Theorizing the enactment of mediatized environmental conflict

Abstract

Contemporary ‘mediatized environmental conflict’ involves complex interactions between (i) activist strategies and campaigns, (ii) journalism practices and news reporting, (iii) formal politics and decision-making processes, and (iv) industry activities and trade. This article theorizes how these interactions occur, drawing on evidence produced by a nine-year period of investigation into environmental media practices, content and technologies. Indicative of power dynamics in a globalized world, mediatized environmental conflict is enacted by the events and negotiations that occur at the ‘switching points’ between the four identified spheres of action. The conflicting messages, representations, debates, and practices that dynamically constitute these switching points are how environmental conflicts are contested, bringing together interlocking networks of media, political, and economic power. These networks traverse the local, national, and transnational in varying degrees depending on the particular issue or site in question. The groups and decision-makers who exercise greatest influence in the midst of conflict are those able to determine what is made visible to opponents and wider publics, meaning that both ‘mediated visibility’ and ‘invisibility’ are important strategic resources in battles over the environment conducted in media saturated social worlds.

Keywords

Environmental activism environmental journalism environmental media environmental politics mediatized conflict mediated visibility switching points

A high-profile environmental activist, Miranda Gibson, sits on a small platform near the top of an 80-m gum tree situated in a remote forest in southwest Tasmania, Australia. She uses Skype on a solar-powered computer to speak via a video screen at a press conference in the state capital, Hobart, announcing a new campaign protesting the export of local timber to Asian markets. Print and broadcast journalists are present at the conference, observing the novelty of the launch and producing news stories that outline details of the campaign. A primary target of the activist campaign is the Japanese corporate customers who buy timber sourced from high conservation value Tasmanian forests, with a number of Japanese environmental groups also joining the campaign. In response, the state premier attacks the accuracy of activist claims and accuses them of threatening economic investment in the state, in part because the exporter is Ta Ann Tasmania; a subsidiary of Ta Ann Holdings—one of six large forest companies based in Sarawak, Malaysia. Heated debate over the legitimacy of so-called international market attacks by environmentalists and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) ignites across online, print and broadcast media forums, while news reports continue to appear about the contentious issue of appropriate certification for forestry exports (Lester, 2014).

This sequence of events in 2012 fits within a much wider pattern of mediatized environmental conflict that, in varying forms, stretches back over 40 years (Lester, 2007; Lohrey, 2002). Variations of a ceaseless ‘dance’ between activists, journalists, politicians, and industry leaders have continued because of the globally recognized symbolic and physical significance of the Tasmanian forests and wilderness—one of just three World Heritage-listed temperate wilderness areas in the southern hemisphere. The ever-present vectors of media, political and industry power are unpredictable in this context, oscillating between local, national and transnational levels as contending claims circulate about the environmental threats posed by the logging of old-growth forests. Triggers for intense conflict emerge from multiple sources. Sometimes it is a state-based journalist who uncovers details of destructive forestry industry practices, or an international news outlet such as The New York Times or La Figaro publishes an expose of environmental degradation in the island state that then rebounds back into state and national political debates (Flanagan, 2007). At other times, the heavy focus of the news media on a major environmental policy announcement or an election generates myriad responses, including renewed activist campaign activities and coordinated efforts by political parties and logging companies to dominate the news agenda of commercial and public service media. There are also the moments when environmental activists attract news media coverage or provoke official political responses through a spectacular protest action, in conjunction with the ‘mediated mobilization’ of national and international supporters through online networks (Lievrouw, 2011). These efforts towards effective protest and ‘connective action’ have exhibited an increasingly complex structure since the proliferation of broadband Internet, mobile communications, online news and comment, independent media sites, and user-generated video and blogs (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; Cammaerts, 2012).

This article theorizes the enactment of mediatized environmental conflict—a prominent feature of media saturated social worlds in which the communication of environmental risks, threats, and disasters is ever-present (Beck, 2009; Cottle, 2006a; Lester, 2010a; Pantti et al., 2012). Following the analytical example of ‘middle-range’ theorization, the approach taken here combines ‘theoretical ambition with empirical cautiousness’, recognizing that geographically and historically situated social, cultural, and political spheres simultaneously reflect and inform macro-level processes such as globalization and mediatization (Hjarvard, 2013: 3–5; Merton, 1957).¹ This combination of ambition and caution mirrors a longer-standing perspective in sociology and media and communication studies that steer a path between the abstraction of ‘grand theories’ that presume to offer definitive explanations of social and cultural phenomena, and heavily empirical descriptions of phenomena that exhibit ‘endless minor variations’ (Hjarvard, 2013). A middle-range approach is reflected in the structure of the article. Mediatized environmental conflict is first positioned in relation to theories and concepts of mediatized conflict, mediatizaton, productivism, and ecologically centered worldviews. This positioning is then grounded and extended by a series of empirical descriptions demonstrating the enactment of mediatized environmental conflict in a real-world setting.

