We Speak for the Trees: Media Reporting on the …sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-2788...Media Reporting on the Environment ... The Annual Review of Environment

ANRV390-EG34-18 ARI 8 October 2009 21:5

We Speak for the Trees:Media Reportingon the EnvironmentMaxwell T. BoykoffCenter for Science and Technology Policy Research, and Environmental Studies Program,University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309; email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2009. 34:431–57

The Annual Review of Environment and Resourcesis online at environ.annualreviews.org

This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev.environ.051308.084254

Copyright c© 2009 by Annual Reviews.All rights reserved

1543-5938/09/1121-0431$20.00

Key Words

communication, cultural politics, discourse, governance, news

AbstractThis review article surveys the role of the media in communi-cating environmental issues. Media representations—from news toentertainment—provide critical links between formal environmentalscience and politics and the realities of how people experience and inter-act with their environments. People abundantly turn to media—such astelevision, newspapers, magazines, radio, and Internet—to help makesense of the many complexities relating to environmental science andgovernance that (un)consciously shape our lives. I examine how mul-tiscale factors have shaped media coverage in complex, dynamic, andnonlinear ways. These inquiries are situated in historical context as wellas in larger processes of cultural politics and environmental change.Discussions here also touch on how media portrayals influence ongo-ing public understanding and engagement. Connections between me-dia information and behaviors are not straightforward, as coverage doesnot determine engagement. Nonetheless, this article explores how me-dia reports influence the spectrum of possibilities for different forms ofenvironmental governance.

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IPCC:IntergovernmentalPanel on ClimateChange

Mass media:publishers, editors,journalists, and otherswho produce, interpretand disseminateinformation, largelythrough newspapers,magazines, television,radio, and the Internet

Contents

1. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4322. MASS MEDIA, CULTURAL

POLITICS, AND THEENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434

3. A BRIEF HISTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4354. THE GREAT ENVIRONMENTAL

GESTALT SWINDLE . . . . . . . . . . . . 4405. MULTISCALE FACTORS

SHAPING MEDIA REPORTINGON THE ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . 443

6. INTERPRETATION OFENVIRONMENTAL NEWSIN THE PUBLIC SPHERE . . . . . . . 447

7. ONGOING MEDIATREATMENT OFENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES. . . . . 449

1. INTRODUCTION

On June 13, 2005, a headline on the front pageof the USA Today proclaimed, “The debate isover: globe is warming.” Article author DanVergano wrote (1):

Don’t look now, but the ground has shifted onglobal warming. After decades of debate overwhether the planet is heating and, if so, whosefault it is, divergent groups are joining handswith little fanfare to deal with a problem theysay people can no longer avoid.

Two days later, an editorial from the same news-paper went with the lede, “Yes the globe iswarming, even if Bush denies it” (2).

This particular set of reports was deemedsignificant for three primary reasons. First, thiswas because of the influence of the source. In re-cent years, USA Today has been the most widelycirculated daily newspaper in the United States(3). Along with other top newspaper and televi-sion outlets, this newspaper—through a rangeof format, content, and distribution strategies—has contributed to discourses shaping ongoingclimate governance in the United States as wellas internationally (4). Second, this stance wassaid to more accurately articulate the consensus

view in climate science that humans contributeto climate change, most prominently embodiedby the past decade of reports from the UnitedNations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (IPCC).1 Third, the re-porting shined a light onto ongoing contentiousclimate politics at the U.S. federal level, wherePresident George W. Bush’s administrationwas viewed as having a climate science andpolicy stance at odds with many supportingscience and governance bodies, e.g., the U.S.National Academy of Sciences. Vergano’slucid piece went on to win the 2006 DavidPerlman Award for Excellence in Journalismfrom the American Geophysical Union, andmany scientists and policy actors—who overtime had felt that their research findings,comments and statements have often beenmisrepresented by a range of mass mediaoutlets—felt this marked a watershed momenttoward more accurate environment and sciencereporting (6).

But did this mark the new beginning forimproved media coverage of climate change?Did this signal a significant change in asso-ciated spaces where media represent environ-mental issues more broadly? Was this an illus-tration of the steady march of progress towardbetter science, media, and governance interac-tions? To address these kinds of questions, thisarticle starts by assessing continued coverage of

1In recent decades, scientific understanding of attribution toclimate change has evolved. In the last decade, reports andfindings have signaled a broad scientific consensus—despitelingering uncertainties regarding the extent of attribution—that humans have been contributing to modern climatechange. For instance, the recently released IPCC Summaryfor policymakers in Climate Change 2007: The Physical ScienceBasis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth AssessmentReport of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states,“Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temper-atures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to theobserved increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concen-trations” (5, p. 8). This IPCC statement is the product ofover 2500 of the planet’s top climate scientists’ reviews andassessments of physical science research on climate change.Fielding over 30,000 comments on drafts of the documentfrom experts and governments, this multistage peer-reviewand consensus process represents a clear view of the state ofscientific understanding of climate change.

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climate change in the pages of that same news-paper. In 2008, there appeared a piece in USAToday by Rice called, “Climate Now Shift-ing on a Continental Scale. Study: MigrationPatterns Adjust, Plants Bloom Early.” Thenews “hook” was research findings from Nature,documenting shifts in a range of physical andbiological shifts in response to changes in theclimate. Rice reported on new findings that col-lated shifts, from penguin population declinesto early European arrivals of migratory birds tomelting glaciers around the world. However,the article then stated the following (7):

It was a real challenge to separate the influ-ence of human-caused temperature increasesfrom natural climate variations or other con-founding factors, such as land-use changesor pollution,” says study coauthor DavidKaroly, a climate scientist at the University ofMelbourne in Victoria, Australia. Scientistsreported in the study, however, that “thesetemperature increases at continental scalescannot be explained by natural climate vari-ations alone.” But Pat Michaels, a senior fel-low in environmental studies at the Cato In-stitute in Washington, D.C., says the research“is a retrospective study, with very little to sayprospectively, given the unevenness of globalwarming.” Michaels says that there has beenno warming since 1997 and that a recent study,also published in Nature, found that globalwarming isn’t likely to get started again forat least another 10 years. “I think the problemwith this study is not in matching the past withthe changes but in projecting the future.”

To the frustration of some of the scientistsinvolved in the Nature study (8), Rice conflateda number of distinct scientific issues when as-sembling the article. In so doing, he called anumber of distinct facets of climate science intoquestion thereby raising the spectre of doubtover well-established findings in climate sci-ence. Therefore, this piece enabled the well-known contrarian Pat Michaels to fundamen-tally call into question whether the climate ischanging at all.

These brief examples illuminate some of thecommunication challenges facing the produc-tion of media representations of the environ-ment. In this article, I work through perennialdifficulties in traversing the dynamic terrain ofmedia reporting and the environment. Whilethe article addresses consumption of mediamessages to some extent, it focuses on produc-tion of interacting texts and images. In so doing,I explore how some aspects of these processeshave improved, while others continue to faceongoing institutional, political, economic, andcultural challenges. First, the review situatesmass media in a wider cultural politics of the en-vironment. This context setting facilitates howenvironmental science and governance findmeaning in our everyday lives, and how massmedia, in particular, respond to the Lorax-likecall to “speak for the trees.” Second, the articletraces a brief history of the developments ofthese spaces, and their interactions over time.Third, it argues that the overarching quandaryfacing contemporary media coverage of theenvironment is that many distinct issues andchallenges are conflated and confused, therebyskewing public understanding, governance,and policy action. Fourth, the text unpacks andinterrogates a range of factors at multiple scalesthat contribute to the practices that producemedia representations. These include externalfactors (such as political economic challengesassociated with corporate media consolidation)as well as internal influences (such as contri-butions from the deployment of journalisticnorms). Fifth, the article connects these factorsshaping production with their disseminationand interpretation of environmental news inthe public sphere, as well as our private lives.Here, it also briefly surveys two models thatmap media and policy attention/engagement.Finally, how these elements may shape futuremedia coverage of ongoing environmentalissues is assessed. These contested spacesbetween media and environmental politics areoutlined to help make sense of how mediarepresentations frame truth claims, how largerpolitical contexts influence such framing pro-cesses, and how particularly amplified voices

www.annualreviews.org • Media Reporting on the Environment 433

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in these spaces shape ongoing interpretationsof environmental issues. In other words, thisreview seeks to appraise the Lorax-like roleof media as a key interpreter and actor at theinterface of humans and the environment.

2. MASS MEDIA, CULTURALPOLITICS, AND THEENVIRONMENT

He snapped, I’m the Lorax who speaks for the trees,which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please.

