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Competing and conflicting messages via online news media: Potential impacts of claims that the Great Barrier Reef is dying
Abstract
Coverage of issues by news media is known to impact on both public perceptions and policy development aimed at addressing the featured issues. We examine the potential impact of news media coverage regarding the health and potential future of the World heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, which is under multiple pressures, both natural and anthropogenic. We draw on the extant literature regarding the impact of news media coverage of other complex issues, linking to relevant, albeit limited theoretical concepts that have been applied to previous media studies. We find that media coverage is predominately sensationalized and negative, with the potential to reinforce perceptions that mitigation attempts will be ineffective and thus likely to inhibit future policy development. We discuss the need for a review of existing science communication models and strategies to reduce the knowledge-practice gap between scientists and policy makers, together with proactive strategies to counter negative news coverage.
... Since media trends can lead to policy shifts or giving voice to alternative viewpoints [17 ], utilizing big data to analyze the 'post truth era', which has arisen since 2015, has never been so necessary. The era of 'fake news' or 'post truth' has partially arisen due to increasing economic inequality. ...
... Concern has arisen regarding the media allowing fringe climate-skeptic voices to become a relevant part of the media agenda [20]. Increasingly, negative science communication can reinforce perceptions that mitigation attempts will be ineffective and thus likely to inhibit future policy development [17 ]. Having access to data to enable extensive quantitative analysis of the media landscape is essential to understand how science communication needs to change, particularly in relation to climate change. ...
... This mechanism of creating a repository, whereby data mining is possible without access to the full article, mirrors the GDELT approach. Alternative media mining methodologies are limited due to paywalls, language constraints [17 ], input data quality and storage capacity [28 ] and using a narrow subset of news media [29]. ...
Climate change affects the lives of millions of people. While much attention has been paid to the biophysical impacts of climate change, researchers have little empirical information on the impacts on human society. Climate related social challenges are difficult to accurately measure. One recent data source, the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) Project, could close that gap. It monitors the world’s broadcast, print, and web news in over 100 languages and identifies the people, locations, organizations, themes, and events driving our global society.
Increasingly, big data sources like GDELT are being used to understand how changing actors, events and sentiment in the news media can help understand social change. By analyzing GDELT’s data, applications, and methods, this review identifies the potential of this new data source for the increasingly important role that computational social science can play alongside established biophysical data in monitoring largescale environmental change.
... News of impacts to the GBR over 2016-2017 were reported internationally and a large proportion of those media stories were sensationalized and fatalistic in their messaging 37 . There were concerns that this negative media coverage would lead to a decline in tourist visits to the region 38 and propagate perceptions that no effective action to save the GBR is possible 37 . ...
... News of impacts to the GBR over 2016-2017 were reported internationally and a large proportion of those media stories were sensationalized and fatalistic in their messaging 37 . There were concerns that this negative media coverage would lead to a decline in tourist visits to the region 38 and propagate perceptions that no effective action to save the GBR is possible 37 . Records of visits to the GBR indicate that general decline in tourist visits has not yet occurred 39 ; instead, there has been an increase in 'last chance tourism' , characterized by the motivation to see an iconic place (or species) before it is gone or permanently changed 40 . ...
... Symbols and imagery portraying risk events further interact with these processes in ways that can intensify risk perceptions 48 . Public awareness and perceptions of threats facing the GBR have evolved in recent decades and media representations of threats and risk events are considered to have had influence 37,49 . Ironically, tourists perceive their own activities as a dominant impact at ecologically sensitive sites 50 . ...
Iconic places, including World Heritage areas, are symbolic and synonymous with national and cultural identities. Recognition of an existential threat to an icon may therefore arouse public concern and protective sentiment. Here we test this assumption by comparing sentiments, threat perceptions and values associated with the Great Barrier Reef and climate change attitudes among 4,681 Australian and international tourists visiting the Great Barrier Reef region before and after mass coral bleaching in 2016 and 2017. There was an increase in grief-related responses and decline in self-efficacy, which could inhibit individual action. However, there was also an increase in protective sentiments, ratings of place values and the proportion of respondents who viewed climate change as an immediate threat. These results suggest that imperilled icons have potential to mobilize public support around addressing the wider threat of climate change but that achieving and sustaining engagement will require a strategic approach to overcome self-efficacy barriers.
... In the 2017 survey, however, climate change became the fore-most issue for all local stakeholder groups. The extent, magnitude, and ecological impact of the 2016 and 2017 mass bleaching events (Hughes et al. 2018 and the considerable attention from the media that explicitly attributed the events to climate change likely increased people's concerns about this issue (Eagle et al. 2018;Boudet et al. 2020). Together, these results indicate that shifts in perceptions were related in part to changes in the predominance of particular issues in the media (Lee et al. 2015;Boudet et al. 2020) and are suggestive of the media's importance and likely influence on public perceptions. ...
... This discrepancy may be because the latter question relates the threat of climate change in general terms, whereas we examined the threat of climate change to the GBR specifically. Although many news media representations of the 2016-2017 mass coral bleaching events attributed climate change as the cause (Eagle et al. 2018), there was a concurrent alternative-facts campaign in Australia run by vested-interest groups and conservative news media that denied the climate-change attribution (Opray 2019). Survey respondents' political orientation and their Conservation Biology Volume 00, No. 0, 2020 primary sources of news in relation to the coral bleaching event could have influenced their threat perceptions and acceptance of climate change as the cause of recent mass bleaching (Lee et al. 2015). ...
Managing human use of ecosystems in an era of rapid environmental change requires an understanding of diverse stakeholders’ behaviors and perceptions to enable effective prioritization of actions to mitigate multiple threats. Specifically, research examining how threat perceptions are shared or diverge among stakeholder groups, and how these can evolve through time, is increasingly important. Here, we investigate environmental threat perceptions related to Australia's Great Barrier Reef and explore their associations before and after consecutive years of mass coral bleaching. Using survey responses from 2013 and 2017 involving commercial fishers, tourism operators, and coastal residents (n = 5,254), we found that the threats perceived as most serious by these groups differed substantially in the pre‐bleaching period but became strongly aligned post‐bleaching. Climate change became the most frequently reported threat by all stakeholder groups following the coral bleaching events, and perceptions of fishing and water quality also ranked high. For the three stakeholder groups of fishers, tourism operators, and coastal residents, the prioritization of these three threats tended to diverge in 2013, but convergence became evident post‐bleaching. These results indicate an emergence of areas of agreement within and across stakeholder groups. Changes in perceptions were likely influenced by high profile environmental disturbance events and media representations of attributable threats. Our study provides insights into the plasticity of environmental threat perceptions and highlights how their convergence in response to major events may create new opportunities for strategic public engagement and increasing support for management actions. Article impact statement: High‐profile environmental crises shape public perceptions and may create new opportunities to engage people with mitigation and adaptation. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
... Again, the higher awareness of climate-related threats to coral reefs could be explained by an imbalance in communication efforts (Duarte et al., 2008). Following the 2016-2017 back-to-back coral bleaching event, media reports rapidly increased, heavily influencing public perception of the impact of climate change on coral reefs (Eagle et al., 2018). In comparison, seagrass loss from cyclone Yasi in 2011 and the mass mortality in Shark Bay due to an extreme heatwave (Strydom et al., 2020) received little media attention. ...
Seagrass meadows, one of the world's greatest natural assets, are globally declining due to direct-anthropogenic (e.g., pollution, coastal development, run-off) and climate change (e.g., cyclones, floods, marine heatwaves) threats. One of the primary constraints in seagrass management and restoration is a lack of societal awareness about their role in the marine environment, their importance to human well-being, and their vulnerability. Public perception studies are useful tools to assess communities' ecological knowledge and attitudes. The Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (GBRWHA), famous worldwide for its iconic coral reef, also hosts one of the world's largest areas of seagrass meadows, which provide many ecosystem services to the associated communities (e.g., nursery habitat, coastal protection, carbon sequestration etc.). However, the perception of seagrasses among coastal communities of the GBRWHA is poorly understood. Through an online survey of marine recreational users, we assessed public awareness of the role seagrasses play, its benefits, and threats to seagrasses in the GBRWHA, in comparison to coral reefs. Our results showed that there is an imbalance in perception of the role and ecosystem services provided by seagrasses and coral reefs among frequent visitors of the GBRWHA. Only 17% of respondents recognized ‘seagrass’ as a habitat of the GBRWHA. Ecosystem services from coral reefs were considered greater than from seagrasses (p < 0.05). Compared to previous studies, a higher percentage of participants believe in climate change (75%). Nevertheless, the general perception is that climate change impact magnitude is higher in coral reefs compared to seagrasses (p < 0.05). Additionally, climate change mitigation, a seagrass-related ecosystem service, was equally attributed to coral reefs and seagrasses (p > 0.05). Willingness-to-pay for coral reef restoration was higher than for seagrass (p < 0.05). For both marine habitats, willingness-to-pay for restoration was higher in younger people and participants with a university degree. Content analysis showed that people believe that marine habitats' conservation/restoration can be achieved as a collective effort. On the other hand, a lack of trust in government actions was identified as a barrier to willingness-to-pay. These results confirm the need to raise awareness about the importance of seagrasses and of its vulnerability to climate change. To achieve that, we provide two key recommendations: to enhance purposeful experiences through citizen science and to increase effective scientific communication.
