Abstract
In Media & Environment: Conflict, Politics and the News, Libby Lester reminds us that there is still much to know about how news media construct knowledge about the environment, take positions on public issues and engage audiences in environmental debate and action. At the center of the book’s treatment of these interrelated roles and activities is the question, do news media engender environmental citizenship or merely foster greater interest and emotional engagement with environmental concerns?
Questions about media’s ability to foment social action are not necessarily new. Indeed, as far back as 1948 communication research pioneers Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton (1948) expressed concern about the possible ‘narcotizing dysfunction’ of media messages that stimulate an informed citizenry who nevertheless abstain from decisions or actions. But given today’s growing concerns over global climate change and environmental risk and degradation, and the need for the planet’s inhabitants to adjust their lifeways to avoid a global crisis, Lester’s reframing of such questions in environmental terms is delivered with an understandable sense of urgency.
Lester argues that grasping how the environment is shaped and understood as a public issue through news media requires an interrogation of, on the one hand, the articulation of power through symbols and control of debates, and, on the other hand, how people digest that information and apply it to their everyday lives, be they ordinary citizens or policymakers. She stresses that this is no easy chore, as power is contingent and operates in diverse ways involving symbolic struggle and strategic manoeuvring of which the news media itself is often an active player. The willingness and capacity of audiences to respond to this game of echoes and move toward action is then of paramount importance because it speaks to what Lester calls ‘our environmental futures’.
The book is thematically organized into chapters on constructing and discovering the environment (Chapter 1: Media and Environment), public areas of debate (Chapter 2: Conflict and Risk), the construction of news as related to flows, form and content (Chapter 3: News and Journalists), source selection and ranking among political, scientific, industry and lay ‘voices’ (Chapter 4: Sources and Voices), movements, protest and the internet (Chapter 5: Movement and Protest), celebrities, symbolic power and environmental politics (Chapter 6: Symbols and Celebrities) and the potential for citizen agency and media engagement (Chapter 7: Environment and Engagement).
Lester writes in a clear and accessible style, and draws from an expansive review of theory and past research in an insightful and effective way throughout the book. She also does a nice job of providing examples of journalistic practice and media’s role in the trade of symbols from around the globe, such as the New York Times’ ‘polar bear story’ (Chapter 3) and the Sea Shepherd Society’s use of ICTs in the Antarctic to gain news coverage (Chapter 5), to illustrate how news, though socially and culturally constructed, has real and significant consequences in our lives.
The author’s richest interpretations of media’s presentation of environmental conflict, however, are rendered through examples from Tasmania and Australia, which is not surprising given the depth of Lester’s previous work in the region. For example, in Chapter 5 she details some of the strategies and media tools that activists have used to garner mainstream media attention in environmental conflicts relating to Australia and Japan, as well as for preserving the Tasmanian wilderness. These examples not only reveal the degree of sophistication and responsiveness that environmental activists and NGOs have developed in relation to media coverage and other opportunities, but also put into question the capacity of these efforts to achieve lasting gains.
Chapter 6, perhaps the most provocative part of the book, is devoted to trying to sketch out an understanding of how such lasting gains are thwarted versus the potential for environmentalists to better harness the symbolic power of images, events and people. Here again Lester draws from the Tasmanian wilderness, training her focus on the killing of ‘El Grande’, a giant, 350-year-old tree located in the Florentine Valley. The tree’s plight is especially noteworthy because, despite its iconic resonance and the coverage of its death by the international press, Tasmanian news suppressed coverage and the forest service even removed the tree’s name from its website – thus revealing ‘the contest at the heart of environmental conflict for symbolic power’ (p. 153).
Through such illuminating tales about the politics and practices of news media and their limitations and possibilities for covering the environment, Lester leads the reader to her conclusion that, yes, news media do in fact matter. She provides many reasons for why she thinks this is so, but at the center of her analysis is the notion that ideas and images about the environment are political. This central assertion and the path that she takes to arrive to it are what make the book an important contribution to the literature on media and the environment. But despite this contribution, what Lester remains concerned about, and where the book ultimately leaves the reader, is searching for a vision for how news media might do a better job of animating environmental citizenship.