Representing the culmination of a nine-year research effort (detailed in a later section) and using Tasmania as its focus, mediatized environmental conflict is shown to be constituted by the interactions occurring between four key spheres of action: (i) activist strategies and campaigns, (ii) journalism practices and news reporting, (iii) formal politics and decision-making processes, and (iv) industry activities and trade. Other components of our research indicate that each of these spheres possesses its own extensive networks of media, political and economic power, which are governed by institutional affordances and limitations, professional norms and practices, commercial opportunities, and the uneven command of symbolic resources.² These features are impacted by the dynamics of a convergent media environment where information is circulated by and moves between broadcast, print, and digital media platforms. Yet, it is argued that the key to understanding mediatized environmental conflict are those moments and spaces where two or more spheres of action interlock, conceptualized as switching points (Arsenault and Castells, 2008; Castells, 2009) created by cross-cutting media practices, political viewpoints, strategic objectives, and modes of ‘mediated visibility’ (Thompson, 2005). Mediatized environmental conflict is, therefore, a product of the mutually constitutive interactions between activism, journalism, formal politics, and industry. The unpredictable and charged character of these interactions helps to explain the fractiousness surrounding the issues and claims that determine shared environmental futures. The following section outlines the theoretical basis for these claims before presenting evidence-based descriptions of the media practices and relationships that sustain these conflicts.

Mediatized environmental conflict

Simon Cottle's concept of ‘mediatized conflict’ (2006a) addresses a defining feature of a ‘global, media age’ (2013)—the witnessing of conflict via media images, representations, news formats, and communications technologies (see also Cottle, 2006b, 2008, 2011). Related to the established theory of ‘media events’ (Couldry et al., 2010; Dayan and Katz, 1992) and the more recent notion of ‘disaster events’ (Katz and Liebes, 2007; Liebes, 1998), Cottle's idea is significant because it offers an empirically grounded vision of conflict that articulates with processes of social and cultural change experienced anywhere from a local to planetary scale. Reports and images of war, protests, social movements, public crises, terrorism events, and environmental disasters are positioned as sites where dispersed publics form collective sentiments about conflicts and catastrophes in a globalized world. They are also focal points where political deliberations and decisions determine what is to be done about the upheavals, impasses, and traumas caused by conflict, with journalism and news performing crucial roles in the relaying of information and interpretation of these occurrences. Political events and news reports of conflict connect with repeated and recognizable actions that are expressed physically (e.g., demonstrations, marches, police and military interventions), politically (e.g., the formation of political parties, petitions, voting at elections, government policies, industry lobbying), and through media (e.g., appeals for aid, news reports, public relations campaigns, political advertising, mobilization of online support, production of independent media). These characteristics illustrate the multiple layers of mediatized conflicts that are comprehended at-a-distance by the majority of citizens.

Cottle's contribution is to present a concept that addresses the multiple dimensions and scales of mediatized conflict, and that, most importantly, stresses the constitutive role performed by media in the enactment and experience of conflicts and their political consequences (see also Robertson, 2013: 328). Media forms and practices are much more than the means through which news about conflicts are relayed to audiences. They are also resources used by journalists, victims, bystanders, activists, concerned citizens, government agencies, and commercial actors to convey information, interpretations, and opinions to a range of personal and public networks (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr, blogs, websites, etc.). The content that circulates through these networks also enters into the flow of news and political discourses surrounding a conflict. These dynamics embed media practices and technologies as agents that help to structure conflicts and their conduct, with the question of how media ‘do things with conflicts’ a primary concern:

‘Mediatization’ is used here in a powered sense to deliberately capture something of the more complex, active and performative ways that the media are used in conflicts today. The media … are capable of enacting and performing conflicts as well as reporting and representing them; that is to say, they are actively ‘doing something’ over and above disseminating ideas, images and information. (Cottle, 2006a: 9)

Mediatized conflict is a process, something that occurs through repeated and socially situated interaction between individuals and groups whose perceptions and actions are structured by and expressed through media. Cottle's thinking reflects a broader appreciation of mediatization as a ‘process-oriented concept’ that has seen social, cultural, and institutional settings increasingly subject to far-reaching media processes and logics over time (Strömbäck, 2008). Mediatization processes are identifiable through investigation of transformations evident in any number of contexts, including politics, religion, and sport, as well as growth in the institutional and corporate power exercised by the media and digital technology industries in their own right (Couldry, 2012; Cushion and Thomas, 2013; Hepp, 2013; Hjarvard, 2013; Keane, 2013; Lundby, 2009). Furthermore, these developments are characteristic of the disruptions caused by the relentless dis-embedding and re-embedding of social relations in late modernity (Giddens, 1990), as demonstrated by sustained meta-processes such as institutionalized individualization, globalization and transnational connectivity, commercialization and the emergence of a consumer society, and, most recently, mediatization (Bauman, 2000; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Hepp, 2013; Krotz, 2009; Thompson, 1995).

