The power of the unseen: environmental conflict,the media and invisibility

Abstract

This article critically revisits the operation of ‘mediated visibility’ in the context of environmental conflict. Challenger groups have long gained access to news media and influenced political decision-makers by staging highly visible protest events that draw public attention to environmental threats and destruction. The advent of the world-wide web and digital media tools has since added to the tactical arsenal available to groups wanting to infiltrate and disrupt government and corporate networks of power. In turn, governments and corporations deploy these same tools to maintain their reputation and check opponents who oppose their activities. These developments have, we argue, produced a significant flow-on effect. The function of invisibility – or the coordinated avoidance of media communication, attention and respresentation in order to achieve political and/or social ends – is an under-examined feature of contemporary environmental politics. The case study and evidence presented here are drawn from fieldwork conducted in the Australian island state of Tasmania, and extensive content analysis of news media, social networking platforms and websites.

Keywords

activism conflict forestry industry media and environment mediated visibility protest symbolic power Tasmania

Ever since the advent of print, political rulers have found it impossible to control completely the new kind of visibility made possible by the media and to shape it entirely to their liking; now, with the rise of the Internet and other digital technologies, it is more difficult than ever. (Thompson, 2005: 38)

Who is seen in public debate, and how, have rightly been principal concerns in the study of media and environmental politics in recent years. Connecting to questions of power and justice, a range of approaches and concepts have been used to understand how media practices, institutional and organizational logics, and technological change impact on the visibility of social movements and political organizations. Visibility carries with it symbolic power, or an ability to control and/or affect political affairs, that has been witnessed globally (Cottle, 2000). In outlining the significance of ‘struggles for visibility’ (original emphasis), John B. Thompson observes that achieving ‘visibility through the media is to gain a kind of presence or recognition in the public space’ (2005: 49).¹ The obverse of this situation is thought to be the debilitating condition of invisibility, confining ‘one to obscurity – and, in the worst cases, [it] can lead to a kind of death by neglect’ (2005: 49). This article critically revisits the function and power of visibility and obscurity in media-saturated contexts. The strategy of becoming deliberately invisible is shown to be a potential asset available to challenger groups and political actors attempting to influence government policy and environmental outcomes.

Environmental conflicts and debates over the past decade have been key sites for struggles to achieve visibility in the media (Boyce and Lewis, 2009; Castells, 2009; Cottle and Lester, 2011). Growth in networked digital communications technology innovation and use since the 1990s has helped to change the conditions for visibility in environmental politics. Offering the possibility of weaker boundaries, leakages and accessible transterritorial information flows, the internet, web and mobile technologies offer a tantalising (if not always realized) source of hope for activists seeking to lessen the power exercised by corporate capital, industry and the established news media industry over formal political agendas (see, for example, Lievrouw, 2011; Renzi, 2008). How these technologies bring into open view what was previously hidden is evident in local, regional and transnational conflicts, as well as in the capacity of shifting issue-based ‘communities’ to make sense of the contending knowledge claims emerging out of such conflicts (Lester and Cottle, 2011). For example, protester interventions in the Southern Ocean against Japanese whaling ships illustrate Thompson’s point that the mediated visibility of events impacts on the collective understanding of what is happening and is an ‘inseparable part of the unfolding of the events themselves’ (2005: 49). Audio-visual footage streamed in real time, showing clashes between protesters and whalers, which is then broadcast and streamed by news outlets, provides a shocking immediacy to the reality and danger of the ‘whale wars’ fought annually many miles from land (Crouch and Damjanov, 2011; Lester, 2011). Used effectively, digital networked media tools allow activists to enter into news and information flows and overcome journalistic practices that may limit the reporting of their activities to less meaningful frames. Geographical remoteness, once an advantage for commercial whalers and a disadvantage for protesters, is also exploited as the activists are afforded a level of control over the production and distribution of media images.

