FRAMING AND COMMUNICATING ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

FRAMING AND COMMUNICATING ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES Final Report to the Commission of the European Communities CONTRACT NO EV5V-CT92-0152 EC ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH PROGRAMME: RESEARCH AREA III RESEARCH PROJECT NUMBER PL210493 December 1995 Klaus Eder in collaboration with Anna Triandafyllidou, Paolo Donati, Mario Diani, Paul Statham, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Ger Mullally, Piet Strydom, Dany Drom, Didier Le Saout, Angelika Poferl, Karl-Werner Brand, Carlo Ruzza, Pedro Ibarra Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * THIS RESEARCH PROJECT HAS BEEN FUNDED BY THE FOLLOWING INSTITUTIONS: Commission of the European Community, Brussels Directorate General XII-D/5 (Research and Development) SEERS program, project number PL 210943 European University Institute, Florence Department of Political and Social Sciences Research Project "The Making of an Issue" (project no. 42) Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Bonn Forschungsprojekt "Ökologische Kommunikation" (Projektnummer Ed 25/6-1) Ministère de la Technologie et de la Recherche, Paris Direction générale Projet de recherche "Débat écologique et espace public" (N. décision 91.V.0282) Comision Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnologia (Spain) (Project SEC94-0211) PROJECT COORDINATION Prof. Dr. Klaus Eder Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Fakultätsinstitut für Sozialwissenschaften, Berlin European University Institute, Department of Political and Social Sciences, Florence Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * PARTICIPATING RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS Italy Contractor: European University Institute Badia Fiesolana, Via dei Rocettini 9, I-50016 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI) Office phone: +39 (55) 4685-260 Fax: +39 (55) 4865-201 E-mail: [email protected] Leading Researcher: Prof. Dr. Klaus Eder, European University Institute, Department of Political and Social Sciences Research staff: Dr. Anna Triandafyllidou (part I) Paolo Donati, Dr. Mario Diani (part II) Paul Statham (part I - UK case) Dr. Carlo Ruzza (EU-case) Ireland Contractor: Centre for European Social Research 36 Mary Street, Cork, Ireland Office phone: +353 (21) 213944 Fax: +353 (21) 310559 E-mail: [email protected] Leading researcher: Dr. Piet Strydom, University College Cork, Centre for European Social Research / Department of Sociology Research staff: Ger Mullally Dr. Pat O'Mahony Elaine McCarthy UK Contractor: Department of Sociology/Centre for the Study of Environmental Change University of Lancaster, Cartmel College, Lancaster LA14YL, Great Britain Office phone: +44 (524) 59-4191 Fax: +44 (524) 844788 E-mail: [email protected] Leading researcher: Professor Scott Lash, University of Lancaster, Department of Sociology / Centre for the Study of Environmental Change Research staff: Dr. Bronislaw Szerszynski John Myles Peter Simmons Germany Contractor: Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Münchner Projektgruppe für Sozialforschung Dachauer Straße 189, D-80637 München Office phone: +49 (89) 155760 Fax: +49 (89) 1577949 E-mail: [email protected] Leading researcher: PD Dr. Karl-Werner Brand, Münchner Projektgruppe für Sozialforschung Research staff: part I: Angelika Poferl, Reiner Keller part II: PD Dr. Karl-Werner Brand France Contractor: Université de Paris - Nanterre 2000 Avenue de la République, F-92001 Nanterre Cedex Office phone: +33 (1) 4097-7649 Fax: +33 (1) 4097-7656 E-mail: [email protected] Leading researcher: Professor Michel Dobry, Faculté de Droit et Sciences Politiques, Institut de Politique Internationale et Européenne Main researchers: Dany Trom (part I) Didier Le Saout (part II) ASSOCIATED RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS: Basque country (Spain) Associated institution: Universidad Pais Vasco Departamento Estudios Internacionales / Ciencia Politica Posta Kutxatila 644, Campus de Leioa (Vizcaya), Spain Office phone: +34 (4) 4647700 ext 2354 Fax: +34 (4) 4648299 Researchers: Professor Pedro Ibarra Iñaki Barcena Mario Zubiaga Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................1 PART I: THE PROJECT IDEA .............................................................................................5 The Research Agenda..........................................................................................................7 A MODEL OF THE LOGIC OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION ...........................................................7 The arena of environmental politics .............................................................................7 Framing environmental issues ......................................................................................8 The media discourse: identifying resonating themes ................................................9 The rules of the game: reconstructing actor strategies.............................................9 Institutionalizing bias: a cultural account of environmental politics .......................10 Culture and discourse...................................................................................................11 THE METHODOLOGY IN QUESTION: COMPARATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS...........................13 Methodological assumptions in discourse analysis .................................................13 The logic of comparative discourse analysis ............................................................16 The Practice of the Methodology....................................................................................19 FROM IDEAL TYPES TO REAL CASES: TAKING THE IRISH CASE AS A REFERENCE CASE .......19 CONTEXT ..............................................................................................................................19 INTERVENING CONDITIONS ...................................................................................................20 (ii) Culture ...............................................................................................................22 (iii) Structure...........................................................................................................25 PROVIDING THE GROUND FOR EXTENDED COMPARISON .....................................................30 PART II: FIVE CASE STUDIES FOR COMPARISON ...................................................33 Ireland: Media Discourse, Actor Strategies and Institutional Rules .....................35 THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE IN IRELAND: SELECTING A NEWSPAPER SAMPLE ...........................35 THE IRISH NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE ON THE ENVIRONMENT ...............................................36 Content Analysis: issue structure ...............................................................................36 Content analysis: actors named in text......................................................................38 Types of environmental discourse..............................................................................43 The structure of environmental discourse .................................................................45 THE ACCIDENT OF CHERNOBYL IN THE IRISH PRESS: A 'MEDIA STORY LINE'.......................56 Cultural indicators..........................................................................................................58 The differentiation of Irish media coverage of Chernobyl .......................................60 Constructing a framework for receiving 'risk' ............................................................61 Whither the social metaphor? .....................................................................................64 THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF ENVIRONMENTALISM ...............................................................64 Two case studies...........................................................................................................64 THE IRISH MEDIA DISCOURSE: A SYMBOLIC OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE .............................69 POLITICAL ACTORS ...............................................................................................................73 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Master frame(s) .............................................................................................................73 New fora for politics and policy making? ...................................................................75 Information strategies: open or closed? ....................................................................78 MOVEMENT ACTORS.............................................................................................................79 Master frame(s) .............................................................................................................80 Degree of institutionalisation reached........................................................................82 Division of labour between movement organisations ..............................................83 Movement actors and media attention.......................................................................86 INDUSTRY AND THE ENVIRONMENT ......................................................................................87 Master frame(s) .............................................................................................................87 Strategies for controlling the risky political environment.........................................89 Media profile...................................................................................................................91 Going technological or dialogical?..............................................................................91 THE NEW POLICY GAME ........................................................................................................95 Italy: Media Discourse, Actor Strategies and Institutional Rules ........................101 THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE IN ITALY: SELECTING A NEWSPAPER SAMPLE ..............................101 THE ITALIAN NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE ON THE ENVIRONMENT ..........................................104 Environmental Issues .................................................................................................104 The.................................................................................................................................106 Types of environmental discourse............................................................................108 THE ACCIDENT OF CHERNOBYL IN THE ITALIAN PRESS: A 'MEDIA STORY LINE' .................110 'Stories' of Chernobyl in the Italian press discourse ..............................................111 Conclusions: Constructing a 'media story line' .......................................................119 THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF ENVIRONMENTALISM .............................................................120 THE ITALIAN MEDIA DISCOURSE: A SYMBOLIC OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE ........................123 POLITICAL ACTORS .............................................................................................................124 Environmental policy in Italy: general traits.............................................................124 Communicating environmental issues: guiding principles ....................................125 Re-building trust: The role of political actors...........................................................127 MOVEMENT ACTORS...........................................................................................................130 Unification, institutionalization and media-oriented strategies .............................130 The relationship between movement actors and industry ....................................132 Mobilization potential and the game of environmental policy...............................133 INDUSTRY AND THE ENVIRONMENT ....................................................................................136 Industry in the political game: lobbying, public relations and the distantiation from politics ..................................................................................................................136 The.................................................................................................................................139 The competitive game of environmental technological innovation......................141 THE NEW POLICY GAME ......................................................................................................143 Germany: Media Discourse, Actor Strategies and Institutional Rules...............149 THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE ......................................................................................................149 THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN GERMANY ....................................150 Issue structure and issue context .............................................................................151 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Actors ............................................................................................................................152 Types of the discourse ...............................................................................................153 Issue- and actor-specific configurations ..................................................................154 FIELD RESULT GOES HERE .................................................................................................156 Method ..........................................................................................................................156 East and West or the exteriorization of the problem: The conservative discourse on Chernobyl in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)..................................157 Chernobyl as a symbol of the non-controllability of modern technological risks: The liberal story line....................................................................................................159 GERMAN UNIFICATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE. A STUDY ON THE GERMAN POLITICAL CULTURE OF ENVIRONMENTALISM.....................................................................160 Method ..........................................................................................................................161 Results ..........................................................................................................................161 THE SYMBOLIC OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ACTORS IN GERMANY 165 POLITICAL ACTORS ............................................................................................................168 ENVIRONMENTAL ACTORS .................................................................................................173 INDUSTRIAL ACTORS ..........................................................................................................177 CHANGING RULES OF THE GAME ........................................................................................181 United Kingdom: Media Discourse, Actor Strategies and Institutional Rules .184 A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF THE BRITISH MEDIA DISCOURSE ON ENVIRONMENTALISM 1987 TO 1991 .............................................................................................................................184 Environmental Themes ..............................................................................................184 Actors in the Environmental Discourse....................................................................185 Type of Environmental Discourse.............................................................................186 THE BRITISH MEDIA DISCOURSE ON CHERNOBYL 1987-1991 ........................................188 Chernobyl Contents ....................................................................................................188 Chernobyl News Stories 1987 to 1989 - Soviet Disaster and Domestic Concern ........................................................................................................................................189 Chernobyl news stories 1990 to 1991 - fatalism in the face of global risks .......192 Summary ......................................................................................................................196 LANDSCAPE IN THE BRITISH MEDIA DISCOURSE: A RESONATING THEME IN BRITAIN......196 Landscape: ideas of nature and nation ...................................................................196 Landscape in the news: sample definition ..............................................................197 Landscape framing in the news ................................................................................199 How people define nature: landscape as framed object.......................................200 In news context........................................................................................................200 In place context: country life in England and Wales ..........................................200 How nature defines people: landscape as framing subject ..................................203 As the idea of green times: scientific futures ......................................................203 As the idea of a green ............................................................................................205 Summary ......................................................................................................................206 PATTERNS OF COHERENCE AND CONFLICTUALITY IN THE BRITISH ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE ........................................................................................................................206 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * POLITICAL ACTORS .............................................................................................................207 Masterframes ...............................................................................................................207 New fora for politics and policy-making ...................................................................209 Information strategies: closed or open? ..................................................................210 MOVEMENT ACTORS...........................................................................................................211 Masterframes ...............................................................................................................211 Degree of institutionalisation reached......................................................................212 Division of labour between movement organisations ............................................215 Media attention and mobilisation ..............................................................................216 INDUSTRIAL ACTORS ..........................................................................................................217 Masterframes ...............................................................................................................217 Strategies of controlling the risky political environment ........................................218 Media profile.................................................................................................................220 Going technological or dialogical?............................................................................221 RULES OF THE GAME/POLICY STYLE ..................................................................................222 France: Media Discourse, Actor Strategies and Institutional Rules ...................225 THE MEDIA IN FRANCE: THE CHOICE OF NEWSPAPERS......................................................225 QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF MEDIA DISCOURSE ON THE ENVIRONMENT IN FRANCE .............225 QUALITATIVE STUDY OF CHERNOBYL MEDIA COVERAGE ...................................................230 THE THEME OF THE COUNTRYSIDE IN FRENCH MEDIA DISCOURSE ...................................232 SYMBOLISM IN THE POLITICS OF NATURE...........................................................................233 INSTITUTIONAL ACTORS......................................................................................................234 BUSINESS ACTORS .............................................................................................................237 ENVIRONMENTAL ASSOCIATIONS .......................................................................................240 THE NEW POLITICAL GAME .................................................................................................241 Basque country: Media Discourse, Actor Strategies and Institutional Rules ..244 POLITICAL CONTEXT ...........................................................................................................244 RESONATING STRUCTURES................................................................................................246 The media.....................................................................................................................246 Main coding indicators................................................................................................246 THE CHERNOBYL STORY LINE ............................................................................................251 NATIONALISM, DEMOCRACY AND ENVIRONMENTALISM IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY ...........253 Conceptual introduction..............................................................................................253 The narrative structure of the discourse on the Basque country.........................254 The Lurraldea case .....................................................................................................257 The narrative structure in other discourses on environmental problems ...........259 Provisional conclusions ..............................................................................................260 Towards a new interpretative frame?.......................................................................261 CONCLUDING REMARKS .....................................................................................................263 PART III: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS.......................................................................265 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Comparing Media Discourses in Europe....................................................................267 INDIVIDUALIZING COMPARISON I: THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES SINCE 1987...................................................................................................................................267 The selection of indicators .........................................................................................267 The definition of environmental issues ....................................................................268 Field result goes here .................................................................................................272 Types of environmental discourse............................................................................275 Types of action ............................................................................................................280 Framing Strategies......................................................................................................282 Concluding remarks ....................................................................................................285 INDIVIDUALIZING COMPARISON II: THE CHERNOBYL MEDIA STORY LINES SINCE 1987 .....286 The principles of analysis...........................................................................................286 The initial story 1987...................................................................................................286 Second phase 1988/89: Interiorisation ....................................................................290 1990-91 Climax: continuities and change ...............................................................291 Elements of the emerging environmental discourse: Chernobyl metaphors .....292 Typifying the different media story lines ..................................................................293 VARIATION FINDING COMPARISON: ACCOUNTING FOR THE DIVERSITY OF EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENTAL CULTURES ..............................................................................................295 Cultural biases: the political culture of environmentalism.....................................295 Degree and direction of the variation .......................................................................297 Comparing Environmental Regimes in Europe ........................................................300 INDIVIDUALIZING COMPARISON I: THE CONSTRUCTION OF A POLICY FIELD .......................300 INDIVIDUALIZING COMPARISON II: THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF PROTEST ....................301 INDIVIDUALIZING COMPARISON III: THE GREENING OF INDUSTRY ......................................304 VARIATION FINDING COMPARISON: ACCOUNTING FOR THE DIVERSITY OF EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENTAL REGIMES .................................................................................................306 Identifying the rules of the game: environmental regimes in Europe..................306 Variation and direction of environmentalism in Europe.........................................310 PART IV CULTURAL BIASES, INSTITUTIONAL FORMS AND POLICY MAKING ................................................................................................................................................315 Towards a European Environmental Regime? .........................................................317 THE EU ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY COMMUNITY .................................................................317 INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION IN BRUSSELS ...............321 IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTALIST CULTURE ON POLICY NETWORKS ....................................322 EXTERNAL CONCERNS OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY-MAKING COMMUNITY ................326 The.................................................................................................................................326 Relations with industry................................................................................................327 Relations with non-governmental organizations ....................................................330 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................332 An Encompassing Comparison ....................................................................................335 THE EU AS A HOMOGENIZING CONTEXT: SITUATING THE CASES IN AN ENCOMPASSING STRUCTURE ........................................................................................................................335 POLICY IMPLICATIONS ........................................................................................................337 Appendix I: Coding Indicators for Articles on Environment.................................340 Appendix II: Interview Schedules .................................................................................348 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................354 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Note on the authors who have contributed to this final report: Chapter 1: Klaus Eder, Pat O'Mahony and Ger Mullally Chapter 2.1: Klaus Eder Chapter 2.2 - 2.3: Pat O'Mahony and Ger Mullally Chapter 2.3 - 3.5: Ger Mullally, Pat O'Mahony and Elaine McCarthy Chapter 3.6 - 3.9: Ger Mullally Chapter 4.1 - 4.5: Anna Triandafyllidou Chapter 4.6 - 4.9: Paolo Donati Chapter 5.1 - 5.4: Angelika Poferl (in collaboration with Josef Deisböck, chapter 5.4) Chapter 5.5 - 5.9: Karl-Werner Brand (in collaboration with Angelika Poferl, chapter 5.5) Chapter 6.1 - 6.4: Paul Statham Chapter 6.5 - 6.8: Bron Szerszinski Chapter 7.1 - 7.4: Dany Trom Chapter 7.5 - 7.8: Dider Le Saout Chapter 8: Pedro Ibarra Chapter 9: Klaus Eder (in collaboration with Jessica Ter Wal) Chapter 10: Klaus Eder Chapter 11: Carlo Ruzza Chapter 12: Klaus Eder Responsible for the whole: Klaus Eder Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 1 INTRODUCTION The research on framing and communicating environmental issues was based on two different types of analyses. The first dealt with the nationally specific cultural resonances of environmental problems which were analyzed through the analysis of media discourses. These analyses served to describe what we called the "setting of the stage" in which environmental actors act. The concept of a "stage" allowed us to introduce the cultural themes pervading the public arena and the country-specific logics of public discourse. The second type of analyses concerned the institutional dimensions that define the action space for policy actors, movement actors and corporate actors. The metaphor of a stage was extended to the players on this stage which served to identify the non-discursive conditions, i.e. institutional conditions which shape the making of the environmental issue in the different countries studied. These analyses finally helped to identify the specific cultural and institutional constraints and opportunities of an environmental policy domain and the manner in which it self-reproduces over time. This framework is clearly distinct from traditional social movement research and policy analysis.1 The main difference to traditional social movement research is that we no longer stick to the static perspective of analysing opportunity structures, but rather take a more dynamic perspective of the interaction game (in terms of reciprocal monitoring) between these actors, emphasizing the symbolic (or cultural) embeddedness of these interactions. Thus we are able to identify more precisely the "discursive universe" within which policy making takes place. Two types of approaches were used in the following analyses: a discourse-analytical and a neoinstitutionalist approach. The first encompasses both a content-analytically standardized approach and a qualitative-hermeneutic approach to media discourse. The second concerns the way in which actors in this action space monitor each other reciprocally. This research agenda has led to two interrelated tasks. The first task has been defined as the media resonance analysis and is based on (a) content analytically standardized and (b) interpretative (qualitative) media analysis of data ranging over (a) a week (end of April) for the period from 87-92. The content-analytically standardized 1 For a recent overview of traditional social movement research see Tarrow (1994); for a more culturally oriented line of social movement research see Eder (1993). A cultural type of analysis has developed in recent years in policy analyis too. See Fischer & Forester (1993), Richardson et al. (1982) and Stone (1989). Specific to the field of environmental policy see Craig et al. (1993) and Rayner (1990, 1991, 1992). 