Dr. Seuss

Contemporary environmental challenges per-meate the very material and discursive fab-ric of our lives, weaving through economics,politics, culture, and society. Through time,mass media coverage has proven to be a keycontributor—among a number of factors—thathas stitched spaces of environmental science,governance, and daily life together. Mass mediahave given voice to the environment itself byarticulating environmental change in particu-lar ways, via claims makers or authorized defin-ers. More formal spaces of science, policy, andpolitics operating on multiple scales often findmeaning in people’s everyday lives and liveli-hoods through mass media—albeit in messy,nonlinear and diffuse ways. I thus adopt a moreexpansive view of science in society where sci-entific understanding is part of, rather thanseparate from, public uptake. As such, massmedia have thereby influenced a range of pro-cesses, from formal environmental policy to in-formal notions of public understanding. Mediarepresentations are convergences of competingknowledges, framing environmental issues forpolicy, politics, and the public and drawing at-tention to how to make sense of, as well as value,the changing world. Emanating out from theseprocesses, public perceptions, attitudes, inten-tions, and behaviors, in turn, often link backthrough mass media into ongoing formulationsof environmental governance.

Most broadly, mass media range from enter-tainment to news media, spanning television,films, books, flyers, newspapers, magazines,radio, and the Internet. In the past decade, there

has been a significant expansion from con-sumption of traditional mass media—broadcasttelevision, newspapers, radio—into consump-tion of new media, such as the Internet andmobile phone communications. This move-ment has signaled substantive changes in howpeople access and interact with information,who has access, and who are the authorized de-finers or claims makers. Essentially, in tandemwith technological advances, these communi-cations are seen to be a fundamental shift fromone-to-many (often one-way) communicationsto many-to-many more interactive webs ofcommunications. Together, these media areconstituted by a diverse and dynamic setof institutions, processes, and practices thattogether serve as mediating forces betweencommunities, such as science, policy, and pub-lic citizens. Members of the communicationsindustry and profession—publishers, editors,journalists, and others—produce, interpret,and communicate images, information, andimaginaries for varied forms of consumption.Studies show that television is respondents’primary source of information, followed by theInternet, then newspapers and radio (9).

Workings of mass media—processes andtheir effects—are usefully situated in a widercultural politics of the environment, andchanges therein. By cultural politics, I meanprocesses involving how meaning is constructedand negotiated across space and place. Thisinvolves not only the representations and mes-sages that gain traction in discourses, but alsothose that are absent from them or silenced (10,11). Moreover, assessments of discourses aretethered to material realities and social practices(12). Harvey has commented, “struggles overrepresentation are as fundamental to the activi-ties of place construction as bricks and mortar”(13). Examining these features as manifesta-tions of an ongoing process facilitates the con-sideration of questions regarding how powerflows through the capillaries of our sharedsocial, cultural, and political body, constructingknowledge, norms, conventions, and (un)truths(14). Such dynamic interactions form nexusesof power-knowledge that shape how we come to

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understand things as the truth and, in turn, con-tribute to managing the conditions and tacticsof life (15). However, rather than brash impo-sition of law or direct disciplinary techniques,these more subtle factors permeate and con-tribute to what becomes permissible andnormal in everyday discourses, practices, andinstitutional processes (16). Effectively, theseinfluences shape how we view environmentalproblems as well as potential solutions.

Furthermore, the discursive and material el-ements comprising a cultural politics of envi-ronmental change are inextricably shaped byongoing environmental processes themselves.This has been described as the dialectic of na-ture and culture (17). Nature is not a backdropupon which heterogeneous human actors con-test and battle for epistemological and mate-rial successes. Rather, meaning is constructed,maintained, and contested through intertwinedsociopolitical and biophysical processes (18). Inother words, the changing environment—andhumans’ interaction in these spaces—providesthe material for the media to cover. Meaningis constructed and manifested through the on-tological conditions of nature and the contin-gent social and political processes involved ininterpretations of this nature (19). Approachingthese spaces of cultural politics of the environ-ment in this way helps to interrogate “how so-cial and political framings are woven into boththe formulation of scientific explanations of en-vironmental problems, and the solutions pro-posed to reduce them” (20). These framingsare inherent to cognition and effectively con-textualize as well as fix interpretive categoriesto help explain and describe complex environ-mental processes (21). Moreover, these serve toassemble and privilege certain interpretationsand understandings over others (22).

So although cultural politics of the envi-ronment lurk in a multitude of spaces (ourneighborhoods, county councils, workplaces,schools, and town centers), a prominent linkbetween these spaces again is mass media. Thiscommunity serves a vital role in communica-tion processes between science, policy, and thepublic. Representations of climate change via

mass media shape many people’s perceptionsand considerations for action. Media commu-nications thus unfold within a larger politicalcontext that then feeds back into ongoingmedia coverage and considerations. Fromregulatory frameworks (bounding politicalopportunities and constraints) and institutionalpressures (influencing political and journalisticnorms) to individual decision making aboutwhat becomes news, these interactions are dy-namic and contested spaces of meaning makingand maintenance. Thus, it can be argued thatmass media outlets—and the many people andprocesses comprising them—effectively speakfor the trees as they give voice to environmentalproblem formulations in various ways and alsothen frame the ways in which they are discussedand governed. These articulations may takeon varied roles over time, from watchdog tolapdog to guarddog.

3. A BRIEF HISTORY

In this section, these mass media processes areplaced in greater historical context. In so do-ing, there is further exploration of those whomake various claims about the environment byway of mass media. Clearly science and politicshave influenced media coverage of the environ-ment over time. But conversely, media repre-sentations have also shaped ongoing scientificand political considerations, decisions, and ac-tivities. In other words, mass media influencewho has a say and how. Along with many spa-tial factors also shaping how mass media grapplewith various environmental issues, the temporaldimension regarding these unfolding processesof representation and therefore knowledge pro-duction and destruction are important. Overtime, there has been a great struggle to rep-resent and thereby influence the ways in whichinstitutions and individual grapple with variousenvironmental challenges.

An expansive history of media begins withthe art of rhetoric in ancient Greece andweaves through the centuries of the RomanEmpire, the European Middle Ages, and theRenaissance. Over these formative periods,


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a wide range of activities and modes ofcommunication—performance art, plays, po-etry, debate—drew on narratives, arguments,allusions, and reports to communicate vari-ous themes, information, issues, and events(23). These seeds of media then sprouted overthe centuries that followed. However, suchgrowth was limited by a number of com-peting factors, such as strong state controlover the public sphere, legacies of colonial-ism, low literacy rates, and technological ca-pacity challenges (24). However, it was throughconditions during the French Revolution andthe first Industrial Revolution in the late1700s that provided opportunities for mediacommunications—newspapers in particular—to emerge with widespread force (25). Thethirst for mass political communication, cou-pled with newfound technological and eco-nomic capacity, as well as freedom to par-ticipate in democratic processes, enabled theproliferation of and development of newspa-pers into the 1800s. In the mid-1800s, me-dia communications expanded their reach andinfluence tremendously, where mass circula-tion print presses were set up in urban centers,and daily newspaper production quadrupled in40 years: Circulation grew from 0.34 papers perhousehold in 1870 to 1.21 papers per house-hold in 1910 (24). Thus, during this time, massmedia outlets formed increasingly significantand powerful social, political, economic, andcultural institutions (25). Moreover, rapid ex-pansion of modern media communications inthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries set thestage for the impressive deployment of infor-mation via countless channels and outlets nowdubbed the “fourth estate” in contemporary so-ciety. Nonetheless, it was not until the 1920sthat scholars actually began to speak of such ac-tivities as media, as we do today (23).

Many books, essays, media reports, andtexts throughout the last century consideredenvironmental issues, thus provoking attentionand movements of environmental politics. Forinstance, Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanacprompted many to consider environmentalstewardship through his discussion of the “land

ethic” (26). In media studies, research from the“Chicago School” (27), the “Frankfurt School”(28), and luminaries such as Lazarsfeld &Merton (29) and Walter Lippman (30) shapedthinking in politics and cultural studies as theyrelated to modern media communications.Intersections between mass media and theenvironment gained greater prominencein the 1960s and 1970s, as practitionersand researchers gained more insights intoconnections between human activities and en-vironmental responses (31, 32). For instance,Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring raised pub-lic awareness on the environmental risk frompesticide exposure and examined how chemicalindustry interests influenced the lack of envi-ronmental policy action (33). Carson’s analysis(focused on the disappearance of spring birdsongs from fatal toxic exposure) significantlyshaped investigative environmental reportingand the profession of science journalism fromthen up to the present (34).