... Similarly, the Great Barrier Reef has been at the center of decades-long, media-based activism campaigns that could sway environmental policy (Foxwell-Norton & Lester, 2017). However, others have argued that media attention has generally been sensationalized and negative, likely inhibiting effective policy (Eagle et al., 2018). It is also possible that the efficacy of the Great Barrier Reef as a communication tool could vary geographically; while it is relatively close to highly populated regions of Southeast Asia, its spatial distance from people in the Americas and Europe could reduce perceptions of immediacy for those populations and, likewise, efficacy (e.g. ...
Civic engagement that leverages scientific concepts and reasoning is cited as a goal of science education, yet little research has attended to authentic enactments of science-related civic engagement that youth undertake currently. We shed light on this understudied area by investigating youth letters written to the (then unknown) future US president in 2016. Using qualitative text analysis, we examined youth scientific reasoning via argumentation about climate change, aiming to clarify how youth use science in conjunction with other forms of reasoning within civic engagement, specifically around two popular icons of climate change—polar bears and the Great Barrier Reef. We describe several observed trends including a high frequency of logical appeals and their co-occurrence with implicit ethical appeals. We use these findings to offer implications for science education research and practice, suggesting explicit attention to the role of morals, ethics, and politics in science-related civic engagement.
... This may be due to the well-known value -behavior gap (Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002), but it may also result from a sense of futility fostered within the last chance paradigm. Eagle and colleagues (Eagle et al. 2018) document that the misinformation surrounding the fate of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia leads visitors to feel that "mitigation attempts will be ineffective" (p. 154), stunting the perceived efficacy of individual and policy solutions. ...
Aldo Leopold is widely regarded as one of the founders of the modern field of ecology. He was also a skilled woodsman, hunter, and a proponent of personal development through time in the outdoors. In this essay, we focus on how Leopold viewed certain benefits concomitant with immersive outdoor experiences. Guided by his 1943 essay, The Flambeau, we highlight the importance Leopold placed on opportunities for trial-and-error through primary experience in nature for youth, while asking if these freedoms still exist in the Anthropocene. We then present four broad and interrelated social-ecological dimensions – record visitation, climate impacts across boundaries, last-chance tourism and volatility in governance – facing park and protected area managers, and outdoor and environmental educators who are the caretakers of these freedoms. Despite these challenges, we close by asserting the importance of a youth agenda to maintain access to experiences that provide young adults opportunities for risk and exploration. These experiences are paramount for both their intrinsic value and their potential to inculcate environmental ethics in future generations.
... Social research conducted in 2008 indicates that while most Australians endorsed statements of concern about climate change and the GBR, the actual uptake of climaterelated behaviors was lower (Sutton & Tobin, 2011). Since this time, multiple mass coral bleaching events have generated significant media attention about climate risks to the GBR (Eagle, Hay, & Low, 2018;Hannam, 2016) and community concern about reef health and climate change Marshall et al., 2019). Surveys of residents of GBR catchments report that perceptions of climate change threat were related to uptake of waste-related behaviors (Goldberg et al., 2018), and recent polls indicate that Australians are increasingly likely to agree with statements indicating concern about climate change and support for decarbonization (Ipsos, 2018;Merzian, Quicke, Bennett, Campbell, & Swann, 2019). ...
Climate change is the most significant threat to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). While Australians express appreciation and concern for the GBR, it is not clear whether they connect climate-related action with reef conservation. An online survey of 4,285 Australians asked “…what types of actions could people like you do that would be helpful for the GBR?” Only 4.1% mentioned a specific action related to mitigating climate change; another 3.8% mentioned climate change but no specific action. The most common responses related to reducing plastic pollution (25.6%). These findings demonstrate that most Australians have poor capacity to identify individual climate-related actions as helpful for reef protection, and that generic calls to action—such as “protect the reef”—are unlikely to elicit climate-related actions. As such, reef conservation initiatives must explicitly promote actions—in the home and in society—that reduce emissions and support the transition to a low carbon society. © 2020 The Authors. Conservation Letters published by Wiley Periodicals LLC
... However, we argue that there remains a need for such assessment approaches to be groundtruthed with human assessments, to ensure representativeness of socio-cultural values, and to account for potentially shifting baselines of perceived aesthetic beauty (Pugach et al., 2017;Knowlton and Jackson, 2008). Peoples' values, sentiments and perceptions of the natural environment, and the GBR in particular, have been shown to shift over relatively short time periods (Curnock et al., 2019), and can also be influenced by external factors such as marketing and media representations (Coghlan et al., 2017;Eagle et al., 2018). Consideration of such effects, particularly when involving different observer cohorts in long-term monitoring, will be important to ensure reproducibility of test results and to validate longer-term comparisons. ...
Aesthetic values are a key driver of tourist and recreational visitation to natural areas and are listed among the selection criteria for World Heritage properties. However, assessment and monitoring of aesthetic values in natural areas, and coral reefs in particular, have proven to be challenging. In our study we explored the value and limitations of a rapid assessment approach involving non-expert ratings of aesthetic beauty as a potential tool for long-term monitoring of aesthetic values in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, Australia. We investigated the sensitivity of a rating scale for detecting change and sampling requirements for monitoring, as well as inter-observer biases, using an online survey of 1417 Australians in which respondents rated the aesthetic beauty of 181 coral reef images on a ten-point scale. Our results show average aesthetic rating scores ranged from 4.35 to 8.34 on a scale from 1 (ugly) to 10 (beautiful), with potential to detect differences of statistical significance within one point, indicating sufficient sensitivity to change for monitoring purposes. We found that a sample size of c.100 ratings per image provided a reasonable balance between cost (i.e. sample size) and accuracy (i.e. error). Older respondents (>65 years) with higher levels of coral reef visitation, experience and interest were more likely to give extreme ratings, however, there was no apparent predictor for this bias to be positive or negative (high or low ratings). Based on these results we provide recommendations to assist coral reef managers in their use and interpretation of non-expert aesthetic ratings in coral reef monitoring.
... LEK's participation in marine governance is not adequately acknowledged, with increased knowledge-sharing between fishers and scientists influencing scientific research, and with feedbacks returning to coastal communities (Anbleyth-Evans, 2018a). In this way, marine LEK can inform the ecological norms of civil society, and a better-informed society may have a greater appetite for stronger sustainability solutions (Eagle et al., 2018). LEK be can be linked to impact assessment on other cultural services, which it can preserve by identifying ecological risks. ...
... If there is an asymmetry it may result in incomplete understandings of core concepts or issues amongst some of the readers and decision makers. That may result in constructions, in some situations or by some parties, that are far divorced from 'reality' (Van der Meer et al. 2019), and that may result in misinformed decisions, resource allocations or policies (Lyytimäki 2014;Eagle et al. 2018). ...
Newspapers are key information sources and may influence both public opinion and policy. Previous studies have analysed the portrayal of ecosystem disservices in newspapers, but none have assessed the relative coverage between disservices and services, or how it might have changed over time. We report on the relative frequency and depiction of ecosystem services and disservices in South African, English newspapers over a 15-year period. We used a SABINET search complemented by key-informant interviews with environmental journalists. For each article we recorded if it covered ecosystem services or disservices, the type of service or disservice, and article tone and length. Overall, 2,201 articles were found, of which 25% were on services and 75% on disservices. The number of articles per year declined over the 15-year period for services, but not disservices. The most common services were energy and craft materials, food production, recreation and culture, and disservices were human health, heat waves and floods. Articles on ecosystem services were 25–40% longer than those on disservices. Article lengths on both declined over the 15 years. The greater reporting of ecosystem disservices over services is likely to influence public opinion and environmental decision-making accordingly.