2 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * analysis provided answers to the selectivity of media reporting on issues and actors by asking the following questions: - what are resonating themes and their careers in the time period observed? - who are the trend-setting actors (the opinion leaders)? - what are the issue linkages and actor/issue linkages? The qualitative discourse-analytical method further explores the problem of national resonance patterns to environmental issues by asking the following questions: - is there a nationally specific narrative structure underlying the media discourse on the environment? - to what extent are such "story-lines" linked by an umbrella story-line (ideological or non-ideological world views in the national political cultures)? The reconstruction of cultural patterns which are constitutive of nationally specific media discourses also had a methodological function: it allowed us to embed the content-analytically standardized analysis in a qualitative analysis which is closer to the meaning structures of discourse than any content analysis can be. This goal has been realized in three distinct steps which together make up the media section of the different country reports2: (1) an analysis of the media coverage of environmental issues in the post-Chernobyl period (2) an analysis of the nationally specific story-line in the reporting on Chernobyl (3) an analysis of the role of nationally resonating themes in the media discourse on the environment The second research task was based on structured narrative interviews with movement actors, corporate actors and political actors concerning the communication campaigns and the philosophies regarding the relationship of these actors with the "public". In addition, media texts in so far as they are a source of information about these campaigns, and philosophies and textual material produced by these collective actors were used for this research task. These analyses yielded answers to the following questions: - Are there common themes (framings of issues or of the environmental issues as such) that unite different collective actors. Is there a basic cultural consensus and under which conditions does it hold? Where do differences start? Are these differences issue-specific or in terms of ideological or cultural umbrella frames? Are there specific issue-linkages constituting a shared framing? - To what extent are actions and the reasons given for them dependent upon the internal environment of each actor or of their external environment? - What kind of institutional forms in fact develop in the field of reciprocal monitoring of these actors? What kind of conflictual structure develops among the collective actors? 2 Short versions of these country reports can be found below. The full reports are available on request from the coordinator of the project. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 3 - Which position do these actors occupy in the developing discursive field? How do they try to enter the discursive field of public discourse? What kind of relation to policy-making institutions exists? This textual analysis answering the question of the action repertoire, issue-specific frames and umbrella frames and institutional position of environmental groups, industrial actors, and political actors allowed us finally to analyze the use of the cultural environment, the use of the resonating structure of a given national culture and the reciprocal monitoring of these actors within this discursive universe. The goal was to show the cultural embeddedness of the strategic action of the collective actors in the field of environmental politics. This goals has been realized in the second part of the different country reports. This second part consists of the following four steps presenting the results of this analysis: (1) an analysis of communication strategies of movement actors (2) an analogous analysis of corporate actors (3) an analogous analysis of political actors, and finally (4) an analysis of their embeddedness in the discursive universe defined by public discourses on the environment The following presentation of the results of these two research steps has been organized in four parts: an introduction formulating a comparative perspective that has evolved in the course of the research (Part I); five national case studies (plus one) on the structure of the media discourse on the environment which sets the stage for environmental actors in the national context, and five national case studies on the institutional dynamics of communication on the environment which analyzes the way in which this stage is going to be populated by movement actors, business actors and political actors (Part II); a comparative analysis of the media discourse as a field of collective action and of actor's strategies in this field and the emerging institutional framework generated by them, guided by the question of whether there is an emerging European media discourse and institutional context of environmental politics (Part III); and finally an attempt to explain policy performance in the light of these factors (Part IV). 4 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * PART I: THE PROJECT IDEA Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 7 1 The Research Agenda 1.1 A MODEL OF THE LOGIC OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION 1.1.1 The arena of environmental politics The first assumption guiding our research has been that environmental politics is taking place within a cultural context which combines two opposing world views: on the one hand the feelings, anxieties, and popular theories of the "people", and the scientific, theoretical knowledge of experts on the other. Environmental issues are constructed through both processes: the theoretical construction of experts and the theoretical construction of people. Therefore the environment is a case in which "two cultures" meet and set into motion a highly specific dynamic. Our research interest have been neither the experts nor the people, but the intermediaries between both. These are mainly three groups: political actors who play this role by definition in democracies; public interest groups (or organized social movements) who are a new phenomenon in politics as the term "new social movements" already makes clear; and finally business actors (or the traditional private interest groups) who are also new in the sense that they have taken up a role in defining a public good. We call these actors consequential collective actors.3 Two hypotheses have guided the research: (1) These actors negotiate issues and 'do' politics, by engaging in public communication over issues: environmental issues are not simply there but constructed in the course of public communication. (2) Among these, actors develop rules of interaction which lead to basic changes in the political institutions regulating decision-making processes, an order which we called a postcorporatist order. In addition we worked with two corollary assumptions concerning the context of actual political developments in Europe: (1) Models of development which can serve as basic orientations of policy-making are by their very nature based on controversial scientific facts and on controversial 3 For this term see Laumann & Knoke (1987). They worked with a similar design but different hypotheses on the social organization of policy domains. 8 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * moral world views which necessitate the discursive handling of such issues; there is no other way to deal with public goods based on such controversial grounds than to enter into dialogues. (2) In the general evolution of modern political institutions, which are linked to the structural role of the nation state and the new role of transnational institutions (such as the European institutions), the model of the institutional regimes developing around the politics of the environment offers the elements for a form of participatory democracy which goes beyond current limits: those of the institutionalization of democratic procedures in the nation-state, which are still essentially those invented during the course of the French Revolution. This report analyses the nature of public communication on the environment in five European countries. Public communication on the environment is interpreted against the wider symbolic order of politics in these countries. The project as a whole examines whether environmental public discourse is moving towards new ethical foundations as it is increasingly "colonized" by the identity projects of environmental social movements. The project examines the discursive field of environmentalism, which was understood as the context of collective action, by analysing the reciprocal constitution of environmental public discourse as a whole, and the identities of specified collective actors - whether economic, political or social movements - in particular. 1.1.2 Framing environmental issues The model developed on the basis of these assumptions is a political communication model (PCM).4 It differs from the political process model in that it emphasizes the construction of meaning in the political actions of consequential political actors. This implies to emphasize the "framing strategies" of these collective actors. Framing needs a social space where frames can be circulated which is the space of public discourse. Since the media are the main institutional carriers of public discourse in modern societies, we take the media discourse as the field in which political action takes place. This model applies to modern societies in different degrees. Our assumption (see above) has been that environmental issues belong to those in which communication (in contrast to rational goal orientation) becomes the central mechanism of politics. Thus we expected that this model would fit our case of the politics of the environment. This implies a shift from the analysis of interest group behaviour to group-specific strategies 4 This model is part of a general turn to communication in the social sciences. Prepared by the so-called "linguistic turn" (referring to the philosophical and epistemological foundations of the social sciences and to figures such as Habermas) it is followed today by an empirical turn which claims that communication makes a difference. In the context of policy making, such a model has been proposed by Cobb et al. (1981), Sabatier et al. (1988, 1993), Covello et al. (1988) and Liberatore (1992). In social movement research the emphasis on framing implies a communication theoretical perspective. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 9 of communication which define both, a shared world of discourse and a mechanism for following one's interests. Therefore an adequate model of political behaviour has to go beyond the principle of strategic interest maximization and be extended to the dynamics of involvement posed by interaction effects produced and reproduced by communicative behaviour. To participate in dialogical forms of political struggle makes a difference - it is this difference that can be analysed by the careful analysis of framing strategies. 1.1.3 The media discourse: identifying resonating themes The symbolic medium of communicative action of consequential collective actors is the forum provided by the mass media. The choice of the print medium has to do with practical and substantial considerations. The practical reason is availability and access.5 The second reason is that the basic framing of public problems and issues takes place first in the print media and then diffuses into the other media channels. This even creates feedback effects in so far as print media again comment on what is going on in other media. When analysing media texts we were not looking for facts about the real world such as the state of the environment or the real motives of actors. We were rather interested in what the media discourse defined as real. It is this what binds actors together and to particular roles in public spaces. Thus we were going beyond the idea of the press as a source of information to the idea of press as a discourse (van Dijk 1988). 1.1.4 The rules of the game: reconstructing actor strategies Actors are embedded in an environment which gives meaning to their actions. This environment cannot be controlled by any one of these actors, something which forces the analyst to understand the rules which constrain collective actors in a specific field. The traditional way is to define legal rules as constraints for actors. This, however, is already a result of processes that precede legal regulation. We are interested in the rules which structure the actions of consequential collective actors before they are legally codified. However, actors not only submit to rules; they try to create or change the rules. Therefore an analysis of the institutional context which is there before legal rules defines the rules of the game has to be understood. In addition, the more the coordination and cooperation of actors follows patterns of extra-legal agreements and mediation the more this prelegal context becomes a central mechanism of explaining the dynamics of actors in a given policy field. 5 In future research CD-Rom retrievals should be used more systematically. In our case the uneven availability of such means in the different countries created too many problems regarding comparability of the studies and the lack of CD-Rom data before 1991 in all countries prevented its use for this research. Therefore we had to rely on "manual" media analysis. 10 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Therefore the reconstruction of the rules of the game is looking at the way in which actors present their images to other actors and thus create a first level of coordination and conflictualization of an issue. The question of the legal institutionalization of such relationships is a secondary process which is certainly important, but which also gives rise to new definitions of the context, with the consequence that legal rules no longer can be considered to be the primary rules defining the rules of the game. The central role of communication in defining the rules of the game has two contradictory consequences. The first is the emphasis on consensus, of producing shared definitions of the world. Even the conflictual definition of an issue is a way of defining a shared view of the world. The second is an emphasis on language games, on a lifeworld thematized and restated through communication which emphasizes the particularity of those sharing a cultural world. Communication here leads to the separation of actors, dividing their worlds and thus using issues for defining difference, creating what we have called a "cultural bias".6 It is this double process which has not been analysed adequately in the analysis of environmentalism, but which is central for understanding the dynamics of the prelegal context for the actors involved including policy actors. 1.1.5 Institutionalizing bias: a cultural account of environmental politics The research in the end offers two specific propositions: firstly, that a new ideological "master-frame" is established in public discourse as the outcome of the competing symbolic packages of the collective actors, with the innovative impulse emanating from environmentalist protest actors; and, secondly, that ecological discourse undermines the cultural basis of protest movements, because of their success in reconstituting the relevant symbolic order. These propositions imply that the "environment" is more than a technical problem: it has become the symbol of a specific life form.7 It is institutionalized bias. Environmentalism represents an institutionalized bias which is the result of social processes, of interactions between collective actors which in turn redefine the positions of the actors in this process. Movements which have been triggered by the institutionalization of the bias are subsequently institutionalized as well. This is obvious on the local level; it diminishes the more we look at wider encompassing levels of political organizations. 6 This term is taken from the work of Mary Douglas. It has been further developed in Thompson et al. (1990). 7 This proposition has been made in different ways. Cf. Douglas (1986, 1992) and the famous statement in Douglas & Wildavsky (1982) for the cultural theory approach. The research presented below is an attempt to go a step further with such a culturalist explanation of environmentalism in modern societies. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 11 The environment has become the main target of a new political conception of a collective life and a social order which is worth living in. It has concentrated the emotional energies and normative projects of the people. To the extent that the environment is reduced to a technical questions, these energies and ideas are disembedded from the project of a collective good. They will become homeless. Since an alternative collective project has already appeared and started to compete with the project of environmentalism - namely ethnic communities which define their identity by drawing cultural boundaries - the cultural significance of the environment increases. The competition between two contrasting political projects makes the environment still less a merely technical problem. It is but an option of an institutionalized cultural bias. To avoid there being unintended consequences of environmental policy making, this competition of options for a cultural life form has to be taken into account. 1.1.6 Culture and discourse We will describe the outcome of this constellation of collective actors a post-corporatist order. These are terms that need some justification. The prefix "post-" has become exceedingly popular in forms of classification such as "post-industrial", "post-modern" and "post-bourgeois". What is generally accepted is that the present is a period of exceptionally rapid and encompassing change which can be likened to other epochal shifts such as the historical emergence of democracy as a form of political coordination or the implications of the technical innovation associated with the industrial revolution. The contemporary period is likened to earlier periods of social transformation, too, in the sense of there being a dramatic shift in the cultural self-understanding of certain pivotal social groups. But in contemporary society, perceptions of shifts in the cultural foundations of social life are accompanied by the claim that such change will not one day simply form a new and stable mould, where new certainties replace old ones, but that instead the point has been reached where rapid cultural change has itself become permanent. Very often, however, implicit or explicit claims of permanent, reflexive cultural change are not accompanied by any attempt at substantiation in detailed time- and place-bound studies of mechanisms and processes of cultural innovation and their consequences. The term "discourse" serves to indicate the means whereby cultural change is effected and, reflexively, the outcome of that change. The concomitant premise to claims of unceasing cultural transformation is the recognition of there being a shifting constellation of discourses, which are vehicles for change and enable social action to be relatively uncoupled from routinized normative prescriptions. But how much and how far remains an empirical question which cannot be answered by recourse to accounts of the constitutive conditions of post- or late-modernity. Discursive fields producing specific effects and modalities of social change are understood as being produced by the communication of culturally situated actors. What makes discursive fields distinctive in the sense used here, is that change depends on 12 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * the communicative performance of actors in public fora. Communicative exchange, when it addresses the regulation of contemporary collective goods issues, is characteristically between organized collective actors who fight over collectively defined rights and who, in so doing, construct discursive fields as discursively structured inter-organization fields. Since in this process, cultural resources are exposed to transformation both by virtue of being tied to such actors who are engaged in dynamic positional shifts and because the cultural orders which regulate these discourses are ceaselessly revised through discursive processes - discourse and culture stand in a volatile, reflexive relation to one another.8 8 The precise relationship between culture and agency, ranging between the polar extremes of the determinism of culture and the voluntarism of agency, is a matter of protracted theoretical examination. What can, however, be concluded with some confidence from the current state of knowledge is that (a) a relatively autonomous "cultural system" (Archer 1988) or "cultural structure" (Alexander/Smith 1993) or "socio-cultural life-world" (Habermas 1987) which represents both a pragmatic structure (structure of orientations and competences) and semantic structure (structure of meanings) exists, so to speak, before agency, and that (b) this cultural world is mobilized in agency but also re-patterned as a consequence of types of agency and that (c) empirical inquiries are needed into what precisely are the parameters between the cultural system/structure/life-world and its (re-) construction through various kinds of agency. The focus of the analysis is on collective, organized agency which takes place in what Habermas understands as the symbolically structured life-world. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 13 Communicative action takes on the special form of discourse when collective actors are forced to recognize the premises of common discursive exchange with a public observing their behaviour and the normative consequences resulting from it. Discourse stabilizes the relationship between actors, it creates a common action space, and it serves as a means whereby civil actors defending or extending the values of everyday life, exert pressure on the autonomy of social systems. In this process, a discourse with major societal resonance may result in institution formation. Our hypothesis is that contemporary collective goods issues are increasingly addressed through discursivelyfashioned institutions which are institutions of a qualitatively new order which we call a post-corporatist order.9 In this report, the emergence of these institutions is examined using the field of environmental politics as a particular case study. This case is looked at from both sides: the context set by discursive boundaries of the space in which environmental actors act, and the strategies of actors that take this context as a constraint and opportunity structure of their action. 1.2 THE METHODOLOGY IN QUESTION: COMPARATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 1.2.1 Methodological assumptions in discourse analysis To address the issues outlined above requires a form of methodologically rigorous textual analysis, commonly described as discourse analysis (DA).10 Sociological discourse analysis however presents several major difficulties given the current state of knowledge and technique. The first difficulty lies in the conventionality of the judgements used by the researcher. Not since the breakdown of the positivist programme has it been assumed that the explanandum can supply its truth if the right methods are employed without the intermediation of selecting and valuing bias by the researcher. Rather, following the lead of post-positivist philosophy of language, it is now accepted that researcher and the object of their research occupy a common symbolic universe, albeit with distinct knowledge interests. The research process is therefor presented more as a form of argument rather than a form of proof. The reflexive presuppositions of contemporary cultural analysis render this "hermeneutic circle" even more acute, in that the cultural judgements required to attribute significance 9 This term is chosen because we assume that environmental politics has found fertile ground especially in those countries which have been described as neo-corporatist. For this discussion see below Part III. 10 Here we refer mainly to the work of van Dijk (1988). See also Donati (1992). 14 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * to the manifest statements made by actors emanates from the researcher's own cultural worlds. These are externally subject only to the loose control of the disciplinary knowledge base and procedures. In this instance, these controls are exceptionally loose in that a body of expertise has not as yet accumulated to a level that would act as a conventional repository either for the legitimate relation of theory to practice or for the craft of research. It may be said that to utilize sociological techniques of discourse analysis is to operate in conditions of high task uncertainty. This points to the need to consider, as a second difficulty, the limitations of existing research in the field. The sociological analysis of discourse cannot exclusively proceed on the micro-scale of conversation analysis - even though forms of sociological discourse analysis utilize the fine detail of conversation analysis - because the objects of analysis of sociological DA involve assumptions that cannot be intra-textually demonstrated. If sociological DA is considered as an analysis of the semantics of texts and the discursive strategies of actors, and if it is assumed that these discursive strategies can only be reconstructed in relation to extra-textual categories which are produced by a procedure which is not DA, strictu sensu, then the relationship between actors and a body of textual statements attributable to them depends on the interpretive choices of researchers. These choices are at best only partially grounded in the text. This, of course, makes claims based on textual relations more difficult, or, at best, more precarious. Recourse to extra-textual characterisations of actor strategies can variously be derived from methods which complement the textual analysis, from what is revealed in the text, or from researchers' fore-knowledge based in part or in whole on other research. The complexity of this exercise will vary with the ambition of the research investigation, i. e., what expectations about changes in the social world are assumed to be associated with the discourse in question and what strength of extra-textual constructions are required to characterize an actor. One might reasonably assume that a round-table discussion on an administrative decision is going to necessitate less extra-textual problems in characterising agents' strategies than collective actors contending to shape legitimation foundations of a political order in media communication. This problem has a first-order and second-order expression. It is a first order problem when the researcher draws on other knowledge within the same realm of analysis, e.g., cultural analysis of discourses, and a second order problem when there is a need to move beyond this realm of analysis. The problem of relating cultural analysis of discourses to social-structural analysis is a classic case in point. Notwithstanding these difficulties, the cultural analysis of discursive texts is valuable for a number of reasons: (a) It has constructivist advantages in letting the subjects speak where this is important. It may therefore act as a constraint on the imperialism of research, in some cases forcing researchers out of their own cultural "epistemes" and forcing them to confront the irreducible difference of other worlds. The researcher in turn is Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 15 strengthened by being able to construct immanent positions, e.g., identities, interests or ethical codes for social actors, where before they may only have been attributed or inferred from observed behaviour. (b) It has systematic advantages in providing a method of inquiry that allows regularities which have empirical-theoretical value to be recorded which may not either have been otherwise observed, or even sought. The latter advantage derives from the particular ontological assumptions and methodological procedures that are associated with discourse analysis. (c)It has advantages in providing a trace on the classifying judgements of researchers, in that the basis of these judgements is analytically revealed in the procedures adopted. (d) It has "tracking" advantages in that the analytical procedures offer means of analysing symbolic interaction whose forms and processes over time shape social outcomes. The realization of these advantages depends on whether the architecture of the DA is appropriately conceived, as well as the appropriateness of the means used. The architecture or design depends on extra-discursive assumptions about conditions, context and actors strategies as well as the specific analysis of texts. Sociologists find themselves caught in a quandary, by no means confined to DA, when they attempt to relate both elements in the design. The text analysis reveals only a part of the social world and controlling for the connotative horizons of the interaction requires theoretical assumptions about it. In sociological work, there is a tendency to replicate the way linguists have reduced complexity and increased abstract power by introducing a distinction between deep and surface structure. But because of the nature of sociological DA - based upon the sociologists desire for generalizability given the explananda of the discipline - this distinction is relatively weaker than in other forms of DA. Sociologists tend in fact to relate the textual parts of their analysis to abstract symbolic premises.11 Constructions such as these are conventional expedients that follow theoretical traditions. The relationship between text and context is stabilized in a way that facilitates the introduction of aspects of the context that are relevant but too difficult to research or aspects of the context that are simply not taken into account in the research. Typically, ideas of deep structure or "logic" emanate from the non-researched context. These constructions, however, remain useful on account of their conventional value in sociological analysis, even if the implications of the assumptions on which they rest are not or cannot be fully explicated. In this respect, a general problem in sociological theory-building is reproduced in sociological DA. In the following section, in the light of these remarks, we lay out an approach to discourse-analytical constructivism that underlines the research conducted for this report. Emphasis will be put on integrating the discourse level and the actor level of the proposed analysis. 11 Favoured constructions include themes in political culture (Gamson 1992), institutional cultures of modernity (Eder 1993), the binary structured discourse of liberal democracy (Alexander/Smith 1993). 16 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 1.2.2 The logic of comparative discourse analysis The methodological starting point for the analysis and explanation of the dynamics and logic of ecological communication is frame analysis (Gamson/Modigliani 1989, Gamson 1992; Snow et al. 1986; Snow/Benford 1988, 1992). Frames are stable patterns of experiencing and perceiving events in the world which structure social experience. The collective actors who participate in ecological discourse each have distinctive "nature" frames which are related both to their cultures and their interests. The project is concerned with the analysis of culture as a dynamic variable; hence, actors' cultures do not simply follow from their interests, though interests of course affect cultural standpoints, but these cultures have a causal status which influences the definition of interests. More generally, the cultural environment of action is constituted in such a way that "nature" attains a generalized status as a container of semantic meanings and rule competences of a factual, normative or evaluative kind, which precede and constrain and/or enable corresponding kinds of action. Actors may be said to occupy cultural frames insofar as these frames involve a distinctive way of understanding the relevant part of the world and an equally distinctive way of relating to it. Collective actors do not have simply one frame with which to understand the world. They may have a number of frames corresponding with "actor fractions", but these frame positions, over time, tend to become more unified as a plethora of frames, carried originally by the institutionally unsecured actor, are subject to pressures towards institutionalization. The frames which the project focuses on are frames borne, in the first instance, by environmental movement actors. These frames articulate both symbolic and normative innovation paths that ultimately - depending on whether and the degree to which they are successful condition other actors behaviour by changing the general cultural environmental of action. They become universalized cultural conditions of action. Concretely, the analysis proceeds in three distinct steps. The first step involves identifying the cognitive devices used in constructing the distinctive actor frames; the second, analysing this construction of frames as a process of symbolic packaging; and the third identifying the master frame which emerges from competing framing strategies in public discourse. In relation to the first step, framing devices are the pragmatic attitudes associated with acting in the three great institutional spheres that separated out with the advent of modernity: science, law and morality, and art. The corresponding framing devices are empirical objectivity, moral responsibility and aesthetic judgement, though, in practice, as will become apparent below, these were refracted into a number of more specific, derivative framing devices for analytic purposes. The actor-specific utilization, or particular actor selection, of framing devices defines the cognitive sources on which social actors draw to create an identity as a "collective actor". Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 17 The second step involves identifying the symbolic forms that organize the framing devices into communicable frames. Framing devices are used by social actors for either generating a moral sense of themselves or for furthering their rational interests. For both purposes, framing devices have to be embedded in collectively shared symbolic forms. To identify frames it is therefore necessary to include the social context of framing devices - that is, empirical social situations with real actors - to move from cognitive to narrative structures. The term "symbolic packaging" describes how actors use framing devices in specific contexts in ways which both constitute their own identity, provide others with a perception of this identify, and engage in discursive competition with these other actors. A third step is to analyse how actors compete for the control of frames in a given discursive field and push their particular framing of issues (symbolic packages) in competition with other actors. From competition over the control of frames emerges a discourse which defines the collective or societal validity of frames of reality. Regarding the first two steps, the "objective" structure of the discourse needed to be taken into account. We identified three factors that we thought of as organizing the media discourse: - a contingent factor: events which focus attention - a structural factor: the mode of resonance of each country - a time factor: attention cycles We controlled for the "contingent factor" by choosing the Chernobyl event as an event which had an equal impact in all countries that were part of our analysis (which is the media discourse in the week of the Chernobyl accident in the years following the accident). Its importance is obvious. It had produced reactions in all newspapers which can be followed throughout the years. A common ground in terms of a shared reference of the different media discourses in place and time was thus guaranteed. The "structural factor" has, firstly, to do with a specific public resonance pattern of environmental issues in national media discourses and, secondly, with a specific institutional resonance pattern. The media analysis gave data on public resonance, the interview analysis on institutional resonance (of which we find in the media discursive effects). The "time factor" is central to the public communication model; it shows attention cycles, resonance inflations and interactive effects of overlapping issue attention cycles. Our data enables us to analyse thoroughly a five year period for identifying mechanisms that were responsible for the dynamics of media discourse beyond the reach of the intentions of consequentially focused collective actors. The interview analysis was expected to show an increasing reflexive consciousness of collective actors regarding the volatility of legitimation-generating issues over time, in terms of an increase of communicative flexibility on their part. Two kinds of textual material have been retrieved: natural texts and reactive texts. Natural texts were those produced in ongoing media discourse and in the text production of 18 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * the researched collective actors, i.e., media texts on the one hand, leaflets, information brochures, programmatic statements and their popularized versions on the other. Reactive texts were those produced in the artificial interview situation in which texts were produced in reaction to the mere presence and the demands of an interviewer (see Appendix I for the interview guide). The coding of these texts was guided by a detailed coding scheme (see Appendix II). The coding of media texts distinguished beyond "objective" indicators such as time and place - the qualitative dimensions of actors, actions, issues and frames. This allowed us to look at combinations of these dimensions over time and across places. The coding of the media texts was to be as detailed as possible in order to admit analytic possibilities not foreseen theoretically and to permit synthetic work, the strategy of making sense of pieces. Coding texts is like a puzzle in which pieces fitting well are grouped together according to an emerging image which can be recognized as meaningful by the researcher. This type of synthesizing strategy, based on an analytical radicalism, can be applied to analytical schemes which provide material for distributional patterns (how more often does x appear as compared to y or z) as well as material for Gestalt patterns (which is the qualitative variant). Such strategies depend on the sense-making capacity of the researcher. Questions of reliability therefore could only be secured by providing strict analytical guidelines, by discussing synthetic strategies and by confronting the results which were produced by the research partners in the other countries. A criterion of the validity of the data is shown by surprising similarities between countries regarding general issue distributions and careers. This "quantitative" discourse analysis provided first information on the cultural context within which collective actors organize their action and try to solve the problems they are confronted with. The methodological strategy of a discourse analysis of media and interview texts thus allowed us to identify the symbolic space within which collective actors interact. It provided the empirical basis for applying the public communication model presented above. To understand the logic and dynamics of this space we took a second step: applying the logic of comparative analysis to the cases analysed. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 19 2 The Practice of the Methodology 2.1 FROM IDEAL TYPES TO REAL CASES: TAKING THE IRISH CASE AS A REFERENCE CASE Our model (PCM), developed from theoretical arguments and from preparatory research, constitutes the "general case" which oriented our research strategies. For the purpose of a guiding comparison of particular cases, this general case has to be theoretically specified. This will be done in the following by constructing an "ideal type" of public communication on environmental issues which is the ideal type of a "late modern discourse". An ideal type does not represent reality, but rather a meaningful and coherent way of how environmental problems can be handled with the cultural biases and institutional opportunities available in European-type societies. The methodological device of an ideal type will then be used to find out in which way the concrete cases deviate from this ideal type. This will allow us not only to describe more exactly the differences between these cases but also to identify some of the factors that explain these differences. In addition to constructing a "late modern" ideal type of a discursive field for environmental problems we will specify this ideal type by confronting it with an empirical reference case. We do this by using our most "extreme case" which is the Irish case. This case is different insofar as it is peripheral to the European "core countries". Its cultural resonances differ sharply from those of the core countries and the problems with which collective actors are faced and around which they organize their conflictual strategies and their consensual possibilities. In order to understand the value of this methodology it is necessary to link our general model to the comparative reference case, namely ecological communication in Ireland. In order to adequately set up the specific research questions for the following analysis, we will outline the main implications of the framework below (see table 1 below). What characterizes this model is the examination of how a process of socio-cultural interaction precipitated by an environmental social movement leads to innovation in the cultural realm, by diffusing a long-run but suppressed cultural relation to nature. The existence of a cultural option of this kind, and the presence of a social actor capable of carrying it, are the indispensable causal conditions of the phenomenon. These also are present throughout the framework. The Irish part of the framework, column three, involves a specific analysis of the nature and degree of the presence and consequences of the phenomenon and its attendant set of causal conditions in one cultural setting. The model represents additional levels of research focus. These are the context of socio-cultural interaction, the intervening structural conditions that facilitate or constrain the interaction, the interaction process itself, and, finally, the consequences of interaction. These are described below in table 1. 2.2 CONTEXT 20 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The context refers to the immediate conditions of the interaction process. This is composed of two research foci: the multi-organizational discursive field which is the condition and the product of the interaction between the actors and the print medium which is the material condition of a critical aspect of the multi-organizational field. The context is based on assumptions about the constitutive significance of inter-actor discourse between the three major collective actors. The assumption that inter-actor discourse between competing collective actors - played out in the public forum of the mass media - is pivotal to understanding the reflexive relationship between culture and discourse today, already involves a specific articulation of the idea of a discursive field. The DA proper involves the analysis of this discursive field and discursive agency within it. It has been assumed that public, ecological communication has become highly organized, both by virtue of the organizational structure, strategies and identities of competing collective actors and in the structure and contents of the communication that passes between them. Further, it is assumed that this organized communication may give rise to an ideological discourse. Inter-actor communication is played out through the media, which in turn brings in the assumption that the contemporary media has immense power as a vehicle for agenda-building within contemporary public spheres. Public communication played out through the media has a decisive influence in shaping the environmental consciousness of mass publics. In the Irish case, this context is conditioned by a relatively unstable multi-organizational field which is cognitively highly volatile and therefore not yet possessed of significant norm creating powers for the behaviour of the concerned actors. The state actor is characterized by conflicting criteria of political performance, chiefly the conflict between acting as regulatory or developmentary agency. Different priorities in these dimensions make for a difficult balancing act when trying to establish common ground in conflict situations, especially since the dual, conflictual legitimation discourse that arises in these situation mirrors precisely the state's own structural ambivalence. One side of this legitimation discourse is characterized by an environmental collective actor which has at its disposal a range of discourses, from fundamentalist deep ecology to political ecological reformism. The other side of the legitimation discourse is occupied by the business actor which also disposes over a range of discourses, ranging from outright dismissal of environmental claims to various stances of accommodation. The print medium, while highly institutionalized and important in public communication, is characterized by the unusual absence of a significant left-of-centre newspaper. It generally tends to be both right-of-centre and populist, something which forms a barrier to environmentalist messages. 2.3 INTERVENING CONDITIONS Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 21 Intervening conditions that bear upon socio-cultural interaction between collective actors are understood as the opportunity structures for symbolic mobilization and resonance. They are organized in table 1 around the three variables of the broad context of collective action, cultural themes of nature, and the opportunity structure of environmentalist symbolic action. To understand the import of opportunity structures of this kind, symbolic mobilization and resonance of environmentalist themes within ecological communication has to be seen in the broader opportunity constellation for ecological communication within societal communication (Luhmann, 1989, Miller 1994) which is conditioned by the relationship between the public sphere and the political and economic systems (Habermas 1987). Within this frame the dimensions of table 1 referring respectively to European late modernity and to Ireland - but relating here, specifically, to intervening conditions - should be understood. The contents of this table are further elaborated in the sub-sections below. (i) Actors Large scale collective actors associated in the first instance with social movements demanding innovation have a pivotal role in constituting modern society; their existence is in fact a distinctive characteristic of that society. The environmental movement is a collective actor that has long run roots in the culture of modernity. However, in contemporary society, a developmental path opens up for its cultural messages due to the high salience of environmental problems on the public agenda. The competitors of the environmental actors are business actors and political actors. These collective actors belong to earlier social movement activism which have left them structurally and culturally at the core of modern societies. While identifying actors at this level of abstraction tends to obliterate differences, these differences can partly be picked up in the analysis. The development path of cultural innovation derives from the environmental protest actor which, partly animated by a widespread perception of risk, poses problems that the other actor must address. The environmental actor is, in contrast to the other actors, built on principles of communicative self-organization and carries both substantive cultural and proceduralcommunicative principles that challenge the "rationality foundations" of existing economic and state-political mechanisms. This is leading, in tandem with wider social change, to a reconstruction of the institutional conditions of action by all major social actors. This becomes pronounced within the legitimation sphere of environmental politics. In the Irish case, understanding action potentials necessitates some prior understanding of a previous period of collective mobilization. The founding of the Republic of Ireland took place as a product of a many-stranded nationalist mobilization between the 1870s and 1920s which led to its political separation from the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. The institutionalization of nationalist mobilization into the nation-state 22 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * form led, on the contrary, to a period of low political mobilization, after the internal cleavages within the nationalist mobilization had resolved themselves into a normal politics of competition between two strands of the post-movement settlement. The Catholic church also became immensely influential in establishing the culture of politics through its organized domination of the production of culture. The framework of political activity in the new state therefore took on the form of a Catholic corporatism in which the cultural remit of possible political action depended on acceptance of a rigid, Catholic cultural code. The extension of this code to the whole of social life ensured both that new ideas of political need did not emerge or where they emerged that they could easily be suppressed. This Catholic-corporatist model of society was constitutionally copper-fastened in the so-called Free State Constitution of 1937. The slow march of social change began to change the terms of this settlement from the late 1950s onwards. Gradually, the framework of Catholic corporatism began to loosen to be replaced by a new kind of corporatist settlement, in which the major players, Trade Unions, Employers and Government, began to define and operate from their own, relatively secularized, institutional cultures. From the late 60s, this model was ever more powerfully accompanied by a profusion of organized interest groups who sought to influence political decisions by the mobilization of public opinion. The latter phenomenon partly represented the emergence of a new politics of need (and of opposition to new needs) on issues such as women's rights, health, welfare, and the environment, a development related to the declining significance of political parties and an increase in self-organized mobilization and in participation norms. Notwithstanding these changes, environmental mobilization has, on the whole, been relatively low. The pattern of mobilization has been overwhelmingly issue-driven and localized with a tendency to rhetorically identify rather than practically act on environmental issues (Skillington 1993). Only in the last number of years has Green politics reached the threshold of electoral penetration, a development which signifies a slow translation of immediate opposition to risky development into a more principled understanding and support for environmentalist goals. Many of the major international environmental organizations are now present in Ireland and, as will be apparent later, they have tended to introduce new cultural perspectives or revitalize older ones in the service of new interests. (ii) Culture The innovative impulse carried by the environmental collective actor is located in the specific understanding of the relationship between humanity and nature. The dominant model of this relationship is the domination of nature by humans, but an historically longrun alternative model of a more sympathetic relationship to nature, carried by a countercultural movement, has run like a thread through the modern period. This alternative relationship to nature has gained unparalleled force in the culture of contemporary Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 23 society as a consequence of its increasing density of communication and greater fluidity of cultural forms, coupled with structural changes and the widespread perception of the environment as a social problem. Changing ideas and values about the relationship between humanity and nature give rise to new ethical codes seeking collective societal validity through the construction of institutionally sanctioned classificatory systems and norms. The perception of problems associated with an instrumental frame is growing and this creates new levels of cultural opportunity for messages that crystallize these perceptions. Political and business actors, in turn, are forced to recognize the increasing potency and constraining implications of the cultural consequences of these messages. In order to gain an understanding of the culture of environmentalism in Ireland some knowledge is required about the wider social and political culture. A "classic" description of this culture which has obtained throughout most of the lifetime of the state and still provides benchmarks by means of which to assess cultural change may be provided by the following account which is drawn from materials on Irish political culture. The social and political culture in Ireland has been characterized by: - a high level of authoritarianism and paternalism emanating from Catholic moralization of cultural codes is exported into norms of political action. The moralization of cultural codes has an innovation- and critique-inhibiting force which re-enforces antiintellectualism. Anti-intellectualism and its correlate anti-modernism protect cultural tradition from reflexive testing and restrict the discursive fluidization of authority. They also restrict the sphere of evaluative reflection. - the presence of communitarian and imaginary rules deriving from a rigidly prescriptive definition of the imaginary national community, and immunized from discursive testing, that block the politicization of existing suppressed needs and the formulation of new ones. The absence of reflexive discourse prevents latent oppositional elements from becoming anchored in the political culture. The authoritarianism and the unexplicit foundations of this political culture, grounded in a totalizing national identity, impede the mobilization of opposition and ensures low levels of participation. The mechanism of participation is based on local personal bonds (clientelism) for specific individual or group needs. - The dominant class culture is that of a petite-bourgeoisie, comprising farmers, merchants, traders, professionals, which traditionally reacted against the advent of urban, secular and industrial society. This class culture constituted the dominant intellectual stratum which shaped the normative notions of nature, virtue, respectability, privatism, sexlessness, masculinity, national landscape, that were institutionalized in the new nation-state, a process that was accompanied by an erosion of the power of the intelligentsia in favour of the clergy who could better shape and diffuse these ideals. 24 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * - Notions of rights and justice derive, within the overarching framework of a Catholicized moral code, both from this petit-bourgeois class culture and a diffuse egalitarian coalition, small farmers, workers, welfare dependents who were united in the quasiegalitarian push for national citizenship. - Populist legitimation foundations are derived from a culturalist construction of the nation that involves direct dominance of the "people" with little regard to constitutional arrangements (at least those of a liberal-pluralist kind), the institutional mediation of power relations or minority rights. Populism, of course, is also characterized by antiintellectualism. - The British constitutional and legal tradition has left a respect for legal and political procedure and underpinned the cultural stability of democracy as procedure. Democratic procedure is based on formal parliamentary rules and a fragmented, populist discourse acts as a relief mechanism both for the formality of rules and the rigid moralization of the life-world. Since populist mediation of politics (phenomena of personalization, conventionalism, and localism) arose from a reaction to the construction of a modern, bureaucratic state within the UK, Irish political culture is constructed by putting the state on the outside of a highly moralized life-world. But the state, disburdened from reflexive scrutiny, precisely mirrors the life-world and institutionally reproduces it through legitimate authoritarianism. - The consciousness of peripherality and isolation, fuelled by myths of "race exploitation", feeding into a powerful national we-feeling engenders a culture of apologia which deflects criticism outwards but in so doing creates a further culture of disablement and non-responsibility which re-enforces structures of dependency and passivity. The above elements together represent an ideal-typical characterisation of the political culture of the Republic of Ireland. In fact, this characterisation represents a model whose significance is waning (Strydom 1994). The symbolic order of Irish politics can be broken into a first phase, from the 1920s to the 1950s, which is characterized by the post nationalist movement institutionalization of a Catholic habitus as the arbiter of political values. This is accompanied by the development of a Catholic body of rights and duties. The second phase is based on the continuing hegemony of Catholic-corporatist values but one which is now penetrated by alternative societally anchored goals based on liberal-individualist, entrepreneurial, urbanist, and welfarist values. Catholic rights are now set in a more secular environment and considerations of the relationships between rights and justice lead to the beginning of a re-elaboration of rights within existing social and constitutional limits. This phase was dominant from the 1950s to the 1970s. The third phase which has run from the late 1970s to the present is characterized by the continued persistence but fluidization and politicization of the Catholic habitus as public communication increasingly dilutes its cultural and psychological foundations. The exploration of rights within the existing legal framework is now joined by a new politics of Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 25 need which leads to the articulation of fundamental new rights arising from new cognitive models. The most prominent of these rights are women's rights and environmental rights. Both are the subject of major new public discourses. It should finally be emphasized that these phases cannot be rigidly separated from one another; elements of both the first and second phases are still strongly present in the third phase. The culture of environmentalism has historically been quite closely related to the British model, where the environment has been understood in terms of conservation. But the conservation theme was an important constitutive component of a nationalist identity that ultimately broke the British political link and, less successfully, sought to break the cultural hold of "anglicization". So, at a relatively early point, symbolic representations of the environment became associated with a nationalist mobilization that was anti-English and distanced from the Protestant elite who were the early bearers of conservationist themes. A prominent aspect of Irish nationalism was a romantic rejection of enlightenment and the modern life forms that followed from it, so Irish environmentalism's distance from the enlightenment was focalized through a conservative national movement. But modern environmentalism in Ireland is partly recognizable as a new movement carrying ideas of participation and substantive cultural ideas that bring it into conflict with the populist authoritarian cultural form of political power that followed the successful nationalist mobilization. To the extent that it faces in both directions, inclusive nationalist populism and modern ideas of participatory democracy, Irish environmentalism unifies two alternative cultural currents within itself. (iii) Structure The structural changes that shape the action and discourse context of environmentalism are wide-ranging but the most significant are the often-referred to decentring of the centrality of politics, and the related emergence of new institutional forms that connect politics and civil society, major economic changes leading to a post-industrial economic structure, and the emergence of an extended middle-class of which a significant number carry new "post-materialist" values. All three kinds of changes described in terms of lateor post-modernity involve a movement away from hierarchical forms of social order. All three kinds of change put a premium on symbolic innovation whether in procuring legitimation for political decisions in a dis-aligned political society, in securing organizational compliance inside or organizational legitimacy outside of work-based organizations, or in the production of selves or collectivities. These intervening structural conditions take the following form in the Irish case. The first - already to some degree characterized in the actor framework - involves a shift from a closed, secretive Catholic corporatism, to a relatively more open corporatism representing a diversified institutional culture and, subsequently, to variants on neo- or post-corporatism reflecting the premises of the new politics. These changes reflect both a shift in the cultural premises of discourse in the public sphere, and a transformation in 26 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * the structural coupling of the public sphere with the core of political decision-making. This makes issues of transparency, accountability and participation of higher political salience. In relation to the second variable of economic structure, the productive organization of the economy has moved from a substantially agricultural base in the first period, to a developing industrial base built around export-led growth largely generated by inward investment of multi-national capital in the second. This has then led to a third phase in which there is a definitive decline in the importance of agricultural production, an expansion in scale of multi-national investment, a massive growth in the scale and diversity of service industry and a new emphasis on the development of an indigenous, export-oriented industrial sector. The current expansion of multi-national capital has been based to a significant degree on the siting of high-risk industries such as pharmaceuticals and chemicals in Ireland, as a cognitively capably but poorly-regulated periphery. This has, in turn, led to escalating conflict between proponents and opponents of these developments. Tourism as the major service industry of the country has also become embroiled in fundamental environmental disputes over the despoliation of landscapes. The third variable - the transformation in social stratification - has seen the transformation of class structure encapsulated in two phases of movement from the first phase of rural, petit-bourgeois, and artisan foundation to two distinctive shifts: in the second phase, the growth of a new urban working- and middle-class strata; and, in the third phase, the relative decline of the working-class and the further growth of the new middle-class which has accompanied the expansion of service industries. This development has been accompanied by a relative renaissance of independent intellectual and cultural life carried by a new intellectual stratum. The ideal type of a late modern type of society has been developed though a paired comparison of a real type with a theoretical type. It has helped us to clarify the dimensions which come into play in the analysis of communication systems. The context is first of all symbolically defined, as discursive space into which different factors intervene and the reproduction of which is shaped by these factors. These are the action capacities of collective actors, their interpretations and their structural positions. The relationship of discursive contexts and collective action is worked out in this model; it shows the complementarity of both perspectives which, however, have to be separated analytically for research purposes. The synthetic work is what the comparative analysis has to contribute: to show how in a typical way discourses and actors are connected. This determines the way they act and the way they perceive what they and the others do. It is only by comparative analysis that we can go beyond the perspective of given actors and evaluate their action repertoire in the light of others. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 27 Table 1: The Framework of Research LEVELS OF ANALYSIS/SCALE EUROPEAN LATE MODERNITY IRELAND phenomenon The way in which socio-cultural interaction precipitated by an environmental social movement leads to innovation in the cultural realm by the diffusion of a long-run but suppressed cultural relation to nature The degree to which the object of investigation of the project as a whole applies in the case of Ireland in the context of the symbolic order of the Irish public sphere causal conditions The existence of a cultural option of an alternative relation to nature, the presence of a social actor capable of carrying it, and the appropriate opportunity structures for this actor to establish this theme in public discourse The existence of a cultural option of relating to nature embedded in a symbolic-political order shaped by a conservative Catholic and national identity, the rise of an increasingly organized social movement actor, and a specific constellation of opportunity structures field Multi-organizational discursive fields between state, economic and civil societal actors multi-organizational discursive fields between the relevant actors are weakly-articulated, volatile and unstable medium Public communicative exchange through the print-medium has a balancing effect in communicating public discourse across the political spectrum The structure of the print-medium is unusual by European standards in lacking a major left-of-centre indigenous newspaper Collective actors corresponding to major institutional spheres of modernity with focus on cultural innovation by environmental social movement actors who have been able to attain a high level of mobilization in relatively favourable circumstances. This is accompanied by growing restraint on other Exchange between collective actors constituting a public discourse with a relatively weak environmental actor struggling to achieve resonance for its frames. Correspondingly, the capacity of political and economic actors to pursue goals without normative restraint, though diminishing, is still relatively CONTEXT INTERVENING CONDITIONS collective action and opportunity structure 28 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * actors. high. culture and opportunity structure Modernity characterised by cultural value of responsible public communication and by two-stranded humanity/nature relation; dominant instrumental and sympathetic. The growing perception that the dominant instrumental model no longer answers cultural needs leads to increased resonance for social movement frames. Environmental movement struggling to communicate sympathetic and riskless relation to nature and "institutional myth of discursivity" in historically relatively closed public sphere in which alternative nature themes have been, to a large extent, absorbed into national identity themes. structures and opportunity structure Economic (post-industrialization), social (new class fractions) and political (de-centring of political system/institutional innovation) create space for new symbolic politics. Political, social, and economic structures make symbolic mobilization difficult but pattern of events, and symbolic contestation that accompanies them, has an opening effect framing devices Distinctive configurations of classifying devices by collective actors based on the three major cultural orientations of modernity, scientific, moral, and aesthetic, Framing devices heavily related to national culture and distinctive "local" style of political communication frames Cultural attitudes to nature available in modern societies mobilized by framing devices Gradual emergence of "realistic" political ecology frame on the side of environmentalists. Frames carried by state and economic actors gradually tempering hostility to environmentalism themes Culturally available meaning clusters which are appropriated in actors' statements but which also provide them with contexts of relevance Cultural themes relating to the environment deeply embedded in national symbolic order forcing environmentalist symbolization to mobilize general cultural themes in pursuit of environmental goals discourses Types of discourse which semantically organize the exchange of themes expressed through framing devices Addition of significant new discourses to the structure of environmental discourse in the last decade SOCIAL INTERACTION Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * discursive agency 29 The packaging of distinctive cultural themes by collective actors using specific configurations of the framing devices regulating modern communication Idem Cultural innovation proceeds with successful implantation in public culture of identity frames carried by environmental collective actors which become discursively institutionalized as an ethical master frame of public communication with normative consequences Cultural innovation proceeds to the point where coherent identity frame carried by environmental collective actor leads to minimal ethics of ecological discourse based on the principle of discursivity which has significant, if uneven, normative implications CONSEQUENCES anticipated outcome of discourse (medium term, eg, 1015 years) 30 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 2.4 PROVIDING THE GROUND FOR EXTENDED COMPARISON The project has proceeded by means of a methodology of inquiry based on a deductiveinductive loop that involves applying general hypotheses to particular, national cases and recombining the results. The phenomenon in the Irish case, the reference case of the general hypothesis, is the subject of detailed analysis in the empirical section of this report. Here, in line with the methodological remarks above and further following table 1, ecological communication is analysed as a process of symbolic interaction between the collective actors who are responsible for discursive agency. This agency is accomplished within the horizons of the distinctive frames that the collective actors introduce, by means of the mobilization of cultural themes via the use of framing devices. Themes are symbolically organized meaning containers that are both specific and general. When actors mobilize a specific theme it needs to have general relevance to be effective, a micro-theme applied in a specific case must resonate with a macrotheme in the symbolic political order in question. Actors attempt to achieve maximum symbolic affect on various receptions sectors of the public by using cultural judgement on what will resonate most meaningfully, and pragmatic or symbolic judgement on the precise framing devices that will enable the culturally chosen theme to best do so. The combination of cultural theme and symbolic form can be described as an actors’ statement. Hence themes are both input and output conditions of statements and of the organization of statements in specific discourses produced by symbolic interaction. These discourses factor environmental public culture into distinctive types of exchange which transcend the specific issues (flora and fauna, chemical and so on) in which they arise, though certain discourses tend to be more associated with certain issues as will be apparent in the analyses presented below. The objective of the analysis is to show how the hypothesis of the project applies in the different case: that is to examine whether there is a restructuring of public discourse on account of the rise of environmentalism, which is taking effect as the institutionalization of certain cultural themes with corresponding shifts in the conditions of discursive agency. In the following, therefore, we proceed in two major steps. Firstly, we analyse the symbolic resources and processes which characterize environmental public discourse, based on the detailed coding work of media discourses. In a second step, the role of collective actors in this process is then evaluated. This leads us to the construction of the ideal type of institutionalized environmental politics: the identification of cultural biases and their institutionalization in specific rules of the game. Each case will therefore be analysed in two dimensions, i.e. resonance structure and institutional structure. These two dimensions have been operationalized in the following way. In the first dimension, the resonance structure in media discourse, was analysed in three ways: - in a content analysis of the coverage of issues, actors and discourse types; - in a qualitative reconstruction of the Chernobyl story line showing Chernobyl to be a metaphor for human responsibility for environmental degradation; Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 31 - in a qualitative frame analysis of environmentalist concerns in national political cultures. On this basis the cohesion/conflictuality of the resonance structure and the functionality of the resonance structure as a symbolic opportunity structure for consequential collective actors has been assessed. In the second dimension, the institutional structure of the field of environmental politics was analysed using interview texts with the following actors: - with political actors to identify (a) fora for politics and policy making and (b) information strategies; - with social movement actors ("NGO's") to identify (a) the degree of institutionalization reached, (b) the division of labour between movement organizations, and (c) the media attention to and media mobilization by social movement organizations; - with industrial actors to identify (a) strategies of controlling the risky political environment, (b) their media profile, and (c) their preferred way of going either technological or dialogical. On this basis the rules of the game of the underlying institutional order embedded in a specific discursive universe has been identified. The following presentation of the country studies (PART II) is organized along these operational lines. This formal structure of the presentation of the cases lays the ground for the comparative analysis later (PART III). 32 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * PART II: FIVE CASE STUDIES FOR COMPARISON In five case studies which were defined by their political boundaries ("nation-states"), the interplay of media discourse and actor strategies has been analysed. The analysis of media discourse aimed at identifying the specific resonance structure which defines the symbolic opportunity structure for consequential collective actors. This structure determines the chances to be listened to in public to which actors react by engaging in communication strategies. The analysis of actor strategies as embedded in such a symbolic opportunity structure is aimed at identifying the rules which structure the interaction of these actors. In each case we want to show that an institutional regime is emerging which is characteristic of the case in question. A comparative analysis of these cases in Part III will then explore whether we can identify different types of institutional regimes in the field of the environment or whether we are confronted with a convergence of culturally and politically quite distinct countries toward a common type of environmental regime. This analysis has obviously policy implications in the sense that a European environmental policy has to take into account the dynamics of a process of potential convergence or divergence to reproduce itself as a publicly visible and substantially consequential political actor. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 35 3 Ireland: Media Discourse, Actor Strategies and Institutional Rules 3.1 THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE IN IRELAND: SELECTING A NEWSPAPER SAMPLE Newspapers are an important information channel for a large percentage of Irish adults with a net daily reach of 86.6%.12 The print media is a particularly significant medium for environmental issues in Ireland. "This [the press] is the single largest source [of environmental information] for the majority of people, in particular in the Dublin area among the 25-34 age group" (An Taisce, 1987). The Irish media landscape currently consists of twenty national newspapers, in excess of one hundred provincial and suburban newspapers and a large number of magazines and periodicals (O'Donnell et al. 1992). The majority of the print media in the Republic of Ireland support a conservative political viewpoint with the possible exception of the Irish Times and tend in general to target the affluent ABC1 category (O'Donnell et al. 1992, O'Reilly 1991).13 It needs to be stated explicitly that the Irish context is characterised by the unusual absence of a left of centre newspaper. The media data bank for the Irish case study contains 9 publications.14 A representative cross section of the Irish print media was desired which encompassed a variety of genres, a temporally differentiated range (i.e. daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly) and represented a variegated world view and readership. The choice was predicated not simply on circulation figures but on a range of publications that would satisfy these criteria and were included on the basis of contextual knowledge and recommended by a variety of actors as pertinent to our objectives. 12 European Campaign Planner, Issue 5, Spring 1993, p. 10. 13 Although this segment is targeted there is a high degree of differentiation in the readerships of the various newspapers. The Irish Times has a 75% ABC1 readership whereas the Sunday World and The Star both reach almost 80% C2DE readership (Hussey 1993: 353). 14 The data bank includes 4 daily newspapers ( Irish Times, Irish Press, Cork Examiner, The Star), one Sunday newspaper (Sunday World), one weekly newspaper (Irish Farmers Journal), a fortnightly magazine ( The Phoenix), a monthly official publication ( Technology Ireland ) and a quarterly (Earthwatch). 36 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 3.2 THE IRISH NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE ON THE ENVIRONMENT 3.2.1 Content Analysis: issue structure The issue categories are divided into the classification of general and specific problems.15 The category 'general problems' focuses on the relatively unspecified discourse about the environment and includes the problems of air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, depletion of resources and the question of pollution in general. The category 'specific problems' addressed problems related to particular issues such as global problems, chemical/ physical problems, flora/fauna problems and public life problems. An overview of the combined problem categories reveals that in general environmental issues are predominantly concentrated in the "news" section or the "features" section of our sources. The "news" section accounts for 34.4% of total coverage of environmental problems with the daily newspapers tending to emphasise this category. The next significant section for environmental problems is "feature" articles which account for 26.5% of all coverage but this is largely due to the preponderance of the more specialist and marginal press to adopt this format. Only 7.4% of all of the environmental issues coded warranted editorial attention. Environment and Science columns accounted for only 5% and 2% respectively of all coverage. The number of articles that appeared in the "politics" section is negligible with only 1.3% of all articles appearing in this section. In quantitative terms the dominant general problems were resource depletion, general pollution and water pollution. A number of issues can be traced through the general problems category that correspond to more specific issues. The depletion of resources, in particular, is linked to the specific sub-issues of nuclear power, rainforests, the destruction of the built and natural environment and harm to animals. Specifically, these relate to the controversy over the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria, concern over land fill dumps and the destruction of wildlife habitats. The issue of general pollution usually occurs as an umbrella reference to more specific debates such as littering and problems with the chemical industry. The significance of this sub-category increases in relation more general debate surrounding the Earth Summit in 1992. The Rio Earth Summit provides an opportunity, not only for reference to global problems, but also a 15 Some of the general problems overlap with the specific issue categories identified. The coding of an issue in one category does not impede its coding in subsequent categories. Multiple coding, as in the Italian case, has contributed to covering all of the issues and sub-issues. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 37 more generalised discourse on pollution. The problem of water pollution is linked predominantly to the seasonal risk of pollution to rivers from agricultural effluent. Its relative stability from 1987 to 1991 can be attributed to the now annual exchange between experts issuing pollution warnings, environmental groups calling for regulation and agricultural organisations calling for financial palliatives. This issue peaks in 1989 when the agricultural community reacts unfavourably to a proposed water pollution legislation. The issue of air pollution on the other hand is somewhat unstable as it is linked to specific events such as emissions from the chemical industry in 1987. The statement by Margaret Thatcher proposing nuclear power as a clean source of power in 1989 and debates about smog in 1990 and 1992. Soil pollution was not a significant problem in the Irish media discourse and only arose as a secondary problem associated with agricultural effluent. Specific problems are broken into four major categories.16 Quantitatively, the most significant categories were flora and fauna problems, chemical /physical problems, public life problems and global problems. Flora and fauna problems were broken into three sub-categories. The first sub-category was 'harm to landscape', i.e. rivers, lakes, forests, coastal zones, parks, reserves etc. The next was 'harm to animals' which includes the threat posed by economic activity to aquatic life and to wildlife, and, the debate about hunting. A third category referred to a composition of both categories. Flora and Fauna problems are relatively stable across the sample with a peak in 1992 related to the impending Earth Summit and the escalation of debates surrounding the role of the natural and built environment in national identity. Many of the flora and fauna problems are bound up with other specific problems such as chemical pollution from industry and agriculture. Three problems are specified within the category of Chemical Physical Problems. In order of importance these are chemical pollution/toxic waste, nuclear power and soil contamination. Coverage of chemical pollution ranges from oil spills and the use of agrochemicals to problems with the chemical pharmaceutical industry. The coverage of many of these issues tends to have a localised focus in view of the prominence of single issue conflicts regarding industrial location decisions. The nuclear power issue, not surprisingly, peaks on the first anniversary of Chernobyl in 1987. The major issues can be broken down into coverage on the anniversary of Chernobyl, the Nuclear reprocessing facility at Sellafield in Cumbria and nuclear submarines. The problematization of nuclear power is interesting since it is an issue of national importance that receives a substantial degree of attention relative to other problems. The renewed importance of the nuclear issue in 1990 is directly attributable to controversy regarding a nuclear reprocessing contract between Germany and the Thorpe facility at Sellafield. 16 Initially there was a fifth category which was designed to pick up on addition problems not included in the specific categories. This later proved to be unnecessary. 38 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Environmental pollution has a number of implications for everyday life, this includes contamination of water and food, dumping and littering, and, effects on public health. Public health problems converge for the most part on the issues of radiation and chemical pollution and dominate this category. The problem of domestic waste is articulated as a problem of littering but also comes into focus regarding the location of landfill sites. The problem of litter is generally related to the adverse consequences on tourism and is linked to individual campaigning journalism as is the case in 1988 and 1990. Global Problems referred to problems of global consequence such as global warming, ozone depletion, deforestation and acid rain. In general, global problems are poorly represented in the Irish case and no issue appears in every year of the sample. Articles on global problems are mostly contained in the more marginal or specialist press. Global warming is the most significant issue in this category and its path ranges from stating the problem in 1987 to the announcement of remedial measures on a national level in 1989. This extends to expectations of solutions in the run up to the Earth Summit in 1992. Coverage of global problems peaks in 1992 because of the Earth Summit. However the focus is not purely international as there is a localist focus in the Irish Farmers Journal on the possible positive effects of climate change on agricultural yields. 3.2.2 Content analysis: actors named in text Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 39 A large variety of types of actors were included in the coding scheme. A total of thirteen coding categories were applied to relevant actors in the Irish data bank. Due to the presence of more than one type of actor the coding of actor types was multiple. A number of types emerged as particularly important. The most significant named actor that emerged was in the category 'political/ non-protest' which includes 'conventional types of political actors such as government17 and opposition, parliaments, political parties and supranational organisations such as the UN18 and the EC19. This categorisation was the most quantitatively significant accounting for almost 24% of all actors mentioned in text. The most significant sub-category was that of government/administration and particularly the Irish government. The broad range of Irish government and state bodies reflects the diversity of issues and the hitherto fragmentary nature of administrative structures concerned with environmental problems. Local Authorities appear in the database relative to the localised nature of many conflicts and as a result of the contradictory character of Local Authorities as both development agencies and environmental regulators.20 The governments of other countries figure to a lesser degree in the Irish data bank. The most significant among these is the Soviet (later Russian & Ukrainian) government, who appear in relation to the continuing debate around Sellafield. The increasing importance of the EC(EU) in Irish life is reflected in the presence of EC(EU) institutions in the data bank. Non-specified actors are prominent in the Irish media. This category was applied where there is reference to 'the people' and is closely related to the importance of collective common interest and moralisation frames. References to 'the people' and 'the community' generally appear in articles where named actors are also identified. This classification is generally applied to the denote 'the people of Ireland' or 'the people of 17 The most significant actor mentioned was the Irish Government and various extensions of state. There was a broad range of ministers and departments evident in the data base e.g. Minister for Energy, Minister for the Environment, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Agriculture, Minister for Finance, Department of Communications, Department of the Marine, Department of the Taoiseach (Office of Public Works). There were also various extensions of the state including the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) and Customs and Excise. Other Governments who appeared in the data bank include the British, Soviet (later Russian and Ukrainian), US, French, Malaysian and West German. 18 UN organisations featured include U.N.E.P, U.N.E.S.C.O AND W.H.O 19 EC organisations include the Commission, Parliament and Council and also the European Environment Bureau and the EC Fisheries Conservation Unit. 20 No further distinction was drawn between central government and local government in the coding scheme, therefore no quantitative assessment of relative importance can be made. However the following local authorities were included: Cork Corporation, Cork County Council, Dublin Corporation, Donegal County Council, Meath County Council, Kerry County Council, Dungarvan Urban Council and Galway Corporation. 40 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Chernobyl' etc. The persistence of this category across the data-bank is seen as an indicator of the importance of populist legitimation in the Irish context.21 Environmental groups per se account for only 9% of total coverage of environmentally relevant actors. If we add protest organisations, who are predominantly single issue campaigns or networks, this figure increases to 13%. The most prominent environmental groups mentioned are Greenpeace and Earthwatch.22 21 22 This point is taken up at a later stage with reference to cultural resonance. The relative importance of Earthwatch is overstated by the fact that we have included an environmental magazine in our data bank. Earthwatch magazine proclaims itself Ireland's only environmental magazine and although it covers a broad range of topics it tend to publicise the organisation's own campaigns. The organisation does not achieve the same prominence in the mainstream press although it does get some coverage. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 41 Greenpeace attain most prominence in 1987 following their spectacular action of blocking the outfall pipe at the Sellafield nuclear plant. Greenpeace are again prominent in 1991 regarding the Thorp installation at Sellafield. Greenpeace are a mainstay in Irish media coverage of environmental issues appearing in all the years covered in our analysis. They are particularly present in relation to the nuclear power issue and the anti-toxic industry debate. Earthwatch are present in the mainstream press in relation to the discourse around Chernobyl in 1987 and 1988 and also in relation to the Kowloon Bridge disaster in 1987. Earthwatch are affiliated to international environmental organisation Friends of the Earth (FOE) who appear in their own right especially in 1987/88 in relation to demonstrations on the anniversary of Chernobyl. From 1987 to 1992 there is a steady growth in 'other' environmental organisations reported in the media from 10% of all environmental groups covered in 1987 to around 35% in 1992. Many of these organisations have existed on the environmental landscape for a considerable period of time and the increased media share could be interpreted as an increased propensity to direct themselves at the media.23 The category 'protest actors' denotes informal networks that emerge around particular single issues and local groups and in total they account for only 4% of all actors mentioned in text. It is only in the latter part of the sample, from 1990 to 1992 that Green Parties, both national and international, emerge in any marked fashion. Business actors broadly defined were broken into three separate categorisations, business/industrial, agrarian business (including agriculture, aquaculture and mariculture) and service sector organisations. When aggregated the total representation of business actors is a significant 22% of actors reported. The most significant category was business/industrial accounting for over 50% of business actors coded. This category was continually represented across the data bank with two main industrial sectors emerging as the most significant. The chemical industry fluctuates in importance from around 10% of total industrial coverage in 1987 to 40% in 1989 and the energy industry 23 Gamson (1995) makes an important observation in relation to the media standing of social movement organisations. He argues that those who open the doors for others to gain media standing may often find that their preferred frame is poorly represented by those who have become spokespersons in the media. Greenpeace are acknowledged by many of the environmental groups interviewed as an important factor in facilitating media access. However, this has resulted in competition among organisations for media attention and has proved an obstacle to the effective division of labour among environmental groups communicating environmental issues. 42 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * ranges from around 15% in 1988 to almost 70% in 1990. It should be noted however that the energy industry reported in the data bank is not indigenous, coverage primarily relates to BNFL and the international nuclear industry. Agrarian business accounts for around 8% of total actors represented and is somewhat overstated by the fact that one of the newspapers include in the data bank specifically targets this sector. This sector is nevertheless present in the databank throughout the period studied. If we cluster the media, business actors in general and scientific institutions some 36% of total actors represented are accounted for. The role of scientific discourse in Irish environmental debates is reflected by the continuous presence of scientific institutions in media coverage. Experts or scientific institutions appear in every year covered in the data bank and account for nearly 12% of environmental actors reported. The more marginal categories were also illustrative. Celebrity figures sponsoring environmental discourse in the media were so insignificant as to barely register at 0.8% of actors reported. The category 'other societal actors' which included trades unions, the church and professional groups accounted for only 2% of actors identified in text. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 43 3.2.3 Types of environmental discourse This category is based on pre-existing knowledge and experience on the environmental discourse. These categories are frameworks of discourse that structure the environmental debate and rely on the evaluation of the coder to classify the newspaper articles according to the seven ideal types provided by the coding scheme.24 Unlike previous categories there was no opportunity to code for more than one option.25 The first type of discourse identified is technical and industrial growth which refers to articles which relate environmental discourse to problems of economic growth and development. The initial impression of results runs counter intuitively and suggests a relatively low, albeit persistent, presence of this category. However this is a purely environmental discourse and does not negate the observation that the competition between economy and environment plays an important role in structuring the Irish environmental debate. By way of illustration we need to briefly look at the category "relation of environmental discourses to other discourses". This category seeks to capture the nature of competing discourses and clearly illustrates that the most frequent competition is between environmental discourses and "political and economic issues". This categorisation represents between 51% and 73% of all competing discourses. The category of "Technical/Industrial growth" tends to address the economic potential of environmentalism i.e. growth in tourism and agriculture through a green image or conversely the economic fallout from pollution. This discourse persists although somewhat erratically from 1987 to 1991 and does not register in 1992. This discourse peaks in 1988 and represents 8% of all discourse coded in the sample for that year, but in the other years that it appears it accounts for only 2-3% of coverage. 