Our argument is that the political significance of the environment, and the pivotal role of media in contests over the definition and understanding of environmental risks and impacts, requires conceptual recognition.³ The term mediatized environmental conflict represents a category of mediatized conflict that has, over the past decade or so, exhibited a sharply increasing order of scale and intensity. Conflicts have grown in concert with widespread concerns over the state of eco-systems, animal species, wilderness areas, forests, food productions chains, resource extraction, atmospheric conditions, and natural and industrial disaster management, all of which affect the lives of billions of human and non-human actors. The scientifically validated effects of anthropogenic climate change, combined with the vehemence and volume of much climate change denial (McKnight, 2010), have played a decisive role in ensuring that the environment and environmental conflict are the prominent feature of political and news agendas internationally, drawing in a range of media, industry, political, and sub-political groups and organizations (Beck, 2009; Giddens, 2009; Urry, 2011). Played out on the ‘public screens’ of mass, mobile, and social media (DeLuca et al., 2012, 2011),⁴ these battles concentrate individual and collective attention on the experience of environmental degradation and the likelihood of environmental collapse. The specific features of local, regional, and national contexts contribute to contrasting responses about how the ‘organized irresponsibility’ of industrial activity and advanced capitalism should be dealt with, especially in terms of deciding who should bear the costs for the damage caused (Beck, 1999).⁵

Mediatized environmental conflict signifies the spaces, sites, and times where alternative visions of modernity are fought for and over as the physical world changes in an age of ecological crisis. Manifest in various forms and evolving in response to contemporary events and often-fierce disagreements, these visions coalesce around two broad conflictual perspectives that are circulated through news and media communication networks. First, political challengers and social movements promote an ecologically centered ethics and sensibility that encourages a respectful and harmonious attitude towards nature (Maxwell and Miller, 2012). Favored by those who seek to protect and speak on behalf of the environment, their activities and objectives encompass a range of positions that aim to strike a balance between the demands of human life and the well-being of the environment for present and future generations (although significant philosophical differences exist over where the ‘right’ balance is to be found between human and non-human interests) (Curry, 2011). Pro-environmental attitudes also confront the instrumentality and time–space compression of global capitalism through an emphasis on the ‘cosmological’ or ‘glacial’ time of the natural world, thereby undercutting the imperatives of short-term political cycles and the demands of real-time financial markets (Hassan, 2011; Lash and Urry, 1994; McAfee, 1999).

The second and opposing perspective involves a wide-ranging set of industry and commercial interests that prioritize the health of market economies around the world. These interests are buttressed by political systems (democratic and non-democratic) and major parties that subscribe to a ‘doctrine’ of expanding free trade and marketization as a beneficial social good (Couldry, 2010; Harvey, 2005). Productivism, or ‘a stress upon economic growth as a prime economic value’ (Giddens, 2009: 52), situates the environment as a source of natural resources and raw materials that enter into commercial production chains and/or a site for development, tourism, and ancillary commercial services. The dominance and political influence of those who favor productivism are secured by the considerable human and financial resource advantages enjoyed by corporate capital, including global mineral mining companies, the polluting industries, and the property development and tourism sector. For those corporations and political parties that respect the principle of environmental sustainability and its attendant regulatory safeguards, the environment is treated as a resource-abundant setting to be managed in order that ongoing economic investment and business opportunities are made possible. For less respectful commercial operators, industry lobbyists, and politicians, the environment is primarily an exploitable resource—something to be dug up, drilled into, cut down, discharged into, and built upon—in the pursuit of productivity and profit. The practices of the latter also involve some odious examples of ‘greenwashing’ in public relations and advertising campaigns, connivance with commercial news media, exploitative labor practices, and the marginalization of populations who resist resource exploration and extraction (Maxwell and Miller, 2012; McKnight, 2010; Pearse, 2007, 2012; Pearse et al., 2013; Waisbord, 2013).

Mutually constitutive interactions

Tasmania is an ideal location to examine and understand the dimensions of mediatized environmental conflict, especially as this island state has been a ‘living laboratory’ for the collision of pro-environmental politics and industry-led productivism for decades. Home to the world's first Green party, the United Tasmania Group, it has been described as having the only political system in the world focused primarily on environmental issues, with forestry industry practices and policies a focal point of activist campaigns, political elections, and public disagreements played out in the news media (Hay, 1991–1992; Pybus and Flanagan, 1990). It was also where the protest campaign to save the Franklin River achieved international media attention in the summer of 1982–1983, proving to be a momentous historical event that announced the environment as a mainstream political issue (Harper, 2009; Hutchins and Lester, 2006). This rich history has contributed to an established but skeptical culture of news reporting and journalism in the coverage of environmental conflicts, government policy-making, and industry practices (Lester, 2007).