EDITED BY Kurt Jax
... comm.). Controversial concerns about the death of GBR are discussed [25], however MAR is below the radar. ...
Purpose: The study sought to analyze the impacts of sensationalized media coverage and perception on current events in Myanmar Methodology: The study adopted a desktop methodology. Desk research refers to secondary data or that which can be collected without fieldwork. Desk research is basically involved in collecting data from existing resources hence it is often considered a low cost technique as compared to field research, as the main cost is involved in executive’s time, telephone charges and directories. Thus, the study relied on already published studies, reports and statistics. This secondary data was easily accessed through the online journals and library. Findings: The results show that showed that sensationalist television news tends to be more negatively evaluated than non-sensationalist news. In addition, critical views on arousing content appeared to be particularly visible among young and middle-aged adults. These findings suggest that the rise of sensationalist news could be an explanation of the declining trust in news media that is witnessed in a number of countries Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The media logic theory and the agenda setting theory may be used to anchor future studies in the information sector. The study results will also benefit other stakeholders such as the policy makers as well as researchers and scholars from different parts of the world. The top management of media companies industries in the country will also use the study findings to improve social media coverage performance in all their activities and programs. The study recommends that the adoption of effective social protection development policies in the media will help to improve efficiency in their major operations and activities.
The loss and degradation of nature can lead to hopelessness and despair, which may undermine engagement in conservation actions. Movements such as Conservation Optimism aim to avert potential despair of those involved in the conservation movement. Some argue that fostering positive states such as hope or optimism can motivate engagement and action; however, others question whether fostering hope or optimism may inadvertently undermine perceived gravity of conservation challenges. There is little empirical evidence that identifies how positive states such as hope and optimism influence conservation engagement. Here we address this gap by quantifying dispositional hope and optimism with a representative sample of Australians (N = 4285) and assess their relationship with indicators of conservation engagement, using the Great Barrier Reef in Australia as a case study. We find that one dimension of hope (specifically—hope pathways—defined by Snyder's Hope Theory as knowing different ways to act) was associated with greater capacity to identify two types of behaviors for reef conservation (climate‐related behaviors odds ratio (OR) = 1.44; and plastic reduction behaviors OR = 1.22) and greater likelihood of adopting climate‐related actions (β = 0.20). Optimism was associated with recognition of plastic reduction behaviors only (OR = 1.22) We then examined the pathways mediating these effects. Neither hope nor optimism undermined appraisal of conservation threats. The effects of optimism were mediated by reduced action futility; the effects of hope‐pathways were mediated via stronger perceptions of threats to the reef (threat appraisal) and confidence in performing useful actions (coping appraisal). Our findings suggest that rather than undermining appreciation of the challenges involved in conservation, dispositional hope can strengthen appraisal of both the challenges and solutions, and thereby increase conservation engagement This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
In the late 1970s, Carden Wallace was at the beginning of her lifelong exploration of the Great Barrier Reef — and indeed, reefs all over the world. For Wallace, who is now Emeritus Principal Scientist at Queensland Museum, the beginning of her Reef career coincided with the emergence of both feminist and environmental movements that meant her personal and professional lives would be entwined with a changing social, cultural and political milieu. In this article, we couple the story of Wallace’s personal life and her arrival in coral science to identify the Reef as a gendered space ripe to explore both feminist and conservation politics. The article is part of a broader Women of the Reef project that supports a history of women’s contribution to the care and conservation of the Reef since the 1960s. In amplifying the role of women in the story of the Reef, we find hope in the richness of detail offered by oral history to illuminate the ways discourse on the Reef and its women sits at the intersection of biography, culture, politics and place. In these stories, we recognise women’s participation and leadership as critical to past challenges, and to current and future climate change action. By retelling modern Reef history through the experiences and achievements of women, we can develop new understandings of the Reef that disrupt the existing dominance of patriarchal and Western systems of knowledge and power that have led us to the brink of ecological collapse.
Fluctuations in media and public attention create major challenges for the governance of environmental problems but detailed investigations of how issue‐attention cycles affect environmental governance processes remain limited. This article addresses this gap using a literature analysis to examine the effects of issue‐attention cycles on policy responses to plastics pollution. It explores trends and features of media coverage of plastics, their influence on public pressure for action, linkages between shifts in attention and measures to govern plastics at the international, national, sub‐national and corporate levels, and options to utilise issue‐attention cycles to support greater action on plastics. The review indicates that heightened media coverage has encouraged greater public engagement with plastics overall but that elements of media reporting raise questions about the coherence and longevity of public pressure for change. Links between attention peaks and increased policy activity also remain unclear, though some policy‐makers have used peaks to inject momentum into policy processes and initiate longer‐term reforms that buffer policy against declining interest. Alongside these techniques, new framings emphasising the economic, social and health impacts of plastics may assist in extending concern and pressure for action. The article concludes by arguing the need to deepen understandings of the properties of attention cycles for different environmental problems and their implications for governance efforts.
This study analyzes the news media coverage of floods in a major flood-prone state of India, Bihar. Although news media helps shape public perception and political actions, little analysis of this means of communication has been conducted in India. Major topics and issues discussed during the coverage of Bihar floods in years 2013, 2017, and 2019 were provision of food, shelter, and health facilities, failure of the transportation system, waterlogging in urban areas, and failure or management of embankments. There was no skepticism on whether climate change was real. Political parties took contradictory positions: the ruling party attributed floods to a changing climate but other parties, and news media, emphasized the lack of disaster mitigation actions and were uninterested in climate change. This study suggests that it is more important to prepare for disaster mitigation actions around the major issues discussed and communicate them to the public. Media should become a major stakeholder by questioning the authorities about disaster preparations prior to the monsoon season and communicating mitigation actions to the public once disaster has struck, and help both public and government to better manage and mitigate the disaster.
An obituary for the Great Barrier Reef (the Reef) by travel and food writer Rowan Jacobsen (2016) commemorated its ‘lifetime accomplishments’ in Outside, the US outdoor recreational magazine. ‘News’ of the Reef's demise went viral and the economic and political furore that followed was immense. Tourism industries, especially reliant on international arrivals, were impacted as potential visitors accepted the Reef's passing as fact. Politicians scampered to reassure Australians and the globe that the Reef was indeed still alive and beautiful. In the Australian public sphere, climate science deniers, alongside those advocating for climate action, collided over the impacts of global warming to Reef health. Subsequent mass coral bleaching events in 2016, 2017 and 2020 sustained at the very least, the idea that the Reef was, or was soon to be, dead.
Our paper follows the idea of a ‘dead Reef’ in the context of historical and recent debates about Reef protection. Using Google Trends, we identify Jacobsen's article as the source of increased Australian and global ideation of a ‘dead Reef’. As a site of local and global environmental communication – where human relations to nature are expressed and understood - the Reef holds extraordinary story telling power. At the current junction then, the way we communicate the Reef is critical to public understanding and political action on climate change. We conclude Jacobsen's article is an example of the problems of satirical communication, serving to amplify existing conflicts and undermine efforts to foster to climate action.
The ocean's remoteness, ecological complexities, lengthy ecosystem processes, and vulnerability to multiple and cumulative anthropogenic threats make marine conservation communication particularly difficult. Both scientists and journalists face unique challenges in explaining the science of these often out-of-sight ecosystems. Given the inadequacies of marine news, improvement appeared necessary. However, the experiences and views of journalists and scientists have hardly been examined within marine news contexts. Thus, this study sought the perspectives of these two professional groups to provide a discussion on ways to improve news coverage of complex ocean issues through enhanced journalist–scientist working relations.
Both journalists and scientists rated the quantity, breadth and quality of marine news as average and were receptive to alternative ways for reporting ecosystem complexities. Although some frustrations remain, both valued impactful news stories resulting from their working relations and preferred direct contact with each other over indirect methods such as press releases and science news platforms. Both groups generally agreed on what to include in marine news, but scientists favoured a collaborative approach to news content decision-making more strongly than journalists.