Over the past three decades, scholars haveexamined how these representations have fedback into ongoing formulations and consid-erations of environmental problems, issues,and themes. For example, an investigation byLiverman & Sherman (35) examined portrayalsof natural hazards in novels and films and was setin an edited volume examining intersections be-tween media and culture across a number of en-vironmental issues (36). Furthermore, Nelkin(37) wrote an influential book on the reasonsbehind the increase of media coverage of sci-ence and technology. Following on from thiswork, Burgess (38) put forward a foundationaland conceptual work regarding the productionand consumption of environmental meaning viathe media, and she commented on the emerg-ing need to examine aspects of the intersec-tions between mass media, science, environ-mental politics, and public citizens. Since theearly 1990s, a sharp increase in research has ex-plored the influence of mass media on culturalpolitics and environmental change (e.g., 39–45). Many studies have examined specific envi-ronmental issues. For instance, Wilson (46) andother researchers have recognized the key role

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that television weathercasters play in the com-munication of a range of science and environ-ment issues. Other examples include agricul-tural biotechnology and genetically modifiedfood (47–49), climate change (50–54), earth-quakes (55), energy (56), hazardous waste (57),nanotechnology (58–59), nuclear power (60–61), environment and public health (e.g., globalbird flu) (62), the autism vaccines controversy(63), natural hazards and disasters (35, 64), andstratospheric ozone depletion (65). The ma-jority of these studies examined print mediacoverage, whereas others sought to examinetelevision news (64, 66–69) and radio news cov-erage (70). Additionally, most of these assess-ments have focused on North American (71),U.K. (72–74), EU (75–76), and Australia/NewZealand (77–79) contexts.

It is useful to further consider the exampleof climate change to appraise the burgeoningmedia coverage of associated science and gov-ernance issues, assess studies that have consid-ered media and climate change interactions, andconsider issues of who are the claims makersof environmental problems in the mass media.Media coverage of climate change first emergedon a mass scale in the 1930s. A staff report in theNew York Times commented, “The earth mustbe inevitably changing its aspect and its climate.How the change is slowly taking place and whatthe result will be has been considered. . .” (80).Media coverage of human contributions to cli-mate change continued to sporadically appearthrough the subsequent five decades. But, as in-ternational and domestic climate policy beganto take shape in the mid-1980s, the three media-science-policy spheres collided when mediacoverage of climate change science and pol-icy increased dramatically; therefore, many cli-mate science and governance issues flowed intopublic view (69, 81). A number of high-profileinterventions turned spectacles generated sub-stantial attention and became emblems for new-found public concern on the issue (82). Duringthis period and into the 1990s, climate scientistswere widely quoted and called upon in the me-dia as authorized speakers on behalf of the cli-mate. Street has commented, “Representation,

ENGO:environmentalnongovernmentalorganization

COP: Conference ofParties

whatever the principles or ethical values in-forming it, does not reflect the world so muchas organize knowledge about it” (83). In addi-tion, carbon-based business, industry interests,and environmental nongovernmental organiza-tions (ENGOs) have grappled for their partic-ular discursive and material actions to addressclimate challenges. Many struggles to representclimate change in the 1980s and 1990s werethus also dominated by businesses interests andENGOs (84). In the process of understandingchanges in the climate, many entities, orga-nizations, interests, and individuals battled toshape awareness, engagement, and possible ac-tion. Among business interests, over time thoseenmeshed in carbon-based energy productionbecame particularly interested in these chal-lenges. The variously embattled efforts to de-fine the climate question and frame the prob-lems, predicaments, and possible solutions haveexpanded tremendously to a variety of actors insubsequent years.

Moving from the 1990s into the new millen-nium, the amount of media coverage of climatechange continued to rise. This reached a high-water mark in 2006 and into 2007. Figure 1shows the ebbs and flows of news articles onclimate change or global warming from January2004 through February 2009 in 50 newspapersacross 20 countries. Owing to sampling, therelative trends across the various regions aremore useful than absolute numbers in the fig-ure. Nonetheless, the high-water mark of cov-erage of climate change in late 2006 and early2007 can be attributed to a series of key andinterrelated events. The year 2006 marked theglobal release of the Al Gore film An Inconve-nient Truth. Moreover, the much anticipated,discussed, and criticized “Stern Review on theEconomics of Climate Change” was releasedon October 30, 2006. Intense media coverageof the Stern Review then fed into media at-tention on the Twelfth Conference of Parties(COP12) meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, that be-gan approximately a week later. Following on in2007 were greatly fluctuating oil and gasolineprices, as well as the releases of the highly in-fluential IPCC Fourth Assessment Reports (5).


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GHG: greenhouse gas

However, the figure also reveals a dis-cernible leveling off or decrease in the amountof coverage from later 2007 through 2008 andinto 2009. This trend could be attributed toa number of intersecting influences. Amongthem, first, media attention on the global eco-nomic recession may have displaced the newsslot for climate change reporting; second, is-sues formerly discussed explicitly as climatechange or global warming became increasinglytreated as energy issues, sustainability consid-erations, and other associated themes (e.g., car-bon trading); third, upon the 2007 release ofvarious Working Group reports for the IPCCFourth Assessment Report, fewer fundamen-tal issues were subsequently deemed as contro-versial as in previous assessments (e.g., humancontributions to climate change). With afore-mentioned sampling limitations in mind, thisfigure also indicates that there has remaineda relatively low number of stories on climatechange or global warming in the regions ofSouth America and Africa. This points to acritical regional information gap in reportingon these issues, and it relates to capacity is-sues and support for reporters in these regionsand countries (developing and poorer regions/countries).

Frankly, it is often those who are most at riskfrom environmental impacts, who also are thosewho typically have access to the least informa-tion about it through mass media. This short-coming is detrimental to efforts to build re-silient communities with improved capacity toadapt to changes in the climate, address climateimpacts, and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG)emissions. Amid these larger trends, it is im-portant to note that, to the extent that policyactors and negotiators think of mass media at-tention to climate change as a proxy for pub-lic attention to climate change (and pressurefor action), a diminished amount of coveragemight be seen as detrimental to putting forwardsubstantive agreements, such as the post-2012regime negotiated in the run up to COP15 inCopenhagen, and, more generally, to the futureof significant international policy action on cli-mate change.

Beyond the quantity of news coverage onclimate change and global warming, it is crit-ically important to consider the content ofcoverage and, more specifically, the “framing”of the climate challenge through media rep-resentational practices. From the eighteenthcentury English-led Industrial Revolution and“dark satanic mills,” progress was often de-fined by carbon-based technological advance-ments and driven by the engines of coal, oil, andnatural gas. Meanwhile, beginning in the late1800s, scientists such as Svante Arrhenius, G.S.Callendar, Gilbert Plass, and others began mak-ing links between GHG emissions from en-ergy production and increases in atmospherictemperature as well as other climate changes(85, 86). As scientific work coalesced on basicpoints that the climate was changing and thathumans played a part in such changes, earlyactors responded to these findings. In termsof business, some adapted and changed prac-tices, whereas others called such research intoquestion. Meanwhile, many ENGOs sought toraise public awareness and policy actor con-cern regarding the negative externalities of en-vironmental damage and risk. On this dynamicbattlefield of competing knowledge(s) and rep-resentations, predominantly U.S.-based thinktanks influenced by conservative ideologies—and often funded by carbon-based industryactors—amplified uncertainties regarding var-ious aspects of climate science, de-emphasizedthe human contribution to climate change, andcalled attention to the costs of action, such asswitching to renewable energy sources. Thesemessages were repeated in multifarious ways,from subtle scientific certainty argumentationmethods (87) to more deliberate politics of ma-nipulation (88, 89) and to overtly deceptive dis-information campaigns and initiatives (90, 91).These, in turn, have been found to inspire andcatalyze (92) as well as dampen social move-ments for change (93). Research by McCright& Dunlap (88, 94) has focused on the opposi-tion movement dubbed contrarians, denialists,inactivists, or sceptics.

In the past decade, questions raised acrossthis spectrum throughout mass media sources

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have largely moved away from “is the climatechanging?” and “do humans play a role in cli-mate change?” to more textured considerationsof governance and economics. For instance,many articles have addressed questions regard-ing how to effectively govern the mitigationof GHG emissions from sources contributingto climate change, and how to construct andmaintain initiatives to help vulnerable commu-nities adapt to already unfolding climate im-pacts. Mass media articles on economic andpolitical costs and benefits have played a keypart in framing considerations for policy actionas well as public understanding and engage-ment. However, journalist Pooley—the formermanaging editor of Fortune magazine and na-tional editor of Time magazine—argued in a2009 paper that, although news on climatechange is increasingly focused on economicsand policy action, representations have fallenshort in three key ways (95): First, reporting onthe issues has remained fragmented. Environ-mental journalists cover environmental aspectsof the challenge, politics reporters emphasizethe political edge, and economics writers fo-cus on the economics. As a result, the pictureremains a fragmented one, whereas importantenvironmental issues like these must be treatedmore coherently. Second (and related), journal-ists have failed to make climate economics andpolicy stories understandable and meaningfulto readers. The costs of particular policy ac-tions are highlighted, while the benefits under-reported; conversely the costs of inaction arelargely omitted. Third, Pooley argues that theconsensus on climate governance has been mis-represented and confused, thereby fueling mis-placed debates on various policy actions.

