Strategies and Tactics to Communicate ‘Nature’: Beyond Anthropocentrism in Swedish Media

Climate change, environmental degradation, and loss of biodiversity are amongst the most impellent issues of our times. In the increasingly fractured and polarized global infosphere facing these issues, media actively intervenes in communicating the environment, shaping our understanding of the relationships between humans and nature and how we live with/in it. Interdisciplinary inquiries into media representations of these relationships are, thus, becoming more and more crucial (Bergillos, 2021). Through and within media texts, different social groups with different power positions and projects forge and promote particular meanings over nature, legitimizing or questioning, including or excluding, certain standpoints and voices. Environmental discourses inform policy deliberation and institutional actions and spread in society (Dryzek, 2013), while texts and cultural artefacts concur to signify the ecological world (Corbett, 2006) and shape our ecocultural identity (Milstein & Castro-Sotomayor, 2020). These discourses operate within and through the strategies employed by media in communicating environmental issues since such environmental discourses are not simply circulating in media, but they are also produced through and within the media.

In this paper, we study how media intervene in discursive struggles over the environment and how they promote, contest, change, and transform the representation of nature, producing, reproducing, and circulating meaning through environmental discourses. Combining a post-structuralist and discourse-theoretical understanding of nature (Carpentier, 2022; Dingler, 2005; Escobar, 1996), our aim is to examine the strategies and tactics (De Certeau, 1984) adopted by media producers in articulating the meaning of human–nature relationships, through a case study of seven selected audio–visual productions in the Swedish context, including television series and documentary films, supported by interviews with the media producers involved in their production. Our theoretically informed analysis will show how ‘nature’ is the object of discursive struggles in media communication, with anthropocentric and ecocentric discourses as the main poles of these struggles, highlighting how ecocentric tactics can dislocate the current hegemony of anthropocentric instrumentalism in media communications.

To develop our argument, we start with a discussion of our discourse-theoretical approach (Carpentier, 2017; Carpentier & De Cleen, 2007) to understanding media and the discursive construction of nature, which serves, among other things, to clarify our conceptualization of strategies and tactics that grounds the media analysis. We successively offer a brief outlook of the Swedish media landscape, explicit our methodological procedure, and outline the media productions analyzed. We then present our results by first elaborating on the overall model, showing a range of media strategies consolidating anthropocentric ideology while others destabilizing it, which is further developed and discussed in the presentation of five strategies and tactics identified in our analysis as part of broader environmental ideologies circulating within and through media productions. In the conclusion, we summarize our findings and arguments in perspective of new inquiries on the discursive construction of nature in media communication.

Reproducing and Dislocating Anthropocentric Hegemony in Media

How nature is communicated, perceived, and elaborated across society is a result of complex struggles, where often conflicting voices compete to give meaning to environmental issues (Pezzullo & Cox, 2018). Media communication plays a vital role within and through these discursive struggles by producing, reproducing, and circulating particular meanings of the environment and human–nature relationships that, to varied extents, guide societal perceptions and behaviours by privileging certain discourses while excluding or marginalizing others (Boykoff & Luedecke, 2016, p. 3). This mediating function of media does not merely include the production of content but also involves the selection and arrangement of texts and the organizational, structural, and material aspects of media production. In all media, actors, including editors, journalists, and other content producers, generate, interpret, and communicate information and imaginaries, which together serve as inputs to what becomes common-sense knowledge on matters related to the environment (Boykoff, 2009, p. 434). Yet, the communicative practices of journalists and media producers are also always circumscribed by and embedded within the discursive structures, cultures, and organizations (Hansen, 2018), through which media, using different strategies, actively engage in struggles over the meaning of the environment, with an increasing role in the Anthropocene (Sklair, 2021).

To better understand the role of media in these struggles, we follow a discourse-theoretical approach to media studies (Carpentier & De Cleen, 2007), which considers media not simply as a medium passively communicating social phenomena but as discursive machineries that produce, reproduce and transform social phenomena. Indeed, media are not only one of the fields of the social where discourses circulate but also a “system of dispersion of discourses with their proper specific rules of formation” (Carpentier & De Cleen, 2007, p. 274), which positions media among those constitutive sites of the contingent political, social, and historical construction of discourses.

Here, we should note that discourse studies have a plurality of meanings of discourse, ranging from discourse analysis, with a more linguistic and pragmatic approach, to discourse theory, focused on a more historical and philosophical approach (Angermuller et al., 2014). Among this plurality, our approach focuses on the interconnection between power, knowledge and subjectivity and the macro-contextual understanding of discourse. This approach has much in common with the critical discourse scholars’ approach to environmental communication, which, among other things, have addressed how communication practices on climate change intersect scientific, political, economic and cultural dimensions, constructing meanings of nature in a way to enable dispositions to engagement (or inaction) to transform global environmental politics (Carvalho, 2008; Carvalho et al., 2016, 2021). Still, our discourse-theoretical approach remains closely focused on the macro-contextual and macro-textual dimensions of discourse, which we view to be valuable for analyses aimed to deconstruct “the complex relationships between representations, practices and identities and the way they contribute to the generation of (old and new) meanings” (Carpentier & De Cleen, 2007, pp. 277–278).

