Quoting “the Environment”: Touchstones on Earth

Media influence public awareness through agenda setting and framing of news by selecting what is published, how frequently and through what frames. This content analysis compares portrayals of climate change based on political ideology of the media. It examines daily coverage of climate change in Santiago, Chile by the conservative, El Mercurio, newspaper, and the liberal, La Nación. Twenty percent of the 1,628 articles published in 2003, 2005, and 2007 which included the words “cambio climático” (climate change) or “calentamiento global” (global warming) were analyzed for frequency, content, images, and frames. The liberal newspaper published twice as many articles that were twice as long, with four times as many illustrations about climate change. They presented more thematic and diverse frames than the conservative newspaper. Government sources and conflict frames dominated both newspapers, reflecting some similar maturation processes of climate change coverage found in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere.     

Internet Memes,Media Frames,and the Conflicting Logics of Climate Change Discourse

ABSTRACT

Media frames have been applied to news information for decades to influence the manner in which news is both delivered and interpreted. However, media frames have tended to focus on traditional news media channels, but the emergence of new media platforms now necessitates a recalibration of how media framing is understood in relation to media and communication studies. With a focus on the issue of climate change, this study explores how framing is employed by the phenomenon of Internet memes in the new media landscape. Specifically, memes presented demonstrate the representation of five common media frames from the perspectives of both the “convinced” and “skeptical” logics. It is argued that through the use of common meme templates combined with the typical humorous or ironic message they convey, Internet memes represent a potentially powerful form of socio-political participation in the online community.     

Communicating Haze Crisis Online: Comparing Traditional Media News and New Media Perspectives in Singapore

ABSTRACT

To understand haze-related online communication in Southeast Asia, this exploratory study took a mixed method approach to conduct web analysis of online communication during haze crisis in Singapore, followed by textual analysis of traditional and new media content during peak days. First, web analytics showed that Singapore’s haze online communication occurred mostly on the Twitter platform with primary negative sentiments. Next, textual analysis results found that majority of traditional media-affiliated news provided informative haze reports and centered on positive measurements taken by government and authorities, similar to Public Information Model for crisis management. In comparison, haze-related new media content had diverse topics reflecting laymen’s viewpoints with critical tones and negative sentiments. News portals and blogs used two-way asymmetrical and symmetrical model for crisis management, respectively. Additionally, Social Cognitive Theory’s media diversity perspectives were applied to understand people’s media choices among traditional and new media during natural crisis with environmental influences.     

Moving Society to a Sustainable Future: The Framing of Sustainability in a Constructive Media Outlet

News reporting on sustainability has been criticized for (1) having a limited coverage of solutions, (2) reporting on solutions with a negative bias, (3) being dominated by sources from government and mainstream business, and (4) promoting frames that prioritize the role of the market and techno-scientific solutions, which leave unchallenged the unsustainable behavior of consumer societies and the focus on economic growth. This study was the first to examine how sustainability is reported in a constructive media outlet and found that articles (1) consistently elaborated solutions, (2) described them in optimistic ways, (3) quoted various sources, and (4) developed a frame that challenged consumerism and critiqued society’s preoccupation with growth while helping to imagine a desirable sustainable future. It is thus argued that this novel, constructive approach to journalism can help move society to a sustainable future by expanding the repertoire of culturally-resonant stories to live by.     

Framing Renewable Energy: A Comparative Study of Newspapers in Australia and Sweden

Australia and Sweden display very different institutional settings and contexts for the production of environmental journalism. This empirical study examined how two major quality newspapers in Sweden and Australia have framed renewable energy as an environmental, political, scientific, economic and civil society issue. A deductive, quantitative methodological approach was used to identify dominant frames and actors in articles in The Australian (Australia) and Dagens Nyheter (Sweden) between October 2010 and June 2011 2010/2011. The findings suggest that the attention given to different types of renewable energy in the two newspapers and how issues were framed was contingent on the domestication of the discussion of renewable energy in the two countries. Reporting on renewable energy in both newspapers was characterized by a focus on “elite” actors and economic frames, the absence of civil society frames and negative (The Australian) or ambiguous (Dagens Nyheter) environmental frames. The study extends our understanding of the contextual conditions that enable and limit journalists when reporting environmental issues.     