24 The classification of discourse according to the options provided placed the interpretative burden upon the individual coder, this was of course pertinent to all interpretative categories. In order to reduce the risk of bias and to assess inter coder reliability a monitoring mechanism was established for the entire database. This mechanism primarily consisted of coding log that required the coder to justify the options chosen and to identify difficulties with classification. The log was reviewed on a weekly basis during the coding process and sample articles were redistributed among the coders who subsequently checked there validity. The entire coding process was reviewed and checked on completion of the coding with the purpose of minimising errors 25 The representation in this section is based on the attribution of one discourse type to an article. On this basis the discourses that emerged in order of importance were Conservation, Risk. Policy (Regulation), Participation, Environmental Damage, Technological Industrial Growth and Deep Ecology. However, it has already been pointed out that many articles contained multiple problems and were coded under a number of categories. An important feature of the Irish case was a tendency of the print media to deal with a number of issues in one article thus often suggesting the importance of more than one discourse. The research instrument was not sufficiently sensitive to allow for this complexity. This is an important caveat to the general description that follows. It should be noted that when describing the resonating theme in sections three and four that discourses were related to issues rather than articles and a different picture emerged. In this case the discourses emerged in the following order of importance: Risk, Conservation, Policy(Regulation), Environmental Damage, Participation, Technological Industrial Growth and Deep Ecology 44 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The most marginal discourse following our schematisation is "Deep Ecology". The "Deep Ecology " discourse is almost exclusively limited to the marginal press and is closely associated with environmental solutions that advocate alternative modes of lifestyle. "Environmental damage" discourse is a descriptive type of discourse especially prominent in the early years after Chernobyl referring mostly to Chernobyl and the damage from the Kowloon Bridge represents 13.5% of the total discourse. After 1989 it begins to decline steadily and is concentrated mostly on the destruction of habitats in the latter part of the sample. The prominent discourses in the Irish sample are examined in descending order of quantitative importance. The nature conservation discourse is consistently high over the sample and this is to be expected since "Flora and Fauna problems" represent a significant portion of the issues. It represents over 23% of the entire discourse. This discourse refers to both the natural and cultural heritage of Ireland. Conservation discourse peaks at two points, firstly around the issue of Fota Island in 1988 with conflict around public goods and the preservation of local heritage and then towards the latter part of the sample with diverse discourses around the conservation of fish and animals Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 45 in 1991. Risk discourse is also quite significant representing 21% of discourse. Risk discourse ranges from 16% to 25% peaking, not surprisingly, the year after Chernobyl, risk discourse in 1987 revolved mostly around the issue of Sellafield. Risk discourse in the Irish sample tends to revolve around the dangers of nuclear and chemical technologies The low point of this discourse comes in 1990/1991 which is strange given that the issue of Thorpe in Sellafield emerges around this time as does the Sandoz controversy. Policy discourse is particularly strong in 1990 and participatory discourse peaks in the following years. The policy discourse is quantitatively the next most prominent. It is relatively stable across the sample representing almost 20% of all environmental discourse and represents the largest discourse in 1990. The preponderance for policy solutions to environmental problems in Ireland is borne out by the results of the "solutions to problems" category where between 24% and 37% of solutions were policy oriented. Participation is a constant feature that ranges between 5% and 22%. An interesting feature of the participatory discourse emerges if we look at the upward trend from 1989 to 1991 and compare this with risk discourse we notice that there is a corresponding downward trend. The main features of the Irish environmental discourse then is the prominence of conservation and risk discourse and the relative marginalisation of "technical/industrial growth" and "deep ecology". The marginalisation of the environmental discourse on technical industrial growth is not as remarkable as it first appeared since the main competing discourse is an economic one. It does not come as any great surprise either that "deep ecology" is so marginal. Environmental actors tend to remain within the confines of the political system. The revolutionary character of the environmental movement receded in the late 1970s and even then it had less to do with ecocentrism than with providing a vehicle for revolutionary socialism. The following sections are based on more detailed analysis of selected media texts on environmental topics in particular days in all the years from 1987 to 1992 inclusive. The results presented below are based on the identification of discourses, framing devices and themes for the overall sample. Themes were not part of the original coding scheme but were derived from some of the coding categories. 3.2.4 The structure of environmental discourse An overall perspective on the nature of environmental discourse between 1987 and 1992 is given in the following table 2:. Table 2 Specific Framing Resonating 46 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Issues Actors Discourses Devices Themes Rank Flora and Fauna Problems Political Actors Regulation Personalisatio n Development 1 Chemical/ Physical Problems Business Actors Risk Collective Common Interest Confidence 2 Public Life Problems Environmental Actors Conservation & Environmental Damage Moralisation Progress 3 Participation Scientification Exploitation 4 Global Problems In Table 2, environmental problems, discourses, framing devices and themes are ranked in numerical order. Too great importance should not be attached to the numerical rankings as the sample is a relatively small one. However, a number of observations may be made. Firstly, all of the most representative discourses are those placed on the public agenda by environmentalists and three of the most prominent are relatively new discourses, risk, regulation and damage, whereas conservation has a much longer run significance. In an overall sense, there is little doubt as to how the agenda is being established. Secondly, the thematic structure balances developmental (development, progress) and exclusively normative discourses (confidence, exploitation). One could assume a priori that a complicated relationship obtains between these discourses as competing structural and cultural pressures collide. Thirdly, longidentified facets of Irish political culture are manifested in the prominence of groupidentified discourses such as personalization, collective common interest and moralization. The latter two involve claims to generalizability of perspective. The most distinctive counter-environmentalist framing device is scientification. It should be noted that this account is not actor specific but is oriented to the nature of the public culture as a whole. An early hypothesis that can be derived from this analysis is that of a dominating tendency towards moral-normative themes and frame mobilizations indicating high potential for a conservationist nature frame coexisting with an emerging potential for a political ecology frame. The relation between these two could indicate that Irish attitudes to nature veer between a basic conservationist frame which is still comfortably positioned within and reproduced by the overall symbolic order, and held to some degree by a large proportion of the population, and a political ecological perspective attuned to the antinomies of environment and development which brings in a more objectivist perspective (themes of development and progress, framing device of scientification). These different cultural perspectives appearing in public Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 47 discourse correspond with older and newer movement perspectives on nature (see below). The analysis in table 3 focuses on the location of actor in a particular theatre of action (media communication) and its position in societal (national) and inter-societal (international) communication. It shows the opportunity structure for environmentalist frames in a political culture where an instrumentalist attitude to nature has become widespread. The most immediate indicators of cultural innovation along these lines to be read off table 3 for movement towards new attitudes to nature are (a) the growth of new discourses which emanate from concern for the environment and which are propelled by the symbolic action of environmentalists, risk, regulation and damage, (b) the establishment of actual and potential symbolic competition between various strands of the environmental movement, (c) the significant influence of exogenous cultural influences that open up environmental communication to new cognitive and ethical frames and symbolic repertoires, (d) the importance of in-group identification revealed in the high salience of norm-identifying framing devices and the general tendency of environmentalist symbolization to take a local form, (e) the cross-actor tendency to mobilize themes through framing devices in a confrontational manner that suggests an issue-driven mobilization with relatively low potential for principled mobilization, (f) the tendency to mobilize general "transcendent" cultural themes such as national identity for environmentalist purposes and, in so doing, aligning these themes to empirically shifting symbolic constellations that have a tendency to "de-transcendentalize" them, (g) the relative absence in this sample at least of an ethical debate on the value of nature as a common good, (h) the tendency for the state actor to closely identify with business actors to achieve its development goals means that environmentalist critique achieves a resonance that brings regime trust, long secured by the ideological colonization of normative mediation mechanisms, into question, (i) the growth of a relatively clearlymarked oppositional voice, and (h) the demand for participation bringing into play ideas of the rights of an active citizenry. 48 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Table 3 Component / location environmental endogenous national exogenous growth The competition between growth and environmental protection a pragmatic rather than principled discourse due to high salience of economic expansion in Ireland Since late 50s, when it replaced ideal of frugal self-sufficiency. economic growth given high priority. dominant representation that growth essential not fundamentally challenged by environmentalists given structural economic disadvantages. Little perception of significance of growth debate elsewhere with little comparative importance attributed to international ecological as opposed to international economic trends. regulation Centres around institutional responses to environmental problems; issues include increased environmentalist demand for tighter regulation following major environmental incidents, demands that the Irish Govt do something about Sellafield. Traditional populist hostility to state regulation led to weak enforcement of regulation in spite of relatively strong state. EC regulatory norms increasingly replace UK borrowing; relatively little regulatory innovation in relation to international changes but belated recent introduction of Environmental Protection Agency. participation Rooted in environmental discourse since the 60s with growing intensity as a rights discourse it is recently being accommodated by policy-makers and industrialists in limited experiments perceived by environmentalists as window-dressing Gradual recognition in closed, secretive Irish political and decision-making of its necessity but slow progress outside of traditional economic corporate arrangements. The specific form of environmental participatory discourse due to the colonization by economic interests of clientelistic mediation channels leads to a significant reduction in a system trust based on personal bonds. Increasing recognition of the importance of consensual model in hard cases imported into Irish policy style; new discourses on participative rights imported through analogy and through forms and demands of mobilization risk Entered Irish environ- mental discourse in 70s with growth of multi-national chemical industry and nuclear debate; renewed intensity in late 80s after Chernobyl and chemical incidents New discourse gaining national prominence through environmentalist action Growing importance of distribution of risk as a factor in the quality of life; penetrated Irish discourse through major international incidents and analogous potential cases, esp Sellafield conservation Discourse with the longest history but real presence felt in post-war period with the foundation of the Irish national trust (an Taisce). It spans the Closely correlated with major identity constellations such as the early century growth in the importance of national identity, growing emphasis on Irish conservation movement and discourse draws off a number of inter-national inspirations, tourism, the English conservation tradition, and recently the new international discourse Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 49 natural and built environment and encompasses modernisation, urban/rural dichotomies, public goods and what it means to be a good citizen heritage in the post-war era and major new conservation issues on a national scale, eg, the future of Dublin and conservation of beautiful wild areas importance attached to heritage. deep ecology Fundamentalist critique of modern society but little penetration of Irish environmental discourse due to the high salience of eco-nomic issues Environmental discourse with little national resonance but opportunity conditions for moralistic framing strategies suits its style. Informs philosophy of Greenpeace organization and Irish Green party though in a very muted form by international standards environmental damage This discourse which is an annunciatory or whistle-blowing discourse emerges to prominence in the post-Chernobyl period. Particularly high in the year after Chernobyl but recedes thereafter as it is replaced by regulatory and conservation discourses New political discourse of major significance in national politics given the correlation between coverage of Chernobyl, the potential damage resulting from a Sellafield disaster and a succession of chemical pollution incidents Major new international discourse that has contributed to a general re-valuation of the impacts of environmental problems in Ireland collective common interest Emphasises collective belonging of a national, local, sectional, economic, social or cultural kind; prominent in risk discourse to emphasise the need for policy response and to stress the need to represent Irish concerns in international fora; overwhelming in conservation discourse where it is used to draw a contrast between community and society interests and also used by sectoral interests; in growth discourse it is used to emphasise that producers should act in collective interest; in '87 used extensively in post-Chernobyl along the axes of locality, region and nation in the face of new risks. The use of this framing device both reflects and accentuates a new cultural attitude that envisages new rights corresponding to new perceptions of needs. The predominant tendency associated with this framing device is the assertion of new "communitarian" identities, most notably associated with the fracturing of the domination of the spatial and political centre over the local. But it is still often used as the expression of a collective national identity, most prominently in relation to the Sellafield issue. It is also used in the pursuit of sectoral interests. The idea of local and group-specific needs and rights in the Irish case is heavily influenced by ideas of a more participatory politics of the locality, part of a wider international movement. Notions of rights are specifically introduced by inter-national associations. such as Greenpeace and Earthwatch, and a small but environmentally active non-Irish section of the population. As in most cultural shifts, the EU dimension is prominent, with supra- and sub-national ideas of common interest competing with the national. moralization Emphasises what should or should not be done and who should or should not be doing it. Moral framing devices are prominently used by environmentalist actors as part of a blaming strategy but they are alternatively used by political or official actors as a critique of oppositional selfishness or Historically, the moral community of the nation, the core of an early century nationalist mobilization, was based on an anti-modern opposition to industrial society. This position was then built into a Catholic moralization of the culture of nature until the post-war industrialization movement Environmentalist organizations in Ireland are either part of larger international social-movement organizations or nonIrish activists are heavily present. There has therefore been an importation of value positions and tactical repertoires which feeds into relatively high local mobilization potential in specific cases. Exogenous influence as well as framing clusters 50 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * to assert ideas of the common good. They are prominent in regulatory discourse where there is a strong interest in political and economic responsibility; it is also used extensively by environmental groups in damage discourse normally accompanied by the attribution of blame to a particular source. Risk discourse often combines moral and scientification devices. resulted in a socio-structural elaboration with new sites and stances of moralization. With the advent of risk-intensive industries, anti-state mobilization has resulted in the elaboration of new moral codes and official counter-codes, which can be moral, but also scientific and appeals to collective common interest. social change have played an important role in elaborating new ideas of public good over private right, a perspective which is carried by moralization strategies. The official response has been a strategy of de-moralization accompanied by attempts at consensus-building, learned, in part, from the experience of the incoming multi-nationals. personalization Personalisation or the linking of themes to specific actors is a means of framing issues in such a way that the blame is apportioned to a specific source. The use of the personalisation device is a symbolic manifestation of the clientelistic basis of Irish politics. In risk discourse, the personalization device has high prominence and it is also significant in conservation discourse where it is linked to a multiplicity of environmental groups seeking symbolic avenues by means of a device with high resonance. It also appears prominently in participation discourse where it is used by environmentalists as an anti-exclusion device. Here it is often accompanied by moralization. Political and economic actors use personalization to stigmatize protest actors or to identify with a collective common interest. Personalization has a strong tendency to be associated with other framing devices. Personalization in Irish politics has traditionally acted in a critique-inhibiting manner and was associated with a powerful anti-innovative current anchored in a homogenous social and cultural order. The social, lower middle class, and the cultural, Catholic, tone of this order gave personalization a particular tone. Environmental opposition has led to a significant degree of antisystem personalization, a new development. Hence, personalization is discursively politicized. This has had a major impact on clientelistic political mechanisms as political meaning becomes separated from psychologically mediated personal bonds. It moves from being organized to organizationally contested. Personalization in Ireland has drawn heavily on Catholic ideas of guilt. selfishness and other psychological dispositions. This complex drew heavily on the international Catholic movement in the early part of the century. This psycho-cultural complex is rapidly losing way, though it often persists as a substratal core of values and attitudes, and new cultural models that issue in this framing device draw increasingly from a new repertoire. On the one side, personalization as a device defends a threatened lifeworld and borrows from an international sense of endangerment and system distrust, on the other, new kinds of stigma are mobilized to counter protest action that issue from an international context heavily pro-economic modernization. But the prominence of personalization in Irish discourse would still seem to be of Catholic provenance as manifested by its relatively high incidence in another Catholic country in the project, Italy. scientification This framing device involves supporting arguments linked to other framing devices with scientific claims. It is used both by political and economic actors in risk discourse to deny or downplay dangers of risk or in damage discourse to emphasise that there is no threat to persons or goods. It is also used by these actors in regulation discourse to indicate sound procedures. Environmental actors use this framing device to oppose The appeal to scientific argument in political disputes has historically been relatively unimportant. This has changed with the emergence of science and technology as productive forces with the postfifties industrialization drive and with a cultural revaluation of fact-based argument. The discourse of scientific-technical innovation has therefore been promoted as central to the future of the society, affecting all facets of policy-making, Three stages of exogenous cultural influence may be identified. Firstly, an anti-scientific Catholic perspective; secondly, the post-war absorption of science and technology as an ideology of progress; and, thirdly, the reassessment of this ideology by questioning the consequences of progress and a set of counter-strategies to the tactics used in this questioning process. The last phase is associated with an internationalization of environmentalist and counter-environmentalist strategies Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 51 these claims in these discourse areas. including educational curricula, and has become positively embedded in public attitudes. But environmental issues has certainly led to what Beck characterises as a relativisation of scientific authority which is both a form of inverted scientification - scientification via a critique of science but based on scientific argument - and a revitalization of older suspicions of science. characterised by the entry into legitimation politics of opposing discourses of economic and civil right. The scientific framing devices reveals a heavy penetration of this international conflict into Irish environmental politics. aestheticization Attaching an evaluative significance to the natural or built environments, the framing device of aestheticization is almost exclusively associated with conservation discourse where it is used to value aspects of the natural or built environment or to oppose certain kinds of intervention. This framing device was not so prominent in the database sample but is of major significance given the salience of conservation issues in recent times such as the opposition to the way Dublin has been developed or opposition to interpretive centres in sensitive natural areas. Aestheticization as a critique of industrial and urban society was a prominent idea of the national movement. But aesthetic considerations were sacrificed to lax controls until the 1960s. The new emphasis on the environment as a national resource from the 1960s has pitted conservationism against economic development interests. More generally, aesthetic considerations have low importance in the culture at large, though a counter-tendency is beginning to re-assert itself, in part due to the fact that the society is becoming more concerned with its external image. The Irish nature aesthetic has for long been a subset of English provincialism but without the same mobilizing power. Modernism in any form has made relatively poor inroads. Recently, however, there has been a new wave of concern for the natural and built environment partly through a rise in non-Irish residents in beautiful remote areas who are more radical in the defence of natural beauty, and a new concern with nature as leisure by urban dwellers who have absorbed a modern conception of wild nature as retreat. economic interest An important framing device associated with growth and progress discourses. The general form of this device is anti-environmental. It accords high significance to job creation in a country with high unemployment which has, moreover, regional biases. But, the device takes on environmentalist shape also in the form of an emphasis on the benefits of green production This framing device clearly articulates with the national priority of economic growth. What gives it a particular twist in the Irish case is that the main mechanism of this growth are non-Irish economic actors who colonize the channels of interest mediation and render clientelistic strategies less significant. The main exogenous component is drawn from the rationalizations of multi-national corporations who require certain actions by the Irish state and citizenry in order to set up there. The willingness to accommodate these interests marks a definitive shift from the national credo of economic self-reliance. The value of modernisation leads to highly ambivalent attitudes to environmental protest. Such protest tends to rapidly divide populations wherever it opposes development. This is The theme of modernisation has become the dominant theme in Irish cultural self-understanding since the 1960s. It captures the selfimage of a once-traditional society, which la- The modernisation movement which has been dominant in developed countries since the second world war and exported all over the globe has had near complete hegemony in the Irish case since the early 1960s. The themes Development 52 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * because the particular modernization path has won general acceptance. Additionally, peripheral location, low entrepreneurial capacities, high and negatively valued emigration, and a small home market tends to make inward investment desirable to many whatever its environmental effects. The counter-theme of a critique of dependency doesn't have the same degree of cultural cohesion. It is animated largely by local groups, supported by larger environmental organisations, who agitate on specific issues. So far, it has not reached the threshold of a political movement proposing an alternative development path, though there are recent indications due to some notable environmentalist successes that this may happen. boured under certain barriers due to colonial domination, gradually acquiring economic, social and cultural rationality, which is often conceived as a gradual approach to an European norm. The counter-theme of dependency views the country as subject to a continuum of domination from, first, colonial, then, national and, finally, multinational elites. The latter can manifest itself as a general mistrust of the path of economic development through foreign-led development. The theme of modernization remain, however, much the dominant one. The counter-theme was once a populist ascendent theme of self-reliance which was politically dominant in the early years of the state. assumptions of modernisation, with its idea of long-run economic convergence, the capacity of the western capitalist model to meet all social needs, the emphasis on elite action, suited perfectly a newly emerging elite generation in Ireland in the late 50s who were dissatisfied with what had gone before and need a coherent belief system. In this perception, the previous cultural goal of a self-sufficient rural economy, the Irish version of an early century inter-national protectionist movement, was dropped. There is some potential that the emphasis on industrial growth could be replaced by a cleaner serviceoriented model but a major international shift may be required in understanding the dysfunctions of the previous model, inter alia for its environ-mental destructiveness, before the cultural and material conditions of a new belief system may emerge. institutional confidence Environmental protest is one of the few protest spheres in which there is a public articulation of system mistrust. This is expressed in a variety of ways from calls for the government to act responsibility, to acts of de-legitimation, to allegations of collusion. Public authorities seek to maintain or restore confidence by claims of scientific and technical competence, moral responses, and the claim to act in the national interest. Institutional confidence if measured by degree of evident protest has been historically relatively high. Environmental protest, and general dissatisfaction with the functioning of political institutions, has changed this to some degree. The culture of political authoritarianism has declined with the corresponding decline of the social and culture hegemony of the Catholic Church. Environmentalism has produced a tendency, relatively new in Irish politics, to direct responsibility inwards rather than outwards. The country was little influenced by the protest waves of the sixties that shook other western democracies. But it manifests many of the current symptoms of legitimation crisis. This has resulted in an opening towards the absorption of tactics for expression of symbolic mistrust, on the one hand, and of methods of containment, media campaigns, openings towards participation, on the other. progress The counter theme to technological progressivism occurs immanently within the environmental sphere with the notion of a soft path. This was first popularized by conservation organizations and later advanced further by multi-national environmental organizations. It uses the relatively advanced cognitive culture of its members to challenge the supposed inevitability of scientifictechnical options exercised by business. This theme meets the counter-counter-theme of This theme could be re-entitled scientific-technical progressivism. It has become prominent since the choice of modernization path in the 60s undid a hostility to the culture of science. The countertheme is of an environmentally more benign soft path. Scientific-technical progressivism is of long provenance in western cultures. However, in Ireland, it became relativized by a moral campaign in favour of a rural way of life. This was never completely hostile to progress via science and technology but for a variety of reasons attached more significance to other cultural ends. The post-war climate led to a "normal" emphasis on the centrality of scientific-technical progress for a western country. Environ-mentalists hence fuse historical national and international elements in their critique of unbridled Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * technical incompetence. 