Presenting environmental solutions in Canadian newspapers


Dan Prisk, University of British Columbia

Solutions to global environmental problems require significant social and economic change. Enacting such change will require tactics that generate broad support for what is a politically divisive topic. Experimental research shows that developing support for environmental action is most effective when the impacts appear close to home, but those with power to act are often not those most directly impacted. As such, it is challenging to develop broad support for effective solutions. This paper contributes to the fields of environmental communication and environmental justice by asking how Canadian newspapers portray solutions to environmental injustice. I answer this question through a thematic analysis of 28 articles published between 2014 and 2023 on the subjects of environment, marginalization, and health. The goal in my analysis was to identify key themes in the ways that environmental problems and solutions are discussed relative to climate justice. To do this, I conduct a qualitative analysis using a mix of deductive and inductive coding, memoing, and storyboarding. My results show that the dominant representation of environmental solutions is as the space of government action. Newspapers in Canada portray a faith in contemporary governance structures to successfully act on problems of environmental justice. However, the Canadian government is often compared unfavourably to international states and extra-state institutions in this regard, allowing for a critique of Canadian government within the framework of Western democratic politics. This faith in contemporary governance sits in tension with an emergent theme of more radical solutions, centred on Indigeneity. Here Indigenous people and ideas are often explicitly marked in discussions of problems and solutions in ways that holds them up as spaces of potential solutions outside the norms of settler-colonial Canada. In contrast to the more systemic view of solutions, the dominant depiction of environmental problems is as local and small scale, with the effects happening close to the problems themselves. This is more closely tied to the presence of Indigeneity, as both themes connect individual and community health to the immediate space in which they exist. The acclaim of action occurring in other places is problematic for its lack of critical engagement with the effects of that action (or lack thereof); however, as a device, it allows newspapers to engage with a discussion of systemic solutions that holds the Canadian government to account for its lack of action, without questioning broader social and political structures. We are given moderate solutions to radical problems. These results challenge established knowledge that shows media coverage diverging from accepted climate science. They contribute to a growing body of literature that shows contemporary news reporting gradually moving inline with best practices from research on a challenging topic. The broad focus on systemic over individual solutions reflect the scale of action that is required to counter global environmental harms. A scale that necessitates broad social and economic change: we can not shift towards a socio-economic pathway that limits global warming and provides a socially desirable world through recycling and green consumption. The problems of environmental harms are depicted in a way that is localized and human, such that the social distance between reader and subject is reduced, generating conditions amenable to broad political support for action. Taken in context of prior research this shows an overall trend for environmental coverage to converge towards accurate and effective reporting practices. This paper is particularly relevant to environmental sociology and the theme of CSA this year as effectively acting on environmental problems is key to building sustainable shared futures. The socio-economic pathways described by the International Panel on Climate Change require significant social change if we are to limit warming to 1.5c. This is daunting, but also presents an opportunity given the changes describe a world of greater social and economic justice. How such problems and solutions are presented in newspapers is a crucial aspect of structuring the action that occurs.

This paper will be presented at the following session: