Mark C.J. Stoddart

“Governments Have the Power”? Interpretations of Climate Change Responsibility and Solutions Among Canadian Environmentalists

The authors examine environmentalists’ attribution of responsibility for addressing climate change and their beliefs about solutions to this problem. Their analysis is based on responses to open-ended questions completed by 1,227 members of nine different environmental organizations. For these environmental movement participants, the federal government is seen as most responsible for addressing climate change. Government leadership is necessary because it has the power to set regulations and lead corporations and citizens toward pro-environmental behavior. However, a substantial number of participants also assert that “individuals are the driving force” in dealing with climate change. In this framework, individuals can take responsibility either through making lifestyle changes, or through applying pressure to government and businesses as citizens and consumers. Corporations are interpreted as unwilling to change on their own but must be coerced into becoming more environmentally sustainable by a strong state.

Constructing masculinized sportscapes: Skiing, gender and nature in British Columbia, Canada

Sport sociology has provided a significant body of critical research on gender and social inequality within outdoor sport. Less attention is given to how the social construction of sport landscapes shapes gendered power relations. This article examines how skiing landscapes are constructed as masculinized spaces. The mountainous sublime is a site for performing athletic, risk-seeking masculinity.The backcountry and advanced terrain at ski resorts also appear as masculinized places. By contrast, less risky areas of the skiing landscape may be interpreted as ‘gender-neutral’ or feminized space. Through skiing, participants construct the meaning of gender and place, privileging masculinized versions of the sport.

Canadian News Media Coverage of Climate Change: Historical Trajectories, Dominant Frames, and International Comparisons

We examine climate change news coverage from 1997 to 2010 in two Canadian national newspapers: the Globe and Mail and the National Post. The following questions guide our analysis: Why did the volume of climate change coverage rise and fall during the period? Focusing on the key period of 2007–2008, what kinds of issue categories, thematic frames, and rhetorical frames dominate the news discourse? Canadian news coverage of climate change is characterized by a series of peaks and troughs, combined with an overall increase in coverage. The volume of coverage appears to be primarily driven by national and international political events, more than by changes to national or global carbon emissions, or by other ecological factors. The Canadian news discourse about climate change is dominated by themes of government responsibility, policymaking, policy measures for mitigation, and ways to mitigate climate change.

Canadian news media and the cultural dynamics of multilevel climate governance

Links between national news outlets (Globe and Mail and National Post) and climate-change discourse are examined in order better to understand the cultural politics of Canadian involvement in climate governance. National news media use a narrow range of issue categories to interpret climate change to the public. Both news outlets also privilege national and international political spheres, with less attention to climate governance at the sub-national level. However, there are important differences between them. The Globe and Mail tends to focus on government responsibility, while the National Post tends to focus on climate science and the economic costs of addressing climate change. Four key periods (1999, 2002, 2006, and 2010) are examined in order to trace shifts in climate-change discourse. There has been a shift towards greater issue complexity over time, coupled with a growing polarisation of climate discourse across the two national news outlets.

Conflicting Climate Change Frames in a Global Field of Media Discourse

Reducing global emissions will require a global cosmopolitan culture built from detailed attention to conflicting national climate change frames (interpretations) in media discourse. The authors analyze the global field of media climate change discourse using 17 diverse cases and 131 frames. They find four main conflicting dimensions of difference: validity of climate science, scale of ecological risk, scale of climate politics, and support for mitigation policy. These dimensions yield four clusters of cases producing a fractured global field. Positive values on the dimensions show modest association with emissions reductions. Data-mining media research is needed to determine trends in this global field.

A typology of diversion: legitimating discourses of tourism attraction, oil extraction and climate action in Newfoundland and Labrador

Focusing on the case of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canadas easternmost province, we analyse a typology of diversionary techniques that lend legitimacy to the contradictory projects of expanding tourism and fossil fuel use, on the one hand, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, on the other hand. We combine the work of two bodies of legitimacy theory within environmental sociology. First, we draw on techniques of distraction, as detailed by Freudenburg and Alario and Gramling and Freudenburg, to explore how discursive misdirection maintains an incongruous status quo in the public and political spheres. Second, we draw on Norgaard’s work on cultural nonresponse that describes how climate change denial is constructed in private and interpersonal spheres. Informed by policy documents and interviews with stakeholders, we identify and analyse three legitimation techniques – pursuing divergent policies, manipulating timelines and diverting attention – that sustain policy tensions and delay substantive climate action. By combining and extending public and private spheres of legitimation theory, we identify a complex typology of interrelated techniques used by actors to actively construct, and arguably distort, social-ecological relationships.