Despite the changes described here, commercial and public service news outlets maintain a pivotal role in the generation of mediated visibility. Actors located throughout the political spectrum must be present in both ‘legacy’ media and the networks of ‘mass self-communication’ supported by broadband and wireless technologies (Castells, 2009). Influence over public opinion and political agendas results from successfully finding connections between the two. Communicative ‘bridges’ are built when activists upload footage to YouTube, update blogs and vlogs, tweet links to journalists and use Facebook to raise money for the purchase of advertising space in national newspapers and on commercial television. The same tools are available to governments and corporations that seek to engage citizens and consumers in ongoing ‘conversations’ in an effort to make effective decisions and secure favourable public relations (see Couldry et al., 2007; Freeman, 2011). Networked digital communications technologies both amplify the importance of these new forms of visibility and render them more variegated and difficult to manage. For Thompson (2005: 37–8), this complexity increases the challenge of controlling how and where visibility is manifest, and what character it takes:

given the nature of the Internet, it is much more difficult to control the flow of symbolic content within it, and hence much more difficult for those in power to ensure that the images made available to individuals are those they would wish to see circulated. (Thompson, 2005: 38)

This statement suggests that mediated visibility is a precious but precarious resource for activists and peddlers of political influence, creating news frames that can work for and against their objectives in unpredictable ways. This situation is the product of news and information flows that have intensified in speed and scale in recent times (Gane, 2006; Lash, 2002), and are, as a result, less controllable either by regulation and monitoring compared to the era of mass media.

Prevailing conditions of visibility, uneven access to news media and super-abundant information flows are being met by two key responses (see Thompson, 2000). First, politicians, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are investing heavily in public relations, image management and/or the surveillance of opponents in order to combat unexpected criticism and embarrassing revelations before they even appear. Second, and of most significance for our analysis, is a focus on secrecy and restricting freedom of access to information about political activities and negotiations to avoid unwanted interference and input. Declarations of commercial confidentiality and legal restraints have often been used to interrupt the supply of information to the public arena (see, for example, Ericson et al., 1989). However, these mechanisms have been weakened considerably by alternatively justified, reckless and mischievous disclosures via the likes of Twitter, Wikileaks and YouTube (Flew and Liu, 2010; Lester and Hutchins, 2009; Matthiesson, 2010; Segerberg and Bennett, 2011).

These developments give rise to an important yet under-examined issue in the operation of media and political power. Questions of control and strategy in the contemporary media landscape cannot be fully understood without paying serious attention to the idea of invisibility, or the planned and coordinated avoidance of media communication, attention and representation in order to achieve political and/or social ends. Conditions that allow political actors and activists to stay out of the news media spotlight, conceal their activities, or to slow and block the distribution of information are changing to such an extent that the ability to strategically avoid appearing in the media is arguably a key – and dynamic – resource. Our interest is in how invisibility is achieved in the context of contentious and fractious environmental conflicts, where the control of information, claims and counter-claims has always been difficult. The internet and web have only compounded the difficulty of keeping issues out of sight, especially given the dense social, communication and source-related networks existing within and between many environmental groups, journalists and political operatives. The next section outlines the approach used to investigate these issues and the methodological problem of seeing and analysing what is, by definition, difficult to see.

Identifying the unseen in environmental politics

As discussed, much environmental media research to date has focused on how the once hidden is made visible, focusing on the role of protest and activist media strategies designed to draw widespread attention to otherwise neglected problems. There is also an impressive range of scholarship analysing the gate-keeping function of journalists and the framing of ecological concerns by commercial and public service news, revealing the structural inequalities that exist in ‘the journalistic field’ (Bourdieu, 2005; Cottle, 2009; Wolfsfeld, 1997). Shifting the focus to invisibility alters the types of questions that are posed in subtle yet crucial ways. What mechanisms are able to keep major environmental issues and matters of legitimate public interest invisible? Why do some actors choose not to be seen and under what conditions is it possible to remain unseen? As the boundaries of media communications in the network society (Castells, 2000) become more porous and the opportunities for leakages increase, then the strategic utility of invisibility and its value within environmental politics can also be expected to change.

