Introduction
How should direct action campaigners use mainstream media? Here are 2 case studies from Australia – Blockade Australia and Disrupt Burrup Hub. This article is part one of two on the role of media in the strategies of Australian direct action climate groups. Read Part 2 – How Disruptive Climate Campaigners use Social Media.
If no one reports on your blockade of fossil fuel infrastructure, was your disruption effective?
The grassroots of the climate movement often deploy nonviolent direct action as a tactic. Activists target fossil fuel companies and projects in order to reduce emissions and cause cost and delay for big polluters. But it’s not just about material disruption. Most of the time, direct action practitioners are also trying to spread a message. For that, they rely on traditional media, including newspapers, radio, television, and online news websites.
Activists often use the amount and sentiment of media coverage they receive as key metrics of an action’s success –
- but why are these indicators so important?
- What makes for ‘good’ media?
- And how can activists plan their campaigns to gain the sort of coverage that helps them to achieve their goals?
Different campaign groups use and think about media differently, depending on their strategies. When designing campaigns, activists should think carefully about the kind of media coverage they need to fulfil their aims, and how they can get it.
Blockade Australia and Disrupt Burrup Hub are two direct action groups in Australia that have been in the headlines in recent years for disruptive climate protests. Both see traditional media coverage as important to helping achieve their goals. Despite this, there are differences in the ways they think about and approach traditional media, because of their different strategies and theories of social change.
I spoke to members of Blockade Australia and Disrupt Burrup Hub to understand the role of media in their overarching strategies.
Case Studies
Blockade Australia Point to the Roots of Climate Crisis
Blockade Australia campaigners told me their strategy was to fight systemic forces like capitalism and colonialism by educating the public on the causes of the climate crisis and by building political power through direct action.
The group first sprang into action in November 2021 with a series of blockades targeting the world’s largest coal port in Newcastle, New South Wales. Since then, they’ve held periods of disruption, which they refer to as ‘mobilisations’, targeting various locations including the Sydney CBD and several ports across Australia. In June 2022, armed police raided a rural property where around 40 people associated with Blockade Australia were present, prompting significant media coverage. Blockade Australia members have faced hefty sentences and jail time for taking part in direct action.
Matt, who preferred to be referred to by only his first name, has worked as part of the group’s media team during mobilisations. He told me the campaign was focussed on promoting an understanding of the systemic drivers of the climate crisis.
“[We’re trying to] bring the focus back off individual bad [fossil fuel] projects, that maybe is more of the way that a lot of the environmental movement frames things, towards the focus being on the economic and political system that is overseeing the broad-scale destruction that we believe is happening,” he said.
“What we’re doing when we’re talking to people is trying to [promote] that understanding, that the climate crisis is a threat to life on earth, that the systems that are in power on this continent and around the world are causing the crisis and have no capacity, let alone will, to change.
“We have a call to action for people to involve themselves in direct action and the building of a movement that is looking at building power towards changing the fundamental structures of the way that decision-making is run on this continent and around the world.”
Kloda, who also preferred to be referred to by her first name, is another member of Blockade Australia’s media team and has been involved in developing the campaign’s messaging and media infrastructure. She told me part of the campaign’s strategy was to build a “culture of resistance” and work towards mass mobilisation.
Both Matt and Kloda agreed that communicating with the public through traditional media was important for executing Blockade Australia’s campaign strategy – though less important than causing meaningful disruption. Blockade Australia’s website says the campaign focusses disruption at “economic bottlenecks and centres of political power” to cause “social, political and economic disruption”.
Kloda said mainstream media offered “another way for us to tell our story, to reach more people, to gain support or for them to be able to participate or be sympathetic.” In other words, traditional media could be used as a mobilising tool to build involvement and support.
Matt said the traditional media was useful for getting Blockade Australia’s messaging on the severity and causes of the climate crisis into the public consciousness. “We’ve been able to get a form of discourse about the Australian state into the mainstream media, off the back of our use of direct action,” he said.
“If we’re not getting good media, it’s not like the actions don’t have value, but we’re getting less mileage off the efforts to make those actions happen.”

Disrupt Burrup Hub Brand Fossil Fuels as Toxic
Disrupt Burrup Hub is a campaign group with a goal of ending industrial expansion at Murujuga on Western Australia’s Burrup Peninsula. Woodside has operated gas facilities there since the 1980s, and has plans for expansion of its Burrup Hub. Campaigners oppose expansion because of potential climate impacts and concerns for Aboriginal cultural heritage in the area, which is home to more than a million rock art engravings.