While media representations of climategovernance—and critiques therein—havegained traction in recent years, others arguethat the discussions have remained encased inthe logic of neoliberal late capitalism (96). Inthe academic literature, critiques have emergedregarding the dangers of emergent “carboncapitalism” associated with commodifyingthe atmosphere, and the fixation with marketmechanisms as primary tools to answer climate

questions, among others (97, 98). Moreover,these movements are deemed problematic tothe extent that these activities “render themessy materiality of life legible as discreteentities, individuated and abstracted from thecomplex social and ecological integuments”(99) and, in so doing, reduce the need for decar-bonization to a matter of simple (neo-liberal)political economics. In other words, suchreformist economic measures are (to invokethe hackneyed hymn), “like rearranging thedeck chairs on the sinking Titanic.” However,these critiques have remained largely absentin mainstream mass media representations todate. Nonetheless, within these frames, busi-ness groups, ideologically driven think tanks,and ENGOs have continued to vigorouslydebate and discuss associated features andconsequences in the landscapes of mass media.Examples abound: As businesses have touted“carbon neutrality” in their practices, and someENGOs have praised such activities as a firstawareness-raising step toward ongoing decar-bonization of industrial practices; meanwhile,other ENGOs have fiercely critiqued theseclaims as “greenwashing” business-as-usualactions.

At the same time, the boundaries betweenwho constitute authorized speakers (and whodo not) as well as who are legitimate claimsmakers are consistently being interrogatedand challenged (100, 101). Leiserowitz haswritten that these arenas of claims making andframing are “exercises in power . . . . Those withthe power to define the terms of the debatestrongly determine the outcomes” (102). Mediacoverage of the environment has increasinglyexpanded from drawing on scientists, business,and ENGO actors for quotes and commentsinto spaces such as those of popular culture.This is more prevalent in contemporaryentertainment media; such developments haveimplications on the changing architecture ofthe cultural politics of environmental change.Although endangered polar bears or wildmoose may have previously represented issueson the environment, human celebrities haveincreasingly been seen as the new charismatic


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megafauna, populating discourses on pos-sibilities for environmental governance andeveryday action. In the past five years or sothere has been a clear surge in the coverage ofcelebrities connected to climate change in vari-ous media outlets (103). In the aforementionedneoliberal spaces carved out by increasinglymarketized, privatized, and individualizedways of addressing environmental question(s),U2 frontman Bono elegantly described manycomplex, intertwined, and contradictory forceswhen he commented in an interview with Vogue,“celebrity is a bit silly, but it’s currency of a kind”(104). These celebrity effects raise questions asto whether such activities represent democraticmovements by and for the people and thepublic realm, or rather plutocratic, unique, andextraordinary elite behaviors of distraction.However, as these questions relate to environ-mental governance and everyday practices, theyare arguably as important now as ever before.

In the new millennium, actors makingclaims about environmental issues have contin-ued to expand, and the negotiations involved inwho are authorized definers of environmentalissues has intensified. For instance, a key studyexamined how ENGOs have drawn on exper-tise and engaged in debates around the issue ofenvironmental waste in the United Kingdom.Researchers found that, while ENGOs stillrely on the authority of science, the more con-temporary spaces of environmental science andgovernance have opened up to greater ENGOaccess as legitimate claims makers themselves.The authors make the point that across otherenvironmental issues, “many challenges arenot strategic but contextual . . . expertise builtaround one boundary does not automaticallytransfer to another” (101). As mass mediaframe and represent environmental issuesincreasingly through these extended networks,questions remain as to how these represen-tations will shape the contemporary culturalpolitics of the environment, where formal en-vironmental science and policy are entangledwith everyday life. Mass media representationsof environmental actors, action, predicaments,and progress remain key influences that shape

discourses and bound considerations of essen-tially who speaks for the trees in ongoing ques-tions of environmental governance. It remainsimportant to examine how media representa-tions and symbols are negotiated through rela-tions of dominance, subordination, inequalitiesof access, and resources, thereby influencinga “scope of politics” (105) or a spectrum ofpossibilities for environmental governance.

4. THE GREAT ENVIRONMENTALGESTALT SWINDLE

Mass media are important interpreters of envi-ronmental science and policy information: Thepublic frequently learns about the environmentfrom news and entertainment media. In thiscontext, central, fundamental, and immediatechallenges that continue to face mass media inportraying environmental issues are those offairness, accuracy, and precision in representa-tion. In this high stakes milieu of environmentalreporting, journalists and editors, as well as sci-entists and policy actors, need to be intenselyscrupulous. Although media interventions seekto enhance understanding of complex and dy-namic human-environment interactions, vagueand decontextualized reporting instead can en-hance bewilderment. Nonetheless, all too of-ten, media reports conflate the vast and variedterrain from environmental science to gover-nance, from consensus to debate, as unified is-sues. To the extent that mass media fuse all theseissues into environmental gestalt, the collectivepublic is not well served.

Disagreement and dissention certainly havevalue in reshaping understanding. However,when these are not effectively placed incontext with the larger currents of scientificviews from convergence to contention, publicunderstanding of these issues suffers. Seminalresearch by Corbett & Durfee (106) examinedcoverage of climate change with a focus onuncertainty. Through an experimental designof three newspaper story treatments, i.e., con-troversy, context, and control (neither contextnor controversy), they found that greatercontextualization within climate science stories

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helps to mitigate against controversy stirredup through uncertainty. So reader perceptions,and by extension public understanding, can beaffected by the sometime subtle characteristicsof context.

Context helps sort out marginalized viewsfrom counterclaims worthy of consideration onvarious aspects of environmental challenges.New York Times journalist Revkin (107) refersto reporting without context “whiplash jour-nalism.” He has written that, “the media seemeither to overplay a sense of imminent calamityor to ignore the issue altogether because it isnot black and white or on a time scale that feelslike news. This approach leaves society like aship at anchor swinging cyclically with the tideand not going anywhere. What is lost in theswings of media coverage is a century of studyand evidence . . . ” (107). As a result, it becomesmore (rather than less) challenging for citizensand policy actors to make sense of these is-sues, influencing their everyday lives and liveli-hoods. Moreover, such treatments through themedia contribute to ongoing illusory, mislead-ing, and counterproductive debates within thepublic and policy communities.

There are facets of science and environ-ment where agreement is strong and conver-gent agreement dominates, whereas in otherscontentious disagreement garners worthwhiledebate and discussion. Such conflation breedsmanipulation and further confusion. Granted,media reporting helps address, analyze, and dis-cuss these issues but does not answer them. Me-dia coverage needs to better portray the con-tours of the varied aspects of environmentalchange, as better reporting has critical implica-tions for understanding, meaning, and potentialpublic engagement. Clearly, the role of the jour-nalist is not that of a parrot. Choices about howto represent various aspects of environmentalscience and policy through the media depend onavailable information, interpretation, and con-text. Nonetheless, all aspects of environmen-tal issues should not be treated equally. Thereare facets of environmental change whereconsensus is strong and convergent agree-ment dominates, and in others, contentious

disagreement garners worthwhile debate anddiscussion (Figure 2).

First, consider panel (a), high mercury expo-sure adversely impacts humans and the environ-ment. The convergent/divergent arrows intro-duce a temporal dimension that influences suchlevels of agreement. Through increasing sci-entific information, there has been rising con-vergent agreement over time that various usesof mercury can be damaging to human healthand the environment. Panel (b), genetic en-gineering of crops can solve food productioncrises, and panel (c), nanotechnology is the keyto clean energy production in the 21st cen-tury, represent both environmental science andgovernance questions that have a range of per-spectives, views, and opinions. Therefore, theschematic represents divergent agreement onthese particular points, though some particularcases may have arguably more points of viewstaked out than others. Last, consider panel(d ), humans contribute to climate change. Overthe past two decades, IPCC endeavors have en-hanced understanding of global climate changethrough careful interpretation of emerging cli-mate research via peer-reviewed and consensus-driven processes (108). In this particular aspectof climate change, IPCC statements have be-come clear and consistent with those from nu-merous national science academies and otherscientific organizations in stating the humansplay a role in climate change.