Journalists' and scientists' commonly shared views and goals concerning marine news identified in this study could serve as a common ground for uniting the two professions. Institutional policies that permit one-on-one journalist–scientist interactions could lead to mutual understandings about the contexts of their relationship challenges. More trustful and mutually beneficial relationships, in turn, could be a basis for a more collaborative news generation process. Compiling and making marine visuals readily accessible to journalists; training programmes that enhance journalists' and scientists' understanding of the influence of media message framing on conservation actions; media appreciation of marine ecosystem complexities' newsworthiness; and the notion of media's social responsibility in reporting marine conservation issues could contribute to more impactful coverage.
This edited collection addresses climate change journalism from the perspective of temporality, showcasing how various time scales—from geology, meteorology, politics, journalism, and lived cultures—interact with journalism around the world.
Analyzing the meetings of and schisms between various temporalities as they emerge from reporting on climate change globally, Climate Change and Journalism: Negotiating Rifts of Time asks how climate change as a temporal process gets inscribed within the temporalities of journalism. The overarching question of climate change journalism and its relationship to temporality is considered through the themes of environmental justice and slow violence, editorial interventions, ecological loss, and political and religious contexts, which are in turn explored through a selection of case studies from the US, France, Thailand, Brazil, Australia, Spain, Mexico, Canada, and the UK.
This is an insightful resource for students and scholars in the fields of journalism, media studies, environmental communication, and communications generally.
• 1. Human activities are a major source of threat to marine ecosystems. Solutions thus require changes to or cessation of those activities in addition to multiple restorative and conservation efforts – all of which, in turn, require public support for success. However, scientific understanding of threats to marine ecosystems has not paralleled public understanding of those threats in many jurisdictions. Highly complex, interwoven, distant, vulnerable to multiple stressors, and hosting biota that are biologically unfamiliar to people, marine ecosystems present unique communication challenges.
• 2. The merits of effective communication capable of motivating behavioural change, policy action and support for marine conservation are often emphasized. To date, however, environmental communication, as a field, has largely focused on terrestrial ecosystems and more recently on climate change, leaving research‐informed marine conservation communication neglected.
• 3. Adding to the small compilation of marine conservation communication literature, this integrative review provides a new understanding of how six message frames (emotional , problem/solution , outcome , value‐based , distance , and social norm ) can interactively help enhance the effectuality of conservation messages. Insights from the framing‐related literature are merged with those from relevant fields including the theoretical literature, and the behavioural, social, and environmental sciences to define concepts, provide examples and explain the relevance of the six identified frames. The potential strength of these frames are discussed and suggestions on how they might be used to communicate different marine conservation issues are provided.
The health of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is rapidly declining, driven by multiple stressors including land-based impacts on water quality. For over fifteen years Australian Governments have been investing in programs to promote the voluntary adoption of agricultural practices that reduce nutrient, pesticide and sediment runoff. Insights from monitoring, modelling and research have been used to progressively refine and focus investments over time. Despite this, progress is clearly inadequate to achieve the ambitious program targets. More recently, policy makers have introduced new targets to enhance the active engagement of communities and land managers in programs to improve water quality outcomes. In this review article, we draw on the empirical evidence from the social science literature available from studies within the Great Barrier Reef catchments and consider implications for the current approach being used in Reef programs. Adopting a qualitative evidence synthesis approach, the review examines a nested set of themes: from landholder decision making on practice adoption; participation and engagement in programs; and the influence of the broader policy settings and instruments to deliver government plans and investment. The review highlights the influence of factors such diverse landholder goals and motivations, social and cultural risks of participation, and the benefits of knowledge exchange over knowledge transfer in building trust and commitment amongst landholders. The review also highlights the importance of maintaining collaboration and capacity in industry and natural resource management networks, and, committing to active experimentation and learning at both the farm and program levels. Critical knowledge gaps include the potential for greater participation of supply chain and private actors in program delivery, including exploring the efficacy of ‘smart’ regulation responses, and the impact of re-emergent place-based models for implementation.
This paper examines the campaign for legal personhood for the Great Barrier Reef launched by the Environmental Defenders Office of North Queensland in 2014. Although this campaign has been unofficially shelved, the paper argues that it still provides a useful chance to think through the practicality and politics of some of the current experiments in environmental law, especially contemporary attempts to expand legal definitions of personhood. The EDO campaign is held up to critical scrutiny by considering its practical efficacy, environmental merits, conceptual foundations and ethico-political import, especially in relation to Indigenous justice. It argues that such experiments are to be welcomed, whether as immediate opportunities, thought experiments or pressure points, and that public and scholarly discussion of the legal personhood mechanism needs to be alert to the dangers of unknowingly and ironically replicating dominant power relations while seeking to overthrow them, but also of shutting down alternatives at precisely the moment we need them most.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to focus on the implications of claimed detrimental impacts for the agricultural activity of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) ecosystem health in Queensland, Australia. The authors discuss the complex interaction of factors that have contributed to the decline in reef ecosystems and the challenges presented by multiple industries operating within the GBR catchment area. The authors then discuss measures employed to address agricultural run-off, claimed to be a significant factor in declining reef water quality.
Design/methodology/approach
Surveys of land managers were undertaken in partnership with two of the six natural resource management (NRM) organizations operating in areas adjacent to the GBR identified as having very high risk of natural and anthropogenic runoff. The sample population was obtained from a membership database within the two regions. Participants include land managers from the both regions who engaged in sugar cane production (Region 1 and Region 2, included in this paper) and cattle production (Region 2, to be reported later). Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed including open-ended responses.
Findings
A large-scale study of land managers reveals several reasons for the lack of success at reducing agricultural run-off. The authors discuss the rationale for a move to a theory-grounded social marketing approach to encouraging land manager behavior change, highlighting barriers, and potential enablers of sustained behavior change.
Originality/value
This study is first of its kind that discusses the behavior of land managers in the GBR catchment area and highlights facilitators and impediments of land managers’ behavior change toward GBR protection actions.
This study explores two pre-eminent features of transnational media coverage of climate change: The framing of climate change as a harmful, human-induced risk and the way that reporting handles contrarian voices in the climate debate. The analysis shows how journalists, and their interpretations and professional norms, shape media debates about climate change. The study links an analysis of media content to a survey of the authors of the respective articles. It covers leading print and online news outlets in Germany, India, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Switzerland. It finds that climate journalism has moved beyond the norm of balance towards a more interpretive pattern of journalism. Quoting contrarian voices still is part of transnational climate coverage, but these quotes are contextualized with a dismissal of climate change denial. Yet niches of denial persist in certain contexts, and much journalistic attention is focused on the narrative of ‘warners vs. deniers,’ and overlooks the more relevant debates about climate change.
The coastal seagrass meadows in the Townsville region of the Great Barrier Reef are crucial seagrass foraging habitat for endangered dugong populations. Deteriorating coastal water quality and in situ light levels reduce the extent of these meadows, particularly in years with significant terrestrial runoff from the nearby Burdekin River catchment. However, uncertainty surrounds the impact of variable seagrass abundance on dugong carrying capacity. Here, I demonstrate that a power-law relationship with exponent value of − 1 (R2 ~ 0.87) links mortality data with predicted changes in annual above ground seagrass biomass. This relationship indicates that the dugong carrying capacity of the region is tightly coupled to the biomass of seagrass available for metabolism. Thus, mortality rates increase precipitously following large flood events with a response lag of < 12-months. The management implications of this result are discussed in terms of climate scenarios that indicate an increased future likelihood of extreme flood events.
The publically documented decline in health of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) has led to its labelling, in media and academic literature, as a last chance tourism destination. That is, a place tourists travel to experience before it is gone. While the GBR has been labelled as such, no empirical evidence has identified that this is actually occurring. This article explores if tourists are motivated to visit the GBR to see it before it's gone, and examines the level of concern tourists have about the range of issues that are threatening the GBR. Drawing on 235 questionnaires with on-site tourists, the results indicate that tourists are seeking travel to the GBR in a bid to see the reef before it's too late. These tourists – identified as “seeking a last chance experience” – were also found to be more environmentally conscious, and have a higher level of concern about the overall health of the GBR. In terms of threats to the GBR, respondents indicated that they were mainly concerned about coral bleaching/disease and climate change, with tourism only considered as a moderate to low concern. The implications of this are discussed.
