Date of Award
2009
Publication Type
Master Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Department
Communication Studies
Keywords
Social sciences, Communication and the arts, Health and environmental sciences, British Columbia
Supervisor
Valerie Scatamburlo-D'Annibale
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This thesis explores the struggle for environmental protection in the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia and how this decade-long battle was covered in the media. It also seeks to add to the discussion on how social movements can utilize the power of the mass media. First, literature on social movements and the media is reviewed within the contextual framework of political economy, as well as literature on Greenpeace and its media tactics, a key actor in the forest battle. A critical discourse analysis was then carried out on a sample of articles from the 'Globe and Mail' and the 'Vancouver Sun' from 1995 to 2007 that explicitly used the term Great Bear Rainforest. The analysis revealed that the coverage matched the expectations set out by McLeod and Hertog's protest paradigm, in that the environmentalists were portrayed in marginalizing frames until an agreement was reached on the Great Bear Rainforest.
Recommended Citation
Richardson, Gemma, "The Great Bear media battle: How the forest was finally won" (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 8192.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/8192