Considering panel c in more detail, with in-creasing confidence, the IPCC has reached con-sensus that climate change is an issue that hashuman (anthropogenic) influences.2 A steadyflow of IPCC reports since 1995 have rep-resented critical discourse moments (53) thathas thereby solidified a storyline of consen-sus regarding anthropogenic climate change.Consequently, over the past dozen years, thismanagerial discourse has tethered institutional

2In other related climate science issues, such as the rate oftemperature change or the extent of connections betweenhurricane frequency and intensity and climate change, thereis no clear consensus at present. Moreover, political questionssuch as who is responsible and what should be done about itremain highly debated issues.


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Convergence

High mercury exposure adversely impacts humans & the environment

Genetic engineering of crops can solve food production crises

)b()a(

)d()c(

AlarmistsDenialists

Humans contribute to climate changeNanotechnology is the key to clean

energy production in the 21st century

Figure 2Media representations and convergence/divergence of views in environmental science and governance. This schematic is adapted froma Nature Climate Reports commentary by Boykoff (156) and comments by Revkin at the 2006 Society of Environmental Journalists. Thebell curves illustrate the relative strength of agreement or disagreement on selected examples for environmental issues. The strength ofconvergence on particular issues can be interpreted through statements such as those from expert panels like the IntergovernmentalPanel on Climate Change (IPCC) in panel (d ). The IPCC has stated that the “observed increase in globally averaged temperaturessince the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations” where“very likely” has been established by the panel to signify “greater than 90% probability.” Here probability and strength of convergencea treated similarly.

activities and actors to storylines that surroundhuman contributions to climate change andhas reproduced itself (or has sought to doso) through policy-relevant research statementsand decisions. Although it can be challengingto appropriately characterize and delineate gen-eral views in a broadly construed scientific com-munity, the collaboration of top climate scien-tists from around the world through the IPCCpresents a unique opportunity to do so. Cli-mate change is a rather unique environmentalissue in this sense, in that such a topic is widelydeemed legitimate across these spaces of sci-ence and governance. Adger & Benjaminsen(109) have explored different climate changediscursive regimes and have described a

“managerial discourse” as one that draws pri-mary authority from scientific findings, focuseson macroscale solutions, and bases actions onexternal policy interventions. This work thusconcentrates on the IPCC as a group that ef-fectively articulates a managerial discourse thatinteracts with national and international policydiscourses. While acknowledging that this sci-entific consensus is not a singular translationof “the truth,” this policy-relevant informationhas been a critical input to implementation ofnational and international climate policy.

When mass media report on this partic-ular issue, research has found that attentionhas been paid particularly to more extremeviewpoints rather than those in convergent

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agreement (see Figure 2d, alarmists anddenialists, and the text below for more precisereasons). Previous research has empiricallyfound, as recently as 2006, that U.K. tabloidnewspapers have significantly diverged fromthis consensus position in representing thisdistinct issue (see sidebar for more on U.K.Tabloid News Coverage of Climate Change).It was found that minority views—in thiscase alarmist and denialist discourses—earnedmuch more amplified attention in mediareports (110). As a result, when the process offraming—whereby meanings are constructedand reinforced—confuses rather than clarifiesscientific understanding of anthropogenicclimate change via the media, this can createspaces for policy actors to defray responsibilityand delay action regarding climate change. Inaddition to concerns about the claims-makinginfluence of the aforementioned denialists, orcontrarians in the preceding section, othershave raised concern about alarmist movementsthat push climate change discourse in the mediabeyond the parameters of what science cancurrently claim. This has been characterized invarious ways such as alarmism, catastrophism(111), and climate fundamentalism (112).

Taylor & Buttel posited that the organiza-tional arrangements that define what are en-vironmental problems (such as anthropogenicclimate change) can be seen as “particularly vul-nerable to deconstruction” (113). Others havepointed out that as scientific understanding im-proves, rather than settling questions, it of-ten unearths new and more questions to beanswered. Moreover, greater scientific under-standing actually can contribute to more com-plicated policy decision making by offering up agreater supply of knowledge from which to de-velop and argue varying interpretations of thatscience (114). In other words, any time that thebiophysical is captured and categorized at thescience-practice interface, it undergoes varyingdegrees of politicized interpretation, as influ-enced by power and scale via temporal and spa-tial contexts (115). Thus, in the discourse as-sembled by the IPCC, a certain way of viewingthings is privileged, and a particular storyline

U.K. TABLOID NEWS COVERAGEOF CLIMATE CHANGE

In the United Kingdom, daily circulation figures for tabloid news-papers are as much as 10 times higher than broadsheet sources.Moreover, readership patterns correlate with socioeconomic sta-tus; the majority of readers of tabloids are in working class demo-graphics. With a growing need to engage wider constituenciesin awareness and potential behavioral change, it has been impor-tant to examine how these influential sources represent climatechange for a heretofore understudied segment of U.K. citizenry.Through Critical Discourse Analysis, investigations of framingand semistructured interviews, this project examined claims andframing of climate change in four daily working class UK news-papers from 2000–2006, i.e., The Sun (and News of the World ), theDaily Mail (and Mail on Sunday), the Daily Express (and Sunday Ex-press), and the Mirror (and Sunday Mirror). Data showed that newsarticles on climate change were predominantly framed throughweather events, charismatic megafauna, and the movements ofpolitical actors and rhetoric, whereas few stories focused on cli-mate justice and risk. In addition, headlines with tones of fear,misery, and doom were most prevalent. These analyses then en-able discussions of how these representations may have influencedongoing climate science and governance as well as contemporarycultural politics (see References 110 and 155).

has gained salience (116). In the case of anthro-pogenic climate change, the stakes within andbetween carbon-based industry and society arehigh. Therefore, the science-practice interfacebecomes a particularly strategic discursive bat-tlefield. When media representations such asthese conflate distinct issues into a great envi-ronmental gestalt, it effectively misinforms thebroadly construed public about the texture andnuance involved in complex contemporary en-vironmental challenges.

5. MULTISCALE FACTORSSHAPING MEDIA REPORTINGON THE ENVIRONMENT

Amid possible immediate improvements tothe fairness, accuracy, and precision of me-dia reporting on environmental issues, manypolitical, economic, cultural, and institutional


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challenges remain in terms of capturing and cat-egorizing environmental issues through mediarepresentations. In what follows—focused pri-marily on the production of such portrayals—various reasons for persistent trends and chal-lenges are addressed. In so doing, a range of is-sues are discussed, such as how environmentalstories come to be reported and what factorsinfluence media capabilities in covering en-vironmental stories. I focus on political eco-nomic and cultural factors as well as individualjournalistic pressures that shape the contempo-rary landscapes of science-media-governance.Moreover, I focus on interacting journalisticnorms that contribute to media coverage ofthe environment. Ultimately, the dynamismand contestation of knowledge production inthe public arena are explored to make senseof how varying media representational prac-tices may contribute—amid a complex webof factors—to divergent scientific, policy, andpublic priorities.

Interactions between media representa-tional practices and the environment arecomplex, dynamic, and messy. It is clear thatenvironmental issues shape media reporting;however, it is also true that journalism shapesongoing conceptions of environmental prob-lems and associated politics, policy decisions,and activities. The aforementioned notions offraming are again important here. Forsyth hasstated, “assessments of frames should not justbe limited to those that are labeled as importantat present, but also seek to consider alternativeframings that may not currently be consideredimportant in political debates” (20). Variousactors—both individuals and collective—seekto access and utilize mass media sources in orderto shape perceptions of environmental issuescontingent on their perspectives and interests(117). Through journalistic norms and values,certain events become news stories, therebyshaping public perception (118, 119). Asym-metrical influences also feed back into thesesocial relationships and further shape emergentframes of news, knowledge, and discourse.

For example, in the area of media cover-age of stem cell research, Nisbet et al. have

defined frames as “central organizing idea(s)or storyline(s) to a controversy that providesmeaning to an unfolding series of events, sug-gesting what the controversy is about and theessence of the issue” (120). Focusing on me-dia interactions in the issue of nanotechnology,Anderson et al. point out that it is often a pro-cess of “intense negotiation between journalistsand their editors . . . (to) help render ‘an infin-ity of noticeable details’ into meaningful cate-gories” (58). The emphases on controversy andnegotiation demonstrate the intensely politi-cized spaces these media-politics interactionsoccupy in the process of framing. Such consid-erations thus provide a window into principlesand assumptions underlying framing of repre-sentations of environmental issues and politics.According to Forsyth, examinations of particu-lar framings provide an opportunity to question“how, when, and by whom such terms were de-veloped as a substitute for reality” (20).