Our analysis is informed by a combination of historical analysis, fieldwork, and detailed case studies conducted in Tasmania since 2006, as well as the cultivation and maintenance of an extensive network of research informants.⁶ These efforts were given additional stimulus by three years of project funding provided by a national research agency, the Australian Research Council (ARC).⁷ Commencing in 2010, this support enabled the direct observation of different locales of activity—NGO, activist and political communications offices, protest sites, and news outlets—during the southern hemisphere summers of 2010 and 2011. By moving between locales, it became possible to trace and connect the practices of activists, journalists, formal political actors, and the forestry industry. We were also able to obtain parts of the ‘backstory’ for how groups engaged and responded to events and practices occurring in the other spheres. This method was matched to a program of 29 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with activists and NGO representatives, journalists, and politicians and political advisors. The de-identified data produced by these methods was supplemented by extensive content analysis of relevant websites and news texts, serving to contextualize the activities and issues that had been observed, noted and discussed in the field. Leading environmental and industry groups’ websites and social networking profiles (Twitter and Facebook) were monitored weekly for 13 months, a period that covered both state and national elections. The content of state-based, national and international online news websites was also collected and counted, including screenshots. A total sample of 2,202 items was then subject to categorization in terms of the sources and issues reported upon.⁸ The analyses and arguments developed from the collected evidence were also extended and problematized by the editing of an international collection on environmental conflict that dealt, in varying degrees, with different sections of the globe, including Australia, the US, Europe (including the UK), Latin America, China, Japan, the Pacific islands, and Africa (Lester and Hutchins, 2013).

The assembled evidence and scholarship show that mediatized environmental conflict is an outcome of the mutually constitutive interactions between activist strategies and campaigns, journalism practices and news reporting, political processes and decision-making, and industry activities and trade. Internationally, the proliferation of digital technologies, mobile communications, and networked media is making it difficult to conceive environmental conflict occurring completely outside of, or beyond the reach of media and media networks. The politicization of these conflicts is partly an effect of the media system, the ‘logic’ of which infuses the conduct of present day politics and political issues (Castells, 2004; Esser and Strömbäck, 2014; Strömbäck, 2008). This logic produces a functionally interdependent relationship between the four spheres of action identified earlier—‘they intersect and depend on each other’ (Keane, 2013: 177). The form and types of interaction between activists, journalists, political actors, and industry figures depend on the issue and context in question. But, in a structural sense, the practices and decisions taken in each sphere are conditioned by a historically sensitized awareness of the strategies, likely responses, and levels of influence existing within and across all four spheres. The practical implications of this structural conditioning can be witnessed throughout a spectrum of familiar patterned scenarios. Examples include news reports of a coordinated protest campaign and online petition against a government policy that expands industry activity; public criticism of activists by ministers and sitting parliamentary members for ‘harming’ the economy and ‘threatening’ jobs; news coverage of legal action taken against protesters by a corporation for disrupting their operations; the sustained questioning of a minister for the environment by journalists during a press conference following the release of a new policy; or the broadcast of an investigative expose of environmental devastation by a high profile television news media outlet, prompting immediate comment from environmental NGOs, political parties, and industry spokespeople in online and offline forums. Competing and contradictory scientific and economic rationality claims run throughout all of these examples and contribute to differing outcomes depending on who is speaking, how they are framed, and what the claims are directed towards (Lester and Hutchins, 2012c; Waisbord and Peruzzotti, 2009).

Analysis of the interactions described here necessitates a focus on the events and negotiations that occur at the meeting point between the different spheres of action. Adapting an idea developed by Arsenault and Castells (2008; Castells, 2009), these are conceptualized as switching points—the spaces and sites where interlocking networks of media, political, and economic power meet and where environmental conflict is enacted. The concept of the switching point was initially offered as a means to understand the exercise of power within the global ‘meta-network of finance and media’ (Castells, 2009: 426), as exemplified by News Corporation and the ‘archetypal media mogul’ Rupert Murdoch (Arsenault and Castells, 2008: 489). It has since been used to think about the power and counter-power wielded by governments, social movements, and citizens in the course of large-scale political and military convulsions, including the recent Arab uprisings and the Occupy Movement (Castells, 2012). In the case of mediatized environmental conflict, switching points are instantiated by the production and circulation of contending messages, representations, debates, and strategies emanating from each of the specified spheres. These phenomena are simultaneously physical (e.g., forests, protest sites, newsrooms, political offices, parliaments, press conferences) and mediated (e.g., news, online forums, social networking, mobile communications, broadcast media) in character. Switching points are also impacted by the timing of political and media cycles, including journalistic routines, protest planning, election campaigns, environmental policy reviews, and industry announcements, as well as environmental and disaster events that focus public and activist attention on pressing environmental problems.

Switching points

The examples discussed in this section offer details and explanations of how mediatized environmental conflict is enacted. The issues and events discussed represent a broad cross-section of the evidence that has been collected and analyzed over the course of our research. The purpose of presenting this evidence is not to provide in-depth analysis of each event or issue, as this is available elsewhere in various journal articles and books chapters.⁹ Rather, the intention is to highlight the vital interactions occurring at the switching points between activism, journalism, formal politics, and industry. It is these dynamics, and the power differentials underpinning them, that determine how environmental conflict unfolds.