53 scientific-technical progressivism. exploitation The theme of exploitation is used inclusively in a consensual-populist manner when directed against the actions of the historical exploiter, Britain, who fails to act on the Sellafield nuclear plant. Here, it sometimes embraces an unified theme of national exploitation crossing the official/oppositional divide. But, in relation to this issue, and elsewhere, it divides into and countertheme and theme with the counter-theme of resistance to exploitation as the defining moment in charges of collusion with the British authorities over Sellafield or claims of risk industries as environmental exploitation. This is met with official accusations of irresponsibility and selfishness. As a cultural theme, exploitation carries a heavy historical imprint. The dominant historical use of the theme is in the claim that the Catholic Irish were exploited by a British colonial regime. Exploitation could be described as a latent theme of the Irish labour movement but did not give rise to a powerful oppositional anti-exploitative belief system. The rise of environmentalism has moved exploitation up the ladder in the oppositional repertoire but it has mainly local potency and has not reached the point of perceiving the pattern of industrial development as environmental exploitation per se. The main cultural borrowing has been historically the idea of national exploitation. The new thematic of exploitation by exposure to risk has the effect of dissolving the outward-focus of the national theme, though paradoxically at times tending to strengthen it by annexing new issues to the national canon. The Sellafield issue is a powerful motif in the exploitation theme and, here, international alliances, or the lack of them, brings in a new dimension of environmental diplomacy. public good The theme of public good in relation to the environment is an acute example of the need for norms that transgress private right. Hence the counter-theme of the threat to public good is the defining moment which is opposed by the theme of rights to the exercise of private right as a means of securing the public good. Environmental ideas of public good turn on the national significance of the landscape which must not be desecrated. The claim that the state has failed to protect the public good in this respect has fuelled one of the keynote environmental battles of the 90s so far, that over interpretive centres. The failure of the state to adequately enforce licensing and other legislative controls has also arisen as a major public goods issue. The response has focused on the threat to jobs and economic goals of placing environmental public goods over private right. Public goods issues have a weak constitutional status due to the favouring of private right. The dogmatic core of the institutional system has constantly resisted the expansion of public goods, and attendant rights, in all social spheres. In recent times, legal interpretations have favoured a more expansive reading of the constitutional position in favour of a wider understanding of the public good. The increase in concern for collective public goods in the society at large is a background to perceptions of environmental public goods. Public goods issues in the environmental sphere have become associated with institutional innovation by the state expressed in the rise of regulatory agencies which are forced to share the definition of common goods issues with a mobilized public. There are incipient indications that these development are becoming embedded in Irish environmental politics but it is too early to say whether they will move in a principled or expedient direction. 54 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The question that arises is whether an environmental oppositional actor can acquire the level of coherence of identity and symbolic power to successfully implant a new ethical frame on the Irish political order? The further question is what shape can we anticipate this frame actually taking? To address these questions we will, in the next section, consider the shift in the cultural basis of ecological communication between the years 1987 and 1992 and then examine the symbolic politics of two important issues, one a chemical issue, the other nuclear. These cases will identify the form and content of the symbolic exchange that actors engage in over concrete stakes. Table 4 (below) details the difference between the specific issues, consequential actors, framing devices and resonating themes in 1987 and 1992. Environmental discourse in 1987 is elaborated in the public arena in a number of specific containers which in order of prominence refers to Environmental Damage, Risk, Regulation and Conservation and finally participation (see table 4). The Environmental Damage and Risk discourses are in fact statements that problems exist. On the first anniversary of Chernobyl across a wide range of issues in addition to simply stating that there is a problem a particular shape is put on these problems. The framing strategies used by competing actors reflect and shape the acts of annunciation. The framing devices identified in media coverage in 1987 place personalisation, collective common interest, moralisation and scientification as the most prominent devices used to shape the ideational elements that communicate the nature of the problem to the wider audience. For the most part these are adversarial frames with the Soviet Government, British Nuclear fuels and the Irish government being constructed as 'them'. There are also limited instances of aggregate framing when the Sellafield issue sees the temporary conflation of environmental and political actors as 'we the nation'. The framing device of collective common interest is used by all actors but is deployed in different ways depending on the issue. The main form that this device takes in 1987 is the appeal to the imagined community based on locality, region and nation. For example, the government links the problem of radiation to the British government by framing the problem as being against the national interest. Flora and Fauna Problems dominate the newspaper coverage in 1992. There are a number of articles which in particular relate to the then immanent Earth Summit at Rio. The formative discourses in this year are policy discourse and conservation with a lesser emphasis on risk and participation. The main discourse of 1987 which was damage is displaced to a marginal position whereas risk remains an important discourse. The main themes are similar to 1987 though their relative importance has altered. As represented in table 4, Development replaces Confidence as the main theme in 1992. The theme of progress remains the next most important followed by confidence and public good. Similarly, the main framing devices remain the same but the order of importance has altered. Collective common interest replaces personalisation as the leading device followed by personalisation, moralisation and scientification. It is tempting to attribute the shift in the order of the two principal framing devices to the shift in discourse priorities represented in the 1987 domination of damage discourse in the Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 55 immediate aftermath of Chernobyl as against the rise of regulation and conservation interests in the run-up to Rio. Of course, these changes may not simply be correlated with international events; they may also be determined by endogenous shifts in the more general relevance structure of environmental communication in the period. In the 1987 sample, Sustainable Development as a theme was confined to conservation discourse. The immanence of the Rio summit sees this potential compromise theme now appearing in policy, conservation, and environmental damage discourses. The growth in importance of the theme of development over that of confidence between 1987 and 1992 also reflects the international mellowing of environmental conflict into a more compromise-oriented, if not consensualist, standpoint. Structurally, the framing devices are pretty similar in the two years. Yet, the modest change that occurs in the framing device structure is in line with the dual trend of Irish ecological communication following international events and a general mellowing of conflict. The basis for this claim is to be found in the small expansion of the common interest framing device, as with the economic interest device, and the contraction of most of the other devices. The new structure serves as an indicator of a less conflictual tone in the exchanges. Concerning the structure of the discourses, there is an evident decline in the damage discourse and a drop also in participatory discourse and a significant increase in the growth and conservation discourses. Considering the long-run salience of the latter discourses in Irish culture (see table 3 above) it is plausible to view this as a return to relative normality, post-Chernobyl, albeit in circumstances of general change. The most significant conclusion that can be drawn from the comparison of 1987 and 1992 is that in both years environmental communication in Ireland is highly structured by international events. Hence, the manner in which national environmental communication is embedded in international communication is apparent. Of course, this international context merely establishes the broad parameters of communication which is also firmly embedded in a local context. Much has changed internationally by 1992 and, as outlined in table 4, international organisations bring radically new perspectives into the national debate. These perspectives are met to some extent by a corresponding shift in attitudes of economic and state actors. However, it should be noted that even in 1992 there is little direct exchange between actors. Rather, they begin to vaguely articulate similar goals, that of squaring economic development and environmental sustainability. Table 4: Issues, actors, discourses, framing devices, resonating themes 1987/1992 1987 Specific Issues Actors Discourses Framing Devices Resonating Themes Rank 56 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Chemical/ Physical Problems Political Actors Environmental Damage Personalisatio n Confidence 1 Flora and Fauna Problems Business Actors Risk Collective Common Interest Progress 2 Public Life Problems Environmental Actors Conservation & Regulation Moralisation Development 3 Participation Scientification Exploitation & Public Good 4 Global Problems 1992 Specific Issues Actors Discourses Framing Devices Resonating Themes Rank Flora and Fauna Problems Political Actors Regulation Collective Common Interest Development 1 Chemical Physical Problems Business Actors Conservation Personalisatio n Progress 2 Public Life Problems & Global Problems Environmental Actors Risk Moralisation Confidence 3 Participation Scientification Public Good 4 3.3 THE ACCIDENT OF CHERNOBYL IN THE IRISH PRESS: A 'MEDIA STORY LINE' A particular instance which has triggered environmental communication in Ireland has been the Chernobyl accident. An analysis of the Irish Chernobyl discourse allows to give a more rigorous qualitative analysis of the specific resonance structure of Irish culture to the discourse on the environment. By identifying a media story line underlying the Chernobyl discourse a qualitative indicator of cultural change in the media discourse on Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 57 the environment will be constructed and used for the further analysis of the logic of environmental communication in Ireland. The Republic of Ireland does not have an indigenous nuclear industry. Attempts by the Government to establish a nuclear policy in the mid 1970s were frustrated by widespread opposition and encountered large-scale public mobilisations through the late 1970s. The policy was abandoned in the early 1980s and the Irish State has subsequently set its face against nuclear power. The conflict around the attempt to situate a nuclear facility at Carnsore Point in Co. Wexford was a seminal event in locating environmental groups in the political arena. Through the nuclear debate in the 1970s many activists became sensitised to the existing risks from chemical technologies located in Ireland as a result of the state's industrialisation policy (Baker 1990). As a consequence there was a divergence in the nuclear movement with energies being redirected into a critique of industrial policy. The anti-toxic debate in Ireland over the last twenty years has been characterised by conflict. The nuclear debate in the intervening period became located in the realm of foreign policy with Sellafield occupying centre stage. Nuclear power discourse in the Republic of Ireland has, since the rejection of an indigenous nuclear energy strategy, provided a useful social metaphor for bi-partite relationships with Britain. The experience of nuclear power as an exterior "other" has set anti-nuclear sentiment in the context of a historical relationship characterised by external interference in domestic Irish affairs. The scale of events surrounding the Chernobyl accident has undoubtedly impacted on the competition generating environmental meanings in Irish discourse on nuclear power. The perception in Ireland of nuclear power as an unacceptable risk combined with the unexpected nature of the Chernobyl explosion gave rise to a "communication crisis". This crisis was evident in many other countries: 'Neither, were there in Sweden or elsewhere, any appropriate channels to inform them [the general public] since the governments in most countries had denied or neglected the need for emergency plans for such an accident nor had any familiar code or language been established by which the information could be articulated' (Nohrstedt 1993: 85). Language, codes and symbols had to be assembled from the cultural reservoirs and historical experience in national and international contexts. Norstedt notes that prior to the Three Mile Island accident in Harrisburg in 1979 the official discourse on nuclear power denied the possibility of serious pollution, after Harrisburg the discourse revolved around the implausibility of meltdown. When Chernobyl belied this claim the line of defence was that superior Western technology would prevail over the possibility of such a scenario (Norstedt, 1993: 88/89). Patterson argues that "the Chernobyl Story provided almost an ideal opportunity for 'retelling' of such a mythical tale - the integrative 58 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * propaganda of the superiority of American technology disconnected from the risks such technology had just as obviously brought the Soviets" (1988: 133). 3.3.1 Cultural indicators In total we retrieved 104 articles related to Chernobyl from the newspaper sample. Our inclusion of 1986 is in order to get a feel for the coverage of the accident as events unfolded and the inclusion of 1992 and 1993 inflate our yield relative to the British and Italian samples. If we adjust our figures to remedy this the coverage of Chernobyl and related events the Irish sample contains 42 articles in the period 1987 to 1991. The media coverage of Chernobyl in Ireland as elsewhere begins two days after the accident. During the first days immediately following the disclosure Chernobyl is prominent in the Irish media.26 The sample is drawn from all of the publications in the data-bank but the coverage for the most part is drawn from the Irish Times, a national daily newspaper, and the Cork Examiner a regional daily with a national distribution.27 26 Note: Despite the relatively high content of Irish newspapers on Chernobyl it could be argued that it was in fact contained by pressure for column space by concern with the 1986 Divorce Referendum which was the focal point of political debate at this time 27 The sample includes the Irish Times, Cork Examiner, Irish Press, The Star, The Phoenix, Sunday World, Irish Farmers Journal, Technology Ireland and Earthwatch Magazine. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 59 Almost 55% of the entire databank is predictably concentrated in the year of the accident. Thereafter coverage peaks on the first anniversary in 1987 and in 1990. The coverage of Chernobyl in 1990 is attributed to the official admission that the death toll was grossly underestimated in the Ukraine and also to the announcement of a reprocessing deal between Germany and the THORPE reprocessing plant at Sellafield. There is a decline in coverage in 1988 and 1989. This is due to a number of factors. There is a modest increase in the coverage of global problems in these years. More importantly there is increased coverage of chemical problems linked to toxic waste in 1988 and the chemical industry in 1989. There is also an increase in flora/fauna problems in 1988 related to fish kills and in 1989 due to controversial water pollution legislation.28 Chernobyl as an environmental problem follows three main classifications. It is primarily reported as a physical problem of radioactivity both in Ireland and internationally. From 1987 onwards there is growing concern about the threat posed to animals which is particularly related to the contamination of livestock and thus the wider implications for agricultural outputs for domestic and export markets. The problems associated with public life e.g. contamination of food and health effects are a constant concern throughout the sample. General environmental problems such as air pollution and water pollution are only significant in the early part of the databank as the discourse after 1989 focuses on specific problems. 28 Although Flora/Fauna Problems do not peak in 1989 there is an influence exerted on the coverage of the Chernobyl accident. This is illustrated by the growth in discourse on harm to animals and landscape which structures the coverage of Chernobyl in 1989. 60 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 3.3.2 The differentiation of Irish media coverage of Chernobyl A cursory examination of the headlines in the 1986 coverage of Chernobyl reveals a dichotomy in the development of the Chernobyl storyline. On closer scrutiny of the texts of articles concerned with Chernobyl it becomes apparent that there is a distinct differentiation of the issue along a number of lines of development. The coverage of Chernobyl understandably peaks in 1986 and on the first anniversary in 1987 and drops dramatically thereafter. Although the entire data bank was consulted in relation to the Chernobyl issue the coverage was predominantly contained in the Cork Examiner and the Irish Times. The first task then is to identify and characterise these lines of development in the newspapers in the week of the accident in 1986. Then the study focuses upon the unfolding logic of media coverage for the same period of the week of the accident in order to contextualize the social re-construction of the disaster in Ireland. Three main discursive lines were identified: The first line is the 'kremlinisation of risk' which related to coverage of events as they unfolded in the former Soviet Union. The primary media treatment of the issue proceeds along hyperbolic revelation of the news as it becomes available through the world's major wire services. The narrative accounts of the unfolding news of the accident are underlined by the rhetoric of cold war politics. The vast majority of articles narrating events as they happen are still however located within Western stereo-types of Soviet secrecy. Although there are repeated calls for the establishment of safeguards the problem of risk is packaged in terms of the ideological habitus of nuclear power, rather than as a technology that is inherently risky. 2. The second line relates to the attempt to embed the accident historically. It doesn't form a distinct line of development per se, instead it has the role of providing the contextual information that unifies the major lines of development The Irish Times details a chronology of nuclear accidents around the world that precede the Chernobyl Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 61 disaster. The infusion of cold war rhetoric is interesting in that there is a tendency to depoliticise Western accidents on the one hand and while on the other hand stressing the inadequacy and the secrecy that underpins Soviet accidents. The historical packaging of the issue also articulates with wider historical metaphors for risk. On a global scale the comparison with Hiroshima is used to quantify the scale of the disaster.29 Coverage draws parallels between the nature of the Windscale accident and the Chernobyl accident. The critique of the culture of secrecy indicative of cold war representations is refracted through the filter of Irish experience with Britain's nuclear policy. In particular there is an emphasis on the discrepancy between the official death toll after Windscale which is placed at 33 deaths and unofficial accounts which cite the death toll at 200.30 3. The final discursive line focuses on the impact of Chernobyl in Ireland. It deals with the symbolic containment of the political fall-out from the disaster. The coverage also relates to the real dangers to Ireland from the fallout. This is differentiated into two distinct approaches. The first of these is crisis management, i.e. public assurances that there is no immediate danger, and is dominated by expert discourse.31 The second approach is the monitoring of events in Britain to act as a gauge of risk in Ireland.32 Political actors draw upon these approaches to allay fears regarding the real impact. The second level of discourse is largely symbolic various actors draw upon the unfolding disaster as a metaphor for nuclear risk. This is given an added impetus by the linking of Chernobyl to the risk to Ireland from Britain's nuclear programme in particular the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria. There is in fact more discursive interaction in the print media focused on the symbolic capital of Chernobyl than there is on the real dangers for Ireland. 3.3.3 Constructing a framework for receiving 'risk' The 'unpredictability' of Chernobyl not only necessitated the hasty application of interpretative frames which would make sense of the event but also required that these be familiar. The absence of a culture of nuclear power required the ransacking of historical metaphors to establish the credentials of nuclear power as a 'risk' with a track record. Hiroshima, Windscale and Three Mile Island were posed as the precursors of Chernobyl. Chernobyl becomes a social metaphor for a historical juncture in the story of 29 Cork Examiner 1/5/86 "A thousand times worse than Hiroshima". 30 Irish Times 30/4/86 "200 deaths after the windscale fire". 31 Irish Times 30/4/86 "No need for alarm here, say experts". Cork Examiner 30/4/86 "No reason for alarm here, says Energy Board". Cork Examiner 30/4/86 "Europe not in Danger". Cork Examiner 30/4/86 "No Kiev fallout here". Cork Examiner 2/5/86 "Nuclear air not coming". 32 Irish Times 30/4/86 "Radiation normal in Britain". 62 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * nuclear power. This historical cross-roads is established as the baseline against which developments in the Soviet Union in transition are measured. In the larger context of Western responses an event of Chernobyl proportions requires a guilty party. Well established norms for receiving mediated Soviet images provide a context for the attribution of guilt. The form of the story in 1986 and 1987 is important in that primary sources are drawn directly or indirectly from news services. The Irish response to the disaster draws from these norms but recognises the Western historical parallels in particular Windscale which falls into a more familiar dichotomy. There are several levels to the legitimation crisis that arises in the 'risk' discourse surrounding Chernobyl. Western technology is disassociated with the risk displayed by its Soviet counterpart, Ireland is distanced from the disaster by its neutrality and the absence of a nuclear energy strategy. Furthermore, the effects of Chernobyl are contained by the denial of a substantial problem in the first instance and a displacement to Britain in the second. Initially, British figures are used as an indication of the potential 'risk' to Ireland and significantly Chernobyl becomes a metaphor for the 'risk' to Ireland from British Energy Policy. The frames in the first year are packaged as 'a culture of secrecy', 'nuclear risk as a historical given' and 'nuclear risk as an exterior variable'. If we were to postulate the social metaphor arising out of Chernobyl in the first year it could read as follows: Chernobyl has shown that Soviet nuclear power is risky and therefore bad, Hiroshima, Three Mile Island and Windscale have shown that Western nuclear power is risky and can be bad, Ireland does not have nuclear power, Britain does, Britain is putting Ireland at risk etc. This establishes Chernobyl as a powerful social metaphor in the first year resonating with potent cultural symbols in Ireland. The review of Irish media coverage of Chernobyl in the period from 1986 to 1993 provides a number of insights into the nature of the nuclear debate in the Republic of Ireland. The narrative mediation of events simultaneously serves the function of explaining the dimensions of political change in the Soviet Union. The images of Chernobyl pervading the Irish media emphasise the ideological location of the Republic of Ireland within the Western version of events. This is demonstrated by the similarity the Irish narrative to the account that Luke (1987) provides of the Western demonisation of Soviet technology on the one hand and Chernobyl as an indices for the evaluation of "Glasnost" on the other. The monitoring of events as they occur externally helps to situate the internal structuring of Irish discourse on Chernobyl. In the initial period in the absence of an internal focus both environmental groups and policy actors structure the discourse as an outwards problematization of nuclear power. In other words without a nuclear industry of its own Sellafield provides the context for the generation of environmental meaning in relation to the nuclear issue. By focusing on the Sellafield discourse we can claim that at the time of Chernobyl and for a period after the discourse is firmly rooted in the traditional polemic that is Anglo-Irish relations. The semantics of the reflexive Soviet discourse emerging publicly in the post-Chernobyl era finally change the Irish debate. The Irish debate shifts from exclusively demonising the Soviet Union and more importantly Britain towards demands for "eco-glasnost" in the Irish discourse. The Irish state is no longer at one with its citizenry in relation to Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 63 nuclear power. The examples of change in the Soviet Union and a sequence of parallel events in Ireland (i.e. the discovery of fallout, allegations of closure and dereliction of responsibility and the linking of Chernobyl fallout to increased mortality rates etc.) contribute to the differentiation of the field and the occurrence of conflict. The development of the debate within the Soviet Union is mirrored in Ireland. Dissidents and reformers in the Soviet Union position themselves regarding Chernobyl by attributing blame to the regime, thus encouraging critical reflection on the democratisation project of the Soviet elite. Chernobyl is transformed into a carrier for the projects of national self-determination and the achievement of religious and social freedoms. In the Irish discourse similarly actors begin to assert their positions vis a vis the Chernobyl disaster. Environmental groups assert their legitimacy by deconstructing the legitimacy of the state and its institutions. The formulations employed by these groups equate "we the people" with the unrealised national project of independence. Environmentalists draw on the symbols of national identity such "sovereignty" and "neutrality" to this end. This becomes particularly acute in wider societal debates which temporally parallel the aftermath of Chernobyl e.g. the Irish debate surrounding the ratification of the "Single European Act". "We the anti-nuclear nation" is transformed under the terms of the conflict as "we the anti-nuclear people" versus "them the secretive, ineffectual and even collaborative state". These developments are reproduced in the Sellafield debate with the state "standing up" for the Irish people in 1987 being transformed into the "state as quisling" in 1990/91. For its part the state attempts to contain the crisis by deflecting the crisis outwards to Sellafield as a problematic and upwards to the European Community as a problem solving institution. Internally it attempts to contain the crisis in the first instance by understating the problem and retrospectively in the second instance the state tries to absorb the critique through institutional innovation. The state reasserts the legitimacy of its role as protector of the people by reconstituting the discredited NEB as a subordinate of the new National Radiological Protection Board and demonstrates its commitment by injecting resources. The assertion that the technical capabilities of the institutions of state are "infinitely superior" to those in the immediate aftermath of Chernobyl, that the danger to health and thus the economy is non existent and that in future the public will be kept informed are a response to the critique of environmental groups. The fact that the nuclear debate is now internal to Irish society and that the state innovates to try and institutionalise the discourse should not be seen as to indicate that the exteriorisation of the problem has ceased to play an important role. Sellafield continues to act as 'bogeyman' in Irish environmental discourse. On this level at least the Irish discourse on nuclear power continues to look outwards. The qualitative change however is that the isomorphism of the initial period has been replaced by confrontation and conflict. The differentiated field of the environmental discourse on nuclear power now however begins to articulate more closely with the discourse on the indigenous anti-toxic conflict. 64 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 3.3.4 Whither the social metaphor? The initial framing of the Chernobyl accident constructs the social metaphor that despite the implications for change wrought by this event 'nothing has changed'. However, from the initial stages 'disaster' and 'opportunity' are juxtaposed within the various storylines. The international proportions of Chernobyl as a disaster provide a familiar environmental and indeed national metaphor. Environmental groups especially Greenpeace have made extensive use of the biblical 'David & Goliath' metaphor and this is retold in the stand against nuclear interests both in action and words. Similarly, Ireland as a country has often framed its 'foreign policy' endeavours by touting its neutrality and applying the same biblical dimensions to its actions. As early as 1987 Chernobyl is identified as an opportunity to assert its place on the world stage and impress itself in international relations regarding nuclear safety in opposition to powerful nuclear interests. Chernobyl becomes cast in the mould of the mythical 'phoenix' reborn from the ashes a symbol of destruction and rebirth. More pertinent to the Irish context is the image of rebirth imbued in Easter celebrations of new found religious freedoms in the shadow of Chernobyl. These symbols are readily made sense of in the cultural context where Easter is doubly symbolic in terms of the rising in 1916 and the centrality of Catholicism in Irish culture. The decline in newspaper coverage would seem to indicate a perception of diminished news value over the period. The coverage in 1992 is exclusively in terms of the effects in the Ukraine and the Irish discourse has in some measure become 'normalised' as a charity/ humanitarian discourse. The social metaphor emerging by the end of the period is less straight forward. If we suppose it to be the cumulative product of two distinct but interrelated storylines organised around the outcomes of frame competition a layered metaphor begins to become visible. The metaphor is both continuity and of change, continuity in that Chernobyl creates an image that is inextricably linked to Sellafield as a risk. Change in that out of disaster a new social order has emerged in the Soviet Union. The discontinuity in the Irish storyline in 1992 indicates that developments in the Soviet Union are the 'news'. 'Risk' is firmly placed in an Irish context but continues to resonate with exterior causation, however blaming strategies construct new social cleavages similar to those in mainstream environmental discourses. Exteriorisation or the 'politics of denial' is counterbalanced against a doctrine of individual responsibility. Chernobyl in effect has become a metaphor for late Twentieth century Ireland moving forward faced backwards. 