Repeatedly in the tourism literature, reference is made to the negative implications of sensationalist media reporting of disasters on destination image. This assumption is yet to be empirically examined and there is a distinct lack of information in terms of the reporting approach used by national and global media, and their portrayal of disastrous events and the tourism destinations in which they take place. The primary objective of this paper is to examine how destinations affected by disastrous events are portrayed by the media in their coverage of the event. The content of 260 print and online media articles that reported the Blue Mountains Bushfires, a small scale disaster that occurred in 2011, is examined. Findings suggest that the media's representation or misrepresentation of this particular disaster may contribute to the estimated loss of over $100 million in tourism related revenue experienced by this destination. Implications for the tourism industry regarding affective media management are presented.
Bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef
The Australian Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is one of Earth's most extraordinary natural wonders, but it is vulnerable to climate change. Ainsworth et al. have tracked the effects of three decades of increasing heat stress on coral organisms. In the past, pulses of elevated temperatures that presaged hot seasons stimulated the acclimation of coral organisms and resilience to thermal stress. More recently, temperature hikes have been severe and precluded acclimation. The result has been increasing bleaching and death; notably extreme during 2016 in the wake of El Niño.
Science , this issue p. 338
The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is an iconic coral reef system extending over 2,000 km along the north-east coast of Australia. Global recognition of its Outstanding Universal Value resulted in the listing of the 348,000 km(2) GBR World Heritage Area (WHA) by UNESCO in 1981. Despite various levels of national and international protection, the condition of GBR ecosystems has deteriorated over the past decades, with land-based pollution from the adjacent catchments being a major, and ongoing cause for this decline. To reduce land-based pollution, the Australian and Queensland Governments have implemented a range of policy initiatives since 2003. Here, we evaluate the effectiveness of existing initiatives to reduce discharge of land-based pollutants into the waters of the GBR. We conclude that recent efforts in the GBR catchments to reduce land-based pollution are unlikely to be sufficient to protect the GBR ecosystems from declining water quality within the aspired timeframes. To support management decisions for desired ecological outcomes for the GBR WHA, we identify potential improvements to current policies and incentives, as well as potential changes to current agricultural land use, based on overseas experiences and Australia's unique potential. The experience in the GBR may provide useful guidance for the management of other marine ecosystems, as reducing land-based pollution by better managing agricultural sources is a challenge for coastal communities around the world. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Approximately one-quarter of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere each year is absorbed by the global oceans, causing measurable declines in surface ocean pH, carbonate ion concentration ([CO3(2-)]), and saturation state of carbonate minerals (Ω). This process, referred to as ocean acidification, represents a major threat to marine ecosystems, in particular marine calcifiers such as oysters, crabs, and corals. Laboratory and field studies have shown that calcification rates of many organisms decrease with declining pH, [CO3(2-)], and Ω. Coral reefs are widely regarded as one of the most vulnerable marine ecosystems to ocean acidification, in part because the very architecture of the ecosystem is reliant on carbonate-secreting organisms. Acidification-induced reductions in calcification are projected to shift coral reefs from a state of net accretion to one of net dissolution this century. While retrospective studies show large-scale declines in coral, and community, calcification over recent decades, determining the contribution of ocean acidification to these changes is difficult, if not impossible, owing to the confounding effects of other environmental factors such as temperature. Here we quantify the net calcification response of a coral reef flat to alkalinity enrichment, and show that, when ocean chemistry is restored closer to pre-industrial conditions, net community calcification increases. In providing results from the first seawater chemistry manipulation experiment of a natural coral reef community, we provide evidence that net community calcification is depressed compared with values expected for pre-industrial conditions, indicating that ocean acidification may already be impairing coral reef growth.
Although balance is a well-known and arguably important journalistic norm, how should journalists adhere to this norm when the bulk of scientific evidence clearly favors one (presumably accurate) perspective? Should balance be defined in terms of the quantity of information or the quality of viewpoints presented? Using British and American newspaper coverage of the autism-vaccine controversy as a case study, this article explores whether balanced reporting on scientific claims produced a discourse at odds with the scientific consensus that there was no autism-vaccine link. Implications for journalism ethics and risk communication are discussed.
This paper addresses factors affecting climate change perceptions and attitudes among Cooperative Extension professionals in the Southeastern United States. Extension serves as a critical link between climate researchers and stakeholders who have the capacity to directly affect climate change impacts through on-the-ground action. We used the Six Americas scale, developed by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication, as the basis for a webbased survey of 2,758 Extension professionals in eight Southeastern states between August 2011 and March 2012. Given their role as science communicators, one might expect Extension professionals to be as concerned as climate scientists about potential climate changes. We found, however, that Extension professionals are similar to the general public and represent the full range of Six Americas categories. Factors correlated with Six Americas results included: gender, political leaning, education, state Extension program, Extension program area, role within Extension, and coastal/inland location. Our results suggest the importance of engaging Extension staff in a long-term professional development strategy that involves improved training and climate education, preparing Extension professionals to effectively communicate climate change information to farmers and forest landowners whose actions impact climate outcomes.
Issues and their sub-topics in the public agenda follow certain dynamics of attention. This has been studied for “offline” media, but barely for online communication. Furthermore, the enormous spectrum of online communication has not been taken into account. This study investigates whether specific dynamics of attention on issues and sub-topics can be found in different online public arenas. We expect to identify differences across various arenas as a result of their specific stakeholders and constellations of stakeholders, as well as different trigger events. To examine these assumptions, we shed light on the online climate change discourse in Germany by undertaking a quantitative content analysis via manual and automated coding methods of journalistic articles and their reader comments, scientific expert blogs, discussion forums and social media at the time of the release of the 5th IPCC report and COP19, both in 2013 (n = 14.582). Our results show online public arena-specific dynamics of issue attention and sub-topics. In journalistic media, we find more continuous issue attention, compared to a public arena where everyone can communicate. Furthermore, we find event-specific dynamics of issue attention and sub-topics: COP19 received intensive and continuous attention and triggered more variation in the sub-topics than the release of the IPCC report.
The science-based management of natural resources requires knowledge exchange between scientists and environmental decision-makers, however, this exchange remains a significant challenge. Rather, evidence suggests that decision-makers rely on individual experience or other secondary sources of knowledge in isolation from scientific evidence when formulating decisions, potentially compromising the effectiveness of their decisions. As a result a new field of research broadly characterised as ‘knowledge exchange’ has emerged, focused largely on identifying and overcoming the barriers to knowledge exchange among scientists and decision-makers. More recently knowledge exchange research has also begun to explore the relationship between science and decision-making specifically in relation to marine ecosystems and resources. The aim of this paper is to review the literature in relation to knowledge exchange for natural resource management, with a focus on recent evidence in relation to the management of marine resources. This review identifies critical barriers inhibiting knowledge exchange among marine scientists and decisions-makers, such as the inaccessibility of science to decision-makers as well as institutional barriers that limit the extent to which scientists and decision-makers can prioritise knowledge exchange activities. Options for overcoming these barriers, such as novel approaches to knowledge exchange (e.g. – knowledge co-production, knowledge brokers and boundary organisations) and the enabling environments and institutional reforms needed to complement efforts to improve knowledge exchange, are also identified. This review concludes by articulating the gaps in our understanding of knowledge exchange, to help guide future research in this field and improve the sustainable management of marine resources.
Full recovery of coral reefs from tropical cyclone (TC) damage can take decades, making cyclones a major driver of habitat condition where they occur regularly. Since 1985, 44 TCs generated gale force winds (17 metres/second) within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP). Of the hurricane strength TCs (H1-Saffir Simpson scale; - category 3 Australian scale), TC Yasi (February, 2011) was the largest. In the weeks after TC Yasi crossed the GBRMP, participating researchers, managers and rangers assessed the extent and severity of reef damage via 841 Reef Health and Impact Surveys at 70 reefs. Records were scaled into five damage levels representing increasingly widespread colony-level damage (1, 2, 3) and reef structural damage (4, 5). Average damage severity was significantly affected by direction (north vs south of the cyclone track), reef shelf position (mid-shelf vs outershelf) and habitat type. More outer-shelf reefs suffered structural damage than mid-shelf reefs within 150 km of the track. Structural damage spanned a greater latitudinal range for mid-shelf reefs than outer-shelf reefs (400 vs 300 km). Structural damage was patchily distributed at all distances, but more so as distance from the track increased. Damage extended much further from the track than during other recent intense cyclones that had smaller circulation sizes. Just over 15% (3,834 km2) of the total reef area of the GBRMP is estimated to have sustained some level of coral damage, with ~4% (949 km2) sustaining a degree of structural damage. TC Yasi likely caused the greatest loss of coral cover on the GBR in a 24-hour period since 1985. Severely impacted reefs have started to recover; coral cover increased an average of 4%between 2011 and 2013 at re-surveyed reefs. The in situ assessment of impacts described here is the largest in scale ever conducted on the Great Barrier Reef following a reef health disturbance.