As Carpentier (2017, p. 15) recalled, while micro-contextual approaches examine discourses on spoken language and texts, we follow a Barthesian understanding of texts as the materialization of meaning and ideology. This approach shifts from an understanding of discourse-as-language to discourse-as-representation and discourse-as-ideology, focusing on “ideologies embedded in the text and not so much on the language used.” (Carpentier, 2017, p. 16). Contrary to micro-contextual approaches to discourse that confine the context to a speech act or a conversation in a specific (micro) setting, our approach to discourse focuses on how discourses “circulate within the social, paying much less attention to more localized settings” (ibid).

This approach views discourses as macro-(con)textual entities, that is, representational and ideological structures (Carpentier, 2017) that are “always more than just language” and rather “saying (writing)-doing- being- valuing- believing combinations” (Gee, 1990, p. 142). Discourses are always embedded in particular power-knowledge relationships and are communicated through signifying practices (Hall, 1997). These representational-ideological structures, thus, provide frameworks of intelligibility (Carpentier, 2017) that establish particular knowledge and experiences as noteworthy while serving to legitimate, justify, or exclude certain forms of action. A discourse, as a structured entity, is constructed and modified by means of practices of articulations (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) and, consequently, is never totally fixed and rigid but contingent: it can be re-articulated and dislocated through political interventions. Nature, as a discursive concept and product of power relations (Dingler, 2005), is, thus, a terrain of discursive struggles in which competing visions of the world struggle to become hegemonic, while counterhegemonic interventions try to disrupt and dislocate these horizons in the attempt to become hegemonic.

Discourses on nature, in other words, environmental ideologies, communicate and reproduce perspectives that range from extreme anthropocentrism to deep ecological ecocentrism, with many variations in between (Dryzek, 2013). Anthropocentrism is an environmental discourse rooted in the idea of human supremacy over the natural environment and other living species (Corbett, 2006, p. 27). In this hierarchical view, nature has value to the extent that it supports human life and well-being and is, thus, considered solely as a resource that serves humans. On the contrary, ecocentrism positions more-than-human life in a non-hierarchical dimension without giving any exceptional sovereignty to humans over the broader web of life. Ecocentrism, thus, recognizes the intrinsic value of nature, apart from those attributed to it by humans, and emphasizes interdependencies between all living beings. This heterarchical view (Corbett, 2006) opposes nature's instrumentalization while acknowledging its agency to exist and subsist in and by itself, without the need for human intervention.

In their struggles for hegemony, environmental ideologies inweave alliances, in which interconnected discourses work to mutually enforce and fix each other in contingent and unstable series of semantic associations. These alliances constitute a contingent composition of ideologies entangled through and with an infinite and undetermined knot of material and discursive elements- an assemblage (Carpentier, 2017). Accordingly, anthropocentrism interconnects discourses such as instrumentalism, dualism, and solutionism (Carpentier et al., 2021, p. 1170; Nicoletta & Carpentier, 2022). While the dualist approach position human and nature as ontologically separate and in an antagonistic relationship, the resulting externalization of nature contribute to its instrumentalization and works to legitimize its capitalist commodification and exploitation (Moore, 2017). This anthropocentric assemblage is further strengthened by the discourse of prometheanism (Dryzek, 2013, p. 52), which attributes humans (and their technologies) to an endless capacity to solve problems, including environmental ones. Similarly, ecocentrism is supported by a variety of discourses, such as integrationism, indigenism, and survivalism (Carpentier et al., 2021, p. 1170), forming a counterhegemonic assemblage that underscores the inseparability of humans and nature through the non-dualist notion of ‘natureculture’ (Haraway, 2003) that promotes respect for, and co-existence with, nature, while also acknowledging the limits and perils of human intervention on the more-than-human.

