This paper conducts a comparative study of how the idea of hypocrisy was invoked in media coverag... more This paper conducts a comparative study of how the idea of hypocrisy was invoked in media coverage of climate change in twelve newspapers from four countries (Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, United States) between 2005 and 2015. It develops the concepts, and explores the characteristics, of three distinct types of climate hypocrisy: personalized (which attacks the moral character of individuals based upon inconsistencies between their stated beliefs and behaviour); institutional-analytic (which identifies contradictions between institutional rhetoric and ongoing policies and practices); and reflexive (which develops sympathetic accounts of the 2 struggles individuals face in reconciling the tension between values and actions). It explores how these types are used to undermine the credibility of climate advocates as well as to argue for more aggressive climate action, and maps out key features of climate hypocrisy discourse including ideological attributes, targeted actors and behaviours, affective intensity and regional variations. It outlines a number of surprising key findings, including (i) that hypocrisy discourses are more frequently invoked by 'progressives' supporting climate change action than by 'conservatives' resisting climate change action, and (ii) that while both groups use hypocrisy discourse, they tend to use very different types of hypocrisy discourses which each likely have very different impacts on climate change discourse..
Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'études canadiennes, 2021
Abstract:Canada's fossil fuel industry and its supporters have developed robust, aggressive, ... more Abstract:Canada's fossil fuel industry and its supporters have developed robust, aggressive, and affectively powerful forms of petro-nationalism to promote extractivism as a public good and demonize critics as anti-Canadian. This article investigates how industry critics and pipeline opponents have responded to this appropriation and instrumentalization of Canadian national identity. It conducts a multi-modal survey of the Facebook communication strategies of a broad spectrum of progressive English-Canadian civil society groups (political parties, environmental groups, Indigenous organizations, think tanks, labour groups, and alternative media) with a focus upon how Canada is represented. While some groups develop alternative accounts of the nation, they tend to be technocratic and depoliticized. Conversely, more politicized organizations that cultivate left-populist mobilization against extractivism and its state and corporate elites generally avoid framing their communication ...
Building on the work of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Capitalizing on Culture presents an i... more Building on the work of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Capitalizing on Culture presents an innovative, accessible, and timely exploration of critical theory in a cultural landscape dominated by capital. Despite the increasing prevalence of commodification as a dominant factor in the production, promotion, and consumption of most forms of mass culture, many in the cultural studies field have failed to engage systematically either with culture as commodity or with critical theory. Shane Gunster corrects that oversight, providing attentive readings of Adorno and Benjamin's work in order to generate a complex, non-reductive theory of human experience that attends to the opportunities and dangers arising from the confluence of culture and economics. Gunster juxtaposes Benjamin's thoughts on memory, experience, and capitalism with Adorno's critique of mass culture and modern aesthetics to illuminate the key position that the commodity form plays in each thinker's work...
Background: Extreme weather events are intensifying with climate change, offering opportunities t... more Background: Extreme weather events are intensifying with climate change, offering opportunities to raise the public urgency of this issue. The media’s role in communicating this connection is crucial. Analysis: This article analyzes media coverage of wildfires over a nine-year period in British Columbia focusing on how they are linked to climate change, in particular, during the 2017 and 2018 record-breaking fire seasons. Conclusion and implications: In media coverage in British Columbia, there is a marked absence of a link between climate change and wildfires and a tendency for connections to be tokenistic, decontextualized, and normalizing. More provocative narratives developed by various public figures that locate wildfires within broader narratives of climate crisis offer more compelling accounts. Contexte : À cause du changement climatique, les événements climatiques extrêmes sont en train de devenir plus intenses. Dans les circonstances, il devient pertinent de soulever l’ur...