Generating evidence about the purposeful cloaking of political activity presents obvious methodological issues. It is one challenge to identify the issues and opinions that actively compete for attention but fail to appear on the public record, the sources that speak but are not quoted in published copy and press releases, or the facts that are presented to journalists that they subsequently disregard. These tasks, however, are distinct from the larger challenge of identifying the issues and events that are deliberately rendered invisible by sources and which are purposefully kept hidden for a period of time. More perplexing still is how to reveal why and under what conditions invisibility emerges as a desirable objective for activists and political groups, especially when they are trained and practised at pursuing visibility in order to maximize their symbolic power. Our response to these problems involves two interconnected research methods. Direct observation of sites in the Australian island state of Tasmania, a globally significant location for environmental politics, allowed us to monitor and discuss a range of media practices. Direct observation of different locales of activity – NGO, activist and political communications offices, protest sites and news outlets – occurred over two separate three-month periods during the southern hemisphere summers of 2010 and 2011. By moving between locales, it became possible to connect the practices of various actors with converging and conflicting interests. We were also able to obtain the ‘backstory’ for how these groups were presenting themselves and to gauge ‘their success or failure in influencing agendas’ in media and public debates (Anderson, 1997: 37). Implementing this method has required more than short-term observation and the writing of field notes. It has demanded the cultivation and maintenance of contacts and relationships over time – six years in this case – to ensure meaningful access to the places of work and activism of environmentalists and political claims-makers, as well as detailed insights into their activities (Anderson, 1997: 37). Therefore, a considerable amount of empirically based social and media research involving historical analysis, fieldwork, in-depth interviews and detailed case studies informs this article (see Hutchins and Lester, 2006, 2011; Lester, 2007, 2010; Lester and Hutchins, 2009, 2012). It is this level of consistent ‘immersion’ in the research site(s) that enabled identification of the fact that an unusually low level of protest and media activity occurred during parts of 2010, prompting urgent questions as to why this was the case.

The orthodox social research method of content analysis supplemented the direct observation data, allowing us to trace and compare the content of specific websites and news texts with what had been observed, noted and discussed in the field. The content of state-based, national and international online news websites was collected, including screenshots. The analysis counted the quantity of online material and a total sample of 2202 news items was then subject to categorization in terms of the sources and the issues reported upon.² Of this total, 529 items referred to the forestry peace negotiations under investigation. Key environmental and industry groups’ websites and social networking profiles (Twitter and Facebook) were also monitored weekly for 13 months (March 2010–March 2011), tracking the issues communicated about and the websites to which users followed links. The results of our analysis were then cross-referenced against the data generated in the field, particularly in terms of how activists spoke about their activities, and the uses of social networking services and websites.

These complementary methods revealed a surprising result involving a notable decline in media information and activity. This deficit centred on ‘secret’ peace talks held between forest industry representatives, a union and three environmental groups. The talks were dedicated to resolving the intractable conflict over forest use and logging that has dominated Tasmanian political life. These negotiations enabled us to identify and describe conditions under which influential groups used strategic invisibility to undercut the dissemination of open public knowledge, even at a time of profuse online media. Moreover, we witnessed the use of mediated visibility – the dominant source of symbolic power for many environmental organizations – as a bargaining chip that was traded for protection of over 500,000 hectares of native forests. To understand the scenario outlined here, it is necessary to provide the story of how it came about.

Disappearing (and the) forests

Home to almost half a million people, Tasmania provides an excellent setting in which to investigate and analyse environmental conflict. This island state has been the site of fractious political, economic and social disputes over land use and forestry practices for four decades. The world’s first green party, the United Tasmania Group, emerged from the state in the early 1970s (Pybus and Flanagan, 1990) and, in the process, fostered a complex media–environmental movement relationship (Lester, 2007). The 1982–3 campaign to save the Franklin River has been described as the first environmental campaign to attain global stature (Hay, 1991) and a ‘turning point’ in Australian history (Harper, 2009). Staying unnoticed has rarely been an objective for environmentalists and political groups over this period, particularly as almost every national and state election in Tasmania since 1972 has focused on environmental issues. In 2004, the final week prior to the federal poll was dominated by media images of protests, which were the culmination of year-long campaigns by environmental NGOs and a counter-campaign by the Tasmanian forest industry. In the 2007 federal election, a proposal for an AUD2.5 billion pulp mill sparked widely reported protests in the news media and online forums. These campaigns had a profound influence on the political landscape as the major parties jostled to develop forestry policies that the electorate would find palatable. Online media, news organizations and international environmentalist networks have played a central role in these political, symbolic and ecological tugs-of-war that have travelled outwards from Tasmania to register in regional and international news reportage and political forums.