Media strategies play a crucial role in reproducing (or dislocating) the hegemony of anthropocentric discursive assemblages. Strategies are not simply plans or sets of plans through which media or other institutions organize their actions to improve their position or achieve their goals. Contrarily, strategies construct social worlds of their own and cannot be separated from the everyday struggles between more and less powerful actors in society (Bourdieu, 1977). De Certeau (1984) distinguishes between dominant strategies and everyday tactics: the strategies are only available to subjects of “will and power” as they embody “a specific type of knowledge, one sustained and determined by the power” (De Certeau, 1984, p. 36). Opposed to these, tactics are individual actions or manoeuvres attached to everyday life (ibid), through which less powerful actors employ and appropriate the products and knowledge created by the dominant institutions in a way to resist their hegemony. Accordingly, media strategies can consolidate the power of humans over the rest of living beings, discursifying human exceptionalism through audio–visual interventions, while individual tactics can rework these strategies to dislocate the anthropocentric hegemony. However, ‘nature’ cannot directly engage in discursive struggles: non-human living beings do produce signifying practices, but they do not produce public discourses or political ideologies: in media communications, they cannot speak for themselves. Drawing on the ethical stances of postcolonial theory, Carpentier (2022) proposed the tactic of writing back, that is, producing new narrative styles to write and represent on behalf of ‘nature’: a tactic that counter-hegemonically unsilence nature, destabilizing dominant environmental ideologies that fix hierarchical relationships with non-humans and promoting more ecocentric representation of nature (Carpentier, 2022, p. 97). The media products we analyze offer precious audio–visual material to inquire how these media strategies and tactics are practically mobilized in the discursive construction of nature.

Context, Materials and Methods

The research upon which this paper is based is part of a larger research project on environmental communication in Swedish media (and arts), which makes it necessary to provide a brief overview of the media context in Sweden. The Swedish media landscape is commonly characterized as democratic corporatist, with a strong political media tradition in press, radio, and television, professional journalism with independent statute, and acceptance of state's intervention in media structure, though not in content (Weibull & Wadbring, 2010, p. 1). While this context has undergone significant changes in the last decades with the rise of commercial broadcasters and digital media, strong state regulation and a strong presence of public service media remain the keystone of Swedish media policy (Nord & Grusell, 2021). Sveriges Television (SVT), the Swedish national public broadcaster, is the largest TV network in the country, accounting for around 35 percent of nationwide viewership (ibid, p. 122). Di TV, owned by Dagens Industri, which is a leading outlet for financial news, and commercial terrestrial televisions TV4, TV3 and Kanal 5, respectively owned by Bonnier, Modern Time Group, and Discover Communication, concentrate most of the ownership in the Swedish television market. In this context, print and broadcast media continue to attract a significant audience while gradually losing ground with more fragmented usage patterns, especially among the younger population (Ohlsson, quoted in Nord & Grusell, 2021, p. 121). Aside from the mainstream broadcasters, there also exists a nationwide network of non-profit and non-commercial TV stations (RÖK-TV) with a large subscriber base, as well as other independent actors, reaching a more specific yet more limited audience in terms of numbers.

Focusing on this context, the seven audiovisual productions analyzed in this paper were selected among the 56 documentary films and 23 television series that were earlier identified following an extensive quantitative mapping of the Swedish media conducted by the larger research team (see Doudaki & Carpentier, 2023). In the selection of cases, we followed the logics of purposive sampling (Patton, 2001) to include information-rich cases: productions with clearly present and diverse ideological positions, with a degree of originality in terms of their focus, topics and ideas addressed, and that can provide sufficient material -while acknowledging that these purposes also reflect our (discourse-)theoretical framework, therefore, the logics of theoretical sampling (ibid).

The studied productions cover a diverse range of audio–visual outputs. To begin with, Hållbart näringsliv, a TV series with an economic journalism style, focuses on the intersection between business, trade, finance, and sustainability policies, which was broadcast on the financial news channel Di TV. Overseen by the public broadcaster SVT, Briljanta Forskare is a short documentary about societal issues, including biodiversity, pollution, and energy, targeting youngsters in the final years of elementary school (7–9 years). Koll på klimatet is a TV series also featured on the SVT, where the presenter discusses climate and sustainability issues with individuals in Sweden. Tvångsförflyttningar – Bággojohtin is another broadcast of SVT that documents the forced displacement of Sámi people in Sweden, focusing on the struggle between state/Sámi regulatory frameworks on nature. Our analysis also includes more independent productions, including Kiruna-A Brand New World, a documentary produced by Czech film company Analog Vision about the Swedish mining town Kiruna, which started to collapse due to the mining activities, resulting in a decision to move the town and its citizens; and Gállok, a documentary produced by Deep Sea production that focalizes on the plans to introduce a controversial new iron ore mine in Northern Sweden, and on the indigenous and environmental activists’ struggle to stop this mining project. Finally, we analyzed Jordskott, an eco-critical fiction broadcasted on the SVT, featuring the story of a Swedish female detective returning to her hometown just to become deeply embedded in a human/other-than-human conflict over the North Woods.

Methodologically, we have first examined these seven selected audio–visual productions, including interviews with their producers, and reviewed their first analyses (Carpentier et al., 2021; Filimonov & Carpentier, 2022a; Filimonov & Carpentier, 2022b; Nicoletta & Carpentier, 2022; Doudaki & Carpentier, forthcoming; Doudaki & Carpentier, 2023). Successively, we have organized a second round of interviews with the media producers involved in the productions to triangulate our analysis. All the data collected were subjected to a qualitative-textual analysis (Saldaña, 2009; Silverman, 2011), supported by visual and multimodal analysis methods (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Rose, 2016), positioning our analysis in Hansen and Machin's (2013) plea for researching visual environmental communication. The data were coded and grouped into categories and sub-categories in this scope. Then, they were regrouped as a set of different media strategies and tactics, carrying specific ideological contexts through which nature is mediated.