The last decade has seen Australia's economy undertake a significant transformation, with a rapid resurgence in mining. The high exchange rate that has arisen as a consequence of this boom has resulted in a number of other Australian industries becoming less competitive, leading to a two-speed economy. For the tourism industry, the result has been declining visitation, with some commentators attributing this decline directly to the mining boom. This paper explores how the media frames tourism- and mining-related issues regarding the current mining boom in Australia by undertaking a content analysis of 265 online newspaper articles relating to tourism and mining in Australia. The impact of mining on the tourism sector was frequently identified as a key issue, with the rapid expansion of mining increasing competition for labour, resources and infrastructure, as well as having the propensity to destroy certain tourism products. Journalistic techniques, such as hedging, were found to be prevalent in the media reporting, potentially leading to confusion surrounding key issues relating to tourism and mining in the public forum. Future research should seek to explore strategies that could be used by government and businesses to build sustainable, resilient regions through tourism and mining.
Calls for more broad-based, integrated, useful knowledge now abound in the world of global environmental change science. They evidence many scientists' desire to help humanity confront the momentous biophysical implications of its own actions. But they also reveal a limited conception of social science and virtually ignore the humanities. They thereby endorse a stunted conception of 'human dimensions' at a time when the challenges posed by global environmental change are increasing in magnitude, scale and scope. Here, we make the case for a richer conception predicated on broader intellectual engagement and identify some preconditions for its practical fulfilment. Interdisciplinary dialogue, we suggest, should engender plural representations of Earth's present and future that are reflective of divergent human values and aspirations. In turn, this might insure publics and decision-makers against overly narrow conceptions of what is possible and desirable as they consider the profound questions raised by global environmental change.
Enabling and enacting 'practical action' (i.e., purposeful and concerted collective action) in catchments is a key challenge in responding to a wide range of pressing catchment and natural resource management (NRM) issues. It is particularly a challenge in responding to 'wicked problems,' where generating action is not straightforward and cannot be brought about solely by any single actor, policy or intervention. This paper responds to the critical need to better understand how practical action can be generated in catchments, by conducting an in-depth empirical case study of efforts to manage nonpoint source (NPS) pollution in South East Queensland (SEQ), Australia. SEQ has seen substantial concerted efforts to manage waterway and catchment issues over two decades, yet NPS pollution remains a major problem for waterway health. A novel framework was applied to empirically analyze practical action in three local catchment cases embedded within the broader SEQ region. The analysis focuses on 'enabling capacities' underpinning practical action in catchments. Findings reveal that capacities manifested in different ways in different cases, yet many commonalities also occurred across cases. Interplay between capacities was critical to the emergence of adaptive and contextual forms of practical action in all cases. These findings imply that in order to enable and enact practical action in catchments, it is vital to recognize and support a diversity of enabling capacities across both local and regional levels of decision making and action. This is likely to have relevance for other 'wicked' catchment and NRM problems requiring local responses within broader multiscalar regional problem situations.
Given the rising use of visual and multimodal information, text-oriented framing research is at risk of losing traction with current media reality. We propose applying frame processing theory as a general framework for understanding how coherent meaning is constructed from complex stimuli, regardless of their modality: Both visual and textual information processing follow a recursive sequence of (a) selective perception/structuring, (b) decoding, (c) the construction of relations, and (d) their integration into coherent meaning. The specifics of visual and textual modalities provide varying degrees of structuring and salience within a fundamentally unified information processing process. Integrating advances from framing and visual communication research, we discuss implications for the empirical analysis of multimodal news contents, and sketch an agenda for research.
Tropical Cyclone (TC) Yasi (Category 5) was a large (~ 700 km across) cyclone that crossed Australia's Queensland coast on the 3rd of February 2011. TC Yasi was one of the region's most powerful recorded cyclones, with winds gusting to 290 km/h and wave heights exceeding 7 m. Here we describe the impacts of TC Yasi on a number of nearshore, turbid-zone coral reefs, that include several in the immediate vicinity of the cyclone's landfall path (King Reef, Lugger Shoal and Dunk Island), as well as a more distally located reef (Paluma Shoals) ~ 150 km to the south in Halifax Bay. These reefs were the focus of recent (between 2006 and 2009) pre-Yasi studies into their geomorphology, sedimentology and community structure, and here we discuss data from a recent (August 2011) post-Yasi re-assessment. This provided a unique opportunity to identify and describe the impacts of an intense tropical cyclone on nearshore reefs, which are often assumed to be vulnerable to physical disturbance and reworking due to their poorly lithified framework. Observed impacts of TC Yasi were site specific and spatially highly heterogeneous, but appear to have been strongly influenced by the contemporary evolutionary stage and ecological make-up of the individual reefs, with site setting (i.e. exposure to prevailing wave action) apparently more important than proximity to the landfall path. The most significant ecological impacts occurred at King Reef (probably a result of freshwater bleaching) and at Paluma Shoals, where widespread physical destruction of branched Acropora occurred. New coral recruits are, however, common at all sites and colony re-growth clearly evident at King Reef. Only localised geomorphic change was evident, mainly in the form of coral fracturing, rubble deposition, and sediment movement, but again these impacts were highly site specific. The dominant impact at Paluma Shoals was localised storm ridge/shingle sheet deposition, at Lugger Shoal major offshore fine sediment flushing, and at Dunk Island major onshore coarse sand deposition. There was little geomorphic change evident at King Reef. Thus whilst small-scale and taxa specific impacts from Cyclone Yasi are clearly evident, geomorphological changes appear minor and ecological impacts highly variable between sites, and there is no observed evidence for major reef structural change. The study suggests that the vulnerability of reefs to major physical disturbance events can be extremely site specific and determined by interacting factors of location relative to storm path and pre-event geomorphology and ecology.
In this 21st century, examining how climate change is described and considered, largely through mass media, is as important as formal climate governance to the long-term success or failure of efforts to confront the challenge. Mass media stitch together formal science and policy with the public sphere. And many dynamic, contested factors contribute to how media outlets portray climate change. This paper addresses contemporary political economics—from greater workloads and reductions in specialist science journalism to digital innovations and new media organizational forms—as they relate to media coverage of climate change. By way of recent studies and indications of these dynamics, we appraise how power flows through culture, politics, and society, to construct coverage, public discourses, and knowledge on climate change. In so doing, we explore how media representations of climate change have changed over time, and particularly how the rise of digital media has reshaped climate coverage. Considerations of climate change, arguably the most heavily politicized scientific issue at the turn of the new millennium, seek to inform and anticipate corollary science issues, such as ongoing concerns for genetically modified organisms, nanotechnology risks, and increased threats to water quantity and quality. The focus on political economy—the ‘sinews’ of modern life—can also then help to inform perceptions and decision making in associated environmental challenges. WIREs Clim Change 2013, 4:359–371. doi: 10.1002/wcc.233 Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
Journalists communicating risk-related uncertainty must accurately convey scientific evidence supporting particular conclusions. Scholars have explored how "balanced" coverage of opposing risk claims shapes uncertainty judgments. In situations where a preponderance of evidence points to a particular conclusion, balanced coverage reduces confidence in such a consensus and heightens uncertainty about whether a risk exists. Using the autism-vaccine controversy as a case study, we describe how journalists can cover multiple sides of an issue and provide insight into where the strength of evidence lies by focusing on "evidentiary balance." Our results suggest that evidentiary balance shapes perceived certainty that vaccines are safe, effective, and not linked to autism through the mediating role of a perception that scientists are divided about whether a link exists. Deference toward science, moreover, moderates these relationships under certain conditions. We discuss implications for journalism practice and risk communication.