INTRODUCTION: JOURNALISM FOR CLIMATE CRISIS Robert A. Hackett, Susan Forde, Shane Gunster, Kerrie... more INTRODUCTION: JOURNALISM FOR CLIMATE CRISIS Robert A. Hackett, Susan Forde, Shane Gunster, Kerrie Foxwell-Norton 1 DEMOCRACY, CLIMATE CRISIS AND JOURNALISM: NORMATIVE TOUCHSTONES Robert A. Hackett 2 ENGAGING CLIMATE COMMUNICATION: AUDIENCES, FRAMES, VALUES AND NORMS Shane Gunster 3 ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST, POLITICS AND MEDIA INTERACTIONS: AN OVERVIEW Susan Forde 4 FROM FRAMES TO PARADIGMS: CIVIC JOURNALISM, PEACE JOURNALISM AND ALTERNATIVE MEDIA Robert A. Hackett 5 CONTESTING CONFLICT? EFFICACY, ADVOCACY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDIA IN BRITISH COLUMBIA Shane Gunster 6 AUSTRALIAN INDEPENDENT NEWS MEDIA AND CLIMATE CHANGE REPORTING: THE CASE OF COP21 Kerrie Foxwell-Norton 7 ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENT COVERAGE IN THE DIGITAL ERA: THE GUARDIAN'S `KEEP IT IN THE GROUND' CAMPAIGN Susan Forde CONCLUSION: MEDIA REFORM FOR CLIMATE ACTION Robert A. Hackett
The communications systems that grew up alongside the fossil fuel cultures of the twentieth centu... more The communications systems that grew up alongside the fossil fuel cultures of the twentieth century helped spread the word about the wonders of a world awash in energy (at least, that is, in a global North made wealthy through its control over energy resources). In the twenty-first century, our systems and processes of communication are at the centre of a struggle over whether we continue with our energy fantasies or begin to tear them down. How we understand the significance and consequences of the production, distribution, and use of energy matters deeply; how we understand energy in relation to communication matters even more, since our capacity to understand energy-as both problem and possibility-depends entirely on how we communicate about the capacities it affords, the damages it can cause, and our potential to shape the energy futures that lie ahead. This special issue of the Canadian Journal of Communication explores the communication of energy in Canada. Questions of energy dominate Canada's contemporary political, economic, and cultural landscape. Governments at all levels have, to varying degrees, recognized climate change as a political priority. Yet many also continue to champion carbon extraction and export as essential to Canadian economic growth and prosperity. Some in the oil and gas sector admit that regimes of energy regulation and governance need to be modified to address global warming (through, for instance, the imposition of carbon taxes), but many also insist upon the long-term viability of the fossil fuel industry, and our continuing dependence upon it in everyday life. In Canada, as in other countries rich in fossil fuels, there is a concerted struggle over energy, one that pits industry and government against First Nations, environmental groups, and local communities. Industry and government proposals to expand carbon infrastructure-even in the face of the decline of global energy prices, the extraordinary growth of renewables, and the scale, pace, and intensity of climate change-have generated a stiff resistance to "extractivism." This resistance is more than simply a defensive struggle to protect local ecosystems, economies, communities and ways of life. Rather, what is now taking place is a struggle over alternative views of the public good in Canada, based in part around visions of how transformations in the production, distribution, governance, and use of energy can ground new forms of social, cultural, and political life. Historically, critical engagement around questions of energy has been sparse in the humanities and social sciences, and the field of communication is no exception. In recent years, however, scholars from a wide range of disciplines have devoted in
health sciences, history THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW utpjournals.press/chr Offering a comprehe... more health sciences, history THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW utpjournals.press/chr Offering a comprehensive analysis on the events that have shaped Canada, CHR publishes articles that examine Canadian history from both a multicultural and multidisciplinary perspective.
This paper analyzes discursive storylines of opponents of Northern Gateway-a proposed pipeline an... more This paper analyzes discursive storylines of opponents of Northern Gateway-a proposed pipeline and tanker project designed to link Alberta oil sands producers to international markets via Canada's West Coast. It explores how regional concerns about Northern Gateway helped galvanize a movement led by regional First Nations, environmentalists, and settler communities, all of whom opposed Gateway as a means to protect regional ecosystems-and the local communities dependent on them-from "extra-regional" Gateway-backing elites. By articulating arguments against Northern Gateway with salient collective action frames concerning ecological sustainability, regional identity, Indigenous sovereignty, social justice, and democratic agency, this anti-Gateway "discourse coalition" helped contribute to the project's ultimate collapse in 2016. In this paper, we critically engage with Ernesto Laclau's theorization of Populism to analyse this movement as a form of "regional ecological populism," explaining how a shift in spatial framing from the national to the regional enabled a particular populist narrative to emerge. Furthermore, we relate Laclau's framework to Martin Hajer's concept of discursive "storylines" and William Gamson's analysis of "collective action frames" to provide a grounded analysis of how coalitions articulate populist storylines designed to mobilize diverse movement constituents. To do so we conduct a frame analysis of communications materials produced by several prominent First Nations and environmental organizations publicly mobilizing against Northern Gateway, tracing how these groups articulated a common regional ecological populist storyline. Finally, we end with some thoughts about the possibilities and challenges for scaling up regional ecological populism in Canada.