The campaign began in January 2023 when two artists vandalised the iconic Frederick McCubbin portrait ‘Down on His Luck’ with a spray painted Woodside logo. A media storm broke out in August 2023 when Disrupt Burrup Hub campaigners (including myself) were intercepted by police before a planned protest outside the Woodside CEO’s home. Disrupt Burrup Hub has also blockaded Woodside’s operations at Murujuga.
Jesse Noakes is a member of Disrupt Burrup Hub’s media team. His focus has been on developing campaign messaging and liaising with traditional media.
“Broadly speaking, the strategy of Disrupt Burrup Hub was to brand Woodside’s Burrup Hub as the most toxic fossil fuel project in the country, and develop messaging around that to create public awareness of the Burrup Hub and its impacts, and to convert that into political pressure to prevent its further expansion,” he told me.
Like Blockade Australia, Disrupt Burrup Hub hope their actions can help precipitate a broader mass mobilisation, largely by demonstrating the success of direct action in achieving political aims.
“There was also a secondary or broader goal to use the Burrup Hub and mobilising around it as a focal point or a stimulus or trigger for wider movement organising around climate issues within Western Australia and nationally,” Jesse said.
He said gaining media coverage was central to Disrupt Burrup Hub’s strategy and a primary focus was to “generate as much coverage in mainstream media as we could.”
Tahlia Stolarski has worked as part of Disrupt Burrup Hub’s media team, primarily on branding, design, and social media. She said the campaign was focussed on “attacking Woodside’s social licence, general awareness raising about Woodside and what they’re doing up there [at Murujuga], and movement building: getting more people involved in the climate movement in general” – all of which involved communicating through traditional media.
“The point of Disrupt Burrup Hub was getting attention, getting that media attention, and creating a bit of buzz and hype about it,” Tahlia said.
Different Strategies, Different Audiences
Both Blockade Australia and Disrupt Burrup Hub aim to gain mainstream media coverage, but attempt to influence different audiences by doing so.
For Blockade Australia, the mainstream media is primarily a tool used to connect with the public, particularly those who might be sympathetic to their message.
“The people we’re trying to connect with first are people who have on their mind that climate collapse is happening, but maybe they’ve been spending a lot of time going to rallies and trying really hard to make change within the system. We’re trying to reach them and say, ‘there is an alternative way of making change, which comes through building physical pressure,’” Matt said.
“We are [also] trying to push into the mainstream, keeping the concern about climate on people’s radar, because generally I believe it’s in most people’s interest to try and zone out the fact that climate change exists.
“Us getting some penetration into the mainstream media space keeps the broader conversation in people’s mind. If it’s on people’s mind, they can get concerned about it, and we are trying to be somewhere where that concern can go to become a more powerful form of action.”
Disrupt Burrup Hub, with their narrower focus on specific fossil fuel projects and policy concerns, are more focussed on using the mainstream media as a tool to influence particular political decision-makers.
“I don’t think it was necessarily about communicating a message publicly as an optimal priority as much as it was generating political pressure, and that meant focussing on the outlets the government were the most concerned with,” Jesse said.
“The ultimate [audience] were political-decision makers in relation to the various proposals to expand Woodside’s Burrup Hub.
“The political audience is probably nestled within a public audience as a means of reaching them … At times I think we would have prioritised getting our message in the most politically impactful channels over reaching a wider number of people.”

What Makes for ‘Good Media’?
Can unfavourable media coverage help direct action campaigners achieve their aims?
Direct action campaigns often receive media coverage that is negative in tone and sentiment. Activists are regularly depicted as extreme, irresponsible, and dangerous, particularly by corporate media, which is often owned by individuals and entities with financial investments in fossil fuels.
Data from Meltwater Media Monitoring suggests 11.9% of media coverage of Blockade Australia during 2023 was negative in sentiment, while only 0.5% was positive. (The rest being neutral.) The media was harsher – and more polarised – towards Disrupt Burrup Hub: 59.8% of coverage in 2023 was negative in sentiment, while 4.4% was positive. This can perhaps be explained in part by the concentrated ownership of Western Australian media by vested interests – but there are also differences in the ways the two campaigns think about media sentiment and approach the media.
Campaigners from both groups agreed that the amount of media coverage their actions received was more important to them than the sentiment of the coverage.
Kloda from Blockade Australia said audiences were aware of the biases of mainstream media.
“I feel like the people that we’re trying to talk to know we’re being portrayed in a particular way to benefit the narrative of the newspaper or whatever who’s putting it out there, so I’m not sure it matters that much,” she said.
Kloda noted Blockade Australia had also received coverage that was positive in sentiment, particularly when they were framed by more progressive outlets like The Guardian as victims of repressive policing or anti-protest laws.
Matt said he was often surprised Blockade Australia’s media coverage wasn’t more negative in sentiment.