Activism

Activist- and NGO-led campaigns deploy a combination of staged and opportunistic protest action aimed at the engagement and mobilization of supporters and coverage in the news media. The realization of these objectives highlights the short- and long-term detrimental impacts of industry and development activity. Faced by the comparative strength of government, political, and industry communications units, campaigns are characterized by the deployment of meager financial and human resources in an agile and tactical fashion. This imbalance produces a reliance on ‘cheap do-it-yourself media’ tools and practices (Garcia and Lovink, 1997; Meikle, 2002) that are used to create and circulate images, symbols, and messages that leverage the affective resonance of ‘the natural world’ and pristine landscapes that are ‘untouched by human activity’ (Lester, 2010a: 137). Seeking to foment the pressure of public opinion, environmental symbolism of this sort is fed into a switching point where the need to attract the attention of journalists and their audiences is prioritized, assisted by the sharing of information, and uploading of content that occurs within widely dispersed environmental networks. However, campaigns achieve widespread public awareness on an intermittent basis at best. Depending on their frequency, they are susceptible to journalist suspicions that demonstrations and actions are stage-managed or contrived for the news cameras; a conclusion that can lead to negative coverage and news commentary. In contrast, successful campaigns contribute to journalistic scrutiny and questions that elicit discomfort and occasionally hostile responses from government leaders, elected politicians, and industry spokespeople who are forced to defend their activities. Counter-claims to those presented in activist campaigns are also common, with environmentalists often labeled by opponents as ‘troublemakers’ or ‘extremists’ who are ‘out-of-touch’ with the concerns of ‘ordinary’ people and workers.

The activation of exchanges within a switching point can occur via a chance event, planned action, or a combination of the two. An example of the latter occurred in October 2008 in the Upper Florentine Valley in Tasmania's southwest, pairing a planned on-site protest with fortuitous online distribution of video content via YouTube (Hutchins and Lester, 2011). As part of a deliberate effort to obstruct the progress of forest industry workers, activists from a small direct action group, ‘Still Wild, Still Threatened’, blocked a road used by loggers with a car body. Two protesters lay inside the car with their arms embedded in a pipe concreted into the ground. A third protestor observed the car body from a largely concealed vantage point with a mobile phone camera. Footage was recorded as a logging contractor working for Forestry Tasmania (the state's forest management corporation) attacked the vehicle with a sledgehammer. Another contractor screamed obscenities at the activists inside the car body. The violence of the incident was confronting, highlighting a disturbing level of physical and verbal aggression towards protestors unable to defend themselves at the moment of the attack.

The switching point actuating mediatized environmental conflict was catalyzed at the moment Still Wild, Still Threatened uploaded footage of the attack to MySpace and then YouTube. This mechanism shifted the dominant public account of the incident in the favor of activists, transforming the episode from an ‘isolated incident’ in a remote forest into a ‘savage attack’ on peaceful protestors. Uploading the video leveraged the mediated visibility afforded by video-sharing websites, making the otherwise unnoticed or unseen visible via the Internet and networked media (Thompson, 2005). The video became one of the most watched videos on YouTube about the Tasmanian forests, displaying the violence in unedited form for journalists and Internet users (Collins, 2013). For a fortnight after being posted, the video received detailed attention from print and broadcast news outlets, and was shared by members and supporters of various environmentalist groups in Tasmania and beyond. The shocking nature of the footage and viral distribution of the video obligated both government and industry representatives to answer difficult questions posed in the news media, as the following op-ed newspaper article that appeared in Hobart's The Mercury indicates:

Why spend millions of taxpayers’ dollars portraying our little island as a haven of tranquillity when YouTube and TV news programs around the world are filled with horrific images of sledgehammers viciously attacking greenies’ cars in the deep forests? Equally, why carefully craft your own image as a compassionate-but-dynamic, modern and forward-thinking young Premier, and then muddy it by trampling, apparently without much thought, into the murky world of hard-core logging rhetoric and attitudes? (Neales, 2008: 30)

Forestry Tasmania was not only forced to issue public statements and comments distancing itself from the violence because of the harm caused to its commercial and public image, but also hinted at the role of protesters in provoking the actions of forestry workers. The new state premier, David Bartlett, performed a similarly jarring political communication ‘two-step’ that combined strong disapproval of the violence with declarations of support for the forestry industry.

The unique features of this switching point involve the collapse of a sizable resource and power differential, forcing a forest management corporation and a state Premier to respond defensively to activists and then journalists. While the level of controversy attached to this situation may be irregular, the logic of the events described nonetheless reflects deeply patterned interactions between each sphere of action, which in this case involve the targeting of opponents, the mobilization and/or appeasement of supporters, and the stimulation of public attention by news media coverage.

Journalism

The responses of journalism and the news media to environmental conflict are driven by a range of factors that are well known and frequently described, yet are still unpredictable when put into practice. The guiding ambition, however, is to deny environmental actors—politicians, industry representatives, and activists—the capacity to turn switching points ‘on’ and ‘off’ at will and without scrutiny. Within environmental politics, activists and journalists share an ambition to make publicly visible the policies and practices of industry and government, even when faced by organized efforts to keep these matters private. There are various methods used by industry and politicians to protect confidentiality, including legal threats and strategic lawsuits (Ogle, 2010), claims to ‘commercial-in-confidence’ and ‘cabinet confidentiality’, refusal to reply to journalist inquiries and the repeated offering of ‘no comment’, deliberately misleading or partial answers, and invocation of the Chatham House rule. Directed at preventing sensitive information and images from entering media networks, these methods are used by industry and political professionals in order to pursue their interests, as the disclosure of private interactions and decisions often weakens the control of corporations and governments over the flow of information and public debate. For journalists, a determination to reveal private dealings in order to hold industry and political decision-makers accountable asserts their ongoing relevance as functionaries of the Fourth Estate in representative democracies (Schultz, 1998).