The events of 2010 are the basis for the evidence presented here. The year began with an environment movement sapped by the demands of constant campaigning, a government and forestry industry in broad agreement over forest use and the building of a new pulp mill, and a jaded news media that had absorbed environmental protests as a routinized feature of reporting after years of relentless conflict. By March, a global downturn in demand for Tasmanian forest products was quickening, triggered by the global financial crisis and increasing environmental awareness among overseas companies, particularly woodchip buyers in Japan. Gunns Limited, Tasmania’s largest company and Australia’s biggest woodchip exporter, had suffered a staggering fall in market value. Its share price dropped from AUD4.80 shortly after the 2004 federal election to below 54¢ in early 2010, collapsing further to 20¢ not long after. Also, Gunns could not find a financial backer for its controversial pulp mill proposal. In the state election, the pro-forest industry Labor government lost its parliamentary majority and was forced into a power-sharing arrangement with the Tasmanian Greens. The outcome was that long-standing tensions and disagreements between the various political parties, activists and industry groups were maintained, if not exacerbated.

The environmental movement was also experiencing change in terms of self- presentation. The possibility that the Greens might secure a share of power in the state parliament prompted a deliberate strategy that sought to generate electoral palatability across a large cross-section of the population. This approach saw the Greens present a ‘responsible’ public face that distanced the party from its ‘ratbag’ protesting and activist past. This was an effort that emphasized reassuring statements delivered by spokespeople dressed in professional attire at staged media conferences, as opposed to ‘dreadlocked and arm-locked ferals’ chanting in the face of police and loggers in forest coupes.³ Two new environmental groups emerged that underlined this safe and unthreatening vision of environmental concern – the umbrella Environment Tasmania and Our Common Ground, a group of high-profile citizens and organizations who funded an advertising campaign in the lead-up to the state election. These new organizations worked with more radical direct action groups to encourage a cessation of protest activity in the forests throughout the late summer of 2010 and during the state election campaign.

Yet protest activity did not resume even after the election of March 2010 was over and the Greens had won 5 seats in the 25-member house. Controversial logging of native forests continued, albeit at a slower rate as the industry downturn worsened. Mainstream news media reporting on forestry matters continued, although the focus of stories shifted from source-driven content to reporting about how the ‘ailing forest industry’ might be restructured (ABC, 2010a) and the type of government assistance packages that would be required for its ‘overhaul’ (Stedman, 2010a). Given what was at stake, this was the exact moment when direct action environmental groups could have been expected to loudly declare that the forestry practices that they had fought against for many years were, as they had maintained, unsustainable on both ecological and market grounds. Instead, they remained relatively silent. Even more anomalous was the reduced number of media releases issued by all major participants in the conflict, including environmental groups, forest industry workers and community organizations. There was also minimal activity on the websites of key environmental actors, with the exception of reports about the plummeting share price of Gunns on the Australian Stock Exchange. The assumption that website activity had moved to social networking platforms such as Twitter and Facebook was also unfounded. Links to Twitter and Facebook from environmentalist websites took the user to old comments attached to stable numbers of friends and followers. Figure 1 illustrates what has been described here, consolidating the media activities (including new website content, press releases, and social networking updates and posts) for multiple environmental groups and forest industry organizations in Tasmania at this time.

Figure 1.

Number of media items per month generated by Tasmanian environmental and forestry industry organizations relating to the peace talks between March 2010 and March 2011

At this stage of data collection, pressing questions emerged. After three decades of robust, widely circulated media exchanges, what had happened to public debate about the future of forests in Tasmania? Why had one of the most high-profile and lengthy political disputes in Australian history changed so noticeably? Why had key environmental actors all but disappeared from public and media view in the early months of 2010?

