Environmental Risks in Newspaper Coverage: A Framing Analysis of Investigative Reports on Environmental Problems in 10 Chinese Newspapers

Economic modernization has been China's national priority since the establishment of the People's Republic. Since the authorities retain control over the media, which is also now subject to commercial influences, it might be expected that the Chinese news media would construct a discourse of assurance, endorsing economic modernization. A framing analysis of newspaper investigative reports on environmental problems in this article, however, shows that these reports have portrayed environmental problems in a manner that opposes rather than supports the national priority for economic growth. It challenges rather than reinforces the current institutional discourse of development and criticizes rather than contributes to the present structure of the capitalist mode of production in China. In this case, the prominence of the critical reflective discourse demonstrates the critical role investigative journalism potentially plays in arousing the public's awareness of risks in order to create a society in which such risks can be minimized. Factors in the wider social context contribute to our understanding of the critical discourse of environmental problems.     

Ecolinguistics,GIS, and Corpus Linguistics for the Analysis of the Rosemont Copper Mine Debate

This article details an integration of geographical information system (GIS) and corpus linguistics (CL) techniques for an ecolinguistic analysis of a contentious, environmental debate in Arizona, USA. The application of GIS and CL procedures enabled the mapping of place name mentions present within two interest group corpora as well as the mapping of particular meanings and representations of specific places prominent in the debate, that is, maps representing both places and the discursive representations of those places were produced. The corpus-aided analysis and the GIS visualizations exhibit how different interest groups refer to and represent geographical places within their texts and how these references to and representations of places index ideological positions towards the mine and the environment. This integrated CL–GIS approach to the study of environmental discourse provides insights into the discursive representation of place and the importance that references to places serve within environmental discourse. The article briefly discusses the ecolinguistics framework underpinning the work, explains the GIS–CL approach, displays and interprets corpus findings and GIS visualizations, and details implications for additional GIS–CL research for environmental discourse.     

Policy networks,stakeholder interactions and climate adaptation in the region of South East Queensland,Australia

The strategic use of science in regional policy-making forums often assumes collaborative interactions between stakeholders. However, other types of stakeholder interactions are possible. This paper uses the ecology of games to frame an investigation into stakeholder participation in the policy networks for regional climate change planning for South East Queensland, Australia. We tracked organisational participation in policy forums between 2008 and 2012. We then used a novel bipartite network theoretical approach to identify participation by different types of organisations across shared multiple forums, which we argue prefaces: cooperation, collaboration, support or advocacy. Network analysis was then combined with semi-structured interviews to access how scientific information was utilised across the regional network. Our results suggest that stakeholder interactions were predominately used to advocate for organisational agendas. Advocacy artificially narrows the scope of possible policy options and represents a biased, selective use of information. While advocacy is an important part of policy process, as a counter balance, explicit efforts are needed to recurrently expand the scope of policy options.     

The Circulation of Climate Change Denial Online: Rhetorical and Networking Strategies on Facebook

This study uses a topical, rhetorical approach to analyze how climate change denial circulates online through the 25 most popular posts on the Watts Up With That and the Global Warming Policy Forum Facebook pages. These groups adopt the appearance of credibility through reposting and hyperlinking, thus establishing a supportive, networked space among other skeptical sites, while distancing readers from original sources of scientific information. Visitors use a variety of rhetorical strategies to echo posts’ main themes and to discredit alternative viewpoints. Differences between the topoi and rhetorical strategies of WUWT and the GWPF show that the climate change denial community is multifaceted and makes use of social media affordances to craft the appearance of legitimacy. This project contributes to our knowledge of how scientific information is co-opted, manipulated, and circulated in online spaces and how online features shape environmental discourse practices.     

