As a student in Communication, I’m interested in how environmental issues are shaped and delivered for debate in the news media. As we’ve seen in this class, much of our information about environmental issues comes from the news media, such as the sources for our Twitter and blog posts. The news media function as a public forum for information, analysis, and debate.
Those who work in the media shape the discussion by negotiating who gets access to their platform and audience. Those who are on the outside, in this case the players in the environmental movement, strategize ways to gain access and penetrate the political, professional, and economic barriers of the news media.
The weapon of choice for the environmentalists is symbols. They exist in the form of powerful images, strong rhetoric, and symbolic acts. In Libby Lester’s book (2010), “Media and Environment: Conflict, Politics and the News” she explains how this has been manifested in Tasmania. Lester is a Professor of Journalism at the University of Tasmania. This blog post will focus on powerful images.
Powerful images
The Wilderness Society is an environmental advocacy organization founded in 1976 in Tasmania. In March 1983, they took out what were then rare full-page advertisements in the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne’s The Age newspapers. The advertisement protested the Franklin Dam project which was proposed on the Gordon River. In the advertisement, the group used a photograph of “Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River” by Peter Dombrovski. It was accompanied by the caption "Could you vote for a party that would destroy this?"
Source:
The above image on the advertisement was a pivotal moment in the environmental campaign to stop the dam project. It established imagery as playing a key role in affecting the environmental discussion and revealed to the Wilderness Society how they could harness the power of particular images to penetrate the media establishment.
In addition to images, the environmental movement has tapped onto symbolic acts (see Jory's fascinating post about the woman who spent 14 months in a tree) and strong rhetoric to gain power to the news media.
There has been initial resistance from the Tasmanian news media to these movement-sponsored symbols, but the power of these symbols combined with the professional practices of journalism eventually overcame the reluctance in the news media (Lester 2007). According to Lester who has 15 years working as a journalist, the island has a relatively conservative news media with strong historical ties to industry and government. It was quite a feat for the environmental movement to affect the conversation in the media.
References
- Lester, Libby (2007) Giving Ground: Media and Environmental Conflict in Tasmania. Hobart: Quintus
- Lester, Libby (2010) Media & Environment. Cambridge: Polity Press
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ReplyDeleteCan you speak more about the tensions that are present between the environmentalists and the government? Is there strong evidence of lobbying and interest group activism in Tasmania?
ReplyDeleteRehan
Can you speak more about the tensions that are present between the environmentalists and the government? Is there strong evidence of lobbying and interest group activism in Tasmania?
ReplyDeleteRehan