A critical development in the history of the conflict was unfolding – secret peace talks, as they were later dubbed. These ‘private’ talks involved 10 groups: six forest industry lobby groups, a union representing forestry workers, and three environmental groups. The environmental groups were the Wilderness Society, which was dealing with the consequences of internal leadership struggles; the more moderate Australian Conservation Foundation; and the new ‘umbrella’ organization, Environment Tasmania, which liaised with interventionist and visible protest groups. Two agreements, one broad and the other specific, were negotiated at the start of the process. The first was to move the conflict away from the media arena while the talks attempted to find ‘common ground’ (interview 12 May 2010b). During the fieldwork process, an environmentalist privy to the peace talks explained that a ‘general agreement’ among participants was ‘no more punching each other by protest or media release’ while they occurred (interview 12 May 2011a).⁴ The second was to keep the content of the talks ‘quiet’ and to apply the Chatham House Rule, again until common ground had been established. Interviews reveal that the application of the Chatham House Rule – or not revealing the identity of participants – was justified on the following basis:

it’s a very brave thing to do for public opponents to start talking to each other, even without having to answer questions to their members.… It is all very tentative to sound each other out, to see if there is any way forward. Given the history and perceptions, if you’re going into something like this you need very justifiable reasons to take back to the membership.… Initially there is no certainty that there would be common ground. You’re saying, let’s explore this, it might lead to something, it might not. But if you make the process of sitting down talking part of the news, then you have to go back to your members and justify [it] without having to come to any conclusions or be fruitful. The stakes were pretty high particularly for unions and industry. Still are, I guess. (interview 12 May 2011b)

A by-product of the talks was that activists and members of the environmental movement who knew the talks were occurring – Environment Tasmania regularly held physical meetings of a ‘reference group’, that included representatives from across the environment movement in Tasmania – agreed to stay out of the media spotlight, despite misgivings about the lack of information emerging from them.The justification for ‘staying away from the media’ and ‘not stirring things up’ was a ‘fear of media interference or misinterpretation’ (field notes 11 January 2011, 28 January 2011, 15 March 2011; interview 12 May 2011a). Subsequent events revealed that the possibility of protecting around 560,000 hectares of forests from logging was central to their motivation.

Our data relating to the peace talks reveal invisibility for a period of about six months, reflecting carefully maintained information and source activity. This invisibility has two dimensions. The first involves a downturn in environmentalist media communication and protest activity from the state election in March until October of 2010. Inactivity is reflected in the low levels of web-based activity in terms of: (a) website updates such as blogs, reports or news links; (b) issuing of media releases; and (c) social networking activities on Facebook and Twitter (see Figure 1). The second dimension involves the lack of detailed news about the contents of the private talks even after their existence had been confirmed in a small sample of news reports in May (see Figure 2).⁵ The amount of information about the negotiations remained limited despite the (now former) Tasmanian Premier David Bartlett admitting in late June that he had been present at three of the initial meetings (ABC, 2010b). This dearth of information and the non-existent profile of participants – it was difficult to establish who was attending the talks and when they were being held – was extraordinary given that a lasting ‘peace in the forests’ (Stedman, 2010b) appeared to be a possibility. A spike in news, forestry industry and environmental group media activities then occurs in late August following a leak about the pending release of a ‘Statement of Principles to Lead to an Agreement’, which had taken ‘five months of private negotiations’ (ABC, 2010c) to formulate and, controversially, included movement support for ‘a pulp mill’. Released in early October, these principles were presented as a ‘peace road map’ (Darby, 2010) and a ‘solution to the state’s decades-long forestry conflict’ (ABC, 2010d), prompting speculation that a final end to old-growth logging would be announced in the early months of 2011. Media communications then climb across the board from October onwards as a multitude of interest groups struggle to be seen and heard, each attempting to influence how the Statement of Principles would be transformed into precise policy, action and funding. Notable here was the involvement of the federal government, lobbying by national industry bodies, comment from environmental groups about the details of the peace deal and speculation about the types of financial assistance that should be given to logging contractors who were prepared to exit the forestry industry. Public comment also appears on the letters-to-the-editor page of daily newspapers, with a Hobart-based reader criticizing the secrecy of the talks and asserting that ‘the people of Tasmania should be delighted at the opportunity for some input into what will greatly affect all Tasmanians’ (Biggs, 2010). This flurry of activity stood in marked contrast to the previous period, signalling a return to the battle for media visibility that had been a routine of the forestry conflict.