Our data collection activities in 2010 coincided with one of the most perplexing periods in the history of environmental conflict in Tasmania. The quantity of media activity and communication related to the interminable forestry dispute fell to a significant degree. Analyzed in detail elsewhere, this period was characterized by an unprecedented medium ‘invisibility’ by activist groups (Lester and Hutchins, 2012a, 2012b). This apparent invisibility was evident across news media, activist, government and industry websites and social media platforms, as well as by a reduced quantity of media releases generated by the conflict's key actors. A critical development was occurring—‘secret peace talks’—between key environmental and industry groups. These talks proceeded with the backing of national and state governments and workers’ unions, with all parties agreeing to keep the existence of the talks private until so-called ‘common ground’ was reached.

These talks represent a key switching point. The determination of former combatants in the ‘forestry wars’ to render their meetings and discussions invisible to journalists was acutely sensitized to the strategies that had informed many past decisions to ‘go public’ in the news media. Finally, after a period of about 6 months, the news media lifted the veil of secrecy around the talks by using their ‘behind-closed-doors’ character as a news peg. Speaking with the benefit of hindsight, one journalist described his reason for ultimately deciding to report the existence of the talks:

It was obviously a hugely significant development that I thought people should know about. And, you know, [it was] a great news story. It was a seismic shift in the forest debate, in Tasmania's economic and social fabric really. (Interview with author, 2 March 2012)¹⁰

There are a range of interrelated reasons for the poor responsiveness of journalists in revealing the ‘hugely significant’ talks and the Tasmanian Forests Agreement¹¹ that they produced. Contributing elements included skepticism, with some journalists feeling that the talks were not ‘fair dinkum’ [serious] when their existence was articulated by sources (Interview with author, 8 May 2012). This is an understandable reaction given the history of animosity between the groups involved in the talks. Another contributing factor was issue fatigue, with decades of conflict having left many journalists of the view that the unending forestry conflict ‘sucks the lifeblood out of Tasmanian public life’ (Interview with author, 28 March 2012). There is also a long tradition of ‘flak’ (Herman and Chomsky, 1988) in the coverage of environmental issues in Tasmania, which made some journalists wary of reporting the story. Commonplace tactics used by influential industry and political figures include direct criticism communicated to news editors and producers, lengthy formal complaints to media outlets, and occasional instances of formal legal action. Given this tense media and political atmosphere, it was difficult for journalists to find credible sources willing to offer on-the-record comments about the talks.

The eventual appearance of news stories reporting the existence of the talks saw a return to more routine media activity on news, activist and government websites, as well as on Facebook and Twitter. Moreover, spreading awareness of the talks and the Agreement sparked public concern about a lack of transparency in decisions made about the future of the forests, as reflected in this letter to The Mercury newspaper:

Terry Edwards [Chief Executive of the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania] might well be disappointed that the forestry peace plan has been leaked … but the people of Tasmania should be delighted at the opportunity for some input into what will greatly affect all Tasmanians. (Letter to the Editor, 2010: 24)

At the time of writing, it is still unclear which features of the Tasmanian Forests Agreement will have a lasting impact. Spokespeople for newly elected federal and state governments have cited the secrecy surrounding the talks and a lack of community consultation as justification for ‘tearing up’ the Agreement.

This example highlights the difficulty of predicting the outcomes of interactions occurring at a switching point, further emphasizing the need for empirical investigation. In this case, the qualified cooperation of environmentalists, government figures, and forestry representatives in the peace talks confounds any stereotypical characterization of ideologically ‘pure’ environmentalists clashing with ‘corrupt’ industry and political actors. Indeed, the surprisingly nuanced character of these events underlines its appeal as a major story for journalists and news outlets, in spite of the time that was taken to break the silence surrounding the talks.

Formal politics

A cleavage between productivism and ecologically centered perspectives is most obvious in formal party and parliamentary politics, at least as practiced in democratic systems that display varying levels of political pluralism and a mix of commercial and public service media (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). The institutionalized sites and spaces where political decisions are negotiated, debated and announced reflect this division, although political expediency and the pursuit of success at the ballot box can lead to surprising temporary alliances and volatile coalitions. A glance across developments in Australia, the US, and a number of countries in Europe, Latin America and South-East Asia indicates that major political parties and governing coalitions tend to favor policy agendas that support business, economic investment, market liberalization, and industry activity (cf. Cottle and Lester, 2011; Harvey, 2005; Lester and Hutchins, 2013). The groups and individuals who reject productivist rationales in favor of ecological priorities object to the negative environmental impacts that flow from this consensus.¹² This rejection of market-driven economic orthodoxy positions environmentalists as political challengers who, when they enter electoral politics, mostly occupy minority party status or hold junior positions within broader governing and opposition coalitions. This has certainly been the case for Greens party politicians in Australian federal and Tasmanian state politics over the past 40 years.