3.4 THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF ENVIRONMENTALISM 3.4.1 Two case studies The embeddedness of ecological communication in patterns of political culture has become evident in the analysis of the Chernobyl story line of Irish media discourse. By means of two short case studies some additional evidence for this embeddedness is Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 65 given. These cases studies locate environmental communication in the issue cultures of two important chemical/ physical problems i.e. Sellafield and Merrell Dow. For simplicity sake, we have divided the world of actors into two; one official and the other oppositional. In the following sections, each case study is individually described in terms of its general significance (i) Sellafield The Sellafield issue in one form or another has pervaded Irish environmental communication for many years. It imposed itself on the agenda with the outbreak of a fire in the reactor at the Windscale facility and its effect on the health of Irish citizens is still debated.33 Windscale, as is the trend following an accident was renamed and became Sellafield. The Irish government abandoned its own nuclear project in the early 1980's in the face of widespread opposition. Since then various administrations have publicly expressed concern about the dangers of Sellafield. The debate has intensified since 1987 when Greenpeace set up a full time campaign office in Dublin. The Sellafield plant is generally seen to be a major source of radioactive pollution entering the Irish Sea which has come to be popularly known as the "most radioactive sea in the world". The Sellafield debate is an important access point in that it helps to contextualize ecological communication after Chernobyl. The sample can be defended by examining the Chernobyl media story-line which situates the central importance of the Sellafield debate above and beyond the direct effects of Chernobyl. Chernobyl is converted into a metaphor to describe the risk offered by Sellafield and later this metaphor develops a real extension when the effects of Chernobyl become apparent. By 1990, the immediacy of Chernobyl had receded. The former isomorphism became differentiated into an us and them scenario. The currency of this differentiation is the state as quisling rather than the state as guarantor of the common good. Temporally, this is influenced by cross-fertilisation from developments in the anti-toxic debate. There is now a visible articulation between the packaging of the nuclear debate and the chemical debate within the bounds of a crisis transfer thesis, in other words dependency becomes an explanatory variable. (ii) Merrell Dow 33 This is illustrated in an article in the Star newspaper in 1990 in an article entitled "The day the cloud came" when the high incidence of "Downs Syndrome" is linked to the Windscale fire. 66 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The Merrell Dow controversy began in 1988 with the announcement that the Merrell Dow pharmaceutical company was to establish a facility in Killeagh in the East of the county district of Cork and it continued until the plan was abandoned in 1989. The chemical/pharmaceutical sector represents a substantial portion of Ireland's manufacturing exports and despite a change in official emphasis on the future role of the sector, it remains an important actor on the industrial scene.34 The history of the sector in Ireland is paralleled by intermittent conflict on the grounds of environmental health and safety. Ireland underwent a sustained period of rapid industrialisation from the late 1960's onwards though the agricultural sector continues to play a pivotal role in the economic and cultural landscape of the country. The latent potential for conflict between the rural interests and industrialising forces in the society has been exacerbated by the pharmaceutical industry's preference for "greenfield" rural locations. This potential became actualised on a number of occasions in environmental contests in the early 1970's. The terms of the debate in the Merrell Dow controversy are carried into the public domain in risk discourse and regulatory discourse. The risk is framed in terms of the potential to undermine the fabric of rural Ireland, the romantic repository of 'the good life' in Irish society and the frontier against the encroachment of the pathologies of modernisation. The discourse on regulation focuses on the failure of the state to protect the people against the attack. The principal themes are those of the nature of Irish development, the re-orientation of representation and the desirability of technical progress. The locus of the debate is the locality, a microcosm of the people-nation where the democratic game is defined by history and location. The themes and framing devices used by the official and oppositional actors are presented in table 4. The value of this table, to some extent also applying to the overall exercise, is compromised by the relatively small sample of texts. This means, for example. that the switch to scientification framing devices, known from other sources to have been adopted by oppositional actors in the Merrell Dow case as the controversy developed, is not captured here. Nonetheless, as an illustrative exercise with some empirical value, the table enables us to indicate some of the symbolic make-up of official and oppositional symbolic packages. Table 4 Compro34 Opposi- Industrial Policy Review Group "A time for change: Industrial Policy for the 1990's" The Stationary Office Dublin 1992 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Statement Official FD mise Exp CCI Exp 67 FD tional Exp CC I Exp Exp CC I Exp BNFL Sellafield for profit at the expense of people (GP) M Exp Cumbria - focused on short term profits (GP) M Exp Reprocessing is dirty and dangerous S Exp Greenpeace: People don't want it done next to them M Exp CC I IC M IC Sellafield Ireland and Greenpeace standing alone Standing up for ourselves at last Must persuade them this Nuclear Plant must be closed Exp M God Forbid that Sellafield will become our own Chernobyl Exp M Irish government motion on the closure of Sellafield is supported by British people Government at last doing something to protect Irish people IC Irish government is making no efforts internationally to close Sellafield Britannia ruins the waves IC M International safeguards exist to guarantee safety Pr S MERRELL DOW 68 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Actor said as a farmer he had no worries about chemical plant in 'His own backyard' Pr M Provide much needed jobs and bring in specialist personnel Dev CCI Living, working and housing families M Dev CC I Dev Deafening silence of politicians M IC Appeal to Taoiseach to use influence P IC Not taking it lying down CC I Exp Not totally opposed to development Dev Company: Ready to respond to concern Pr S Politics stands in the way of Meaningful dialogue with the community Pr S The following themes are represented in Table 4: Exploitation (Exp), Institutional Confidence (IC), Progress (PR), Development (Dev). The framing devices (FD) are Collective Common Interest (CCI), Moralisation (M), Scientification (S) and Personalisation (P). (iii) Analysis An immediate contrast arises between the two cases. For long periods of the Sellafield case there is agreement between official and oppositional actors on the fact of national exploitation caused by exposure to risk from a plant sited in another territory. At this level, there is high potential for intra-national compromise. But the compromise is temporary; environmental actors turn on the authorities when they don't act with the urgency or purpose they perceive as necessary. The Sellafield issue reveals how pivotal are themes of national identity to environmental communication on many issues in Ireland. These themes, which symbolically enter the themes and counter-themes outlined in table three above, are perceived to have high salience and for "objective" strategic reasons but also for subjective, "principled" reasons environmentalists embrace them. Many environmentalists in Ireland, and in other small countries such as Denmark, are actually committed to reconstructing the resources of national tradition as part of a new eco-national worldview. This has immense social-psychological appeal as moral consensus is given high value as a collective good and Sellafield is an issue, Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 69 which, at times, can offer potential for this consensus. Hence, both official and oppositional actors exchange themes of external exploitation by using predominantly moralization and collective common interest devices. But, in environmental communication with its volatile symbolic politics, this consensus is fleeting. We have already described, in the text above, how the environmentalist perspective, while still using the symbolization of national identity, changed position and turned from an externally-oriented to an internally-oriented critique. The latter position is more normal for environmentalists. National identity is employed in system-critical discourses on such issues as tourism, landscape, multi-national exploitation and so forth. This is the way in which it is used in the Merrell Dow case but Merrell Dow is more about the politics and representation of locality within more general cultural codes and social-psychological orientations. The environmentalist position in the Merrell Dow case, and the newspaper coverage in part, tends also to be more of a discourse on the constitutive principles of civil society directed at conditions of participation in decisionmaking. This would be even more clearly demonstrated if our sample had continued on to deal with the coverage of the public inquiry which accompanied the controversy. Here, the theme of Institutional Confidence looms large as it did in the last texts of the Sellafield issue. The overall impression in the two samples is still of a relatively homogenous cultural order though one that is now subject to strong influences of pluralization. But the identity securing symbolic acts of environmentalists are still substantially located within a consensualist-populist social order whose restricting consequences can be understood as a product of context, the organization of the public sphere, and intervening conditions, the various opportunity structures outlined in table one. The cultural influences emanating exogenously, as documented in table three, bring in new cultural orientations, tactical repertoires and ideas about democratic procedure. But from the evidence of these case studies this is heavily re-translated to align with Irish identities, contexts and opportunity structures. Hence, the construction of a nationally specific narrative structure involves the absorption of cosmopolitanized cultural elements and their localization in specific cultural conditions which significantly alter their cultural significance, leaving to one side, for now, the question of how these cosmopolitan influences might have been constructed in the first place.35 3.5 THE IRISH MEDIA DISCOURSE: A SYMBOLIC OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE 35 See McAdam and Rucht (1993) for a useful discussion of the cross national diffusion of movement ideas. 70 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * To conclude the analysis of the resonance structure of the Irish media discourse on the environment, we will return to the question: To what degree has the symbolic action of environmentalists operating in Ireland been successful in crystallising for themselves a mature identity as an organized actor and in implanting a new ethical nature-frame in public discourse? Both goals depend on changing the conditions of inter-organizational communication, moving it from a diffuse pattern of communication to a discourse with stable normative prescriptions. This formulation points back to introductory remarks where our focus on the reflexive relationship between culture and discourse was outlined. In the following we want, firstly, reconstruct from the above materials the nature of both environmentalist symbolic packages and the packages produced by their respondents, political and business, which, for simplicity, we group together as an "official" actor and, secondly, assess what discursive order these packages presage. The symbolic packages we speak of in this context are large-scale interpretative packages that correspond to frames. In the case of the formation of a new order of discourse, we want to assess whether a new ethicization of environmental communication has occurred which raise it to the status of institutionalized or about-to-beinstitutionalized discourse. Inevitably, in both the representations above and the reconstruction's below, we have been forced to rely heavily on contextual knowledge to cover the area where the research itself has not already gone. The dynamic of national and international as outlined above has implications for how the construction of symbolic packages may be conceived. These symbolic packages are simultaneously broad international cultural forces which claim universalistic import and nationally and locally mediated packages which apply to specific social conditions. The role of historical traditions which affect cultural beliefs and which may exist either as consciously held and active forces, as background conditions subject to cultural mobilization under certain conditions, or as unconscious influences on current actions must also be taken into account (see table one and related discussion). While the evidence of the case studies leads to the conclusion that Irish environmentalist symbolic packages are to a high degree conditioned by the opportunity conditions of discourse resonance in the Irish public sphere and by the influence of indigenous historical traditions it is necessary to attempt to situate this perspective and to relate it to the symbolic package used by their respondents. The symbolic package of Irish environmentalists has had its repertoire extended very significantly by the relatively recent emergence on the scene of international environmental organizations which significantly increased the intensity and persistence of system-critical symbolic action. This had either been fitfully carried by episodic mobilizations and demobilizations or by the much weaker and, often accommodating voice, of conservationism. Recently, in keeping with the international trend, there has been somewhat of a convergence between these symbolic stances leading to still critical but more reformist attitude across the environmental movement. The symbolic package is contextually defined by relatively poorly rooted opportunities for action, by a cultural order still heavily organized around populist-hierarchical-consensualist themes, Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 71 and by a national structural situation that is politically non-participatory and economically heavily dependent. It is further contextually conditioned by a public sphere that is to a high extent virtual in that non-public or non-discursive mediation channels determine to a very high degree political decision-taking which often leaves the public sphere itself of low importance in political decision-taking. In these conditions, interpreting both from the case studies and from the general analysis of the database, one can identify the symbolic package of Irish environmentalism as an environmentalist ethicization of national common good themes involving a re-translation of the national symbolic repertoire. The repertoire has a heavy emphasis on coherent group identifications which are attached to a sense of belonging to a generalized, unitary, moral community. This tends to narrow the space of possible political action. The symbolic package is conditioned by its communication respondent, the official actor, who over the period of the study moved from outright opposition to various accommodating stances, by a thematic structure that still accords great significance to economic development issues, by a communication repertoire that emphasises "local" or situated moralization rather than moralization according to politicized ethical codes and is embedded in an hierarchical cultural model, and by an international context that mitigates the effect of local specificity's through the introduction of a more directly packaged, principled environmentalism. Borrowing form Gamson (1995) we might conclude that in Irish political culture, a discourse on the national interest offers an established way of making participatory claims. This discourse pushes the challenger to demonstrate similarity to the mainstream, accepting the basic premises of ethnic and interest group politics. Inevitably this mutes the challenge to cultural codes, focusing the struggle for inclusion on extending the existing rules to additional categories. The symbolic package that results is therefore "narratively" diffuse given that the symbolic ground of such a package does not permit an easily distinguishable nature theme that exists independently of issue-driven stimuli as an ethicized identity frame supported by a sympathetic, correspondingly ethicized public. The two major strands of the environmental movement, the conservationist, which is still very strong, and the newer, more radical wing, driven by recently arrived international organizations and local groups, are beginning the process of constructing a mutually congenial symbolic space around an emergent political ecology package that could be a symbolic prelude to a period of consensus mobilization on more general themes. But the opportunity space for such a mobilization is hampered by the credibility constraints offered by both the general public and potential participants to principled, non-contingent nature frames. Following Gamson (1995) we can further argue that the division of labour strategy does not really solve the dilemma of gaining media standing, but instead pushes it back to the arena of internal identity politics. This suggests that the symbolic identity of Irish environmentalism will remain relatively diffuse in the short-term but gradually tighten into 72 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * the medium term as a movement-wide identity begins to stabilize. This will, of course, depend on the general contextual and immanent conditions of mobilization. Working from the same set of contextual conditions described in the above paragraphs, one can identify an official symbolic package that is built around preserving the autonomy of political and economic action by the dual strand of, firstly, smothering environmentalist protest in the embrace of a national community that is always already concerned about the environment as part of national tradition and, secondly, by blanket opposition to environmental concerns, usually according to the perspective that they are economically destructive and scientifically ill-informed. Neither of these strategies implies that any effective discourse with action-constraining consequences is being followed. But, as tendentially outlined in the Merrell-Dow case study above, strategies are being pursued both by policy-makers and business that is oriented to dialogical consensus-building with the general public though with a very weak institutional base. More generally, both in their assumptions about the state of public opinion, and in a readiness by the state to exercise regulatory responsibilities, state and business actors are at least anticipating environmental objections and are beginning to feel constrained by the pressure that environmentalists exert in public communication which has been having a modest effect on behaviour. This more accommodating stance could be described therefore as a third strand of the official symbolic package that sees environmental protest as a problem that needs to be contained within existing development strategies but does not extend to consistently entering into discursive exchange with environmentalists. The official symbolic package has, in general, strong narrative fidelity though it is increasingly questioned by the public when put forward in environmental disputes, in part because environmentalist counter-claims are eroding its credibility. The establishment of an environmental master frame requires that an environmentalist symbolic package based on innovative ideas of what is good and worthwhile, what behaviour should be followed and what way the world should be understood, corresponding to evaluative, prescriptive and descriptive worlds, could be coherently articulated, that it could thematically and communicatively reshape the public sphere achieving in this act the conditions of discursive institutionalization, i.e., it would have norm-conforming, world-defining, and evaluative powers by virtue of agreement derived from its continuously tested yet reflexively stable cognitivist foundations. Its normative influence, both substantively and procedurally, would therefore depend on the way in which it was cognitively constructed and re-constructed. The prospects of establishing an environmental master-frame that would facilitate the emergence of a new nature theme in Irish environmental communication that could establish it, on a new basis, as an ethicized discourse is not a short-term prospect. The symbolic space in which environmental communication is conducted is relatively narrow and is only slowly taking on the form of a meaningful discursive exchange by virtue of the gradual recognition that an environment actor exists and must be dealt with in a Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 73 strategic, if not, in any sense, a co-operative manner. Environmentalists might currently be considered as marginal discourse partners who are slowly reaching the status of an organized actor with sufficient power to mobilize a public and who are therefore perceived as worthy of compromise by other partners. But this compromise is still merely strategic though there are indications that this first phase may be changing as the behavioural assumptions of state and business are altered. The second stage, political procedures of consensus building based upon a commonly-held ethicized relation to nature deriving from norms of responsibility that would ensure the protection of endangered collective goods is still some distance away, The cognitivist foundations for such a consensus are not revealed in our analysis above. The narrative fidelity, identity, and resources of environmentalists will have to increase by a slow battle of attrition on a number of fronts before they will acquire the symbolic power to establish new cognitivist foundations for public environmental communication that would draw their current antagonists into new terms of discursive exchange. This will, in turn, depend on a host of environmentally-relevant opportunity structures. The further germination from this stage to a society-embracing new ethical relation to nature that enjoys full sway amongst the public at large, as well as politicized groups, is currently so intransparent as to foreclose a predictive attitude. The following analysis of actors in this developing discursive space will shed some light on the mechanism that foster and block such a development. 3.6 POLITICAL ACTORS 3.6.1 Master frame(s) The empirical findings of our interviews represent a situation very much in flux. The degree of flux in the political system over the period renders many of the emergent structures time-bound and perhaps anachronistic at this stage. In acknowledging this limitation, there are interesting developments which point to an historically specific evolution in Irish environmental discourse. An emerging master frame of "Sustainable Development" is currently struggling to achieve hegemony. To some extent conceptions of sustainability define the parameters of the discourse used by all the actors. Sustainability appears to be a semantic construction bridging the partial institutionalisation of environmentalism. The reference points of the parties range from representative democracy to participatory democracy and pluralism, and from integrated policy co-ordination to legislative adaptation. However, central to all of the political respondents' concerns is the importance of industrial development. Even the Green Party who critique the industrial growth metaphor are increasing moving into communicative relations with business and industry. The problem for many of the parties is to bridge the gap between market failure and bureaucratic failure (Majone, 1986), while maintaining legitimacy. Whereas, 74 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * the political parties appear to frame environmental issues in different ways, and in keeping with their respective identities, the essence of the problem for Irish political parties is legitimacy. Brand's identification of 'ecological modernisation' as a master frame in the German context appears to resonate in the Irish case as a particular manifestation of Sustainability. The persistence of national themes such as development, the problems of delegitimation which environmental issues have given rise to and the lost ground of a "faith in technical progress" model renders the master frame of "ecological modernisation" as a particularly useful variant of sustainable development. Throughout the period of the study political actors have moved from a position of outright opposition to environmental claims to various stances of accommodation. The attitudinal and behavioural assumptions of political actors are undergoing modification and revision. This is a partial and selective process conditioned by a contextual change in the nature of environmental problems. Each of the parties attribute the shift in environmental concern in the political system to systemic responses to problems transmitted from above (international conventions and regulation), from within (institutional innovation and legislative response) and from below(extra-systemic political challenges and increased public awareness/cultural learning). The result has been a reorientation in the framing of environmental issues from the purely technical framing that persisted in the 1980s to the inclusion of social framing definitions. The technical fix option which ascribed significance to end-of-pipe technological solutions through the 1980s is gradually being eroded among institutional political actors. That is not to say that it is redundant. Among many of the respondents the technical aspect of environmental problems persists as a dominant way of attaching meaning to particular issues. In particular the issue of waste and waste management stand out. Ranging across the party political spectrum there is unanimity regarding the existence of waste disposal issues and the need for waste management strategy. The discourse of all political parties, with the exception of the Greens, is that waste management and incineration are inextricably bound together. However, beyond the issue of incineration there is evidence to suggest that there is a shift in technical framing from end of pipe solutions to strategies of minimisation and prevention. Technical policy solutions such as policy integration and institutional innovation are also on the agenda of many of the political actors. In this we see tentative indications of the growth of "ecological modernisation". Bridging the technical and social framing of issues are questions of legitimacy, for example the legitimacy of state institutions in the technological domain is for some parties seen as a social problem of a lack of confidence. The solution to this is a limited communication with the public, legitimated through the provision of independent scientific data made available to policy makers. The object of this approach is primarily the recovery of public legitimacy. The social framing of environmental problems extends across a range of positions for political actors. In addition to the position of aiming for Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 75 public legitimacy, there is an emphasis on the importance of cultural change through communication and education which focuses on behavioral and attitudinal factors. The stress on "common interest" and "avoiding knee-jerk environmentalism" underwrite a consensualist approach held by the political parties which seeks to reconcile the interests of environment and development within the framework of "ecological modernisation". The attempt to move towards a more consensualist approach would suggest a reorientation in politics and policy making, but what is the nature of this re-orientation and what are the implications in terms of the creation of new fora for politics and policy making? 