Media Strategies and Tactics in the Swedish Media Context

The main analytical axis is the mainstream-alternative continuum, referring to the strategies (and tactics) of more and less powerful actors in the field of media. Upon this axis, we identified strategies and tactics in the studied media productions. Across the continuum, we delineated five main strategies used by media in communicating about the environment, including a set of mainstream strategies, hybrid strategies, and of alternative tactics, which will be elaborated below. Accordingly, the strategies of those holding dominant power positions in the field of media, including public and large private broadcasters, such as SVT and Di TV, and the media producers working in these outlets lean towards a hegemonic discursive assemblage of anthropocentrism. Towards this mainstream end, environmental matters are narrated as a problem to be solved, and the communication strategies mainly focus on the human agency (and privilege) in solving such environment-as-problem, based on an instrumentalist-dualist approach to human–nature relationships, and emphasize the importance of techno-scientific initiatives and behavioural change as a means of persuading people into the desired solutions.

Towards the alternative end, alternative strategies or tactics invite critical and radical reconsiderations of hegemonic anthropocentrism based on more ecocentric narratives, as highlighted, not exclusively, but to a larger extent, in the independent documentaries. These tactics emphasize interconnections between humans and nature and the importance of cultural-discursive change that places the environment more at the centre of environmental discourses. In between, we identified the mainstream-alternative category that includes strategies that are distant from the mainstream and include more ecocentric and synthesized narratives, yet do not always fit the critical-radical focus of alternative media strategies. It should be noted that these strategies are not peculiar to a single production: one strategy can sometimes be replicated in different productions.

Here, it should be noted that the model presented is not, and does not aim to be, completely exhaustive. For instance, there are clickbait strategies that aim to incite the public, often at the expense of misrepresentation, or deliberative strategies that aim to initiate discussions around environmental issues, and many others -which were not identified in the productions analysed in this paper. Still, the axis-oriented model can provide a critical ground for reflecting on the ideological set-up behind other possible strategies, as well as the media using those, making it possible to position them on the mainstream(-hegemonic) - alternative(-counterhegemonic) continuum proposed by the model.

Moreover, our model acknowledges the usual limits of the mediation of discourses on the reception end. Since audiences are not passive receivers of media messages, these can have utterly diverse interpretations by different audiences. Therefore, in spite of the strategies used, the audiences may or may not have the same perception of, or action towards, the issues communicated after viewing these productions. Examining this requires a detailed reception analysis, which was not the purpose of this study. Aware of these limits, in the following sections, we further elaborate on the strategies identified in this study, starting from the mainstream strategies.

Reproducing Hegemonic Anthropocentrism

Mainstream strategies are fundamental modalities by which hegemonic-anthropocentric discursive assemblages are (re)produced through and within media production and circulation. At the most general level, it is possible to say that dualist discourses -the idea that human and nature and human and animals are separated entities- and instrumentalist discourses -the idea that nature has value only for human use- can be considered a feature of traditional media approach to nature. For instance, a large body of nature documentaries and economic journalism frame nature as a resource for national economic growth, productivity, job creation, and so on. Mainstream strategies delineated in our study produce this pattern in two main forms: mainstream-solutionist, identified in economic journalism, and mainstream-persuasionist, found in scientific documentaries.

Mainstream-Solutionist

The mainstream-solutionist strategy represents the environment solely as a resource for humans, and any issue of sustainability is worth to be reported because of the interests of economic investors and stakeholders. This strategy is clearly discernible in one of the media products we analyzed, namely Hållbart näringsliv (HN), a series produced within the Dagen Industri network, Sweden's most important financial newspaper. Previous analysis (Nicoletta & Carpentier, 2022) highlighted how the TV series mobilizes a technocratic solutionist discourse that not only protects dominant anthropocentric relations of production on a global level but also projects climate crisis and environmental degradation as potential sites for profits.

In this strategy, the environment is not an object of interest per se, but it deserves attention and coverage only because of its importance for business. In doing so, it uses facts and objective journalism for a facilitative role in the current transformations, which is considered a value-free and objectivist exercise that does not carry any implications. In the words of the presenter of the show:

“In my work, I should be the one presenting all of the facts. But without the opinions. So that you, when you read it, or watch the television show, or whatever, then you are able to make your own decision based on the fact that you get all of the information, but in a kind of filtered way. So that you don’t have to read 600 pages” (N. Mekibes, interview, June 13, 2022).