Questioning the Doubt: Climate Skepticism in German Newspaper Reporting on COP17

Despite numerous international studies on climate change, there is skepticism in the media and it is prominent in public opinion polls. This article focuses in particular on the framing of climate skepticism in Germany, a country that, in the main, is said to be convinced about climate change. By using a two-step content analysis of 379 news articles (print and online) we demonstrate that climate skepticism is present in German news media reporting on the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban, South Africa. We identify two overarching skepticism frames: skepticism about the phenomenon of climate change and about climate science. Our analysis further shows that climate skepticism is not exclusive to a specific political ideology, even though a newspaper's ideology may influence how skeptical frames are being evaluated.     

Environmental Communication as Nexus

This essay examines zoos as a site of struggle in the construction of meanings and memories of human–nature relations. Modern zoos are symbols of imperial power and celebrations of the domination of nature. The grafting of “tropic worlds” onto these monuments of modernity renders the meaning of zoos more ambiguous, reflecting discursive struggles over the meaning of nature, questions about the wisdom of development and progress, recognition of the need for conservation and preservation, and nostalgia for a nature that has been lost. Through a close textual reading of “The Rainforest” at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, this essay explores the simulation of nature in zoos and “tropic worlds” in North American cities. These hyperreal spaces contain an extraordinary amount of the history and politics of the culture that constructs them for fascination, edification, conservation, commodification, and salvation. At stake in these simulated natures is not only the constructions of nature as spectacle and animals as commodities, but also the use of knowledge to maintain certain forms of domination and the “writing” of industrial culture's historical memory of nature and human–nature relations.     

Developments in the Framing of Climate Change as a Public Health Issue in US Newspapers

News media are major channels for the transmission of information to the public and deliver news about the latest developments regarding health issues such as climate change. How the media frame such information may enhance public understanding and enable appropriate responses by individuals and communities. This study follows up on previous research examining media portrayals of climate change in US newspapers from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2008. Here, we content analyze 270 news stories on climate change as a public health issue from five US newspapers between 1 January 2011 and 31 December 2012. Findings indicate that the total number of articles about climate change declined while emphasis on the public health dimension of climate change increased. The types of generic news frames (i.e., dramatic/substantive) most frequently used did not considerably change across the two time periods, however. To explain this, we discuss ways in which people may assess and spark change in news framing of public issues to better reach and influence a range of audiences.     

Climate Skepticism in British Newspapers, 2007–2011

Climate skepticism in the UK media has not been a major focus of recent research. This paper aims to help fill the gap by looking at the incidence of skeptical voices in UK newspapers across three periods: 2007, 2009/2010, and 2010/2011. After analyzing more than 3200 articles, it finds that skeptical voices increased their presence markedly across all newspapers and all types of articles in the second period, and maintained a significant presence in many in the third. Uncontested skeptical voices were particularly prevalent in opinion pieces and editorials in right-leaning newspapers in the second. It also finds that skeptical voices or opinions were more likely to be included in pieces written by in-house non-specialist columnists than by environment editors or correspondents. The negative implications of the results for public understanding and the quality of public debate are then explored.     

The US News Media,Polarization on Climate Change,and Pathways to Effective Communication

The news media are a central source of information about climate change for most people. Through frames, media transmit information that shape how people understand climate change as well as the actions they are ultimately willing to support to address the problem. This article reviews the rise of climate change in the US news media and the emergence of related frames in public discourse. In doing so, it traces the roots of partisan divisions over climate change and highlights the role that events, journalistic practices, technological changes, and individual-level factors such as ideological and partisan identity have played in fostering polarization. The article concludes by identifying the core challenges facing communicators who seek to build consensus for action on climate change and highlights the most viable solutions for achieving success.     

Reframing Ecotage as Ecoterrorism: News and the Discourse of Fear

This study examines how certain Western institutional discourses reproduce particular human relationships with nature. The analysis focuses upon the institutional setting of the zoo, examining long-standing multi-voiced debates about zoos and exploring the contemporary zoo's conservation discourses and cultural, lexical, and spatial elements of gaze and power. The author contextualizes zoo discourses within Western ideological environmental dialectics, including those of Mastery–Harmony, Othering–Connection, and Exploitation–Idealism. The author relates these discussions to her empirical observations of how certain discursive themes are reproduced and complicated within a leading American zoo. In the tradition of critical research that advocates for social change, the essay concludes with analysis-driven discussion about possibilities for zoos to transform their core configurations to more progressively work as agents for systemic cultural and environmental change.     