The continuing degradation of coral reefs has serious consequences for the provision of ecosystem goods and services to local and regional communities. While climate change is considered the most serious risk to coral reefs, agricultural pollution threatens approximately 25% of the total global reef area with further increases in sediment and nutrient fluxes projected over the next 50 years. Here, we aim to inform coral reef management using insights learned from management examples that were successful in reducing agricultural pollution to coastal ecosystems. We identify multiple examples reporting reduced fluxes of sediment and nutrients at end-of-river, and associated declines in nutrient concentrations and algal biomass in receiving coastal waters. Based on the insights obtained, we recommend that future protection of coral reef ecosystems demands policy focused on desired ecosystem outcomes, targeted regulatory approaches, up-scaling of watershed management, and long-term maintenance of scientifically robust monitoring programs linked with adaptive management.
Most commentators understand that contemporary social, economic and environmental challenges require quality governance from global to local scales. While public scrutiny of governance has increased in recent years, the literature on frameworks and methods for analysis in complex, poly-centric and multi-thematic governance systems remains fragmented; displaying many disciplinary or sectoral biases. This paper establishes a stronger theory-based foundation for the analysis of complex governance systems. It also develops a clear analytical framework applicable across a vast array of differing governance themes, domains and scales (GSA). The key methodological steps and evaluative criteria for the GSA framework are determined and practical guidance for its application in reform is provided.
Marine vegetated habitats (seagrasses, salt-marshes, macroalgae and
mangroves) occupy 0.2% of the ocean surface, but contribute 50% of
carbon burial in marine sediments. Their canopies dissipate wave energy
and high burial rates raise the seafloor, buffering the impacts of
rising sea level and wave action that are associated with climate
change. The loss of a third of the global cover of these ecosystems
involves a loss of CO2 sinks and the emission of 1 Pg
CO2 annually. The conservation, restoration and use of
vegetated coastal habitats in eco-engineering solutions for coastal
protection provide a promising strategy, delivering significant capacity
for climate change mitigation and adaption.
Sociological critiques of scientific research processes and their application have developed nuanced understandings of the social, cultural and political forces shaping relationships between science and decision-making. Simultaneously, environmental researchers have sought to construct more engaged, dynamic modes of conducting research to facilitate the application of science in decision-making and action. To date, however, there are relatively few theoretically-oriented approaches that have been able to draw productive connections between the sociological critique and the practical applications that can aid in navigating this complex and diverse milieu. In this article, we propose that the concept of “knowledge governance” can bring together targeted inquiry into the socio-political context in which environmental science is situated, alongside analysis of specific interventions that change knowledge-to-action relationships. Drawing together Jasanoff’s (2005) concept of civic epistemology with Cash et al.’s (2003) knowledge systems for sustainability approach, this knowledge governance inquiry framework offers an integrative lens through which to critically reflect on knowledge-based processes, and incorporate that deeper understanding into intervention efforts. We briefly illustrate its application with reference to a pilot project examining conservation decision-making in the Western Pacific island nation of Palau.
During 2015-2016, record temperatures triggered a pan-tropical episode of coral bleaching, the third global-scale event since mass bleaching was first documented in the 1980s. Here we examine how and why the severity of recurrent major bleaching events has varied at multiple scales, using aerial and underwater surveys of Australian reefs combined with satellite-derived sea surface temperatures. The distinctive geographic footprints of recurrent bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 1998, 2002 and 2016 were determined by the spatial pattern of sea temperatures in each year. Water quality and fishing pressure had minimal effect on the unprecedented bleaching in 2016, suggesting that local protection of reefs affords little or no resistance to extreme heat. Similarly, past exposure to bleaching in 1998 and 2002 did not lessen the severity of bleaching in 2016. Consequently, immediate global action to curb future warming is essential to secure a future for coral reefs.
The Great Barrier Reef is the most recognizable of the Australian properties on United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage List. At the time of its inscription in 1981, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature noted that ‘… if only one coral reef site in the world were to be chosen for the World Heritage List, the Great Barrier Reef is the site to be chosen’. The listing followed the ‘Save the Reef’ campaign, which ran through the 1960s and 1970s and highlighted threats from rapid industrialization and a nation riding a resources boom. Nevertheless, in recent years, the Reef has teetered on being named a ‘World Heritage Site in Danger’, with similar economic conditions driving its deterioration. This article juxtaposes recent media activism to protect the Reef against the earlier campaign in order to compare and better understand how these campaigns engaged publics and policy makers by representing and communicating threats, and concludes by considering their capacity to influence long-term conservation policy.
This study explores images of an attraction that is simultaneously tagged as the ‘greatest reef in the world’, the ‘best managed reef’ and potentially a ‘world heritage site in danger’. Combining research in conservation psychology, place identity and visual communication, this study analysed a sample of images (n = 45) of the Great Barrier Reef to explore the complexity of messages being conveyed with regard to the status and health of the world heritage site and their impact on emotions and behavioural intentions of potential tourists (n = 1249). The results reveal three very different image types: tourism promotion, government support and conservation-oriented. Few of the images portray messaging underpinned by the science of conservation psychology, with most images portraying a negative or ambivalent message. The emotions elicited by the images significantly differed across the three different image types, resulting in different behavioural intentions in response. The overall finding is that there are often contradictory messages about the Reef, arguably impeding conservation efforts to protect the Reef, and a need for an integrated place identity management communication strategy. We propose the notion of care as one value that drives all three major stakeholders and that could underpin an integrated strategy.
Researchers studying processes of global environmental change are increasingly interested in their work having impacts that go beyond academia to influence policy and management. Recent scholarship in the conservation sciences has pointed to the existence of a research-action gap and has proposed various solutions for overcoming it. However, most of these studies have been limited to the spaces of dissemination, where the science has already been done and is then to be passed over to users of the information. Much less attention has been paid to encounters that occur between scientists and nonscientists during the practice of doing scientific research, especially in situations that include everyday roles of labor and styles of communication (i.e., fieldwork). This paper builds on theories of contact that have examined encounters and relations between different groups and cultures in diverse settings. I use quantitative and qualitative evidence from Madidi National Park, Bolivia, including an analysis of past research in the protected area, as well as interviews (N = 137) and workshops and focus groups (N = 12) with local inhabitants, scientists, and park guards. The study demonstrates the significance of currently unacknowledged or undervalued components of the research-action gap, such as power, respect, and recognition, to develop a relational and reciprocal notion of impact. I explain why, within such spaces of encounter or misencounter between scientists and local people, knowledge can be exchanged or hidden away, worldviews can be expanded or further entrenched, and scientific research can be welcomed or rejected.
Weekly carbonate chemistry condition data recorded between 2008 and 2014 in the Chuuk lagoon (7.3°N and 151.5°E) of the Federated States of Micronesia, located in the western Pacific Ocean, were analyzed. The results showed that, during periods of weak intrusion of ambient seawater from the surrounding open ocean, two internal biological processes (calcification and respiration) reinforced each other and together lowered the pH of the reef water for extended periods, ranging from a few to several months. The analysis indicated that reduced intrusion of ambient water is associated with periods of low wind speeds. Such conditions increase the residence time of reef water, thus promoting acidification by respiration and calcification. This phenomenon likely affects many other areas of the coral-rich western Pacific Ocean, which contains 50% of global coral reefs and in which the degree of ambient water intrusion into the atolls has been shown to be closely associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation-induced wind speed change.
The study presented in this article provides a valuable insight into the impact of human-induced environmental destruction on the travel market’s image perceptions of a World Heritage-listed tourism icon: the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The study employs a pre-/post-experimental design to explore how tourists are likely to respond to the media hype surrounding the construction of a port terminal, known as the Abbot Point Project, which will inevitably have some perceived environmental consequence for the ecological sustainability of a section of the GBR. We measured the change in respondents’ image perceptions and travel intentions as a result of their exposure to information about the Abbott Point Project and explored how existing knowledge, past experience and demographic background may influence this change. The findings reveal a significant change in tourists’ perceptions concerning Australia’s conservation efforts towards the GBR, and consequently a change is noted in terms of the time frame in which tourists intend to visit the icon. The results of this study provide valuable information for destination managers responsible for marketing the GBR and other destinations subject to human-induced, and often controversial, environmental destruction.
The Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, Australia, covers over 348,000 km2 of tropical marine ecosystems of global significance. In July 2015, the World Heritage Committee called attention to the cumulative impacts of climate change, poor water quality, and coastal development on the region's outstanding universal value, but stopped short of inscribing the Great Barrier Reef on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Restoring the region's values is hindered by an environmental decision-making process that fails to incorporate cumulative impacts, including the climate change impacts of greenhouse gas emissions sourced from one of Australia's largest exports, thermal coal. We identify policy and processes that enable a more comprehensive consideration of the cumulative effects of coal mining by environmental decision-makers. Implementing cumulative impact assessment requires a collaborative and transparent program of planning and monitoring independent of Government and mine proponents that evaluates local, regional, and global impacts. The future of the Great Barrier Reef depends on transformational change in the cumulative assessment of Australian coal mines.
