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.

Case studies of environmental conflicts in US history illustrate the interactions among the mass media, environmentalists, government, and various power groups, and examine battles over public land, wild animals, clean air, and workplace hazards. Discusses species depletion and the evolution of hunt

Using a range of related disciplinary perspectives, the global contributors to this book analyze and explain the complicated relationship between environmental conflict and the media. The book demonstrates how conflicts emanate from and flow across multiple sites, regions and media platforms and examines the role of the media in helping to structure collective discussion, debate and decision-making.

This history of environmental journalism looks at how the practice now defines issues and sets the public agenda evolving from a tradition that includes the works of authors such as Pliny the Elder, John Muir, and Rachel Carson. It makes the case that the relationship between the media and its audience is an ongoing conversation between society and the media on what matters and what should matter.

Travel journalism about natural attractions is environmental communication at the cusp of consumerism and concern. Countries and regions that market forests, rivers and wildlife to international tourists drive place-of-origin brand recognition that benefits exporters in other sectors. Place-branding in such destinations is not just PR for environmentally sustainable development and consumption, but also a political enterprise. Environmental Communication and Travel Journalism considers tourism public relations as elite reputation management, and applies models of political conflict and source-media relations to the analysis of the ‘soft’ genre of travel journalism. The book seeks to understand how, in whose interests and against what odds discourses of cosmopolitanism and place-branding influence the way travel journalists represent vulnerable and contested environments. Informed by interviews with journalists and their sources, Environmental Communication and Travel Journalism identifies and theorises networks, cultures, discursive strategies and multiple loyalties that can assist or interrupt flows of environmental concern in the cosmopolitan public sphere. The book should be of interest to scholars of environmental communication, environmental politics, journalism, tourism, marketing and public relations.

This is a study of a content analysis of newspaper coverage from the Klamath River Basin conflict over water allocation in 2001 and 2002. The conflict boiled down to the question of who had right to the limited water in the basin - the farmers or the fish? The print media plays a role in policy agenda-setting, and communication literature suggests community newspapers tend to reflect the structure and norms of the cities and towns in which they are based. I analyzed two newspapers in the communities most involved in the conflict: the Herald and News in Klamath Falls, Ore., an agricultural community; and the Times-Standard in Eureka, Calif., which covers the fishing and tribal communities along the lower Klamath River. Did the Herald and News use more pro-agriculture frames, reflecting the community in which it is based? Did the Times-Standard use more pro-salmon frames? A regional paper, The Oregonian in Portland, Ore., was also examined to see if its physical distance from either community meant it used more neutral frames. The study examined articles written during the peak of the conflict, March-September 2001 and March-October 2002. Results suggest that there is a link between newspaper and frames, but it is most strongly seen in the Times-Standard, the lower river newspaper, which used almost twice as many pro-salmon frames as pro-agriculture frames as did the Herald and News or The Oregonian.

Despite a vast amount of effort and expertise devoted to them, many environmental conflicts have remained mired in controversy, stubbornly defying resolution. Why can some environmental problems be resolved in one locale but remain contentious in another, often carrying on for decades? What is it about certain issues or the people involved that make a conflict seemingly insoluble. Making Sense of Intractable Environmental Conflicts addresses those and related questions, examining what researchers and experts in the field characterize as "intractable" disputes—intense disputes that persist over long periods of time and cannot be resolved through consensus-building efforts or by administrative, legal, or political means. The approach focuses on the "frames" parties use to define and enact the dispute—the lenses through which they interpret and understand the conflict and critical conflict dynamics. Through analysis of interviews, news media coverage, meeting transcripts, and archival data, the contributors to the book: examine the concepts of frames, framing, and reframing, and the role that framing plays in conflicts outline the essential characteristics of intractability and its major causes offer case studies of eight intractable environmental conflicts present a rich body of original interview material from affected parties set forth recommendations for intervention that can help resolve disputes Within each case chapter, the authors describe the historical development and fundamental nature of the conflict and then analyze the case from the perspective of the key frames that are integral to understanding the dynamics of the dispute. They also offer cross-case analyses of related conflicts. Conflicts examined include those over natural resource use, toxic pollutants, water quality, and growth. Specific conflicts examined are the Quincy Library Group in California; Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota; Edwards Aquifer in Texas; Doan Brook in Cleveland, Ohio; the Antidegradation Environmental Advisory Group in Ohio; Drake Chemical in Pennsylvania; Alton Park/Piney Woods in Tennessee; and three examples of growth-related conflicts along the Front Range of Colorado's Rocky Mountains.

The news media has become a key arena for staging environmental conflicts. Through a range of illuminating examples ranging from climate change to oil spills, Media, Environment and the Network Society provides a timely and far-reaching analysis of the media politics of contemporary environmental debates.

The first in a new series, this presents a synthesis of current thinking and research on the role of the mass media in the rise of the environment as a social and political issue. It demonstrates the strengths of communications research in the analysis of social issues.