Image Themes and Frames in US Print News Stories about Climate Change

Research on frames in climate change (CC) news coverage has advanced substantially over the past decade, but the emerging understanding of the framing role of visual imagery that often accompanies news texts remains fragmented. We report on a set of image frames identified through content analysis of 350 images associated with 200 news articles from 11 US newspaper and magazine sources from 1969 through late 2009. We reliably identified and quantified the occurrence of 118 image themes. We then hierarchically clustered the themes based on their co-occurrence in images to identify an integrated framework of 42 image frames. We highlight frames associated with particular types of images (e.g., photographs and maps) or geographic regions. From among the full set of frames, we identify 15 that commonly appear in US CC news imagery and discuss the ways in which image frames make salient (or render invisible) particular categories of people, geographic regions, aspects of science, and spheres of activity.     

“Hey Friend,Buy Green”: Social Media Use to Influence Eco-Purchasing Involvement

This study addresses the use of message carriers to convey corporate social responsibility information to promote eco-purchasing involvement. The work tests various media formats transmitted via social media. The effects of corporate vs. peer communication in a corporate social responsibility campaign in stimulating self-reported eco-purchasing involvement are indicated. The research varies communication dimensions of a fictional corporate social responsibility campaign sent through social media. Multiple media formats; new release; article; and advertisement were tested, as was the inclusion of social media persuasive sentiment. The analysis of source/format combinations and source/format/sentiment combinations found statistically significant differences for consumer-to-consumer communication in stimulating eco-purchasing involvement in certain circumstances. This research suggests an emerging role for the consumer communicator as a content co-creator and validates the effective use of articles and news releases instead of advertising on social media, yielding managerial and scholarly implications.     

Resilience as Discourse

Resilience as a frame is increasingly appearing in grant funding, news stories, academic journals, and organization missions. Across these sites, resilience is positioned as an ability to cope, characterized by bouncing back, regaining control, and reducing vulnerability to change. How did resilience come to be understood in these terms? What are the problems with resilience's frames and the practices that produce them? How might we become resilient differently? Using a Foucaultian archaeology, I examine sites and practices that produce resilience as discourse. I analyze resilience's origins in biophysical sciences, systems perspectives that define ways of knowing, visual models that constrain the emergence of new ideas, and persistent dialectics that narrowly order relationships within the world. I propose changes in the discourse for more affective and ecological modes of becoming resilient.     

Global Climate Talks from Failure to Cooperation and Hope: Swedish News Framings of COP15 and COP21

The purpose of this study is to offer an analysis of how two UN Conferences of Parties, COP15 in Copenhagen 2009 and COP21 in Paris 2015, were covered and debated in Swedish newspapers. Two national and two regional newspapers were selected for the study, and a qualitative frame analysis was conducted on 309 articles. A typology of frames applicable to science-related policy and climate change debates was used and its relevance for global climate summit context was discussed. Having territory in the Arctic region, indigenous populations affected by climate change measures, and political and public sensitivity to environmental issues, the climate debate has particular significance in the Swedish case. Findings indicate a trust in the role of national and supra-national governance to address climate change problems, but also that newspapers in Sweden maintained a focus on the global aspects of the two meetings, rather than framing them as surrogate battlefields for domestic politics.     

Routine Reporting of Environmental Risk: The First Traces of Micropollutants in the German Press

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the emergence of a new environmental issue in the German press. Since the 1990s, scientists have detected traces of pharmaceuticals, hormones and chemicals in all segments of the water cycle. These micropollutants have negative effects on aquatic life and might affect human health. Their sources are manifold and include private households. Yet although micropollutants of are direct concern to media audiences, they are a challenging topic for news reporting. Although this issue is systemic and fraught with uncertainty, it does not easily translate into news stories. Our content analysis of 444 articles (1995–2015) reveals that the societal risk was rarely presented as a stand-alone topic. Instead, the issue was mostly covered as part of local routine reporting and framed as a challenge for experts to solve. Over time, the reporting became more managerial, while media framings of micropollutants gained more substance and scope. We contend that local routine reporting should receive more attention as a public forum for addressing emerging environmental concerns.     

加大行政奖惩力度是中国环境绩效改善的主要原因吗?

"十一五"、"十二五"规划时期,中国单位GDP能耗、SO_2排放总量、COD排放总量等节能减排指标均实现了国家规划目标,这与"十五"计划三项指标均未完成形成鲜明对比。现有研究对此的解释存在宏观和微观层面上的不一致。其重要原因在于现有研究将环境绩效改善的原因完全归于行政奖惩所体现的正式制度的作用,而忽视了非正式制度对节能减排绩效的积极影响。本文建构了以包含正式激励和非正式激励的二元委托代理激励模型为基础的分析框架,利用基于717名不同级别官员的问卷数据,采用结构方程方法对上述模型进行了检验。实证结果表明,与约束性指标相关的正式制度中规定的11项奖惩措施所产生的激励对官员的环境治理行为力度并没有显著影响,而体现为顺应中央政府导向和上级领导注意力所代表的非正式制度激励对官员环境治理行为力度产生了显著影响。非正式制度激励对环境治理行为力度的影响存在两条路径。在第一条路径中,官员压力是中介变量,即非正式制度产生对官员压力的影响,官员压力又进一步影响官员环境治理行为。在这一路径中,晋升偏好、服从偏好为正向调节变量,正式奖惩的执行严格程度为负向调节变量。这一路径表明,官员晋升偏好越强、正式奖惩执行严格程度越弱,非正式制度激励对地方官员压力的影响越大;官员服从上级偏好程度越强,官员压力对环境治理行为力度的影响越大。在第二条路径中,非正式制度激励被认为直接影响环境治理行为力度,服务偏好是正向调节变量。这一路径表明,地方官员为人民服务的偏好越强,非正式激励对环境治理行为的影响越大。本文的研究发现调和了环境政策执行领域的理论冲突,为深化对中国"压力型"体制的理解提供实证证据。     

Food for Thought: Audience Engagement with Sustainability Messages in Branded Content

Branded platforms are a growing “gray-zone” of marketing and media messages, in which corporations and news journalists partner to create content that supports strategic corporate goals while aligning with a publication’s scope of editorial coverage. As corporations are key influencers of and contributors to environmental communication, this trend has the potential to change environmental dialogue. In this article, we closely examine messages about food and sustainability, created in partnership by Chipotle Mexican Grill and the Huffington Post news site. We illustrate how use of a branded platform expanded the scope of environmental topics, issues, and frames that Chipotle addresses, how frames identified here connect to frames in coverage of science-related issues, as identified by other scholars, and discuss how branded platforms allow corporations to draw attention to polarizing environmental issues while protecting stakeholder relationships and brand reputation.     

Scapegoating in the Wild: A Burkean Analysis of Two Outdoor Adventures Gone Wrong

Aron Ralston and Christopher McCandless, two outdoor adventurers, have captured the hearts of many American environmentalists. Each has attained the status of cultural icons and inspired books and films to recount their tales. While entertainment media have romanticized both individuals, news media are not as easy on one—McCandless is vilified while Ralston is valorized. When reporting these stories, news media outlets attempted to retell each story in a way that conforms to the dominant American ideology of wilderness, where “progress” is marked by control over nature—control that both Ralston and McCandless clearly unsettled. In addition, both committed many of the same errors in being underprepared. Despite these similarities, why are they each presented so differently in the news media? This paper offers a rhetorical analysis of newspaper articles on each story, where the phenomenon of scapegoating alienates McCandless, and the phenomenon of mortification purifies Ralston, restabilizing this American environmental ideology in both stories. In conclusion, I argue that the essential difference between these two stories is that they present two opposing ideals of a human–nature relationship, with Ralston's ideology including a space for technology and industrial knowledge, and thus construed as more appropriate than McCandless' ideology.     

Fort McMurray and the Canadian Oil Sands: Local Coverage of National Importance

Understanding resource-based communities (RBCs) as potential casualties of Canada's economic proclivity towards resource extraction projects may help us to generate political support for these communities at both local and national scales. The media has a critical role to play in promoting the development of this type of political discourse. This study examines how traditional print media coverage affects Canadians' perceptions of the Athabasca oil sands. A quantitative media analysis examines scope and thematic content of articles appearing in major Canadian newspapers between 2003 and 2013. We find that most coverage concerning the Athabasca oil sands over this period appears predominantly in western Canadian newspapers, with coverage primarily focusing on specific events. We argue that this geographic disparity in coverage does not provide Canadians with the adequate coverage necessary to develop an informed opinion on what the implications of ongoing oil sands development are at both a local and a national scale.