Although journalists have consistentlyviewed their role as one of informationdissemination rather than education, in factthe distinction between these roles becomesblurred in practice. As media representations,by their very nature, inherently frame variousenvironmental issues, such practices also thencontribute—among a host of factors—tosetting agendas for considerations withinenvironmental issues and cultural politics.Willman, a veteran correspondent and fieldproducer with CNN, CBS News, and NationalPublic Radio, has commented, “in terms ofagenda-setting . . . the media don’t tell peoplewhat to think, but they tell them what to thinkabout” (quoted in Reference 4). This statementis reminiscent of that by Cohen in reference tomedia coverage of foreign policy (121).

A 2008 book by Ward, Communicating onClimate Change: An Essential Resource for Jour-nalists, Scientists and Editors (122), representsthe six workshops—organized by Ward andSocci and attended by eminent scientists, jour-nalists, and editors—to address these vexingchallenges of media framing, along with manyassociated cultural, social, institutional, andpolitical economic factors. For instance, media

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professionals, such as editors and journalists,operate within an often competitive landscape.Path dependence through histories of pro-fessional journalism, journalistic norms andvalues, as well as power relations shape theproduction of news stories (24). Therefore,constructions of meaning and discourse,negotiated in the spaces of cultural politics,are shaped by structural factors as well as byauthorized definers in these landscapes. Theseprocesses take place simultaneously at mul-tiple scales. Large-scale social, political, andeconomic factors influence everyday individualjournalistic decisions, such as how to focus orframe a story with limited time to press as wellas limited word counts or segment timings.

In terms of political economics, modernmultinational media organizations, dominatedby developed-country interests, have continuedto consolidate and/or close. The news industryhas faced tremendous challenges since the eco-nomic downturn in late 2007. In difficult eco-nomic times, new examples—particularly in thenewspaper industry—become evident nearlyevery day. Billionaire Warren Buffett (who has astake in the Washington Post among a number ofmedia organizations) has offered a gloomy viewof the future of newspapers, stemming fromthe economic downturn. In discussing shrink-ing circulation and diminished advertising rev-enues, a 23% fall from 2007 through 2008 inthe United States (123), Buffett commentedthat newspapers “were essential to advertisersonly as long as they were essential to readers . . .

[and] I don’t see anything on the horizon thatcauses that erosion to end.” Other examples in-clude the following (123, 124):

� From 1989 to 2006, the number of news-papers featuring weekly science sectionsshrank by nearly two-thirds.

� In recent years, only 7% of the mem-bers of the National Association of Sci-ence Writers have been employed as full-time science writers.

� Nearly one newspaper journalist in fivehas been laid off since 2001 in the UnitedStates.

Moreover, in December 2008, the inter-national cable news network CNN cut itentire science, technology, and environmentnews staff, signaling a reduction in capacityof television news to cover these stories. Thedominance of corporate media structures andorganizations mean that efficiency and profitare overarching factors driving the productionof news content. Economic developments, andcutbacks therein, have proven to have a detri-mental effect on training for news professionalsin covering varied news beats, such as scienceand the environment (125, 126). Additionally,deadlines and space considerations continueto constrain journalists as they can limit theability of journalists to both comprehend andcommunicate complex environmental science(31). Moreover, editorial preferences and pub-lisher pressures can affect news reporting (32).Editorial decisions are frequently made on theamount of exposure and placement (front pageor buried deep in the newspaper), as well ason the use of headlines and photographs. Eco-nomic considerations have limited funding forinvestigative journalism (127). In this milieu,science communication scholars such as Wilkesargue that editors “prefer to hire reporters whohave covered a wide variety of ‘beats’, especiallywhen the job is covering science or anotherspecialised area” (128). In terms of quantityof coverage in developing countries, Harbisonet al. (70) posit that lack of journalist trainingfor specialized environmental reporting hasdecreased the number of climate change storiesin these countries (see the comments above andFigure 1). Conversely, when the issue itselfpushes coverage beyond specialist reporters inthe science pages and into political, business,and general assignment reporters, the issuecan gain increased coverage and attention.Nisbet & Huge (49) assert that in coverage ofplant biotechnology, such spillage has helpedto explain an increase in stories on the issue.Nonetheless, a lack of journalist training hashampered accurate communications of envi-ronmental issues through such constraints (72).

These issues intersect with processes, suchas journalistic norms and values, to further


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shape news content (129). These include ob-jectivity, fairness, and accuracy. Much as sto-rylines are fueled within science and policy,the mass media play an important role, par-ticularly as an interpreter, translator, and dis-seminator of information. As Weingart et al.put it, “the media . . . tend to translate hypothe-ses into certainties” (31). Boykoff & Boykoff(69) have outlined and examined these jour-nalistic norms (personalization, dramatization,novelty, authority-order bias, and balance), andthey shape both what becomes news and howthat news is portrayed.

This inclination to personalize stories meanscoverage focuses on charismatic humanoids,struggling in the negotiated spaces of culturalpolitics and the environment. The gaze is onthe individual claims makers and sensational-ized stories, thus often subsuming deeper struc-tural or institutional analyses. This connects todramatization, whereby coverage of dramaticevents tends to downplay more comprehen-sive analysis of the enduring problems in favorof covering the surface-level movements (130).These norms intersect with the journalistic at-traction to novelty (131). Commonly, journal-ists mention the need for a novel “‘news hook”in order to translate an event into a story.3 Intandem, journalistic valuations of drama, per-sonalities, and novelty can serve to trivializenews content, as it also can lead to the blockingout of news items that do not hold an immediatesense of excitement or controversy. However,this norm does not necessarily lead to reducedcoverage. In their report entitled “Warm words:How are we telling the climate story and canwe tell it better?,” Ereaut & Segnit (112) haveposited that presenting news in this dramatizedform is most common.

An example of a dramatic, personalized, andnovel event that generated tremendous newscoverage is Hurricane Katrina. Despite scien-tific uncertainty that remains regarding links

3These new things are actually novel ways of portraying ordepicting already existing things, in the context of ongoingstorylines and historicized or preexisting norms and pres-sures. Hence, it is the perceived need.

between hurricane intensity and frequency andclimate change, this event spurred a wave ofcoverage. While scientific understanding oflinks between hurricane intensity and climatechange is improving, media coverage of thisevolution has focused on conflict and debate(132). In the United States, Eilperin reportedin The Washington Post, “Katrina’s destructive-ness has given a sharp new edge to the on-going debate over whether the United Statesshould do more to curb greenhouse gas emis-sions linked to global warming” (133). Consid-erations of links to implementation of inter-national climate policy in the public domainwere fueled in this case by comments madeby prominent political actors. For instance,Jurgen Trittin, —Minister of the Environmentin Germany, commented, “The American pres-ident has closed his eyes to the economic andhuman damage that natural catastrophes suchas Katrina—in other words, disasters caused bya lack of climate protection measures—can visiton his country” (134).

These three norms inform authority-orderbias, where journalists rely on official sources(131). In some cases, these authorities step into restore order, and at other times, they serveto increase political concern. Freudenburg(135) discusses embedded power and leveragedlegitimacy enabling privileged constructionsof nonproblematicity in environmental issues.For example, in the case of agricultural biotech-nology, Priest & Gillespie (136) examined di-vergent framings of risk, from short-term andconcentrated to long-term and diffuse. Theyfound that framing depended chiefly on per-spective (from that of a philosopher to that ofan ecologist) as well as a firm reliance on expertcommunity views (136). Finally, these normsintersect with the journalistic norm of balance,an activity that often appears to fulfill pursuitsof objectivity (137). With balanced reporting,journalists “present the views of legitimatespokespersons of the conflicting sides in anysignificant dispute, and provide both sides withroughly equal attention” (138). In coverage ofcomplex issues, such as stem cell research, dis-aster risks, or genetic engineering, balance can

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provide a validity check for reporters who areon deadline and do not have time nor the scien-tific understanding to verify the legitimacy ofvarious claims about the issue (139). Althougheffective in some cases of political debates overenvironmental alternatives for action, the em-ployment of this norm in covering issues, suchas anthropogenic climate change, can serve toperpetrate informational biases in news report-ing (82). Overall, adherence to these normscontributes to episodic framing of news, whichmeans framing that fails to place stories into suf-ficient context (140). This episodic framing canthen skew media coverage, thereby influencingthe ongoing dynamic and contested spaces ofenvironmental politics in the public sphere.