This paper conducts a comparative study of how the idea of hypocrisy was invoked in media coverag... more This paper conducts a comparative study of how the idea of hypocrisy was invoked in media coverage of climate change in twelve newspapers from four countries (Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, United States) between 2005 and 2015. It develops the concepts, and explores the characteristics, of three distinct types of climate hypocrisy: personalized (which attacks the moral character of individuals based upon inconsistencies between their stated beliefs and behaviour); institutional-analytic (which identifies contradictions between institutional rhetoric and ongoing policies and practices); and reflexive (which develops sympathetic accounts of the 2 struggles individuals face in reconciling the tension between values and actions). It explores how these types are used to undermine the credibility of climate advocates as well as to argue for more aggressive climate action, and maps out key features of climate hypocrisy discourse including ideological attributes, targeted actors and behaviours, affective intensity and regional variations. It outlines a number of surprising key findings, including (i) that hypocrisy discourses are more frequently invoked by 'progressives' supporting climate change action than by 'conservatives' resisting climate change action, and (ii) that while both groups use hypocrisy discourse, they tend to use very different types of hypocrisy discourses which each likely have very different impacts on climate change discourse..
Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'études canadiennes, 2021
Abstract:Canada's fossil fuel industry and its supporters have developed robust, aggressive, ... more Abstract:Canada's fossil fuel industry and its supporters have developed robust, aggressive, and affectively powerful forms of petro-nationalism to promote extractivism as a public good and demonize critics as anti-Canadian. This article investigates how industry critics and pipeline opponents have responded to this appropriation and instrumentalization of Canadian national identity. It conducts a multi-modal survey of the Facebook communication strategies of a broad spectrum of progressive English-Canadian civil society groups (political parties, environmental groups, Indigenous organizations, think tanks, labour groups, and alternative media) with a focus upon how Canada is represented. While some groups develop alternative accounts of the nation, they tend to be technocratic and depoliticized. Conversely, more politicized organizations that cultivate left-populist mobilization against extractivism and its state and corporate elites generally avoid framing their communication ...
Building on the work of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Capitalizing on Culture presents an i... more Building on the work of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Capitalizing on Culture presents an innovative, accessible, and timely exploration of critical theory in a cultural landscape dominated by capital. Despite the increasing prevalence of commodification as a dominant factor in the production, promotion, and consumption of most forms of mass culture, many in the cultural studies field have failed to engage systematically either with culture as commodity or with critical theory. Shane Gunster corrects that oversight, providing attentive readings of Adorno and Benjamin's work in order to generate a complex, non-reductive theory of human experience that attends to the opportunities and dangers arising from the confluence of culture and economics. Gunster juxtaposes Benjamin's thoughts on memory, experience, and capitalism with Adorno's critique of mass culture and modern aesthetics to illuminate the key position that the commodity form plays in each thinker's work...
Background: Extreme weather events are intensifying with climate change, offering opportunities t... more Background: Extreme weather events are intensifying with climate change, offering opportunities to raise the public urgency of this issue. The media’s role in communicating this connection is crucial. Analysis: This article analyzes media coverage of wildfires over a nine-year period in British Columbia focusing on how they are linked to climate change, in particular, during the 2017 and 2018 record-breaking fire seasons. Conclusion and implications: In media coverage in British Columbia, there is a marked absence of a link between climate change and wildfires and a tendency for connections to be tokenistic, decontextualized, and normalizing. More provocative narratives developed by various public figures that locate wildfires within broader narratives of climate crisis offer more compelling accounts. Contexte : À cause du changement climatique, les événements climatiques extrêmes sont en train de devenir plus intenses. Dans les circonstances, il devient pertinent de soulever l’ur...