Figure 2.

Number of news media items per month relating to the peace talks between March 2010 and March 2011

The other feature of Figures 1 and 2 is the unusually low level of activity in January 2011 before a conspicuous escalation throughout February and March. This lull can be explained on two counts, one related to the rhythms of media work and the other due to the machinations of Tasmanian politics and news media. Unless there is a national disaster event or a global catastrophe, the Christmas–New Year period and the following fortnight are often slow periods for political news in Australia (and many other countries). These weeks are a time of the year where the politicians and political journalists are able to take holidays before resuming normal duties. The other factor here was the intersection of several issues that led to a ‘wait and see’ mindset among protesters and environmental activists. This month coincided with rumours about the future of the state Premier, David Bartlett, and then the appointment of his successor, Lara Giddings (ABC, 2011a). No one was certain about how this transition would affect the peace deal. The question of who would oversee the implementation of the deal was also undecided, making it difficult to judge the political wisdom and tone of statements that could be reported in the news.⁶ Activist groups also stood by watching a fight between members of a traditional opponent, forestry contractors, over how AUD17 million in industry exit packages should be allocated (Clark, 2011). Once these issues had been (more or less) settled, some environmental groups reversed any restraint they had been prepared to exercise in terms of protest and media activities. Their renewed efforts after January were spurred by fears that sections of soon-to-be-protected high conservation value forests were being logged before the peace deal could come into effect (Bird, 2011).

Here, then, is a case of invisibility during a period when some of the most momentous talks in the history of the Tasmanian forest conflict occurred. The relative absence of media activity and information from March 2010 to around October 2010 is remarkable given the significance of these negotiations to state and national environmental politics. Furthermore, this disappearance from public view occurred at a moment when the likes of Twitter, Facebook, blogs and mobile media increasingly act as potent ‘awareness systems’ (Hermida, 2010) that disseminate news and rumours, as well as interacting with established news outlets and journalists who produce content for broadcast, print and online media (Bruns, 2005, 2008). Limiting the spread of information in this environment is difficult, particularly when activist and lobbying groups that are adept at the tactical deployment of networked digital media are involved. For instance, a typical use of Twitter here could have been the distribution of oblique hints about who was in the meetings and what was happening. It is necessary to account for the conditions that made such an unlikely result possible in a world where the operation of political power is clearly associated with mediated visibility (Thompson, 2005). We deal with each of the key groups involved – the forest industry, news media, and environmental groups – in explaining how a state of invisibility was achieved.

The Tasmanian forest industry had much to gain from closing ranks. An almost total collapse in the share market value of its dominant operator, Gunns, left it open to any proposal that might help reverse this slide and restore a degree of certainty and confidence in its longer-term viability (albeit on a smaller scale than in the past). A demonstrated willingness to visit the negotiating table could also assist in attracting a financial partner and ‘social licence’ for a pulp mill in the Tamar Valley (ABC, 2010e). Most notably, the requirement that the private talks occur out of sight and without journalistic or public knowledge was what the industry had always desired, yet been unable to achieve. As Richard Ericson et al. (1989) observed in the 1980s, power over the news for a private corporation is often the power to stay out of the news while it goes about its business. The fact this outcome has become much harder to achieve under the prevailing conditions of networked media and communications only adds to the allure of a low profile for companies chasing favourable government decisions and sizeable commercial returns. Various mechanisms had been activated in the past by the forestry industry in an effort to control media coverage and avoid unwanted publicity. These had included advertising and public ‘education’ campaigns, the establishment of front groups that promulgated positive messages, ‘flak’ (Herman and Chomsky, 1988) that sought to aggressively counter the protest actions and media messages of environmentalists, and legal action designed to silence opposition, including strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPS) (Ogle, 2010; Pring, 1989). None of these measures had produced lasting results and many had backfired by attracting adverse media commentary. The rise of broadband internet provided even more distractions as activists were gifted the capacity to bypass journalists and distribute information that, on occasion, led to unwanted questions that needed to be answered in public meetings and the news media (Hutchins and Lester, 2011). With little left to lose, the industry was prepared to countenance handing back around half a million hectares of forest resources through meetings held behind closed doors, which was a major shift from its previous ‘no compromise’ stance.

