Media monopolies, digital democracy, cultural clashes - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 215

media production and products (see, for instance, several chapters in
Hansen, 1993b ; Lacey and Longman, 1993 ; Dispensa and Brulle, 2003 ;
Hannigan, 2006 ).
Anders Hansen's ( 1993b ) edited volume on environment and the
mass media gives a good overview of how environmental social scien-
tists have studied the mass media. Three major themes usually stand
out to understand how and when environmental issues have and have
not been covered and reported on by the mass media and how envi-
ronmental media coverage has been 'received' by various audiences.
In the production of environmental news and communication interest
has been on the ups and downs in news coverage, the role of various
newsmakers and gatekeepers in press coverage, and the various strate-
gies and roles of environmental NGOs, state agencies, scientists and
polluters to get their stories, views and framing across the mass media.
A strong emphasis has been on the social construction and power play
of environmental media messages, claiming that only through social
constructivist perspectives we can understand the major discrepancies
between environmental realities and media coverage. The second major
theme focuses on the actual framing of environmental problems and
solutions in the various mass media. Content analysis, discourse analy-
sis, social constructivism and critical theory are some of the often used
approaches to - qualitatively and quantitatively - study environmen-
tal coverage on television, radio and in newspapers, often strongly in
a historical perspective through longitudinal studies. How, how often,
how framed, in which media and with what timescape are environ-
mental issues mediatised? Third, mass media studies have looked into
the ways in which the mass media have changed public understandings
and values of the environment. Survey research, ethnographical stud-
ies and qualitative case studies have tried to understand the influence
of the mass media in society's appreciation of environmental goods,
but also regarding the mass media influence in environmental policies,
politics, controversies and conflicts. This includes sensibilities on the
relevance of the context in which these media messages are transmitted
and 'received'.
These research lines have been extremely useful, providing rich -
also quantitative - insight in “the considerable extent to which envi-
ronmental news is socially constructed” (Hannigan, 2006 : 92). Most
of these studies had a critical nature. These studies often blamed news-
workers and journalists for their superficial, simple, short and limited