Environmental Risks and the Media

Considers the tension between entertainment and information in media coverage of environmental issues.

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?