INTRODUCTION: JOURNALISM FOR CLIMATE CRISIS Robert A. Hackett, Susan Forde, Shane Gunster, Kerrie... more INTRODUCTION: JOURNALISM FOR CLIMATE CRISIS Robert A. Hackett, Susan Forde, Shane Gunster, Kerrie Foxwell-Norton 1 DEMOCRACY, CLIMATE CRISIS AND JOURNALISM: NORMATIVE TOUCHSTONES Robert A. Hackett 2 ENGAGING CLIMATE COMMUNICATION: AUDIENCES, FRAMES, VALUES AND NORMS Shane Gunster 3 ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST, POLITICS AND MEDIA INTERACTIONS: AN OVERVIEW Susan Forde 4 FROM FRAMES TO PARADIGMS: CIVIC JOURNALISM, PEACE JOURNALISM AND ALTERNATIVE MEDIA Robert A. Hackett 5 CONTESTING CONFLICT? EFFICACY, ADVOCACY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDIA IN BRITISH COLUMBIA Shane Gunster 6 AUSTRALIAN INDEPENDENT NEWS MEDIA AND CLIMATE CHANGE REPORTING: THE CASE OF COP21 Kerrie Foxwell-Norton 7 ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENT COVERAGE IN THE DIGITAL ERA: THE GUARDIAN'S `KEEP IT IN THE GROUND' CAMPAIGN Susan Forde CONCLUSION: MEDIA REFORM FOR CLIMATE ACTION Robert A. Hackett
The communications systems that grew up alongside the fossil fuel cultures of the twentieth centu... more The communications systems that grew up alongside the fossil fuel cultures of the twentieth century helped spread the word about the wonders of a world awash in energy (at least, that is, in a global North made wealthy through its control over energy resources). In the twenty-first century, our systems and processes of communication are at the centre of a struggle over whether we continue with our energy fantasies or begin to tear them down. How we understand the significance and consequences of the production, distribution, and use of energy matters deeply; how we understand energy in relation to communication matters even more, since our capacity to understand energy-as both problem and possibility-depends entirely on how we communicate about the capacities it affords, the damages it can cause, and our potential to shape the energy futures that lie ahead. This special issue of the Canadian Journal of Communication explores the communication of energy in Canada. Questions of energy dominate Canada's contemporary political, economic, and cultural landscape. Governments at all levels have, to varying degrees, recognized climate change as a political priority. Yet many also continue to champion carbon extraction and export as essential to Canadian economic growth and prosperity. Some in the oil and gas sector admit that regimes of energy regulation and governance need to be modified to address global warming (through, for instance, the imposition of carbon taxes), but many also insist upon the long-term viability of the fossil fuel industry, and our continuing dependence upon it in everyday life. In Canada, as in other countries rich in fossil fuels, there is a concerted struggle over energy, one that pits industry and government against First Nations, environmental groups, and local communities. Industry and government proposals to expand carbon infrastructure-even in the face of the decline of global energy prices, the extraordinary growth of renewables, and the scale, pace, and intensity of climate change-have generated a stiff resistance to "extractivism." This resistance is more than simply a defensive struggle to protect local ecosystems, economies, communities and ways of life. Rather, what is now taking place is a struggle over alternative views of the public good in Canada, based in part around visions of how transformations in the production, distribution, governance, and use of energy can ground new forms of social, cultural, and political life. Historically, critical engagement around questions of energy has been sparse in the humanities and social sciences, and the field of communication is no exception. In recent years, however, scholars from a wide range of disciplines have devoted in
health sciences, history THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW utpjournals.press/chr Offering a comprehe... more health sciences, history THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW utpjournals.press/chr Offering a comprehensive analysis on the events that have shaped Canada, CHR publishes articles that examine Canadian history from both a multicultural and multidisciplinary perspective.