Elected Greens representatives in Australia have regularly struggled to make their policies and messages visible in the news media and the electorate, although the rise of climate change as an urgent political issue is slowly altering this situation. Nevertheless, recent history shows that interactions at the switching points of mediatized environmental conflict include close cooperation between Greens politicians and activist networks to interrogate government departments in the course of parliamentary proceedings, as well as media interventions to achieve greater public visibility at election time. The senate estimate hearings in the Parliament of Australia¹³ are an opportunity for multi-party committees to scrutinize government operations and spending. Sessions are watched by press gallery journalists hunting for evidence of wasteful government spending, oversight or malfeasance to use as the basis for stories and/or further investigation. Recognizing this fact, Greens politicians utilize this process to maximize focus on departmental practices and pro-industry government policies. Senate estimates are also streamed live online, with the micro-blogging service Twitter proving an effective mechanism to facilitate real-time interactions between politicians and environmental activists (Hutchins, 2014). The national leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Christine Milne, explains:

So Scott Ludlam [a Greens senator] … will put out a Tweet to say, ‘This government department is about to take a seat and come before the senate estimates, do you have any particular questions for’, say the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, or ‘send me the question now cause they're about to start’ … Senate committees are now streamed online, so for activist groups who might be working on a certain issue, they can sit on their computer, watch the senate estimates process … when a bureaucrat gives an answer, someone can write in and say, ‘That is absolute rubbish, go back and ask him this.’ (Milne, 2011: 295)

Persistent questioning of this sort places pressure on the department officials charged with implementing the policies of sitting governments. It can also cause embarrassment for departments and governments when a high-profile news outlet recounts that inadequate or inconsistent answers have been supplied during the estimates hearings.

Twitter has also been used by the Greens during election campaigns to achieve greater media exposure for their policies and causes. An example is the nationally broadcast leaders debate between the then Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, during the 2010 national election. The leader of the Australian Greens at the time, Senator Bob Brown, had his demands for inclusion in the televised debate rejected. A pioneering activist who helped lead the blockade of the Franklin River in 1982–1983, Brown's iconic status as a Greens leader and environmentalist ensured that the use of his Twitter account (@SenatorBobBrown) was widely noticed during the debate. Brown sent 12 tweets over the course of the broadcast that responded directly to the statements of Gillard and Abbott. Noticed by the program producers, these messages began to appear in the moderated Twitter feed at the bottom of the screen during the live coverage. For instance, the tweets made reference to political and activist efforts against government climate change policy and carbon intensive industries, including, ‘Only the Greens will cut carbon emissions by 40% by 2020, with energy efficiency, renewables and saving forests’ (25 July 2010, 7:15 pm). Brown's canny intervention ensured that he and his party had a conspicuous presence in a debate that was followed by engaged citizens and journalists observing the #ausvotes and/or #debate Twitter streams (Bruns and Burgess, 2011).

The ongoing mediatization of politics impacts the structures and processes that determine the functioning of electoral processes and democratic systems (Esser and Strömbäck, 2014; Strömbäck, 2008). These changes take various forms, including the introduction and popularization of new media platforms and modes of communication such as Twitter and social networking. The possibilities for action that flow from the planned and opportune use of these technologies produce obvious effects in the conduct of environmental conflict and the triggering of emergent interactions at a switching point.

Industry

International scrutiny of industry activities has featured in Australian environmental politics since the blockade of the Franklin Dam (Lester, 2007). For example, the accidental torching and death of Australia's largest tree, El Grande, during forests operations in 2007 attracted unwanted publicity for Forestry Tasmania in the UK from the BBC, The Observer, and The Guardian that then featured in local news coverage and political debate (Lester, 2010b). On another occasion, international travel journalists sponsored by the Tasmanian state government escaped their minders and wrote reports about proposals for a new industrial pulp mill development in the Tamar Valley in the state's north (McGaurr, 2013). The potential damage to the reputation of Tasmania's forestry industry caused by these types of stories has situated international and transnational media flows as important sites of struggle. This contest encompasses both a short-term emphasis on the benefits and drawbacks of the issue at hand, and a longer-term dispute over continuing industry activities, the legitimacy of the productivism, and the preventability of ruinous environmental outcomes. A significant escalation of this struggle was evident in 2012 when activist efforts turned from critiquing and protesting government policy to targeting international markets serviced by the forestry industry.