6. INTERPRETATION OFENVIRONMENTAL NEWSIN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Once news texts or segments are producedand enter into the public sphere, these en-coded messages—television/radio broadcasts,printed newspapers/magazines, and Internetcommunications—then compete in public are-nas for attention. Considerations of the in-creases and decreases in media attention to en-vironmental issues have predominantly beenexamined through two key theoretical mod-els: Downs’ Issue-Attention Cycle (141) andHilgartner & Bosk’s Public Arenas Model (142).These models have sought to organize andmake sense of the “institutional, political, andcultural factors that influence the probability ofsurvival of competing problem formulations”(142) within the mass media as well as environ-mental politics, policy, and practices.

Many attempts to theorize the rise and fallof media coverage and public attention to eco-logical issues have relied on Downs’ Issue-Attention Cycle. For instance, in mapping theenvironmental policy-making process, Robertsrelied on this model to “provide an expla-nation of the waxing and waning of issueswithin the policy environment” (143). In termsof agenda setting through the media, Newell

has leaned on this model as an “all-embracingexplanation for the nature of media coverageof global warming,” despite acknowledgmentthat the model fails to “accurately depict thecomplexity and challenging nature of the cli-mate change problem” (144). In describing theIssue-Attention Cycle as it relates to issues inecology, Downs reasoned that attention to envi-ronmental issues moves through five sequentialstages. First is the “preproblem stage,” when anecological problem exists but has not yet cap-tured public attention. Downs posits that ex-pert communities are aware of the risks, butthis has not yet been disseminated more widely.The second phase is that of “alarmed discov-ery and euphoric enthusiasm,” whereby dra-matic events make the public both aware ofthe problem and alarmed about it. Third, thereis the “gradual-realization-of-the-cost stage,”wherein key actors acknowledge the sacrificesand costs incurred in dealing with the prob-lem. Fourth, there is the “gradual-decline-of-intense-public-interest stage” wherein, accord-ing to Downs, actors become discouraged atthe prospect of appropriately dealing with theissue, and crises are normalized through sup-pression and in some cases boredom. Finally,fifth is the catchall “postproblem stage,” whenthe formerly hot issue “moves into a prolongedlimbo—a twilight realm of lesser attention orspasmodic reoccurrences of interest.” In thisstage, Downs covers all possibilities when hestates that the issue “once elevated to nationalprominence may sporadically recapture pub-lic interest” (141). This cycle is argued to be“rooted both in the nature” of the problem andin the “way major communication media inter-act with the public” (141).

This framework is useful perhaps in consid-ering the intrinsic qualities of the issues them-selves that influence these ebbs and flows of cov-erage. Yet, the Downs model fails to adequatelyaccount for influences from the contested ter-rain of environmental politics upon which andfrom which alarm and costs are determinedand contested. For example, it does not captureimplications from political economic drivers


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as well as cultural pressures or social mores(exhibited through regional or national politicaldifferences). It also does not account for thenonlinear factors that shape dynamic interac-tions in environmental politics via the massmedia (145). Logan & Molotch (146) describethe “easy news” and the “hard news” to re-port upon (“if it bleeds, it leads”) and the dif-ficulty reporters face when raising issues thatmight threaten their advertisers or owners’news. Dunlap (147) argues that environmen-tal issues have not conformed to Downs’ Issue-Attention Cycle because the problems haveworsened, new problems have arisen, and, mostimportantly, professionalized social movementorganizations have been built to keep themalive. Critics have also made the point that cy-cles may have both sped up in recent years, aswell as become less apparent (148). Moreover,cross-cultural research has found evidence that,although the Downs model appears to hold insome contexts, it does not hold in others (76). Insum, this model provides helpful, yet only par-tial, and overly linear explanations and interpre-tations of the messiness of the multiple internalas well as external factors shaping environmen-tal policy, politics, and practice. Therefore, theentrenched use of this Downs model has en-abled only limited understanding of how thesemedia representations are constructed and howthese shape (and are shaped by) ongoing envi-ronmental politics.

A second model, the 1988 Public ArenasModel by Hilgartner & Bosk, helps providethese additional considerations. It “stressesthe ‘arenas’ where social problem definitionsevolve, examining the effect of those arenason both the evolution of social problems andthe actors who make claims about them” (142).This approach seeks to examine both internaland external factors—as well as dynamic andnonlinear influences—that shape media influ-ences on environmental policy, politics, andpractices. This helps move analyses beyondstatic representations to more accurate analyt-ical lenses for understanding current trends,strengths, and weaknesses in media coverage

of environmental issues. In this Public ArenasModel, there is an accounting of dynamicand competitive processes to define and frameenvironmental problems. Moreover, this ac-counts for the institutional arenas where theseproblems compete for attention and are ne-gotiated. In other words, there is acknowl-edgment of the attention economy (65) thatbrackets the quantity and quality of mediacoverage of environmental issues at a giventime. Furthermore, this model helps to ac-count for considerations that not all audiencesinterpret things equally. At a minimum, thepublic is a dynamic and heterogeneous com-munity. Connections between media informa-tion and potential behavioral change are notstraightforward: Coverage does not determineengagement but shapes their possibilities (149).For example, some find great inspiration fromthe messages in Al Gore’s climate change fea-ture film An Inconvenient Truth, whereas forothers, it is the subject of great political ire.Perhaps due to his framing as a former U.S.Democratic leader, varied responses may formalong political party affiliation. Furthermore,one can argue that the many actors in this the-ater of discursive and material structuration—from climate scientists to business industry in-terests and ENGO activists—are ultimately allmembers of this public citizenry, so varied re-sponses to media messaging thereby feeds backinto ongoing environmental science and policyformulations.

This section has sought to briefly providefurther connectivity between the productionand consumption of media coverage of the en-vironment. Research, such as studies describedabove, has found that mass media representa-tions powerfully shape translations regardingenvironmental issues. However, interpretationsin the public arena comprise critical compo-nents of these processes. In discussing mass me-dia influence, Bennett has commented, “Fewthings are as much a part of our lives as thenews . . . it has become a sort of instant histori-cal record of the pace, progress, problems, andhopes of society” (150).

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7. ONGOING MEDIATREATMENT OFENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

The turn into the twenty-first century hasmarked a pivotal time for environmental issues,both in terms of threats and opportunities. Forinstance, in 2009, negotiations have rapidly un-folded to address mitigation of GHGs and theassociated issues of climate change. Stakes havebeen high as leaders have sought an agreementto follow the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which ex-pires in 2012.4 Meanwhile, political economicforces have contributed to tremendous pres-sures on and within the news industry, wherethese issues have become more, not less, chal-lenging to cover. Nonetheless, media repre-sentations of Anthropocene geopolitics (11)remain critical to public perceptions of environ-mental concerns into the twenty-first century.Furthermore, these interacting media por-trayals continue to have multifarious impli-cations on ongoing interactions between sci-ence, governance, and public understanding/engagement.

As noted above, there is empirical evidenceto suggest that there have been short-termimprovements in media representations ofenvironmental issues, such as more accuratecoverage of anthropogenic climate change.However, over the long-term scale, manyinstitutional challenges persist for enhancedmedia reporting on the environment. Thedynamic cultural politics are politicized andcontested arenas where agents of definitionbattle for recognition and discursive traction;and it is here where the implications for climategovernance and action remain open considera-tions. The approaches taken herein align withFoucault’s view that “individuals are the vehicles

4This can be evidenced partly by the climate change lobby ex-plosion in Washington, DC, since 2005. In 2009, the Centerfor Public Integrity (151) documented that there has been a300% increase in climate change lobbyists (numbering upto 2,340 in Washington, DC, in 2009) over the past fiveyears, amounting to approximately $90 million in expendi-tures. This indicates that there is a lot to concretely be gainedand lost now on critical environmental issues.

of power, not its points of application” (14). Inso doing, this contribution has sought to beginnecessary unpacking and interrogation on howmeanings are made and maintained as well as onwhat historical and biophysical contingenciesshape our perceived opportunities and alter-natives for climate action. Rutherford pointsout that these processes thereby “contribute to‘regimes’ of truth, which circumscribe how theworld is apprehended . . . ” (152).

