Students’ strike for climate change

A feature story about the climate strike

Melbourne School Strike For Climate Action
Melbourne School Strike For Climate Action, by Julian Meehan on 30 November, 2018, CC BY 2.0

Story topic and angle

My story will talk about the environment issue that students all over the world strike for the climate change problems. Generally, I would write the article from the angle of the strike’s effect and influence on the society. The climate strike has been spread all around the world, including English, German, and also Australia, since the Sweden 12-year-old girl Greta Thunberg’s environment speech. Young students put plenty of passion on the campaign, and ask politicians respond to the worsening environment problems, while their teachers and relevant politicians seem to see the strike campaign as a disordering and meaningless farce, and they keep questioning the rationality and actual effect of the strike.

Narrative genre

The story will be a feature article, which focuses on the environmental issue that students’ strike for climate change. It will discuss reasons and the blasting fuse of climate strike, as well as the reaction of governments and politicians. It tries to answer the important question that is it really an exciting campaign that young people play the role of social practicus, or just an orgy of political correctness?

Publication and target audience

I believe Vice would be an appropriate platform for the story. Vice is a digital media platform of news and features, which is famous for the youth-oriented content. It always tries to build connection with young readers. My article will also target young students, especially those who care about environment issues and social campaigns.

Vice explored its digital news services through online videos since 2006, and videos become a significant part in reports on Vice. It prides itself on being the industry leader in online original video. It encourages more multimedia materials imbedded in my article.

Ideas of information

The feature story focuses on environment topic, requiring data from reliable sources. There will be some objective content supporting the introduction of environment situation in the article. For example, one of the students’ appeals is the energy restructuring. The Australian Energy Update report could explain the aim of students’ movement through current energy consumption in Australia. And some investigation reports about environment could also provide information for the feature, like the Australia Environmental Sustainability Study[pdf].

Another important parts in the article would be the voices from students engaging in the climate strike. A feasible interviewee would be the SRC Enviro Collective from University of Sydney. It has organized a small-scaled climate strike in the campus on 5th March. I would contact the organizers and talk about their views and feelings about the strike.

A campaign website School Strike 4 Climate is the platform where students gather and call on more engagement, which could help to provide their latest information and activities for the feature story.

Meanwhile, the feature will present relevant videos about the issue, such as Greta Thunberg’s speech and some strike situation, to show the development process visually.

The campaign also creates a new hashtag #strike4climate on Twitter, so some tweets about the strike will be showed in the article.

Some pictures of students’ strike are necessary for readers to understand the main focus of the story.

San Francisco Youth Climate Strike
San Francisco Youth Climate Strike – March 15, 2019

 

 

 

About Siyi Zhang 4 Articles
A media practice student from usyd Email: szha2475@uni.sydney.edu.au

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