Media Politics And Environment

Drawing on a range of international examples, Libby Lester invites readers to develop a nuanced understanding of changing media practices and dynamics by connecting local, national and global environmental issues, journalistic practices and news sources, public relations and protests, and the symbolic and strategic circulation of meanings in the public sphere.

Environmental protection has not equally established itself as a permanent fixture in the political systems of all countries: to date, governments and entire societies have responded to environmental challenges in a variety of ways, and concrete environmental policy is still a highly national matter. Moreover, the perception of environmental problems varies considerably on a global scale. The reasons normally cited for these differences largely stem from the environmental policy debates themselves, e.g. poverty, ignorance, capital interests, etc. In contrast, this book shows that concrete environmental policy emerges from a complex interplay of mass media and political conflicts: first, the mass media provide the framework for national environmental policy through agenda-setting, framing and scandalization; second, the mass media thereby change values in the political and social discourse, e.g. by altering the perception of global commons and expanding the possibilities of interest articulation; and third, this can lead to political decision-making processes in which legal and other measures for environmental protection are enforced. The book systematically compares industrialized countries such as Germany and Japan with several rapidly emerging countries in South and Southeast Asia.

Drawing on a range of international examples, Libby Lester invites readers to develop a nuanced understanding of changing media practices and dynamics by connecting local, national and global environmental issues, journalistic practices and news sources, public relations and protests, and the symbolic and strategic circulation of meanings in the public sphere.

This book examines the role of the media in environmental politics and activism in the 21st century. It highlights how politics is mediated in myriad ways through newspapers and news channels, through mobile telephony and through social networking sites. Further, it shows how the media creates and influences relevant discourses, builds campaigns and awareness, and adopts and discards issues. With a range of perspectives on issues of environmental justice and equity, the volume scrutinizes how the media discourse on environment shapes our politics, and the role of international politics, finance, youth, newspapers, magazines and 24-hour television. Bringing together academics, activists and media persons, this highly topical book will serve as significant reading for researchers and scholars of development studies and media studies, as well as policymakers, NGOs and environmental campaigners.

At every stage, environmental policy is the result of the combat of stakeholders interested in, and affected by, the problem being addressed and the range of possible solutions. The combatants include any or all of the following: the federal government, environmental advocacy groups, and business, the media, the scientific community, think tanks, NGOs of every stripe, trade associations and professional organizations, and even state and local governments, each of whom have their own interests in the resulting policy. Environmental Politics: Interest Groups, the Media, and the Making of Policy discusses political battles over the environment from ground level - as they are fought in legislative chambers, the daily newspaper, on television, and, increasingly, on the Internet. The text explores environmental politics as a clash of interests, not ideologies, and environmental policy as a result of the reconciliation of those interests. The author covers not only the conventional aspects of the policymaking process but more recent and less recognized elements and developments such as: Proliferation of legislative riders and monument designations as major environmental strategies Evolving role of the media, from science popularizer to agenda setter Growing influence on both Congress and the public of conservative and libertarian foundations and think tanks Devolution of environmental power from the Federal to state governments Metamorphosis of EPA in a business-driven regulatory revolution Effect of globalization on US environmental policy Newly emerging role of the precautionary principle in marrying science and politics Increasing role of the Internet in promoting populist issues and promoting the decentralization of the environmental power structure No other book covers the politics of the environment the way this one does. Written by an expert with 25 years of experience in environmental policymaking, Environmental Politics: Interest Groups, the Media, and the Making of Policy gives you an insider's view of how policies are forged. By examining these issues through an interest group lens, this book not only accounts for what policies have been adopted but also shows how you can influence policy and effect change.

Media and communication processes are central to how we come to know about and make sense of our environment and to the ways in which environmental concerns are generated, elaborated, manipulated and contested. The second edition of Environment, Media and Communication builds on the first edition’s framework for analysing and understanding media and communication roles in the politics of the environment. It draws on the significant and continuing growth and advances in the field of environmental communication research to show the increasing diversification and complexity of environmental communication. The book highlights the persistent urgency of analysing and understanding how communication about the environment is being influenced and manipulated, with implications for how and indeed whether environmental challenges are being addressed and dealt with. Since the first edition, changes in media organisations, news media and environmental journalism have continued apace, but – perhaps more significantly – the media technologies and the media and communications landscape have evolved profoundly with the continued rise of digital and social media. Such changes have gone hand in hand with, and often facilitated, enabled and enhanced shifting balances of power in the politics of the environment. There is thus a greater need than ever to analyse and understand the roles of mediated public communication about the environment, and to ask critical questions about who/what benefits and who/what is adversely affected by such processes. This book will be of interest to students in media/communication studies, geography, environmental studies, political science and sociology as well as to environmental professionals and activists.

This volume weaves together the literature on the media and the environment into an integrated cultural studies text. The author re-examines the concept of culture using the environment as a case study.

For many years, the objective of environmental campaigners was to push climate change on to the agenda of political leaders and to encourage media attention to the issue. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, it appeared that their efforts had been spectacularly successful. Yet just at the moment when the campaigners’ goals were being achieved, it seemed that the idea of getting the issue into mainstream discussion had been mistaken all along; that the consensus-building approach produced little or no meaningful action. That is the problem of climate change as a ‘post-political’ issue, which is the subject of this book. Examining how climate change is communicated in politics, news media and celebrity culture, Climate Change and Post-Political Communication explores how the issue has been taken up by elites as potentially offering a sense of purpose or mission in the absence of political visions of the future, and considers the ways in which it provides a focus for much broader anxieties about a loss of modernist political agency and meaning. Drawing on a wide range of literature and case studies, and taking a critical and contextual approach to the analysis of climate change communication, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of environmental studies, communication studies, and media and film studies.

Offers a critical and realistic reassessment of the threats posed to the environment in the Middle East, and what can be done about them.