Environmental Risks and the Media

ISBN 10: 0415214467 / ISBN 13: 9780415214469

Published by Taylor & Francis Group, 1999

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 26315046

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Environmental Risks and the Media
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415214467
• ISBN 13: 9780415214469
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Environmental Risks and the Media explores the ways in which environmental risks, threats and hazards are represented, transformed and contested by the media. At a time when popular conceptions of the environment as a stable, natural world with which humanity interferes are being increasingly contested, the medias methods of encouraging audiences to think about environmental risks - from the BSE or 'mad cow' crisis to global climate change - are becoming more and more controversial.
Examining large-scale disasters, as well as 'everyday' hazards, the contributors consider the tensions between entertainment and information in media coverage of the environment. How do the media frame 'expert', 'counter-expert' and 'lay public' definitions of environmental risk? What role do environmental pressure groups like Greenpeace or 'eco-warriors' and 'green guerrillas' play in shaping what gets covered and how? Does the media emphasis on spectacular events at the expense of issue-sensitive reporting exacerbate the public tendency to overestimate sudden and violent risks and underestimate chronic long-term ones?

About the Author

Stuart Allan is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Barbara Adam is Reader in the School of Social Science at Cardiff University. Cynthia Carter is Lecturer in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University.