A constitutive theme of mainstream-solutionist strategy is the encouragement of businesses to invest in the green economy by communicating certain facts instead of others, such as framing specific productive processes as dominant and widespread trends. This aspect of the strategy is particularly evident in the editorial choices of the companies selected for reporting in the TV series. According to the presenters, the first year of the TV programme focused on big companies that are struggling to restructure according to the new green guidelines of the international government (N. Mekibes, interview, December 17, 2021). On the contrary, episodes broadcasted in 2021 documented new entrepreneurial initiatives strongly oriented towards more “green” products, such as plant-based meat, new materials for building constructions, and new energetic sources. Moreover, the role of stock markets and finance are strongly represented as the main character in solving environmental issues through wise investment allocations.

Above all, mainstream-solutionist strategies, attempting to objectively report economic dynamics, make clear the direct impacts of climate change on individuals’ everyday lives, as well as the infrastructural transformations needed. The representation of the environment as an external entity that has been disturbed by inefficient human actions calls for individual transformation, often guided by corporations. For instance, a plant-based diet is considered among the individual choices that are able to curb carbon emissions at the global level and, at the same time, a terrain where companies can profitably invest. In this sense, human action is represented as both the cause and the potential solution for environmental problems, denying any potential autonomy to the more-than-human world.

As a media strategy, mainstream-solutionism (re)produces anthropocentric-instrumentalist discursive assemblages that knot together: a prometheanist approach to climate change, according to which actions of the markets and private investors can have a beneficial, leading role in the management of the environment; an eco-modernist discourse that orients the social and ecological transformations towards new productive instruments and energetics sectors; and a green extractivist discourse with the search of new energetical sources to keep valorization processes alive. Such a strategy, thus, enforces hegemonic anthropocentrism circulating through and within media communication instead of questioning it.

Mainstream-Persuasionist

Mainstream-persuasionism is a second mainstream strategy identified that (re)produces a more general epistemic imbalance within the public frame of the current climate crisis rather than featuring exclusively economic profits and organizational restructuring of firms. The core of this strategy is to provide expert knowledge to the broader audience, assuming a pedagogical role in the representation of the environment. As in the previous case, we identified this strategy as mainstream because it aspires to be the official provider of objective facts to a large audience. It is also persuasionist in regard to the more general role that it undertakes in the (re)production of the hegemony of the anthropocentric discursive assemblage. It motivates and legitimates the active intervention of dominant social actors in the construction of social reality, thus defending the use (and necessity) of communication to change perceptions in an attempt to generate hegemonic consensus about the discourse of climate change, i.e., as a problem to be solved (see also Filimonov & Carpentier, 2022b).

Two media productions analyzed mobilize this strategy: Briljanta Forskare and Koll på klimatet. It is worth briefly analysing one of these productions in its narrative-framing structure to show how this strategy works, grounding the analysis in previous research (Filimonov & Carpentier, 2022b). Briljanta Forskare adopts a classical journalistic approach of framing a clear definition of what the environmental problem is while also providing some moral evaluation with its focus on solving the climate crisis in terms of responsibility. In this case, the mainstream-persuasionist strategy revolves around a moralizing approach to dealing with the climate crisis, providing remedies in a rather solutionist way, attuned to the case of HN discussed above. Scientists represented in the series appear to have solutions and tools to solve the climate crisis - a representation that informs a media strategy in which the experts are hierarchically positioned above the ordinary people. Notably, the latter is represented as passive recipients of that advice and not moral valuation. The experts are constructed from the position of authority, and they present a singular perspective, highlighting a precise understanding of the expert community, which has a rather similar perspective on how to solve the climate crisis. To persuade the viewers of this credibility, scientists are represented in their well-defined professional settings, such as labs and workshops, that communicate stability and trustworthiness. This special framing of scientists marks a strong contrast with that of the ordinary people, who are shown in private settings, ambushed by their apartments, or in the streets of the city. In Koll på klimatet, this visual representation is further sustained by the stress on the colloquial, inconsistent, and nervous language of lay people, who are exposed to chaotic and fragmented ideas about nature and display inconsistencies that the presenter is akin to underlining.

The mainstream-persuasionist strategy displays a binary representation of ordinary people and the scientific community as a consistent whole. At the same time, media professionals are called to organize this persuasion, translating jargon and reinforcing privileged positions. Therefore, this strategy (re)produces power positions between scientists of the techno-managerial apparatus and non-elite actors, fulfilling a persuasion on the audience that still needs to be convinced and, thus, represented as passive recipients of the information. This strategy becomes instrumental in supplying a pattern of individualization in relation to climate change, with no reflection on the structural patterns and unbalanced responsibility of some individuals versus others. All in all, the mainstream-persuasionist strategy uses expert pedagogy to secure and reproduce the hegemony of anthropocentric instrumentalism in the media via what Swyngedouw (2022) has called environmental populism -an ideology that frames climate change as a problem that elites must solve by mobilizing the appropriate techno-managerial apparatus, i.e., to deal with the excess carbon emissions while leaving untouched the deep socio-ecological conflicts that shape our climate conditions.

Mainstream-Alternative

In addition to the strategies discussed above, one other set of strategies identified in our study covers those that lie in-between the mainstream-alternative continuum, through which alternative narratives about human–nature relationships (including more ecocentric ones) are given visibility and voice in the productions of dominant-mainstream actors in the media field.

The documentary Tvångsförflyttningar – Bággojohtin (Forced Displacements - Sámi People) exemplifies how certain anthropocentric narratives are dislocated and contested in mainstream media production through a critique of the state and its relationship to indigenous populations (and whereby, the nature). In narrating the stories of the forced displacements of Sámi, the film represents and highlights the discrepancies between state-centred articulations of nature and the indigenist articulations of the same. The former is grounded in ownership (land/nature as possession), as strengthened by the discourses of national sovereignty and security, while the latter promotes the balance of and respect for nature, emphasizing the co-dependencies in human–nature relationships and viewing land/nature as something “borrowed from future generations” (S.O. Simma, interview, April 21, 2021). In doing so, it brings into view and unmutes the alternative and more ecocentric understandings of nature by the Sámi, who are positioned as representative of indigenous populations.

Still, the story presents the displacements largely as a territorial conflict and maintains a human-centred perspective in representing the discursive struggle between different (human) actors -the state and Sámi- on how to govern and relate with nature. Here, nature enters the story through the reindeer herding Sámi and the narratives about their indigenous approach towards the regulation of nature that emphasize interconnections. These representations also lack a critical-radical focus that might enable thinking outside the hegemonic-anthropocentric framings of human–nature relationships -for instance, by imagining nature free of human regulation (Filimonov & Carpentier, 2022a).

Another mainstream-alternative strategy identified in the productions is characterized by a concern with extending the reach of ecocentric discourses in order to render them audible and appealing to a larger audience. In the TV series Jordskott, this strategy is used by integrating fictional elements and the dimension of supernaturality in the storyline and combining those with non-fictional (and more conventional) representations of environmental destruction by the humans -in this case, by a company working on capitalist-exploitationist logics. As one of the screenwriters of the series notes:

“When you do fiction… you have more opportunities to…make people feel something, because you can do it with the narrative, instead of saying, ‘Well, the statistics of… look at the ozone layer, look at the pollution […] We can […] see all these numbers and go like, ‘Oh, that is terrible!’ [but] we do not feel it. So I think a healthy balance between fact and fiction […] you need both, to deliver the message in an entertaining and… emotionally touching way.” (A. Kantsjö, interview, September 16, 2022)

For the same, it is equally important to skillfully integrate and represent ecocentric narratives in the productions to avoid neglect or rejection of these messages, which could be the case if the message is viewed as forced or manipulative.

Yet, the producers interviewed also point to the difficulties involved in using this strategy of mainstreaming the alternative, given the mainstream media's close alignments with the state and market, leading to marginalization and exclusion of counterhegemonic perspectives. One of these difficulties is finding space for environment-related productions in mainstream media, especially when the general tendency is to think that “there are not enough viewers” for environmental topics, so “nobody will buy them, or nobody will watch it” (S. Adam, interview, June 28, 2022). When it comes to those productions integrating counterhegemonic-ecocentric narratives, another major obstacle is the concern with reactions to these ideas, especially to those that critique and show the consequences of anthropocentrism. When the production has more exposure (i.e., via mainstream media broadcast), this also means louder reactions and criticism (A. Kantsjö, interview, September 16, 2022).

Dislocating Hegemonic Anthropocentrism

Alternatives to these mainstream media strategies are distinguished by their alignments with an ecocentric approach that challenges the centralized position of humans in environmental discourse and are often articulated through integrationist narratives that emphasize the interconnections and interdependencies between humans and nature. As to be elaborated in this section, we delineated two sets of alternative tactics: alternative-critical and alternative-radical.

Alternative-Critical

Alternative-critical tactics highlight, challenge, and dislocate the hegemonic anthropocentrism in environmental discourses through a critique and deconstruction of the different elements of the anthropocentric assemblage, and by giving visibility and voice to counterhegemonic-ecocentric discourses, as well as the discursive struggle in between. The use of these tactics was particularly distinguishable in the documentaries Kiruna and Gállok, as well as in the TV series Jordskott, albeit having quite different storylines.

One of the gentler forms of critique involves showing the disruptions, contradictions, and conflicts surrounding human–nature relationships, as exemplified in the opening shots of Kiruna: a vast natural landscape, in all its stillness, is all of a sudden interrupted by technology, with the appearance a freight train tunneling through the landscape, breaking the stillness with its industrial sound, and demonstrating the central position of the trains, as the financial lifeline of this mining town. Both music and sound are used strategically in the entire production, not only to highlight the ever-presence of the mine in the lives of the inhabitants but also to draw attention to the disruption of natural balance by human activity (J. Pavel, interview, January 27, 2021).