The position of journalists in relation to the private peace talks was curious. The existence of the talks should have been a big news story, particularly once their existence had been suggested in May and the Premier had admitted his involvement in late June (ABC, 2010b). A combination of tacit consent to a negotiated censorship, and journalistic scepticism arguably accounts for why this prominence was never awarded. An established pattern of journalist–source relations and industry–news media relationships had taken hold. Flak, as identified by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988; Klaehn, 2002), has been a regular feature of the Tasmanian forests conflict. Sustained and well-funded industry efforts at discrediting the claims of environmentalists have been undertaken through the pursuit of formal complaints proceedings against news media outlets that air reports regarded as erroneous, in addition to their sharp public rebuttal (Lester, 2007; Lester and Hutchins, 2012). It is difficult to assess exactly how these manoeuvres have impacted upon journalists’ behaviour, but reporters acknowledge displaying a cautious attitude when dealing with forest industry stories (interviews 1 March 2012, 2 March 2012, 28 March 2012).⁷ The environmental movement’s determined pursuit of news media attention has also seen many journalists become sceptical about the frequently ‘staged’ or ‘contrived’ character of protest actions (Hutchins and Lester, 2006; Lester and Hutchins, 2009).

The nature of the events themselves, slowly unfolding and with sources reluctant to speak on the record, was also identified by journalists as a key factor behind the coverage, as in this quote from a Tasmanian newspaper reporter:

A lot of these people wouldn’t talk, so very much at the beginning it was hard to even get them to be able to have a conversation. So I suppose in a news sense, there wasn’t a lot newsworthy about that. (Interview 28 March 2012)

This complexity of factors aids in explaining why the story of the private talks was not pursued aggressively, even as it became increasingly obvious that something important was happening.⁸

Most difficult to unravel here is the attitude of the environmentalists involved.⁹ Not only did the Wilderness Society, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Environment Tasmania agree to participate in the talks, they also worked with other campaigners to stop protesting and limit their media activities (field notes 11 January 2011, 28 January 2011, 15 March 2011; interviews 12 May 2011a, 12 May 2011b). Small and poorly resourced activist groups were persuaded to cede one of the only reliable strategic weapons available to them in the pursuit of their objectives – visibility in the news, and online media that enable ‘mass self-communication’ (Castells, 2009) and ‘sustainable self-representation’ (Couldry, 2003). These have been the most reliable methods by which these groups have overcome organizational resource deficits and had their messages publicly tabled. However, the consistent and growing electoral success of the Australian and Tasmanian Greens fed into a reassessment of the approach promoted by movement leaders, reflecting a discernible change in leadership style and dynamics. The decision to take a seat at the closeted negotiating table with the ‘power players’ of industry and the union movement was a welcome confirmation of political status for those involved. It also coincided with the growing influence of Environment Tasmania and the calculated presentation of a ‘reasonable’ public face for environmental activism. The founding of the benignly titled, Our Common Ground, best captures this approach, directing attention away from direct action groups that occupy logging coupes and conduct tree-sits. According to the new approach, continuing, open political conflict causes lasting damage to the community as a whole and can only be resolved by charting ‘the middle ground’, ‘in safety and if necessary in secret’ (Castles, 2009). These developments and the reorganization of the environment movement also served to increase the power of its leaders, making it more likely that smaller groups would agree to stay out of sight while the talks proceeded. For much of 2010, this cooperation was granted despite the private misgivings expressed by some activists. These focused on shifting power balances and tense relationships within the movement; on the capacity to re-engage in direct action after a long period of ‘shutdown’; and faith in the ability of those at the table to represent broader movement interests (field notes 27 January 2011, 28 January 2011, 15 March 2011; interview 17 April 2012).