From Fisheries Decline to Tourism Destination: Mass Media, Tourism Mobility, and the Newfoundland Coastal Environment

Abstract In this paper, we examine narratives of tourism mobility circulated through print news media coverage of Newfoundland published in Canada, the UK, and the USA between 1992 and 2010. Initially articles were situated within a larger narrative of fisheries collapse, rural decline, and out-migration. In recent years, however, the discourse shifted to emphasize how non-human nature, including whales, icebergs, and national parks, serves as a tourism attractor, yielding benefits for rural communities. We draw on Latour’s work on political ecology, as well as on Urry’s work on tourism, mobility, and climate change, to analyze the eco-political implications of media accounts of tourism and the Newfoundland coastal environment.

Environmentalists' Mediawork for Jumbo Pass and the Tobeatic Wilderness, Canada: Combining Text-Centred and Activist-Centred Approaches to News Media and Social Movements

For social movements, the mass media are a key means of reaching potential supporters, engaging public and political debate and reshaping cultural interpretations of relationships with the non-human environment. We examine how outdoor sport becomes the object of environmental movement mobilization and media claims-making in conflict over the Jumbo Pass ski resort, British Columbia, and Off-Highway Vehicle use in the Tobeatic Wilderness Area, Nova Scotia. We use provincial and national news coverage and interviews with key movement actors to examine how activists interpret the success or failure of their media work. We find that environmentalists are generally successful at translating claims on behalf of nature to a general audience through newspaper coverage. Using an activist-centred approach to media and social movements, interviews with core activists provide insight into barriers that persist and characterize environmental movement relationships with the media.

Leisure, nature and environmental movements in the mass media: comparing Jumbo Pass and the Tobeatic Wilderness Area, Canada

Media coverage from major provincial and national newspapers is used to examine two Canadian sites where leisure and tourism become objects of environmental movement mobilisation: the proposed Jumbo Glacier Resort ski development (British Columbia), and the Tobeatic Wilderness Area (Nova Scotia). In both cases, environmentalists and government appear as central news sources. A dominant discourse defines both of these places as wilderness landscapes that need protection from ecologically inappropriate modes of outdoor recreation (downhill skiing and off-highway vehicle use). There are also key differences between the two cases. First, while motorised recreation is defined as inherently incompatible with the wilderness values of the Tobeatic, environmentalists ally with heli-ski operators at Jumbo Pass in their opposition to resort development. Second, news coverage of Jumbo Pass offers more space to environmentalist opponents to question the ‘wilderness’ status of the region. Finally, in the Jumbo case, tourism is linked to economic development in opposition to ecological protection. By contrast, tourism in the Tobeatic is interpreted as a pro-environmental alternative to extractive development. Despite differences between these conflicts, both demonstrate that the relationship between outdoor recreation and environmentalism may be conflictual, rather than mutually supportive.

Media Access and Political Efficacy in the Eco-politics of Climate Change: Canadian National News and Mediated Policy Networks

ABSTRACT We use a discourse network analysis approach to answer two questions about national news coverage of climate change policy debate in Canada during the period 2006–2010. First, what is the media visibility of actors relevant to policy development and advocacy on climate change? Second, given the political and economic context of climate policy-making in Canada, does greater or lesser media visibility reflect effectiveness in climate policy advocacy? Multiple interpretive frameworks characterize Canadian political discourse about climate change, with fragmentation between the federal government, opposition political parties, provincial governments, and environmental organizations. Contrary to expectations, environmental organizations had high levels of media visibility while the relative invisibility of fossil fuel corporations was notable in the media coverage of Canadian climate discussions. Our findings challenge optimistic accounts of the relationship between media power and political power, and suggest that media power does not necessarily translate to political efficacy.