This paper analyzes discursive storylines of opponents of Northern Gateway-a proposed pipeline an... more This paper analyzes discursive storylines of opponents of Northern Gateway-a proposed pipeline and tanker project designed to link Alberta oil sands producers to international markets via Canada's West Coast. It explores how regional concerns about Northern Gateway helped galvanize a movement led by regional First Nations, environmentalists, and settler communities, all of whom opposed Gateway as a means to protect regional ecosystems-and the local communities dependent on them-from "extra-regional" Gateway-backing elites. By articulating arguments against Northern Gateway with salient collective action frames concerning ecological sustainability, regional identity, Indigenous sovereignty, social justice, and democratic agency, this anti-Gateway "discourse coalition" helped contribute to the project's ultimate collapse in 2016. In this paper, we critically engage with Ernesto Laclau's theorization of Populism to analyse this movement as a form of "regional ecological populism," explaining how a shift in spatial framing from the national to the regional enabled a particular populist narrative to emerge. Furthermore, we relate Laclau's framework to Martin Hajer's concept of discursive "storylines" and William Gamson's analysis of "collective action frames" to provide a grounded analysis of how coalitions articulate populist storylines designed to mobilize diverse movement constituents. To do so we conduct a frame analysis of communications materials produced by several prominent First Nations and environmental organizations publicly mobilizing against Northern Gateway, tracing how these groups articulated a common regional ecological populist storyline. Finally, we end with some thoughts about the possibilities and challenges for scaling up regional ecological populism in Canada.
This paper conducts a comparative study of how the idea of hypocrisy was invoked in media coverag... more This paper conducts a comparative study of how the idea of hypocrisy was invoked in media coverage of climate change in 12 newspapers from four countries (Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) between 2005 and 2015. It develops the concepts, and explores the characteristics, of three distinct types of climate hypocrisy: personalized (which attacks the moral character of individuals based on inconsistencies between their stated beliefs and behavior); institutional-analytic (which identifies contradictions between institutional rhetoric and ongoing policies and practices); and reflexive (which develops sympathetic accounts of the struggles individuals face in reconciling the tension between values and actions). It explores how these types are used to undermine the credibility of climate advocates as well as to argue for more aggressive climate action, and maps out key features of climate hypocrisy discourse including ideological attributes, targeted actors and behaviors, affective intensity, and regional variations. It outlines a number of surprising key findings, such as (i) hypocrisy discourses are more frequently invoked by “progressives” supporting climate change action than by “conservatives” resisting climate change action, and (ii) while both groups use hypocrisy discourse, they tend to use very different types of hypocrisy discourses which each likely have very different impacts on climate change discourse.
In October 2005, B.C. public school teachers conducted a two-and-a-half-week illegal strike that ... more In October 2005, B.C. public school teachers conducted a two-and-a-half-week illegal strike that attracted widespread support from the public. This article conducts a comparative content and discourse analysis of the news coverage provided by the leading provincial outlets in three media types: The Vancouver Sun (newspaper), the News Hour on Global (television), and The Bill Good Show (political talk radio). The Bill Good Show's open-ended, participa-tory format, coupled with the host's commitment to journalistic norms of objectivity and diversity, allowed teachers to play an active and significant role in shaping discussion and debate about the strike. Conversely, coverage by The Vancouver Sun and the News Hour, both owned by CanWest Global, largely failed to reflect public opinion and instead reproduced the ideological bias of conventional strike scripts.
(Preview only, full article can be accessed via Taylor & Francis) This paper examines the provinc... more (Preview only, full article can be accessed via Taylor & Francis) This paper examines the provincial government of British Columbia's recent proposal of building a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry, in which natural gas extracted through hydraulic fracturing will be liquefied and then exported to Asian markets. Drawing upon the growing literature on energopower, petro-state, and petro-culture, selected texts and images from “LNG in BC”—the project's official branding website—were analyzed through a multimodal critical discourse analysis. The results reveal two primary strategies of legitimation: the first emphasizes the economic benefits of LNG development in terms of employment and taxation revenues; the second defines LNG as a means of strengthening B.C.’s environmental leadership. The second narrative depends heavily upon the symbolic values of natural gas, contrasting its “clean” appearance (as a colorless and odorless gas) with the material density and “toxic sensuality” of other “dirty” fossil fuels (such as coal, oil, and bitumen). The website also presents a linear and simplified “storyline” of the generation of LNG which emphasizes the simple, “clean” process of liquefaction to distract attention from the ecological and health risks of hydraulic fracturing.
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