8 pages., Online via UIUC Library electronic subscription., The author of this commentary argued that environmental journalism offers a conceptual model and guide to action for all journalists in the "post-truth" and "post-fact" era. "Since the specialism was formed in the 1960s, environmental journalists have reported on politically partisan issues where facts are contested, expertise is challenged, and uncertainty is heightened. To deal with these and other challenges, environmental journalism ... has reassessed and reconfigured the foundational journalistic concept of objectivity. The specialism has come to view objectivity as the implementation of a transparent method, as the pluralistic search for consensus, and, most importantly, as trained judgment."
17 pages, Traditionally, dietary choices are formed through socialization, social norms and the social environment, while news media seemed to have little impact on people’s diets. This article explores whether today’s news media consumption and in particular consuming and sharing information about food on social media are associated with following a vegetarian or vegan diet. The data come from a tailor-made survey carried out in Hamburg, Germany, in 2018 (N = 1,214). Making use of probit regression with multiple equations, we analyse the associations between vegetarianism and individual news consumption, having vegetarians in the social environment, and communicating about food, controlling for individual and family characteristics. We find that both regular news consumption via social media and having vegetarian friends or family members is associated with pursuing a vegetarian diet. Moreover, news consumption via social media comes with increased communication about food, suggesting high relevance of social media for pursuing a vegetarian diet.
14 pages, Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the U.S. and other countries around the world saw a dramatic increase in the number of people starting pandemic gardens. In this article, the authors use rhetorical framing analysis to explore how news coverage of this gardening boom presented the illusion of control framed around the themes of economics, food sovereignty, physical and mental health, and community and connection. It concludes with a discussion of how these four themes offer an overly-optimistic view of gardening that deemphasizes sustainability, focuses on processes over harvests, and ignores food chain inequities.
19 pages, Previous scholarship suggests that elite media have tended to pay little attention to the adverse environmental impacts associated with meat consumption and production. Through content analysis of 116 articles from 2019, published on eight popular online news sites consumed by a wide range of demographics in the UK, including lower-income groups (the sector most likely to eat meat), we identify common anti-meat and pro-meat environmental narratives, solutions and recommendations, and the dominant sentiment towards both meat consumption and production. We observed a significantly greater presence of anti-meat consumption and/or production narratives than pro-meat. Over half the articles showed anti-meat consumption sentiment, with only 5% predominately in favour. 10% were against unspecified or industrial production practices, 28% were against industrial-scale farming but supported sustainable methods; and none were entirely in favour of the meat industry. These findings are reflected in the dominant recommendation, present in over 60% of articles, to eat less meat. Our results add substantially to previous media research, particularly showing the increased volume of coverage of the meat-environment nexus, varying levels of contestation around meat eating, and the division of responsibility between consumers and industry.
17 pages, For news media on the earth's driest continent, changes in the health and politics of Australia's largest river system, the Murray-Darling, have been a major national focus for decades. In recent times, climate crisis, drought and policy failure have combined to threaten its future, putting the issue under intense public scrutiny. This article offers a critical discourse analysis of specialist rural radio coverage of the issue in 2018–19. It identifies the discourses that the Country Hour program presents and considers the voices and viewpoints that are absent. Two critical discourse moments are analyzed: an ecological disaster in which more than one million fish died, and #watergate – a pre-election scandal over commercial water rights. We map the strategies and roles of Country Hour journalists and other social actors in legitimating the “productive use” of the river system above all else, politicizing the issue and shifting responsibility for the river's wellbeing.
