Wilderness and the Media Politics of Place Branding

It is 30 years since the Australian environmental movement enlisted the term “wilderness” to protect Tasmania's remote Franklin River from hydroelectric development. Environmentalists deployed “wilderness” strategically during the conflict to build public support for their no-dam campaign, aided by national and international media who used the term liberally, while Tasmanian news media and pro-development elites acknowledged the term's inherent political qualities by suppressing its use. Our interest is in the political and media framing of “wilderness” since the concept was “branded” by government and industry at the turn of the twenty-first century. Drawing on continuing environmental conflict over Tasmania's remote Tarkine region as a case study, we ask to what extent media portrayals of “wilderness” have changed since the Franklin dam was stopped and the Tasmanian World Heritage Wilderness Area was created in 1982. Using content analysis of related articles in the local media and qualitative analysis of international travel journalism about Tasmania published over an extended period, we find that place branding has contributed to the routinization of “wilderness” and to a shift in the focus of mediated conflict from “wilderness” to “tourism.” The Tasmanian experience demonstrates that while the actions of the environmental movement can valorize place, branding can depoliticize contested natural areas. Yet brands that incorporate or allude to “wilderness” may have the unanticipated consequence of valorizing “wilderness” transnationally, in a manner that the environmental movement would struggle to emulate.     

Selling Nature In a Resource-based Economy: Romantic/Extractive Gazes and Alberta's Bituminous Sands

Recent literature has explored the interplay between the Romantic gaze and the extractive gaze to conclude that in separating people from nature, both gazes function similarly to subordinate the land to human purposes. Such representations may be seen as part of a wider trend in which media visualizations of nature are based on an implicit ideology, tending to perpetuate and justify existing power relations; those visualizations use images which are increasingly abstract or iconic, and which by force of repetition, replace alternative representations and obscure connections to societal processes such as globalism and consumerism. This article takes up and extends that argument to a critical visual discourse analysis of an official place-branding slideshow produced by the Province of Alberta (Canada), which boasts an economy based significantly on producing non-renewable fossil fuels. In examining that slideshow in terms of Romantic/extractive gazes, this study situates Alberta's rebranding on Corbett's continuum of anthropocentric–ecocentric values; interrogates connections among Alberta's rebranding and invisible flows of power at work in broader, underlying societal processes like globalization, Neoliberalism and consumerism; and tests the commonality of the relationship between extractive and Romantic gazes in light of those processes.     

Biofuels – tools for achieving environmental goals or green place branding? Present drivers and future visions in two Swedish municipalities

This paper presents a study of two Swedish municipalities’ engagement in biogas development. To analyse the drivers of such biogas development, the conceptual framing incorporates two perspectives on local biogas policy: first, policy drivers as connected to environmental goals and, second, policy as a matter of green place branding. The results indicate that biogas engagement serves as a self-governing activity with the fulfilment of environmental goals as a driver; furthermore, it is a way of expressing the mission of municipalities as “engines” of environmental policy. In one studied municipality, biogas engagement has an important symbolic value for green identity, meaning that green place branding is a driver. Still, interviewed actors from both municipalities lack clear long-term visions of biogas. Further studies of biofuel production should critically investigate visions of the future among central and local governments and evaluate the implications of municipalities as biofuel producers.     

区域品牌发展对资源禀赋的敏感性研究

区域品牌已成为提升区域竞争力的重要途径,对于区域经济的可持续发展具有重要影响。本文基于资源配置体系的内生视角,在对区域品牌发展的驱动机制进行探讨和构建的基础上,理论分析并实证检验了区域资源禀赋对区域品牌发展的影响机理和作用边界,以及制度因素在二者关系中的调节作用,以期通过探索资源禀赋、制度因素与区域品牌发展的关系,揭示以资源禀赋为逻辑起点的区域品牌发展驱动机制。研究结果显示,在主效应方面,区域品牌内的品牌声誉、金融支持、技术投入三个资源因素对区域品牌发展均具有显著的驱动作用。作用边界方面,公共营销在品牌声誉与区域品牌发展的关系中具有显著正向调节作用,品牌声誉对区域品牌发展的贡献随着公共营销能力的提升而增加;市场维护变量在金融支持与区域品牌发展关系中具有显著正向调节作用,区域市场维护力度越强,金融支持对区域品牌发展的促进作用越显著。并且,两项制度因素均能够显著正向调节技术投入和区域品牌发展的关系,即制度因素与区域品牌发展对技术投入的敏感性具有正相关关系。研究结论的实践启示在于,区域品牌发展的核心驱动要素为区域资源的禀赋状态,区域内的企业、地方政府等利益相关主体应从树立品牌声誉、加强金融支持、提升创新技术投入三个方面来提升区域品牌的成长动力。在推动区域品牌发展过程中,地方政府的主要职能应锁定在建构主打产品的公共营销体系和维护产品市场交易秩序两个方面,继而为区域品牌成长提供政策环境和必要条件。     

“Single-minded,compelling, and unique”: Visual Communications,Landscape, and the Calculated Aesthetic of Place Branding

Place branding strategies play a significant role in the professional composition of landscape imagery, including the depiction of “natural” landscapes. In this paper, Brand Blue Mountains, a brand currently implemented in the Blue Mountains region (Australia), is discursively analyzed. The brand sets out an all-encompassing “Vision” defining the identity, values and personality of the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains landscape, summarized in the tagline Elevate Your Senses. This “vision” is visually translated into a strictly coordinated and copyrighted suite of logos, graphic design, color, fonts and various photographic styles. Analysis reveals that the degree of control that place brand strategists seek to exert over the visual expression of landscape identity is significant. A highly selective narrative of positive nature-based sensory experience is constructed through the holistic application of contemporary visual media. The brands' communications strategy naturalizes and reinforces a particular market-friendly version of place. The framework that brands set for the representation of landscapes overall amounts to an exercise in calculated aesthetics, whereby the form and content of landscape images of various kinds is measured to achieve the greatest market differentiation and impact which technologies allow. The result of this calculated aesthetic system, with its taglines, saturated color, careful composition and magazine-format brevity, is a reduction in the complexity of landscape representations and a perpetuation of nature stereotypes.