This article examines the role of news media on climate change and sustainable energy in the shaping of audience opinions and beliefs and the possible relation of these to behaviours. It reports on a series of studies conducted between 2011 and 2014 which develop existing approaches to audience reception analyses by using innovative methodologies which focus specifically on the negotiation of new information in response to existing beliefs, perceptions and behavioural patterns – both in the short and long term. Audience groups are introduced to new information, to which the range of responses is examined. This approach allows for an exploration of the interplay of socio-political and personal factors as well as the identification of the potential informational triggers for change. The findings suggest that media accounts are likely to have a shaping role in relation to behaviours under a range of specific and coinciding conditions.
This article examines the framing of environmental risks and natural disasters in factual entertainment television programs of the early 2000s, a hybrid form combining techniques from documentary with techniques such as dramatic reconstructions and computer-generated imagery from entertainment genres. Using qualitative frame analysis, it examines a range of factual entertainment television programs' framing of environmental risk and natural disasters in terms of their attitudes, representation of human participants and visual composition. The article considers the similarities and differences in the framing of natural disasters as factual entertainment compared to the framing of natural disasters in news, documentary and fiction film. It argues that such programs offer representational frames both consonant with and distinct from other media and concludes that they problematically offer a predominantly fatalistic response to environmental risk, constructing natural disasters as voyeuristic spectacles for vicarious entertainment.
The decline of the Great Barrier Reef can be reversed by improvements to governance and management: current policies that promote fossil fuels and economic development of the Reef region need to be reformed to prioritize long-term protection from climate change and other stressors.
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http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2604.html
In 2008, we published a journal paper arguing that while scholarly work on media representations of environmental issues had made substantial progress in textual analysis, there had been much less work on visual representations. This special edition has a number of aims in this respect. It seeks to mark out where there has been progress since 2008, and the papers in this collection represent some of the fresh and exciting high quality scholarly work now emerging on an expanding number of topics and using different methods. We argue that we need to think more openly about what we mean by “the visual.” We begin by placing research into visual representations of the environment into the wider trajectory of visual studies research. We then proceed to review key trends in visual environmental communication research and to delineate core dimensions, contexts and sites of visual analysis.
Although mass media continue to play a key role in translating scientific uncertainty for public discourse, communicators of climate science are becoming increasingly aware of their own role in shaping scientific messages in the news. As an example of how future media research can provide relevant feedback to climate communicators, the present study examines the ways in which grammatical and word choices represent and construct uncertainty in news reporting about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Qualifying and hedging language and other “epistemic markers” are analyzed in four newspapers during 2001 and 2007: the New York Times and Wall Street Journal from the USA and El País and El Mundo from Spain. Though the US newspapers contained a higher density of epistemic markers and used more ambiguous grammatical constructs of uncertainty than the Spanish newspapers, all four media sources chose similar words when questioning the certainty around climate change. Moreover, the density of epistemic markers in each newspaper either remained the same or increased with time, despite ever-growing scientific agreement that human activities modify global climate. While the US newspapers increasingly adopted IPCC language to describe climate uncertainties, they also exhibited an emerging tendency to construct uncertainty by highlighting differences between IPCC reports or between scientific predictions and observations. The analysis thus helps identify articulations of uncertainty that will shape future media portrayals of climate science across varying cultural and national contexts.
This paper investigates how UK newsprint media represent corporate environmental sustainable development activities, and whether they focus on particular sectors or companies with greater market visibility. This builds on, and looks to explain, previous findings that such companies are more active environmental reporters than their counterparts. It presents a novel approach, using content analysis of news media reporting, to implicitly measure consumer opinion ‐ an alternative to the more usual directed‐survey techniques. The implications of this research are substantial, providing an alternative method for academics and corporations to assess the extent to which the market is informed of, and interested in – in this case ‐ environmental performance, without the need for, or to supplement, costly and often inconsistent attitudinal surveys. Use of this approach could bring substantial benefits to corporate and public policy research approaches, providing a means of measuring enduring societal attitudes – whether for particular segments, target markets or nations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Integration has become something of a byword for those concerned with environmental planning and management in Australia in recent years. Yet efforts to collaborate with non-state actors in policy development and implementation, and to co-ordinate local, state and federal government policies and activities suggest that integration can become an amorphous and often ambiguous goal. This article draws on recent collaborative and co-ordination efforts to address water quality issues in Queensland's Great Barrier Reef region to highlight some of these challenges. A preliminary assessment shows how a Reef-wide collaborative water quality partnership has risen to the challenge of integration. To date, this large-scale collaboration has focussed on co-ordinating a defensible knowledge-base to guide water quality management responses and developing an adaptive management strategy to test this knowledge through management experience and monitoring feedbacks. An initial evaluation of these efforts suggests the value of ‘scaling-up’ collaboration to facilitate integrated environmental management. There is no ‘hard-wired’ or structural solution to the problem on integration; instead, this experience shows that the development of collaborative partnerships also holds great promise. Such partnerships need to be carefully fitted to the particular management contexts in which integration is being pursued.
Much of the science communication and journalism studies literature continues to reiterate the same critiques about science journalism. This literature accuses science journalists of inaccuracy, sensationalism, oversimplification and failing to engage audiences in meaningful debate about scientific issues. However, research has yet to offer concrete solutions to journalists that connect theory to practice in an effort to counter these criticisms. In this paper, we approach this gap through the development of clearly articulated models of science journalism that are supported by theoretical considerations of the varying purposes of science communication, and then, importantly, tied to practical story development criteria. Four models are presented: science literacy, contextual, lay-expertise and public participation. These models are clear representations of how science journalism can be produced from within different theoretical frameworks and thereby provide a theoretically-informed but practical guide for nuanced evaluations of the quality of science journalism.
Stretching more than 2000 km along the Queensland coast, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBR) shelters over 43,000 square km of seagrass meadows. Despite the status of marine protected area and World Heritage listing of the GBR, local seagrass meadows are under stress from reduced water quality levels; with reduction in the amount of light available for seagrass photosynthesis defined as the primary cause of seagrass loss throughout the GBR. Methods have been developed to map GBR plume water types by using MODIS quasi-true colour (hereafter true colour) images reclassified in function of their dominant colour. These data can be used as an interpretative tool for understanding changes in seagrass meadow health (as defined in this study by the seagrass area and abundance) at different spatial and temporal scales. We tested this method in Cleveland Bay, in the northern GBR, where substantial loss in seagrass area and biomass was detected by annual monitoring from 2007 to 2011. A strong correlation was found between bay-wide seagrass meadow area and biomass and exposure to turbid Primary (sediment-dominated) water type. There was also a strong correlation between the changes of biomass and area of individual meadows and exposure of seagrass ecosystems to Primary water type over the 5-year period. Seagrass meadows were also grouped according to the dominant species within each meadow, irrespective of location within Cleveland Bay. These consolidated community types did not correlate well with the exposure to Primary water type, and this is likely to be due to local environmental conditions with the individual meadows that comprise these groupings. This study proved that remote sensing data provide the synoptic window and repetitivity required to investigate changes in water quality conditions over time. Remote sensing data provide an opportunity to investigate the risk of marine-coastal ecosystems to light limitation due to increased water turbidity when in situ water quality data is not available or is insufficient.
While many studies have put forward prescriptions for action on climate change it is not clear under what conditions policy innovations are likely to be pursued or what form they will take. It is the purpose of this paper to bring some clarity to these subjects. The paper follows Hood in describing policy-makers in democratic polities as highly risk-averse and therefore unlikely to take policy action unless the circumstances and the nature of the problem they face are propitious. It also suggests that when actions are taken these are not always ‘positive’ – that is oriented towards dealing with the objective manifestations of a problem – but can also be ‘negative’ – that is, geared towards denial of a problem or its rejection. The paper examines the literature on policy failure and success in order to isolate several dimensions of failure which decision-makers would like to avoid. It then combines these elements to construct a two stage model of decision-making which identifies which types of problems and circumstances are likely to lead to innovative activity and which are not. This model is then applied to the case of activities for climate change mitigation and adaptation.