16 pages., Via online journal., This study explores potential factors that lead to environmental opinion leadership behaviors such as informing the public about environmental issues and encouraging preventative behaviors among various social groups. Building on the theoretical framework of the diffusion of innovations model, these analyses explore the effects that mass media may have on perceptions of self-efficacy among opinion leaders and how self-efficacy may, in turn, encourage leaders to communicate about aquatic invasive species (AIS) to others in their social networks. Results indicate that mass media and governmental media can have both a positive and negative influence on levels of self-efficacy, and that opinion leaders with higher levels of self-efficacy are more likely to participate in behaviors that could potentially influence their social network(s). These findings not only highlight factors that influence opinion leadership regarding advocacy of environmental behaviors, but also offer insights as to how future campaigns can work with these groups to promote prevention strategies.
22 pages., via online journal., This study investigates German news media coverage and PR material of offshore wind
stakeholders from industry, politics, science and civil society thoroughly to provide
insights about offshore wind benefits and risks communicated frequently and rarely to
the public. By comparative analyses, differences between stakeholder and media
messages are revealed: while stakeholders strongly focused on the supportive argument
relevance of offshore wind for the energy turnaround, the media often discussed the
negative impacts higher costs and delays in grid connection. Furthermore, the influence
of offshore wind arguments on acceptance is measured within a survey representative of
the German population. With these results, it can be assessed how far influential
arguments were presented and which messages have been used frequently despite their
low impact. Disruptions to viewscapes, limitation of commercial fishing areas, and
hazards to shipping proved to be effective a
30 pages, via online journal, Environmental journalists, as gatekeepers, often become arbiters of risk and benefit information. This study explores how their routine news value judgments may influence reporting on marine aquaculture, a growing domestic industry with complex social and ecological impacts. We interviewed New England newspaper journalists using Q methodology, a qualitative dominant mixed-method approach to study shared subjectivity in small samples. Results revealed four distinct reporting perspectives—“state structuralist,” “neighborhood preservationist,” “industrial futurist,” and “local proceduralist”—stemming from the news value and objectivity routines journalists used in news selection. Findings suggest implications for public understanding of, and positionality toward, natural resource use and development.
18 pages., via online journal., This essay explores the different meanings of the 1960s’ pesticide controversy
as conveyed by the multiple representations of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
(1962). I argue that to understand the impact of Carson’s work on a heterogeneous audience in the early ’60s, we must move beyond an examination
of the book, Silent Spring, to consider its other media manifestations, as a
serialization for The New Yorker and as a television expose for “CBS Reports.” ´
Each conveyed a unique message stylized for the audience of that particular
media. This analysis demonstrates the problems and opportunities for scholars
attempting to gauge the influence of a book on the public understanding of
science. This argument also suggests that to understand the transition of
environmentalism from a grass-roots movement to near universal consensus,
we need to examine carefully the role of media in shaping divergent messages
for different audiences—a phenomenon that assisted in transforming local
environmental issues into a matter of national concern.
15 pages., via online journal., Jeju, an island in Korea, became a place to site wind turbines with an unusually high level of public acceptance. Based on interviews, media analyses, and policy research, we found that the collective memory of socio-economic deprivation enabled community engagement to matter to residents, the provincial government, and environmental activists. It was within socio-historically contextualized processes of articulating the vision of a “good” society that an actual form of community engagement, however inadequate it might appear to some, became relevant to stakeholders in a particular locality. We emphasize that community engagement in renewable energy governance does not have one but multiple and situated ways of mattering depending on local contexts.