Another, more direct form of critique focuses on showing the consequences and inviting a critical reconsideration of anthropocentrism, supported by dualist and instrumentalist discourses and the mechanisms of (capitalist) exploitation, including extractivism. In Kiruna, this critique is introduced through various visual frames that show the digging, the holes and cracks in the soil created by the mining activities (causing the town to sink in), while Gállok invites the viewers to critically evaluate the environmental risks and impacts of mining, mainly through the narratives voiced by Tor, representing the Sámi activists against the mine.

Both documentaries also shed light on a set of mechanisms that facilitate and support the hegemonization of anthropocentric discourses, including official propaganda, built on the topoi of ‘There Is No Alternative’ (TINA) and progress. In Kiruna, TINA topos is particularly strong, framing the relocation of the town as inevitable while rendering it unthinkable to take another form of action (such as the closing of the mine), exemplified by the scenes showing a guided visit to the mining company and opening of the new town hall. In Gállok, particularly in the shots from a public discussion with the mining company representatives, we see how the emphasis on progress serves to downplay the environmental risks involved with the mining project and invokes solutionist discourses -i.e., the ability of post-treatment of the toxic waste (Doudaki & Carpentier, forthcoming).

Another critical tactic identified in the productions is that of deconstructing hegemonic anthropocentrism and overcoming the dichotomies between humans and nature. A distinctive example is found in Jordskott, which dislocates the dualistic human/non-human models by highlighting the intersections, interconnections, and continuities. With the integration of fictional elements and intersecting storylines, the series introduces a variety of actors in a human-nonhuman continuum and shows the fluidity of, and entanglements between, these actor categories, emphasizing the continuities in-between: i.e., Jordskott, the fictional parasite which the series is named after, works to connect the human and more-than-human, by endowing extra-human capabilities to humans. As emphasized by one of the series’ screenwriters, storytelling that integrates fantasy fiction contributes to these pluralist-entanglementist deconstructions since it makes the impossible “easier to imagine”, opening the minds to different possibilities and new ways of doing (Thomas quoted in Souch, 2020, p. 111).

A third critical tactic identified is activated by giving visibility and voice to ecocentric discourses. In Kiruna, these counterhegemonic discourses are voiced particularly by Timo, the local Sámi teacher-activist opposing the mine. As the director notes, it was important for the film to include these “counter voices” since they facilitate a critical reassessment of what has long been taken for granted:

“We say, ‘of course, we have this mining, we have mines, because we need it for iron, it has always been like that’. But meeting the Sámi people… make you realize it has not always been like that, it did not have to be that way, and there actually were people living here before, and the mining, the iron, that we use for our fridges and cars and spoons […] is actually something that has been affecting them for centuries.” (G. Stocklassa, interview, January 28, 2021).

In Gállok, the counterhegemonic narratives are more visible and varied, including those that directly oppose the mine, referring to the associated environmental damage, and those that dislocate the TINA topos, referring to the alternatives that exist (such as leaving the iron ore untouched, like ancient Sámi). In Jordskott, we see that this tactic is integrated into the character development of the “spokesperson for nature”: giving visibility to ecocentric discourses in his capacity to speak and act on behalf of nature and creating “assemblies” with indigenous approaches (A. Kantsjö, interview, September 16, 2022).

A related tactic used in these productions is to represent the discursive struggle between hegemonic-anthropocentric and counterhegemonic-ecocentric constructions of nature. In Kiruna, where this struggle is not very salient in everyday life, these representations are provided predominantly by using audio–visual elements, i.e., scenes of buildings being demolished by bulldozers; the holes and cracks opened in the soil by the mining activities; the Sámi teenager feeding the reindeers; the electromagnetic sounds “reminding you of the iron, all the time” (J. Pavel interview, January 27, 2021). In Gállok, the discursive struggle is much more discernible, as represented through the narratives of the local Sámi (materialized in the protests against the mine) and those of the mining company, the miners, and Swedish locals, who support the mining project (materialized in the mining project itself). In the documentary, several scenes also demonstrate how the counterhegemonic voices against the mine are ignored, discredited, and sometimes suppressed, i.e., in the scenes showing the speech of a British mining company CEO, who even rejects the existence of local people and those showing the protests against the mine, where activists are framed as “mentally ill people” who get involved in “criminal actions”. To sum up, alternative-critical tactics are able to both display and deconstruct hegemonic anthropocentrism as well as integrate counter-hegemonic ecocentric assemblages dislocating hegemonic discursive formations.