Once the world's largest exporter of hardwood woodchips and Tasmania's largest company, Gunns Limited lurched into receivership in 2012. The collapse followed the global financial crisis and a failure to adapt to changing international standards for forest sustainability and procurement practices. Gunns had considerable difficulty in gaining the support of environmental groups in making the shift towards internationally accepted product certification standards. This resistance resulted from the close and often secretive relationship of Gunns with government, the company's largely unrestrained takeover of the forestry industry on the island, and ‘public relations’ strategies that included the frequent deployment of flak against journalists and law suits against opponents. The most famous suit became known as the ‘Gunns 20’ case, running from December 2004 to January 2010. This largely failed action was taken against 20 environmentalists accused of conspiring in a ‘malicious campaign against Gunns’ (Swales, 2010: 39). Viewed as an attempt to curtail the right to dissent in civil society, the case attracted international criticism, damaged the reputation of Gunns, and may have contributed to a marked fall in the company's share price (Swales, 2010).

The collapse of Gunns opened a market opportunity for the production and sale of forestry products. This chance was seized upon by Ta Ann Tasmania in order to sell and market wood veneer for flooring in Japan, with these practices subsequently the subject of environmentalist criticism and protest. With the aid of research fieldwork conducted in Japan, this change in the marketplace afforded us the ability to trace the transnational flows of media messages directed at industry producers, buyers, and retailers of controversial timber products.¹⁴ In particular, it enabled the analysis of how these messages were produced, interpreted, and acted upon across geographic, political, and cultural boundaries and in vastly different media and market contexts (Lester, 2014). The flows of political communication and action that we followed are, it is argued, evidence of an emerging transnational political and public sphere (cf. Fraser, 2007; Volkmer, 2003). For instance, a report produced by a small Tasmanian environmental group, the Huon Valley Environment Centre (HVEC), had a profound impact after it was translated into Japanese by an equivalent environmental organization based in Tokyo. A Japanese company cancelled its contracts with Ta Ann Tasmania on the basis of the report, which asserted that the timber product it was marketing as harvested from plantations was, in fact, sourced from native forests. Ta Ann Tasmania claimed that it was forced to sack 40 workers as a result of the cancelled contract (Lester, 2014).

The HVEC report attracted almost no media or political attention when it was first launched in Tasmania. Rather, it was the response to the report in Japan that prompted extensive local and state news coverage, featuring aggressive claims by industry representatives:

The head of Tasmania's Forest Industries Association, Terry Edwards, says the jobs were slashed because of the international campaigns. ‘We’ve now seen Ta Ann, who was attracted down here to Tasmania by the Tasmanian and Commonwealth Governments, who were asked to invest here, and they too have been subject to quite a dishonourable campaign, in Japan by extremist environmental groups. They lost their jobs as a direct result of that campaign,’ he said. (ABC News, 2012: np)

The Tasmanian Premier and Leader of the Opposition then embarked on a public diplomacy and trade mission to South East Asia, with the ethics and legality of environmental campaigns and protest activity also publicly attacked. At the time of writing, state government representatives have threatened that tough new anti-protest legislation will be implemented in order to stymie campaigns that disseminate purportedly ‘false and misleading information’ about forestry companies and their operations (Tasmanian Liberals, 2014: 4).

This case represents a complex actuation of a switching point, suggesting that industry activities are increasingly monitored by communities of concern that are capable of effective mobilization at the transnational level. These communities are beginning to materialize through a combination of sophisticated political strategies and media practices that sustain highly visible market-based campaigns. Such campaigns are likely to become more pronounced as expanding resource extraction by industry and cross-border trade activity produces both locally felt and globally distributed environmental impacts.

Conclusion

Drawing lessons from the construction of mediatization as a middle-range theory, mediatized environmental conflict is a concept built from a combination of existing theoretical tools, systematically collected empirical evidence, the study of specific historical events, and a contextualized reading of recent environmental and political developments. It focuses on the role of mutually constitutive and structurally conditioned interactions between activism, journalism and news, formal politics, and industry; all spheres of action that possess their own intricate networks of media, political and economic power. Yet, the operation and conduct of environmental conflict can only be understood once the complex interactions between these spheres are traced and analyzed. The basis for our theorization is evident from extensive research completed over the past nine years, which has been problematized and refined by consultation with a vast array of international scholarship that examines environmental conflict, media, political communication, green social movements, and news and journalism.

The next frontier in this domain of research was foreshadowed in the previous section and the discussion of Ta Ann Tasmania and Japan. A level of depth and scope in empirical evidence is needed that is commensurate with the reality of a ‘global, media age’ (Cottle, 2013), and it is this challenge that promises to advance the theorization and understanding of mediatized environmental conflict at this moment in world history. The conduct and potential implications of environmental conflict occurring across borders and between nations and regions has been well recognized. But extensive and detailed evidence of precisely how governments, industry, activists, and the news media respond to environmental issues that are transnationally manifest is lacking. In Australia, for example, the impacts of the mining and forestry industries are evident through trade and diplomatic relations with countries located throughout the Asia-Pacific region, including Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, China, India, Timor-Leste, and Papua New Guinea. These varied relations and their manifold environmental consequences require that media, political, and information flows in and between these nations and across the region are identified and evaluated. To study conflict in this way and at this scale is no small task, encompassing intricate networks of environmental concern, strategic webs of media and political influence, public policy debates, and bi- and multi-lateral trade negotiations and deals. Nonetheless, it is imperative that this research challenge is met, as this is the arena in which global environmental futures are set to be determined.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

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