Thus, media interpretations of environmen-tal change are not the truth translated. Demerittnoted this when he wrote that, “the notion ofa purely scientific realm of objective facts asdistinct from a political one of contestable val-ues is idealized by nearly all participants in de-bates . . . even as it is habitually breached in or-dinary practice” (153). Seen in this way, mediacoverage of the environment is not just a collec-tion of news articles and clips produced by jour-nalists and producers; rather, media coveragesignifies key frames derived through complexand nonlinear relationships between scientists,policy actors, and the public that is often me-diated by journalists’ news stories. Nisbet et al.have pointed out in research on media cover-age of stem cell research that, “the events thattake place in the policy sphere and the groupsthat compete in the political system are notonly mirrored (or covered) in the media butalso shaped by the media” (120). Through time,both internal (e.g., journalistic norms) and ex-ternal (e.g., political economics) factors shap-ing media representations have dynamically re-figured the terms of ongoing interactions inthe arena of environmental politics. These havethen also influenced ongoing considerations aswell as challenges in environmental governanceand policy action (97).

The parameters bounding this review can beplaced further into context in a number of ways,thus considering them within a wider landscape.For instance, to consider the various facets ofthese complex processes of media reporting onthe environment, it could be useful to considerthe “circuits of communication” model, devel-oped by Carvalho & Burgess (81). This modelillustrates three moments or circuits through


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which communications pass over time (81). Me-dia communications first originate and seconddisseminate into the public sphere before thethird phase when they enter the private sphereof individual engagement. Stories and reportsare assembled, compete for attention, are takenup to varying degrees in our personal lives, andfeed back again through ongoing interactionsover time. These feedbacks shape news fram-ing in subsequent moments and inform ongo-ing environmental science, policy, and practiceinteractions. Although this article has largelyfocused on the production of media represen-tations in the public sphere, there is a rich lit-erature (beyond the scope of this article) thataddresses facets of individual understandingand engagement with media and environmentalissues (154).

Overall, the process of media framinginvolves an inevitable series of choices tocover certain events within a larger currentof dynamic activities. Resulting stories com-pete for attention and thus permeate ongoing

interactions between science, policy, media, andthe public in varied ways. Furthermore, theseinteractions feed back on ongoing media repre-sentations. Developments such as the 2009 in-auguration of Barack Obama, the forty-fourthU.S. President, and his early actions to ad-dress various environmental issues may drawfurther attention to environmental concerns,often via media reports on them. More mediacoverage, however, of the environment—andfair, precise, and accurate coverage at that—willclearly not be the solution. Improved report-ing through greater specificity and contextu-alization through combined efforts of journal-ists, editors, and scientists will certainly help tomore effectively engage the public and widenthe spectrum of possibility for appropriate ac-tion. As outlined above, many political, eco-nomic, technological, institutional, and culturalfactors will continue to pose challenges, as wellas opportunities, for media reporting on the en-vironment as we move further into the twenty-first century.

SUMMARY POINTS

1. Mass media serve a vital role in communication processes between science, policy, and thepublic; thus, representations of the environment shape many perceptions of environmentproblems and considerations for environmental governance.

2. Mass media stitch together formal environmental science and policy negotiations to thecultural politics of the everyday, where various actors work to make claims and articulateenvironmental challenges in particular (and oft-competing) ways.

3. A persistent challenge in media portrayals of the environment has been the propensityto treat many distinct environmental processes as one, and this highlights conflicts anddebates in places where complexities and convergent agreement in science and policymay actually reside.

4. Fairness, accuracy, and precision in media reporting remain critical: To the extent thatefforts have fallen short of such aims, media coverage of the environment has contributedto critical misperceptions, misleading debates, and divergent understandings, which aredetrimental to efforts that seek to enlarge rather than constrict the spectrum of possibilityfor appropriate responses to various environmental challenges.

5. Many complex factors contribute to media representation practices: External (such aspolitical economic challenges associated with corporate media consolidation) as well asinternal influences (such as contributions from the deployment of journalistic norms)shape these representations.

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6. Public engagement/resistance to media representations is highly variable; it is a dynamic,nonlinear, and contested terrain between the production of media texts and images andtheir interpretation and consumption.

7. How mass media represents environmental issues will remain important in the intersec-tions between science, governance, and everyday lives and livelihoods in the twenty-firstcentury.

FUTURE ISSUES

1. What can we expect to be the future of mass media as a bridge between formal environ-mental science and policy to our cafes, pubs, living rooms, and kitchen tables amid themultifarious challenges in the twenty-first century?

2. How do news and entertainment media differentially influence how environmental issuesare taken up or resisted in our everyday lives?

3. What are ongoing internal and external multiscale challenges that mass media—journalists, editors, newsrooms—face when covering various environmental issues (e.g.,macrolevel political economic pressures and microlevel journalistic norms)?

4. How does the background and training of the journalists writing the articles affect thequantity of news coverage on the environment as well as the content?

5. Are environment and science reporters “endangered species” in the political economy ofnews coverage on the environment? Or, as environmental challenges potentially becomemore pronounced, will more newsrooms employ environment and science journalists?

6. What are the ongoing and future roles that various claims makers have in the creation,maintenance, or silencing of news discourses on various environmental issues?

7. What empirical work can be done to provide more textured understandings of media andthe environment?

8. What will the future hold for media representational practices in the shaping of neoliberalenvironmental governance?

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The author is not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that mightbe perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks go to Maria Mansfield and Deborah Strickland for (ongoing) contributions to Figure 1.Thanks also to Diana Liverman, Michael K. Goodman, Margaret Fitzsimmons, David E.Goodman, E. Melanie Dupuis, Ian Curtis, Tim O’Riordan, Michael Loik, Sam Randalls, MikeUrban, Scott Prudham, Heike Schroeder, Jules Boykoff, Roberto Sanchez-Rodgriguez, EmilyBoyd, J. Timmons Roberts, and Monica Boykoff. Finally, many thanks to the Annual Review ofEnvironment and Resources editors, particularly Jesslyn Holombo, for their assistance in assembling


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this review. At the time of writing this article, I was a Research Fellow in the Environmental ChangeInstitute, and a Lecturer in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University ofOxford.

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AR390-FM ARI 14 September 2009 9:35

Annual Review ofEnvironmentand Resources

Volume 34, 2009 Contents

Preface � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �v

Who Should Read This Series? � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �vii

I. Earth’s Life Support Systems

The Detection and Attribution of Human Influence on ClimateDáithí A. Stone, Myles R. Allen, Peter A. Stott, Pardeep Pall, Seung-Ki Min,Toru Nozawa, and Seiji Yukimoto � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 1

On the Increasing Vulnerability of the World Oceanto Multiple StressesEdward L. Miles � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �17

Global Biogeochemical Cycling of Mercury: A ReviewNoelle E. Selin � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �43

Interactions Between Biogeochemistry and Hydrologic SystemsKathleen A. Lohse, Paul D. Brooks, Jennifer C. McIntosh, Thomas Meixner,and Travis E. Huxman � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �65

Nitrogen in Agriculture: Balancing the Cost of an Essential ResourceG. Philip Robertson and Peter M. Vitousek � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �97

II. Human Use of Environment and Resources

Nuclear Power: Economic, Safety, Health, and Environmental Issuesof Near-Term TechnologiesM.V. Ramana � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 127

Global Groundwater? Issues and SolutionsMark Giordano � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 153

Crop Yield Gaps: Their Importance, Magnitudes, and CausesDavid B. Lobell, Kenneth G. Cassman, and Christopher B. Field � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 179

viii

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AR390-FM ARI 14 September 2009 9:35

Water for Agriculture: Maintaining Food Securityunder Growing ScarcityMark W. Rosegrant, Claudia Ringler, and Tingju Zhu � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 205

Emerging Threats to Human Health from GlobalEnvironmental ChangeSamuel S. Myers and Jonathan A. Patz � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 223

III. Management, Guidance, and Governance of Resources and Environment

Connectivity and the Governance of Multilevel Social-EcologicalSystems: The Role of Social CapitalEduardo S. Brondizio, Elinor Ostrom, and Oran R. Young � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 253

Economic Globalization and the EnvironmentKevin P. Gallagher � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 279

Voluntary Environmental Programs: Assessing Their EffectivenessJonathan C. Borck and Cary Coglianese � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 305

The Economic Valuation of Environmental Amenities andDisamenities: Methods and ApplicationsRobert Mendelsohn and Sheila Olmstead � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 325

Infrastructure and the EnvironmentMartin W. Doyle and David G. Havlick � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 349

Scientific Bases of Macroenvironmental IndicatorsGordon H. Orians and David Policansky � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 375

Environmental JusticePaul Mohai, David Pellow, and J. Timmons Roberts � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 405

We Speak for the Trees: Media Reporting on the EnvironmentMaxwell T. Boykoff � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 431

Indexes

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 25–34 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 459

Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 25–34 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 463

Errata

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Environment and Resources articles maybe found at http://environ.annualreviews.org

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Documents

We Speak for the Trees: Media Reporting on the …sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-2788...Media Reporting on the Environment ... The Annual Review of Environment