Conclusion: invisibility and the logic of containment

Little of what has been described here is healthy for democratic processes and social movement politics, especially if transparency is regarded as a sacrosanct value in these settings. The importance of environmental policies and industry practices to elections in Tasmania, and the consistent impact these issues have on the national and international stage, means that political citizenship is difficult to enact when major decisions are removed from the realm of those affected by them (Miller, 2007). This problem became apparent through complaints emanating from local councils and communities affected by the private talks when they eventually become cognizant of their existence (ABC, 2010f). The ‘secretive’ talks, it was claimed in the press, have ‘“no legitimacy” while the community was not involved’ (Neales, 2010). It is difficult to deny the validity of this charge given the impact that the Statement of Principles continues to have on citizens living across the length and breadth of the island. The full implications of the talks continue to unfold as debate proceeds about when the moratorium on logging of high conservation value forests will actually begin and what shape a new pulp mill might take. It is here that the continuing role of investigative and campaigning journalism emphatically announces itself (see Schudson, 2008). An aggressive and inquisitive stance by journalists both in Tasmania and on mainland Australia might have revealed the existence and contents of the secret talks much earlier in 2010, or at least posed unrelenting questions to all sides as to why they had disappeared from the media and public stage. Forceful questions alone might have helped elicit input and comment from a range of sources.

The analysis presented in this article has moved beyond the contention that key decisions about environmental futures are sometimes decided ‘behind closed doors’ by powerful groups that wield influence both inside and outside government. A combination of fieldwork that is reliant on access to key actors, and exhaustive content analysis and monitoring of media activities generated evidence of this process in action. The issue is, why would environmentalists, journalists and, to a lesser degree, industry representatives engaged in a fiercely fought and divisive symbolic and political fight all change tack so sharply and collectively withdraw from public view. The answer, we suggest, can be found in the conditions fostered by the new mediated visibility described by Thompson (2005), which has produced a comparatively unnoticed flow-on effect. The value and function of both visibility and invisibility have changed in the era of computer-mediated interaction and convergence, reflecting the increased mutual interpenetration of complex media systems and conflict events. As Simon Cottle (2011a, 2011b, 2011c) convincingly argues about mediated politics under the conditions of globalization, the proliferation of activist networked communications and news media representations work to help constitute contemporary protests, activism and social movements. This function sees the interaction between news, activist and social networking media informing how events and issues are defined and understood by audiences, politicians and participants. Particular political positions and practices are alternatively legitimized, delegitimized and/or bypassed in highly unpredictable ways in the process. This instability in the social production of meaning then feeds back into multi-directional digital information flows, and public opinion(s) that are difficult to manage and predict (Cottle, 2011c).

The decision to become invisible and remove politics from public screens and spheres, therefore, reflects an instrumental logic of containment. A profusion of information, news and representations creates an impetus to stem this flow, reduce the range of inputs into decision-making, and centralize power among key political actors who, ironically, speak on behalf of decentralized social movements such as environmentalism. By taking this approach, the capacity of media and communications to enter into the definition of environmental risks and problems is reduced and the chance of outside voices disrupting ‘orderly’ negotiations is minimized. A concerted attempt at containment is also more likely in the context of intractable environmental disputes like the one in Tasmania. Invisibility is a tempting option when the entrenchment of divisions between opposing sides and competing interests has become counter-productive for all involved, meaning they are willing to enter into negotiations because of exhaustion, vulnerability, suffering and/or an opportunistic sense that they might secure a favourable result. Manuel Castells states that politics in the network society is ‘fundamentally framed, in its substance, organization, process, and leadership, by the inherent logic of the media system’ (2004: 375; see also 2009: 193–4). We have sought to demonstrate that a counter-response of environmental and political actors may be to evade this framing by the media system altogether. In a multimodal, multichannel and multiplatform environment, the ability to not be seen at strategically significant moments should be recognized as a sign and source of power.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a three-year Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant (DP1095173), ‘Changing Landscapes: Online Media and Politics in an Age of Environmental Conflict’. Thanks to Professor Simon Cottle for his research partnership on this grant.

Notes

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