“The main news channels, Fairfax and The Guardian and these sort of things, if we make it to the stage of being published, I think we get a reasonable run at being able to explain why we’re taking action and why we’re motivated to take action,” he said.
Kloda said Blockade Australia also measured the success of their media coverage by how well-represented their aims and messages were.
“One of the things we wanted from the media this mobilisation was actually to have our messaging properly represented,” she said. “In the past … [Blockade Australia] definitely got presented as an anti-coal campaign, and that’s not what it is: It’s about the whole system. One of the positive results [in 2024] was people were actually saying, ‘They’re trying to challenge the whole system.’”
Matt had mixed feelings about negative media sentiment. “We also don’t want to create a situation where we’re broadly hated,” he said.
“Yes, good media is important and it’s better than having media that is just slamming us, but also, probably getting some media is better than getting nothing at all.”
Disrupt Burrup were even more willing to embrace negative press.
“I would say most media coverage would be good, regardless of whether it was ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ of Disrupt Burrup Hub,” Tahlia said. “As long as they’re talking about us and Woodside, it’s considered good coverage.”
Disrupt Burrup was featured on the front page of The West Australian newspaper multiple times in 2023 with highly negative framing, depicted as “eco-fanatics”, “green extremists” and as “thick as two planks of wood”.
Tahlia said she “loved it” when The West Australian – which is majority-owned by billionaire Kerry Stokes, who also has a stake in the gas industry – ran these stories. “It’s kind of like, ‘You’re an idiot. You’re doing what we want you to do,’” she said.
Jesse says Disrupt Burrup Hub was basically striking a deal with the media: “Tell our story, and if we’re the bad guys in the story, then that’s the price we pay, that’s part of the deal.”
“Oftentimes, in much of the media coverage we got from outlets traditionally hostile to our interests, the headline might have been superficially negative, but if you read the body of the story there were still a lot of column inches given over to talking about what we wanted to talk about,” he said.
“There’s something I’ve talked about at times of trading in personal capital for political capital, in other words, personal reputation for political impact. We weren’t too concerned if we were the good guys in the story, as long as the story was about the Burrup Hub and what we wanted to talk about.”
Being willing to lean in to ‘negative’ coverage may help a campaign establish more of a media presence. Disrupt Burrup Hub, as well as receiving a higher proportion of coverage with negative sentiment than Blockade Australia in 2023, also received more than twice as much total media coverage, according to Meltwater data. This suggests there may be a trade-off between quantity and sentiment of coverage. Activists should consider this when designing their campaigns, and consider what approaches best suits their strategy.
Media and Actions go Hand-in-Hand
Activists from both groups agreed that good action design was crucial for maximising the potential of traditional media coverage and achieving ultimate campaign goals.
Matt from Blockade Australia said it was important to make sure actions were “media-worthy”.
“The media and the general public seem to get sick of seeing the same thing or versions of the same thing pretty quickly, so I think it’s pretty essential that if you want to get penetration in the mainstream media or do really well on socials that you actually do something that is kind of different or more powerful otherwise I think it’s going to be really hard to get noticed.”
Jesse from Disrupt Burrup Hub said good action design ensured media stories about the campaign included campaign messaging.
“If you’re doing your job well, by talking about you they are implicitly talking about the message,” he said.
“An action should be such that the message one is seeking to convey is coded in.”
He said this could be done through visual elements and other forms of symbolism. As an example, he pointed to the spray-painting of the McCubbin painting as symbolically representing Woodside’s damage to the Murujuga rock art, and so inherently telling the campaign’s narrative in a way that was obvious in even hostile media coverage. A similar approach is to ensure banners and slogans are always visible in photos and videos of the action.
The planning of both media and actions should be coordinated to ensure maximum impact.

Plan for Success
Despite the ascendancy of social and alternative media, traditional media remains an important tool of mass communication for direct action groups. Both Blockade Australia and Disrupt Burrup Hub see the importance of engaging with mainstream media – while remaining aware of the fact that corporate media is often aligned with forces they oppose.
There’s no one ‘right’ way for direct action campaigners to approach the media – it depends on their objectives and theories of change. However, to maximise the chance of success, it’s vital for activists to plan their media work carefully, in the same way they should plan their actions.
Campaigners should ensure their tactics align with their strategy, and that they keep the big picture in mind.
About the Author
Gerard Mazza has worked as a campaigner, writer, school teacher, radio producer, and bartender. He writes about power and politics in Western Australia for the newsletter The Last Place on Earth.
Movement Monitor Fellows Project
This resource was produced as part of the Movement Monitor Fellows project. Three climate activists were given support to produce resources that promote knowledge and understanding of the Australian climate movement, its practices and its impacts.
Explore the resources:
- First Nations and Multicultural Voices from the Climate Movement
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