Anthropocentric Distance in National Geographic's Environmental Aesthetic

Tourism is the way we understand the world: tourists travel in an increasingly mediated environment in which ubiquitous promotional material and other popular artifacts employ stunning images and romantic travel narratives to describe local environments. Tourist texts “sell” local landscapes to entice visitors, employing an environmental aesthetic that urges travel. With its mission to “explore the planet,” the National Geographic Society contributes to this tourist aesthetic. This essay examines three special issues on Africa simultaneously published by the National Geographic Society: its official journal, National Geographic, and its sister magazines, National Geographic Traveler, and National Geographic Adventure. The photographic images and travel narratives in these tourist texts produce an environmental aesthetic that positions the traveler at the center of these environments. This essay first analyzes how National Geographic constructs Africa's environmental landscapes. These magazines depict Africa as a vast desert plain, a wilderness theme park, and a part of the global scenery. The second part of the analysis examines how National Geographic locates the tourist in these environments. I discuss how National Geographic positions the tourist as protagonist, expert, and hero of Africa's environment. In the conclusions, I argue this environmental aesthetic renders Africa invisible through anthropocentric distance, and I discuss the need for more critical readings of tourist discourse.     

Economics-Oriented Discourse Strategies in Environmental Advocacy

Scholars and practitioners are engaging in a fierce debate over the implications of using market-based discourse in communicating environmental problems and solutions. However, there has been less attention to exactly who is using such economic discourse and how it is combined with other discourses. Prior researchers have proposed tripartite frameworks for categorizing discursive strategies around pro-economic, anti-economic, and non-economic metaphors, which are here applied to eight U.S. environmental advocacy organizations’ press releases. An original text-analytic dictionary of pro-economic, anti-economic, and non-economic discourse is used to distinguish between the proposed discourse strategies. This analysis indicates that economics-oriented discourse strategies are more complex and varied than previously suggested. A more nuanced framework is proposed.     

Towards deliberative coastal governance: insights from South Africa and the Mississippi Delta

Coastal sustainability is elusive in South Africa and the Mississippi delta. These case studies and convergent literatures demonstrate the merits of reconceptualising coastal management as a transformative practice of deliberative governance. A normative framework is presented that focuses attention on underpinning deliberative outcomes to enable governance actors and networks to build cognitive, democratic, sociopolitical and institutional capacity to transform unsustainable and maladaptive coastal practices. But operationalising such intentions is complex and contested and requires a volte-face in thinking and practice. The South African and Mississippi delta experiences provide insights about how to develop a deliberative praxis of coastal governance based on consideration of the choice of process, timeliness, quality of process, equity and representation, connections to the policy cycle, impact, implementation and institutionalisation.     

Whose Discourse Is It Anyway? Understanding Resistance through the Rise of “Barstool Biology” in Nature Conservation

This study examines what happens when contentious lay citizens harness the technical-ecological repertoire of experts as means of challenging nature conservation policy. The causes, manifestations, and implications of this phenomenon are elucidated through a critical discourse analysis. The case study is based on the wolf reintroduction project in Europe, with particular focus on Sweden, using illegal hunting discussions as a point of entry within the hunting community. It reveals the deployment of three topoi, which are defined as stock arguments situated within a discourse. Analysis shows how while some topoi often incur short-term gains in the debate because of their scientific guise, they are fundamentally relegated as folk science (or “barstool biology”) by government experts and, in some cases, contribute to the further marginalization of other knowledges. Acquiescence to this discourse is shown to greatly impede the debate. Finally, the study shows how lack of trust in the public dialog, which hunters openly recognize to be colonized by ecological expertise, results in increasingly noncommunicative forms of resistance toward policy.     

Overcoming Environmental Challenges by Antagonizing Environmental Protesters: The Turkish Government Discourse against Anti-hydroelectric Power Plants Movements

Due to the growing public importance of environmental concerns in the contemporary world, governments that prioritize economic interests over environmental concerns may try to counter environmental challenges not by openly declaring that they do not want to consider environmental demands, but by attempting to antagonize the protesters who voice such demands. This essay explores such a governmental response by analyzing the discourse articulated by the Turkish Government against movements that oppose the construction of hydroelectric power plants (HEPPs) on environmental grounds. In particular, the analysis focuses on how HEPPs, environmental claims and demands of movements, and environmental protesters are represented within the pro-HEPP discourse, and in what ways these representations appeal to popular perceptions. It is demonstrated that the discourse of the government attempts to counter the challenges of protesters by establishing an antagonist relation between the protesters and society by representing HEPPs as crucial for the economic development and, therefore, as compatible with the interests of society as a whole. Moreover, it also attempts to achieve this through portraying the protesters as criminals and terrorists who block the economic development of the country and pose significant threats to the commonwealth, not for legitimate environmental concerns but for some dubious motives and incentives. It is concluded that, with this approach, the government has managed to gain popular consent not only for the construction of HEPPs, but also for the repression of such movements.     