Alternative-Radical

Similarly, alternative-radical media tactics dislocate and reconfigure hegemonic anthropocentrism in several moves: by representing nature as an actor per se, displaying its agency as an autonomous force; rebalancing power between humans and more-than-humans through fiction; and representing the connections between counter-hegemonic struggles. Two media products operated this strategy clearly: Jordskott, through supernatural fiction, and Kiruna, through an observational-style documentary.

The documentary Kiruna acknowledges and re-positions nature, in particular, by showing frames of the land shaking due to the mining activity. This has profound implications in the representation of nature as a potential backfire, a force that is ready to present the bill of savage extractivism. While workism represents a dominant theme in the documentary, with its implication on the economic wellbeing of the city, the scenes displaying the movement of the soil produce a powerful dislocation of the extractivist imaginary, mobilizing an ecocentric discursive assemblage that reacts to the instrumentalist exploitation of lithic strata and dislocates anthropocentric hegemony in mediating more-than-human worlds.

While Kiruna`s tactics still display nature as a passive actor that activates itself in reaction to human actions, the series Jordskott positions nature on a strongly autonomous level, displaying and recognizing its agency, hence rebalancing power in the representation of the environment. In this production clearly emerges an ecocentric discursive assemblage that mobilizes discourses of supernaturalism, indigenism, and anti-romanticism through which the representations of humans are anything but flattering, whereby “nature can be dangerous but in itself it's good… humans are yep, crazy bastards!” (A. Kantsjö, interview, September 16, 2022).

Jordskott tactically portrays, through a creative mix of noir, action, and fantasy, the profound entanglement between humans and more-than-humans, practising posthumanist representations in which borders between the environment and the humans disappear. In these tactical representations, anthropocentric-dualist hierarchies are totally subverted through supernatural fiction. This stems from framing nature as an autonomous entity, existing and acting outside the human will of power. In the words of one of the screenwriters:

“We need to make the forest feel like a… living being […] to feel like you were stepping into something that was…alive …not, maybe alive in the sense of being conscious… because the forest doesn't act on stuff like that, but it reacts on what happens…to it, and around it but we wanted it to feel like this is a living thing and a living thing that is…worthy of protection and respect.” (A. Kantsjö, interview, September 16, 2022).

While symbolizing nature‘s agency, this living forest is anything but romantic since it shows nature's agency in fighting back: “The forest can be pretty nasty to you if you don't treat it with respect… it will react […] if you treat it bad, it would treat you bad…”. Screenwriters of the series explicitly “wanted to show that if you don't respect it [nature], it won't respect you and it can be dangerous […] We need to live in harmony with the forest, then it will treat us well, as well” (A. Kantsjö, interview, September 16, 2022).

The representation of naturès agency also interconnects with other ideological elements in a way that goes much beyond the author's intentionality, as exemplified by the scenes showing that the mining company had released a lethal toxin in the forest, killing (almost) all living beings. Indeed, according to the aforementioned screenwriter, the reception of the plot metaphor “was not intended at first to be a like a metaphor for the indigenous people per se. But as the story progressed, yes I think we actually saw that this could be perceived that way” (A. Kantsjö, interview, September 16, 2022).

In re-positioning and speaking on behalf of nature as more-than-human, alternative-radical tactics, thus, interconnect with, and mobilize anti-romanticist, indigenist, and post-colonialist discourses, dislocating the common-sensical view of nature as instrumental (for the aims of the powerful), which is dominant in the anthropocentric discursive assemblage.

Conclusion

How nature is represented in media communication matters. Media contributes to the reproduction of discursive hegemonies by framing content, images, and sounds that solidify partial visions of the environment in our perceptions. Despite the impending environmental catastrophe, anthropocentrism still seems to remain an untouchable horizon in dealing with more-than-human worlds. Arguably, instrumental anthropocentrism, interconnected with several ideological projects which frame humans as the sole sovereign entity over the web of life, structurally contributes to the climate crisis we are living in. Yet, writing back tactics can destabilize such reproduction when displaying and narrating the autonomy of the more-than-human. Therefore, media can serve both strategies of reproducing hegemonic discursive assemblages and singular tactics of dislocating such hegemonic order, representing the intrinsic value of nature.

Our analysis of Swedish audio–visual media productions showed how the discursive struggles over the environment are centred around the dimension of two discursive assemblages, namely anthropocentrism and ecocentrism. These case studies highlight how audio–visual outputs actively intervene in this discursive struggle by strengthening critical ecocentric positions or enforcing anthropocentric tendencies that lead to unreflexive anthropogenic effects of media communication. Our findings testify to the existence of a set of mainstream strategies using facts within the context of objective journalism and the provision of expert knowledge, along with hybrid strategies that give space to alternative discourses and extend their audience and alternative tactics that critique and deconstruct hegemony, giving visibility and voice to counterhegemonic discourses, and the nature itself. To survive on a damaged planet, inquiries on the discursive construction of nature within and through media strategies seem necessary to think and practice more ethical and decentred relationships with non-humans.