do more than explain the crisis: it can help societies find their way through it.
Language: English
16:30 Reception and price ceremony
17:30 See you tomorrow
Friday, October 23:
9:00 Coffee and small-talk
9:30-10:15 Conference Room 6.04A, Plenary talk 3: Activists and NGOs: The battle for a place in the media and political decision-making – by George Marshall (strategic communications consultant, founder of Climate Outreach)
For decades, British climate campaigner George Marshall has been an active participant and prominent voice in the climate debate, with a background in grassroots movements and NGO networks. He will analyse how the role of activists and NGOs in climate action has evolved, and how media coverage of these actors has developed over time.
Language: English
10:15 Break
10:35-11:35 Parallel Sessions:
Session 1, Room 4.01, Covering Green Conflicts
Mikkel Eskjær is associate professor, Aalborg University in Copenhagen where he researches environmental communication. He will examine how environmental conflicts have evolved over time, increasingly becoming so-called green-on-green conflicts in which different environmental concerns (climate change, sustainability, biodiversity) clash with one another.
Language: English
Session 2, Conference Room 6.04A, Climate activists – voices of citizens and political actors?
Julie Uldam is an Associate Professor and researcher at Copenhagen Business School (CBS). She will present findings from her research into the relationship – or lack of it – between companies and climate activists, and discuss what this means for media coverage.
Amanda Büchert has been involved in activist and NGO networks in Denmark for many years. She has also founded a grassroots media outlet focusing on stories about climate action. She will share her experiences of how the media cover climate activism and discuss how activists position themselves in the wider climate debate.
Language: English
Session 3, Room 3.07, Journalism education & climate literacy
What should all (future) journalists learn about climate and environment – regardless of their beat? And how can educators and professionals navigate the challenges of ‘second hand’ climate anxiety? These are some of the questions addressed by Mette Stentoft, associate professor at the Danish School of Media and Journalism (DMJX) and one of the driving forces behind the school’s new mandatory course on climate journalism.
Language: English
11:35 Break
12:00 Closing Event: Summary and presentation of next year’s event.
12:30 Lunch and goodbye (eat a sandwich with colleagues or take it with you)
Støtte og samarbejde
NJC har modtaget støtte til denne konference Aarhus Universitet, Danmarks Medie- og Journalisthøjskole (DMJX) samt Demos-programmet, der administreres af Nordisk kulturkontakt i Helsinki på vegne af Nordisk Ministerråd.