E-participation for environmental sustainability in transitional urban China

Using information and communication technologies (ICTs), e-participation is a tool that promotes the inclusion of the public in participative and deliberative decision-making processes, thus contributing to a transformation of the interaction between government and citizens in environmental governance and sustainable development. In a number of Chinese cities, citizens increasingly draw on ICTs to promote environmental sustainability and to encourage community-based actions aimed to address various environmental concerns. The potential success of e-participation and the role of ICTs in China has, however, not been well explored. The objective of this study is to understand the role that ICTs can play in promoting public participation about environmental sustainability issues in urban China. Based on an online survey with 630 respondents, the study aims to: (1) analyze what public motivations, perception/attitudes and actions drive environmental e-participation; (2) identify barriers to e-participation, and (3) assess the different applications and functions of ICT for citizen participation in environmental sustainability. The analysis illustrates how ICTs have helped the public to obtain sensitive information about sustainability issues, to mobilize people and to gain media coverage for their actions. The central finding is that new technologies have taken citizen engagement to new heights online. More specifically, the age of ICTs has unleashed a stronger public voice on environmental governance and sustainability issues in urban China, which does not go unnoticed by the Chinese state authorities.     

The WTO,ecology, and Russia: The time to make decisions

The relationship between the principle of free trade and nature conservation is one of the most acute and multifaceted problems in international business. The diversity of WTO activities implies the necessity of interdisciplinary studies utilizing the expertise and experience of specialists in international law and ecologists. In this paper, provisions of the WTO set of agreements and procedures for dispute settlement within the WTO framework are considered as applied to environmental protection.     

Green-Tinted Glasses: How Do Pro-Environmental Citizens Conceptualize Environmental Sustainability?

Recent research has shown that many Australians see pro-environmental behaviour as desirable and identify as being green. However when compared to other countries, Australians score poorly on pro-environmental behaviour measures, engaging mostly in tokenistic pro-environmental actions, and demonstrate low levels of concern for the environment. In this article, we examine this tension through exploring the meaning of the term sustainability to Australian participants who self-identify as pro-environmental. Twenty-six interviews were conducted and analysed using a causal layered analysis. Through the examination of participants’ environmental discourse and practices, some of the deeper socio-psychological processes influencing pro-environmental behaviour are revealed. While participants aspired to be green, their actions were bound by cultural traditions and world views that perpetuate environmental degradation. Participants struggled to define the term sustainability and held self-enhancing motives for adopting what they identify as a pro-environmental identity. These findings highlight the influence of collective cultural constructs in shaping how pro-environmental behaviours are understood and enacted.     

Forging New Directions in Science and Environmental Politics and Policy: How Can Co-operation, Deliberation and Decision be Brought Together?

Science, politics and environmental policy have for several years been encountering social and institutional as well as scientific challenges, national and international. The normative basis of all sciences is pressurised from three sides: by awareness of the public, who claims more transparency and sensibility from the scientific institutions regarding factual or possible impacts of science-based industrial progress; by the industries, which try to speed up and intensify the industrialisation of knowledge; and by the public policies, which want to see the sciences engaged in ways to mitigate unintended consequences of economic, ecological and social developments. At the same time, environmental policy is undergoing a tremendous sea change both in conceptual and practical matters. Since the Brundtland Report in 1987 and accelerated after UNCED 1992, environmental policy has been struggling to become a groundbreaking new paradigm for the capacity of resolving social and political issues as well. Any successful attempt to alter traditional institutional and mental structures in policy-making toward sustainability presupposes a renewed association of co-operation, deliberation and decision making. Results from theory of democracy, studies in science and technology, and evaluation studies in environmental policy and politics can be utilised for this context.     

Food security and seasonal climate information: Kenyan challenges

This article examines challenges to food security in areas especially vulnerable to the effects of climate variability and change, and the potential contribution of seasonal climate forecasting. Drawing on long-term study of the way environmental information is developed and circulates, and on recent fieldwork in Western Kenya, the article describes how climate variability exacerbates food insecurity; the kinds of climate information that are now being developed; and the kinds of technologies, organizations, and expertise that will be needed if new forms of climate information are to benefit vulnerable populations. Findings indicate that new forms of expertise need to be developed at all scales, and that linkage among stakeholders and between organizations functioning at different scales will be a considerable challenge.     

