Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T04:01:51.340Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - Media and the Environmental Movement in a Digital Age

from Part III - Culture and Environmental Sociology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2020

By
John Hannigan
Edited by
Katharine Legun ,
Julie C. Keller ,
Michael Carolan  and
Michael M. Bell
Katharine Legun
Affiliation:
Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands
Julie C. Keller
Affiliation:
University of Rhode Island
Michael Carolan
Affiliation:
Colorado State University
Michael M. Bell
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Get access

Summary

In a seminal article from the early 1990s, Gamson and Wolfsfeld (1993) characterize the relationship between mass media and social movements as one of "asymmetrical dependency," whereby the former rely on the latter for three purposes: to mobilize their constituencies; to validate their existence as politically important collective actors; and to enlarge the scope of conflict, drawing in third parties. In this chapter, I review scholarly research on the media and the environmental movement over the last half century. As helpful as this has been, it focuses almost entirely on traditional media, ignoring the tumultuous changes that have occurred in political communication associated with the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and other new media platforms and technologies. Analysis of several case studies of new media and environmental campaigns suggests that the most effective movement strategy is to embrace a "hybrid media" system which blends older media logics, notably those associated with broadcast television, with new digital media logics.

Keywords

environmental communicationhybrid media systemsenvironmental movement–media interaction
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology , pp. 193 - 205
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amenta, E. & Elliott, T. (2017). All the right movements? Mediation, rightest movements, and why US movements received extensive newspaper coverage. Social Forces 96(2), 803–830.Google Scholar
Anderson, A. (1997). Media, Culture and the Environment, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, A. (2009). Media, politics and climate change: Towards a new research agenda. Sociology Compass 3(2), 166–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, M. & May, J. (1989). The Greenpeace Story, London: Dorling Kindersley.Google Scholar
Carroll, W. K. & Ratner, R. S. (1999). Media strategies and political projects: A comparative study of social movements. Canadian Journal of Sociology 24(1), 1–34.Google Scholar
Chadwick, D. (2014). From “building the actions” to “being in the moment”: Older and newer media logics in political advocacy. The Nonprofit Quarterly, Spring, 54–61. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2014/05/23/from-building-the-actions-to-being-in-the-moment-older-and-newer-media-logics-in-political-advocacy–2/Google Scholar
Chatterton, J. (2011). Victory! Government to scrap plans to sell off our forests. 38 Degrees, February 17. https://home.38degrees.org.uk/2011/02/17/victory-government-to-scrap-plans-to-sell-our-forests/Google Scholar
Corbett, J. (1998). Media bureaucracy and the success of social protest: Newspaper coverage of environmental movement groups. Mass Communication and Society 1(1–2), 41–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corbett, J. B. (2006). Communicating Nature: How We Create and Understand Environmental Messages, Washington, DC: Island Press.Google Scholar
Corrigall-Brown, C. (2016). What gets covered? An examination of media coverage of the environmental movement in Canada. Canadian Review of Sociology 53(1), 72–93.Google Scholar
Davis, C. B., Glantz, M. & Novak, D. R. (2016). You can’t run your SUV on cute. Let’s Go! Internet memes as delegitimizing discourse. Environmental Communication 10(1), 62–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eder, K. (1996). The Social Construction of Nature, London: SAGE.Google Scholar
Elliot, N. L. (2006). Mediating Nature, London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gamson, W. & Wolfsfeld, G. (1993). Movements and medias interacting systems. Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science 528, 114–127.Google Scholar
Gitlin, T. (1980). The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. House, Quintin and Nowell, Geoffrey Smith, , eds. and trans. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Haq, G. & Paul, A. (2012). Environmentalism Since 1945, London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harvard University Center for the Environment. (2013). Social movements and climate change. Environment & Harvard, June 17. https://environment.harvard.edu/news/huce-headlines/social-movements-and-climate-changeGoogle Scholar
Jofré, D. (2017). Social movements and media: Unravelling the communication practices of environmental SMOs in Chile. Paper presented to the Society for Latin American Studies, Annual conference (Glasgow, April 6–7). psa.ac.ukGoogle Scholar
Karpf, D. (2017). A media theory of movement power. The Nonprofit Quarterly, Summer. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2017/07/10/media-theory-movement-power/Google Scholar
Langlois, K. (2017). Down with the Glen Canyon Dam? Earth First Newswire, September 9. http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2017/09/09/down-with-the-glen-canyon-dam/Google Scholar
Lippmann, W. (1991). Public Opinion, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction (Original work published in 1922).Google Scholar
Lockwood, A. (2013). Affecting environments: Mobilising emotion and Twitter in the UK Save Our Forests campaign. In Lester, L. & Hutchins, B., eds., Environmental Conflict and the Media. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 49–60.Google Scholar
Neuzil, M. & Kovarik, W. (1996). Mass Media and Environmental Conflict: America’s Green Crusades, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.Google Scholar
Orr, K. (2011). Greenpeace and the media: Direct action, bearing witness and Marshall McLuhan. The Atlas: UBC Undergraduate Journal of World History, 1–14. https://ubcatlas.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/2011-orr.pdfGoogle Scholar
Vliegenthart, R., Oegema, D. & Klandermans, B. (2005). Media coverage and organizational support in the Dutch environmental movement. Mobilization 10(3), 365–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wills, J. (2013). US Environmental History: Inviting Doomsday, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Yearley, S. (1991). The Green Case: A Sociology of Environmental Issues, Arguments and Politics, London: Routledge.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×