Unravelling the Threads: Discourses of Sustainability and Consumption in an Online Forum

This article analyzes an online discussion that followed an article published by UK environmental activist and journalist George Monbiot in The Guardian online newspaper. The analysis addresses the ways in which participants in an online forum debate responded to the tensions and contradictions between lifestyle, consumption, and sustainability highlighted in the original article. The discursive construction of class, green political orientations, and identities; visions of “the good life”; and appeals to religion and science are highlighted throughout the analysis—as are the discursive strategies for positioning self, other, and audience in the debate. The argument emphasizes the heterogeneity of discursive positioning and reflects on the role of social media in the politics of consumption and sustainability, especially given the inherent reflexivity of web forums as online communicative forms.     

A discourse-analytical perspective on sustainability assessment: interpreting sustainable development in practice

Sustainable development is a ubiquitously used concept in public decision-making: it refers to an ideal vision of global society where human development and environmental quality go hand in hand. Logically, any decision-supporting process aiming at facilitating and steering society toward a sustainable future then seems desirable. Assessing the sustainability of policy decisions is, however, influenced by what sustainable development is believed to entail, as different discourses coexist under the umbrella of the sustainable development meta-discourse. This paper proposes a typology of sustainable development discourses, and, subsequently, applies a discourse-analytical lens on two practical cases of sustainability assessment in different institutional and geographical contexts (in Belgium and in Benin). The results indicate that sustainability assessments tend to be influenced mainly by the consensual ‘sustainable development as integration’ discourse, while also providing a forum for dialogue between different discourses. The results shed light on context-specific discursive and institutional dynamics for the development and application of sustainability assessment. Acknowledging these dynamics as well as sustainable development’s inherent interpretational limits can lead to an improved use of sustainable development as a decision-guiding strategy.     

Changing institutions for environmental policy and politics in New Era China

ABSTRACT

The evolution of Chinese environmental policy and politics can be better understood in the broader context of institutional changes that have taken place since the late 1970s. In this study, an analytical framework was established to analyze how overall institutional changes were reflected in the roles of relationships between governmental and non-governmental actors engaged in environmental governance. Institutional changes were observed at three levels: informal institutions (cultural traditions, and political ideology); formal institutions (the polity, political system, property rights, and judiciary); and governing mechanisms (structures, regulatory approaches, and incentives). This analysis of interactions between institutional changes and the changing environmental process explained not only the drives and constraints behind China’s environmental policy evolution so far but also shed light on future challenges and opportunities.     

Green Screen or Smokescreen? Hollywood's Messages about Nature and the Environment

This paper examines ideologies about nature and the environment in popular, animated Hollywood films—including The Lorax, Wall-E, and Ice Age 2—through a symptomatic reading. The primary goal of the analysis is to elucidate key omissions in these texts through an assessment of the problematic—defined in this research as an a-priori answer to perceived audience concerns regarding the role of consumerism and corporate culture in environmental problems. Silences in the films revolve around: how environmental problems are defined; what the consequences are; who the responsible parties are; and what potential solutions exist to mitigate them. The significance of the research is underscored by the formation of an increasingly intimate relationship between children, consumer culture, and commercial media in the USA, as well as the increasingly dire information emerging about global environmental issues. This analysis reveals the dual, often conflicting, messages that commercial film provides for its young audiences about pivotal environmental problems and their potential resolution.     

The Structuration of Public Participation: Organizing Environmental Control

A growing body of participation literature muses over why current mechanisms of public participation persist when they so often fail; calls for expanding the conceptual boundaries of participation beyond institutional mechanisms, and highlights the role communication, and allied concepts such as discourse and rhetoric, play in participatory processes. Given these diverse calls, environmental public participation can benefit from building a mid-level theoretical terrain. In this essay, I draw upon the sociological tradition of Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory and parallel systems thinking which foreground a structure-action mode of analysis. Through this lens I articulate the basic premises of a structuration model for environmental public participation, pointing especially to issues of agency, which involves ontological security and ontological competence, social systems, and various elements within duality of structure, with an eye toward communication-centered research. This theoretical space further indicates the possibilities of connecting the material realm of action/practice with the symbolic domain of environmental self.