3.6.2 New fora for politics and policy making? Strategies are being pursued by institutional political actors that are oriented towards dialogical consensus building with the general public but as yet this has a weak institutional base. In the case of political parties across the spectrum, there is evidence that parties have responded to the discourse of environmentalists, at least in terms of establishing communicative relations with groups and associations. In each case this was most acute in relation to the development of informal relationships, through networking with environmental protest organisations and citizens initiatives. In some cases this took the form of residual clientelistic relations, whereby parties continued to mediate the interests of economic actors and groups in civil society. In addition to this, political actors actively pursue a process of social monitoring, not only through the media but through interaction and consultation with environmental groups. Most of the political parties to some extent engage in social monitoring. This takes the shape of both formal and informal relationships. In all cases the parties use environmental organisations as an information resource to keep themselves aware of environmental issues. In some cases the interaction is based on intelligence gathering for up-coming environmental legislation. This takes the form of solicited information, but is often unsolicited since many of the national and local environmental groups are anxious to input into policy and prepare substantial position papers on up-coming legislation. The staging of environmental conferences by environmental actors presents politicians and civil servants with an opportunity to monitor developments. This is to a degree a limited mechanism due to the time constraints of political actors, especially when in government. The concerns of business actors are more institutionalised through meetings which give politicians an opportunity to monitor them. The electoral system has also been an avenue for social monitoring over the last number of years. The ascendance of the Green Party in local elections and in the 1994 European Parliamentary elections has indicated the importance of environmental issues to the mainstream parties. Political parties and institutional political actors in general are well aware of the fact that social monitoring of this nature is reciprocal and use the opportunity of informal 76 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * contact to legitimate performance and inform social movement actors of initiatives and innovations as a buffer to conflict. The 1990s have bourn witness to an increasing recognition by political actors that evolving institutional arrangements with regard to environmental protection have to take account of all sectoral interests, including environmental groups and localised protest campaigns. There is, as a result of the ability of these groups to structure and communicate criticism of the state's environmental policy, a gradual interpenetration of political actors by various environmental organisations. Participation is, however, predicated on the a priori acceptance by environmentalists of consensualist themes. This largely refers to an acceptance of the reconciliation of environmental and developmental issues which is increasingly presented as a public discourse of sustainable development that encompasses the imperative of economic growth. The recognition by parties of the positive contribution to be made by environmentalists is as yet qualified by the terms of inclusion. These terms tend to require an acceptance of the legitimacy of the institutions of state, and there is a predilection for "professional" organisations. Groups such as An Taisce (The National Trust for Ireland) have, by virtue of their quasi-institutional footing, identified the importance of a balanced position and this has involved them in interaction with both business and politics. The process of interaction between institutional political actors and environmental actors has intensified since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Prior to this the main route for institutional action by environmental groups was the planning and legal systems. These systems provided an opportunity for participation insofar as they allowed for challenges to industrial policy with regard to local development. Additionally, elected politicians have fulfilled a representative function by introducing amendments with regard to upcoming legislation on behalf of environmental groups. These types of institutional channels have, however, limited the participation of environmental organisations and groups since they are primarily reactive. The protest potential and communicative competences of environmental organisations have given an additional impetus to international developments requiring political actors to innovate. A number of policy and institutional innovations in the early 1990s have brought renewed opportunities for participation. In January 1990 the Irish Government finally framed its environmental policy in the Environmental Protection Programme. Coyle (1994) argues that the motivation for finally creating a framework for environmental protection arose out of a combination of legal obligations as a result of EU environmental policy and a desire by the government to be seen as proactive. The policy document commits the Irish Government to the principle of sustainable development, the precautionary principle, and the integration of environmental concern into all policy areas. Inherent in this policy was the recognition of the need for ecological communication. This was institutionally manifested in September 1990 with the launching of ENFO, the environmental information service. Among the Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 77 most significant innovations of the past two decades was the Environmental Protection Agency which commenced operations in 1993. The decision to establish the EPA by the government in 1991 can be ascribed to a number of factors including the scale and complexity of regulation, the diminished public confidence in existing institutional arrangements for environmental protection and the need to coordinate more effectively with the European Environmental Agency (Benson et al 1992, Coyle 1994). The Environmental Protection Agency is supported by an Advisory Committee, including representatives of environmental NGOs, and the industry, agriculture, education and research sectors. This committee has a wide brief under the Environmental Protection Agency Act 1992, including recommendations on the work programme of the EPA and standards, guidelines and codes of practise in relation to environmental protection. The Advisory Committee to the EPA includes representations from two environmental organisations; Irish Women's Environmental Network (IWEN) and the National Youth Environmental Organisation. However, other more critical organisations are conspicuous by their absence. Greenpeace, for example were highly critical of the decision not to include provision for appealing the decisions of the EPA to a third party (Coyle 1994). Among the many difficulties facing integrated policy making is that the administrative arm of the state with responsibility for aspects of environmental protection is diffuse and located within the confines of a plethora of departments. There are therefore differential perceptions of the administrative system emanating from the social movement sector regarding environmental issues. These views can be contingent on the perceived culture of a particular department or can be related to the performance of a particular minister. Attempts to regularise the interaction between departments has seen the recent establishment of a green network of ministers, whereby representatives from the various departments discuss the potential impacts of their activities and policies. The degree of contact between individual organisations and specific departments has increased with relationships being consolidated on a formal and informal level. The government since the late 1980s has identified the importance of the inclusion of the 'social partners' in attaining goals relating to "sustainable development'. In addition to the important impetus deriving from specific instances of environmental conflict, lessons have been learned from other policy areas, in particular the area of industrial relations. The government established the National Economic and Social Forum (NESF), in 1993 to develop economic and social policy initiatives particularly to combat unemployment and to assist in the formation of national consensus on social and economic matters. The Forum is broadly based with 49 members, including, for the first time, environmental NGO representation.36 Localised infrastructural developments with the potential for conflict have seen the growth in consultative processes. In particular roads and transportation have seen the involvement of local communities and environ36 Department of the Environment, 1994, op. cit., p. 16. 78 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * mental groups in dialogue with local authorities. On a national level developments such as the National Roads Authority have seen the penetration of environmental groups in an advisory capacity on policy. There is a tendency for reformist conservation organisations in particular to become involved in these types of relationships. On the other hand, while the amount of informal contact between groups from the political ecology tradition and political actors is increasing there is a resistance to routinised institutional relationships. In particular this refers to the fear that too close an association with political actors will stymie their autonomous critical potential. Localised quasiinstitutional fora have failed to be inclusive for this very reason. For example, a localised attempt to establish a conflict mitigating discursive forum, which includes representatives of business, administration and conservation/environmental groups, has failed to fully incorporate local protest actors, because of a perception by certain groups that the agenda is pre-conceived and that the forum has as its basis a desire to truncate public communication. 3.6.3 Information strategies: open or closed? Relatively speaking, the information strategies of political actors are more open than they have previously been. However, this has to be immediately qualified by reference to the objective situation of the 1970s and 1980s where a policy of closure persisted. In general, the situation into which environmental discourse was inserted was a national structural situation that is politically non-participatory and economically heavily dependent. It is further contextually conditioned by a public sphere that is to a high extent virtual in that non-public and non-discursive mediation channels determine to a very high degree political decision taking which often leave the public sphere itself of low importance in decision taking. Nevertheless, the communication of institutional political actors is increasingly consensual and participatory, in the face of a cognitively capable opposition which can effectively mobilise public communication. Communication is as a result also legitimatory by its nature. In terms of communication to economic actors, routinised, well developed channels of communication emanating from nonenvironmental-based issue relationships persist in institutionalised forms. In terms of public communication, a two-fold strategy appears to exist. Apart from the procedural, substantive and structural demands that international regulation and conventions are placing on policy makers there are additionally image factors impinging on their activities. The ascendance of environmentalism as a publicly mediated issue has seen policy actors hesitantly drawn into to a public discourse which almost invariably has compounded the lack of confidence in both government and political parties more generally. Even among the more conservative parties there is a recognition of a democratic deficit in relation to public information on environmental issues. The translation of public communication from a purely technology driven legitimacy to one that takes account of social and cultural factors is beginning to emerge. This is evident in positions which range from the communication of information validated by Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 79 independent scientific expertise to communication which emphasises cultural change through educative public programmes. In general, this type of communication is geared towards mass consumption with the express purpose of public education and the provision of information regarding the positive actions undertaken by policy makers. The provision of a public information resource through ENFO is indicative of this approach. Among the political parties, more generally, there is a contradiction between the stated wish in almost all cases of a desire to increase their output of public communication, on the one hand, and the degree of organisational change and resource allocation to achieve these ends, on the other. The delegitimating consequences of engaging in public communication of a conflictual nature is parallelled by an increasing obligation placed upon policy makers to integrate the principal of subsidiarity into decision making. This is an increasingly important factor in the context of the Rio Earth Summit, Agenda 21, and Towards Sustainability. The emergence of multi-sectoral consultative initiatives is an attempt to meet these increasing obligations and to find both localised and centralised alternatives to conflict. The gradual re-conceptualisation of environmental associations from sectional interests residing outside the necessary policy networks to actors that have at some level to be incorporated, is as of yet limited and highly contingent. The restricted trend towards institutionalised communication has, like the Italian case, not resulted in established procedures, nor specific identities. Dryzek (1987) argues that mediation procedures may create a perception, that consensus between the interests of actors is the objective, rather than a process serving the common good. Swan (1993) argues that mediation of this type may not just represent a step back from discursive politics but perhaps even democratic politics. His argument is that this type of mediation is based on an assumption of a liberal democratic model of public discourse that sees fundamental disagreements as sources of instability and thus not the stuff of public debate. A simplistic analysis of political actors' communication in institutional and quasiinstitutional settings that draws on these insights would see such developments as an attempt by institutional political actors to maintain the objective conditions of non-public and non-discursive mediation channels. This is not beyond the bounds of possibility given that policy makers are slow to extend policy networks and revise operational procedures to include new actors who bear conflicting operating assumptions. None the less while bearing this in mind, the obligation to give due regard to the principle of subsidiarity, at one and the same time, allows for the extension of policy networks to include actors that will pay the transaction costs of insider status (an acceptance of consensual and participatory policy making that rejects public conflict). In other words, while appearing democratic they provide a limited discursive context, that is seen to exist by the interested public but which acts as a container for public discourse which is potentially conflictual and delegitimating. 3.7 MOVEMENT ACTORS 80 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 3.7.1 Master frame(s) The Irish environmental movement is characterised by two main strands, namely, conservationism, and more recently political ecology. Young (1990) and Paehlke (1989) identify the first earth day in 1970 as symbolic of the fusion of traditional and essentially elitist preservationism and conservationism with the concerns of modern environmentalism. The convergence path of conservationism with popular environmentalism was not as radical as in the U.S. but conservationists were involved in the first organised manifestations of protest in the 1970s. The inter-penetration of conservationism and political ecology has continued into the 1990s with conservationists increasingly becoming involved in solidaristic relations with national environmental organisations and grassroots campaigns, on the one hand, and political ecology groups using a more consensualist tone, on the other. Nevertheless, there remains, despite the interaction between the master frames, a difference in the way that organisations frame and communicate environmental issues. At a high level of generality, there would appear to be a master frame transcending both conservation and political ecology, which could loosely be termed ecological democratisation. Its frame bridging potential is however limited in the sense that it implies differing relationships to the official master frame of "ecological modernisation". While part of the environmental social movement sector are well disposed to the master frame of ecological modernisation as an opportunity to create a space in which sustainable development could be discursively constructed, others remain sceptical of the motivations of business and political actors, and indeed other environmental groups that subscribe to the concept. The social and technical framing of environmental issues contains strong indication of a democratisation project of Irish environmentalism. The conservationist tradition in Ireland places a particular emphasis on the technical nature of environmental problems. An Taisce repeatedly tend to feature discourses about planned regulated development. Adherence to patterned development and scientific evaluations of environmental problems recur as key issues to be addressed. As with other environmental organisations, the technical framing of environmental problems is accompanied by a social framing that diagnoses a democratic deficit in relation to environmental regulation, the theme of confidence in institutions is therefore ever present in the organisation's discourse. Discourses regarding public accountability and freedom of information are important factors for the organisation that allow for periodic consensus mobilisation across the environmental spectrum. The reformist character of conservation proposes palliative measures that do not preclude an important role for representative democracy. The willingness of conservation groups to seek consensus with public representatives and business actors under the rubric of sustainable development to some extent distanciates them from other organisations. The reformist consensus seeking approach of conservation seeks to achieve its goals through established channels and through the creation of new dialogues with other willing "consequential actors". This does not mean Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 81 that conflict is a redundant feature of the action repertoire of conservationists and the controversy over the Hickson Pharmachem explosion in 1993 and the debate surrounding the disputed heritage centres illustrates this point. The quasi-institutional footing of An Taisce and the consensual orientation of their approach has given the organisation an image of being moderate in the eyes of sections of industry and politics. Discursive exchange is largely regulated at an institutional level in the case of An Taisce, except in cases of conflict where it enters the public domain through the media. Local campaigns and international movement organisations which could broadly be described as political ecology groups, have a somewhat different emphasis from conservation organisations like An Taisce. The masterframe of sustainable development and in particular the official master frame of ecological modernisation is viewed with some scepticism. The technical definition of environmental problems by political ecology groups is one that utilises the device of scientification as a means to an end. While freedom of information is an axiom for many of these groups, there is an additional participative project implied in its deployment. Participation in this case means an explicit requirement to engage in a social and political choice about environmental limits (Jacobs, 1995). Participative processes are not just ways of deciding whether society should conform to objective environmental limits but means of determining what kinds of such limits there are and where they lie (Jacobs 1995). Jacobs, following Wynne (1992), argues that participation in this sense means that 'expert scientific knowledge is complemented by 'local knowledge' emerging from the experience and perspective of particular communities and cultures. Information in this sense is not seen as a tool to be filtered through experts and interpreted but is seen as a public resource to be made available in order that people may define and shape the kind of development that affects their day to day lives. There is a strong bias in political ecology discourse in Ireland towards moral normative themes such as exploitation and lack of confidence in institutions. These themes coexist with counter-developmental themes such as dependent development. Ecological modernisation is cautiously regarded as a strategic device rather than a frame shift on the part of industry and politics. There is a perception among many of the organisations that some actors are genuine in their motivations but that more broadly it is a more strategic attempt to continue business as usual. Local groups such as Cork Environmental Alliance see the existing regulatory framework as an insufficient context into which sustainable development could be embedded. Primarily, the argument runs that the reason for the location of transnational industry in Ireland was the retrograde state of environmental regulation and poor monitoring in Ireland when improvements were taking place elsewhere. The commitment to participation is rooted in the belief that governments cannot legitimately act in a top-down manner. The themes of dependency and exploitation are packaged as "toxic transfer" and were introduced into the cognitive tool-kit of Irish environmentalism during the "enthusiastic phase" of Irish environmentalism. Specific instances of issues such as the Hanrahan 82 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * case, Merrel Dow and Sandoz were cited by a number of the groups as examples where representative as well as participative democracy was seen to fail. Many of the issues which seem at first to be framed as technical are in fact moral arguments, i.e. issues regarding incineration are portrayed as exploitative, the change of technical specifications to receive planning permission is seen as a negation of the democratic process. Greenpeace argue that the prevailing unemployment problems in the Irish context underpin an ability by some aspects of industry to override any conception of sustainable development by using jobs as a bargaining chip in a process of "toxic tradeoff". In other words, industry can trade its employment potential against environmental considerations and achieve concessions in the conditions of its operation. Despite the reservations of environmental organisations to subscribe wholly to the frame of sustainable development there is a degree to which they are becoming compelled to. Jacobs points to the insistence by the Greens in the 1970s on the issue of zero growth as the source of much environmental conflict and argues that it was the willingness of environmentalists to explicitly concede that sustainability and growth are compatible under particular conditions that created the space for the debate about sustainable development. In political terms sustainable development is seen by Jacobs as a new settlement between capital and civil society. He goes on to state that 'in a simultaneous process of pressurising and forming alliances with the progressive forces of capital, this coalition would force the state into leading the restructuring programme envisaged within the model (Jacobs, 1995). This can be seen to some extent in the types of relationships that are being established and the degree of institutionalising processes emerging. Nonetheless, a number of institutional relationships have emerged that point to the continuing importance of traditional forms of institutional communication and indeed newer types of relationships. 3.7.2 Degree of institutionalisation reached The traditional institutional avenues open to conservation and political ecology groups, continue to occupy an important role in the action repertoires of environmental groups in Ireland. Political lobbying plays a particularly important role in this respect. Lobbying is effectively directed at the elected representatives of national and local government, but is also carried on through the development of communicative relationships with civil servants. The local character of some of the organisations acts as an impediment to lobbying on a national scale and brings into question crucial considerations regarding resource allocation. Lobbying can be reactive as well as proactive in that in addition to objecting to particular developments through elected representatives there is also the potential to shape upcoming environmentally significant legislation by preparing detailed submissions and amendments. Essentially, a reactive strategy to the planning and legal processes has periodically provided environmental organisations with an institutional context. The planning system in particular has provided a context for a critical focus on the industrial development policy of the state in a number of high profile cases, e.g. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 83 Merrel Dow and Sandoz. These cases in particular have lent themselves to periods of sustained media coverage which have temporarily opened up discursive exchanges played out in the public domain. Additionally, the planning process has provided an avenue for social monitoring in that it provides a mechanism for access to information. The use of mechanism of talks and meetings with public representatives and business actors has been, and continues to be, quite common among environmental groups. An Taisce, in addition to being a statutory body under the 1963 planning act, are accorded a degree of legitimacy and insider access and more recently have become involved in institutionalised committees. The new institutional arrangements with the state (above) are providing a new, although limited context for participation. However, many of the political ecology groups have tended to be excluded from new arrangements by the terms of inclusion or have actively chosen to remain outside the process. Bi-lateral relationships which occur independently of the emergence of a larger institutional context are the dominant feature of inter-actor relationships. Interestingly, the stated objective of 'refusing to get into bed with industry' has been transformed into refusing to get into bed with government. In the limited circumstance where social co-ordination mechanisms have emerged, the political ecology groups have viewed these as potentially constraining rather than enabling public discourse on environmental issues. Environmental groups, on a national and local level are now actively engaging in bi-lateral negotiations with progressive aspects of industry to achieve coordinated solutions to perceived problems. In this way, outside of an institutionally routinised procedure, accommodations are being achieved that are consensually oriented. This is not a process that means once relationships are established future conflicts are eliminated. Instead, it is a process in the face of uncertainty that negotiates and renegotiates problems and solutions. Examples, of this are interactions between Greenpeace and companies through which alternative technological solutions that are acceptable to the organisation are shared with business actors in co-operative relations. On a local level, accommodations are being reached between business/industrial actors regarding environmental impact. Specifically, this involves consultative interaction prior to the planning process where a negotiated settlement on the impacts of a specific company is constructed. To a degree, this represents a reorientation in politics, since in limited instances the state is being bypassed, and environmental limits are being negotiated between associational actors in civil society and corporate actors in the economy. In reality, the process is limited, uneven and sporadic. While this process has the potential to mediate conflict relative to particular situations, it is not binding across the social movement sector, i.e. other environmental organisations may object to the proposal, nor indeed the economic sector. This process doesn't preclude future conflicts in relation to the same firm. 3.7.3 Division of labour between movement organisations 84 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * As already indicated the environmental movement organisations in Ireland can be broadly delineated along the axis of conservation and political ecology, with deep ecology organisations occupying only the most marginal of positions. The penetration of multi-national, success oriented, environmental organisations has had a profound effect on the division of labour among the movement actors. The cross fertilisation of environmental master frames continues to be a feature of the Irish context, as political ecology is tentatively unifying many of the concerns of environmental groups and concerned citizens. However, there is a still a substantial division of labour among the various organisations which is influenced by many of the factors outlined above, including framing, institutional location, spatial location, organisational structure, action repertoires and communication strategies. The late 1980s and early 1990s have seen sporadic incidences of conservation organisations sharing public platforms with political ecology groups. The most prominent of these organisations is An Taisce whose interests span the preservation and conservation of the built and natural environment with a particular emphasis on scientific value and aesthetic considerations. The conservative nature of An Taisce means that they are somewhat removed from direct action strategies and although they are not averse to organisations like Greenpeace who engage in these activities, they are somewhat cautious in their dealings with them. An Taisce tend to articulate their role in the wider movement as a 'softly, softly approach' when compared with the more 'outgoing, demonstrative groups'. There is also somewhat of a localist bias built into the way An Taisce views other environmental groups. Although the organisation is nationally based, there is more solidarity with community based groups as opposed to groups who come in from outside. Earthwatch, which is affiliated to Friends of the Earth International has gone through a series of transformations since it appeared on the Irish scene as Friends of the Earth in Ireland in 1974 in the context of a growing nuclear movement. Their approach was to engage in direct non-violent action and the adoption of traditional organisational structures and the realisation of objectives through the legal and planning channels. Earthwatch are active across a wide range of issues which are reflected in the broadbased nature of their publication, which is the only Irish environmental magazine. The larger organisations have, relatively speaking more resources and therefore more diffuse issue campaigns. Greenpeace Ireland have a number of main campaign areas including: Toxic Industry, Nuclear Power, Energy, Atmosphere and Ocean Ecology. In particular they have been identified with campaigns against incineration as a major thread in the anti-toxic campaigns and with the issue of Sellafield and nuclear power. CEA distinguish themselves from other environmental groups by the particularity of their focus on the chemical industry. They specify the importance of relations with other community based environmental groups in that there is potentially a large pool of information circulating between them. On the national and international level, they stress the importance of the scientific information that Greenpeace and WEN(UK) have afforded them. Larger groups with an international focus such as Earthwatch(FOE) tend Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 85 to emphasise their own organisational networks asserting their identity as environmental actors with a global reach. Networking has become an important resource for groups trying to enter the debate. Networks are constructed on a number of different levels; they emerge from interactions in everyday life, they can take the form of quasi-professional linkages between groups or they can be inherent in the organisational structure of environmental groups. These networks often are mediated by a number of considerations including at the very least some common purpose, solidarity and the expectation of reciprocity. Networking occurs both on the organisational level and on the personal level. The scientific discourse that surrounds many of the conflicts has been an obstacle to many fledgling campaigns around the country. Networking has been an important accelerator in the scientific education of these groups and has also provided them with guidance through what is for many an unexplored journey through institutional channels. The diffusion of scientific information is an almost circular process between many of the organisations. For example, CEA will provide new campaigns with the resource of their experience, but in addition to the development of their own level of expertise they have received scientific assistance from Greenpeace and Women's Environmental Network. Greenpeace because of their organisational links have access to a network of information that is centrally coordinated in Amsterdam which means that they can tap into international developments as they occur. There is a reciprocal arrangement at work here since information is also fed up into this network from local communities. The use of these networks have been an important counter-measure to the siting strategies of controversial plants. Earthwatch are similarly linked into the larger network of Friends of the Earth International who in turn have representatives in the European Environment Bureau. Like the Greenpeace experience this opens up the reservoir of strategies, actions and information at play in the international context. The larger multinational based organisations were identified as an important facilitator for accessing international information and for strategy development among a number of groups ranging from CEA and C.N.D to the Irish Women's Environmental Network. The proliferation of political ecology groups and issue based campaigns on a local level can be seen, in some measure, as an indicator of the impact of these larger organisations. However, it has also enabled these organisations to pursue their own agendas on a larger scale. In many cases, the networking takes place on a personal basis and this is an important component of the process. An integral part of the way in which CEA network is transcribed within the daily interactions of their members in the local community. This has been important in terms of identifying themselves with local communities in Cork harbour but also plays a crucial role in extending the base of their network. Their relationship with Greenpeace is reinforced by the fact that the toxics campaigner for Greenpeace emerged out of the ranks of CEA. Personal contacts have facilitated the extension of networks to other countries. One example given is the personal contact initiated by a member of 'Communities Against Toxics' in Britain and the subsequent 86 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * connections through conferences and exchange of information. On a local level the regional concentration of a large number of the environmental organisations has facilitated the interaction between a number of groups predicated on personal contact. Another, interesting manifestation of this phenomenon on a local level is a limited incidence of reciprocal memberships among groups. One of the obstacles standing in the way of more effective cooperation between the environmental groups in Ireland, notwithstanding the diversity of issue interests, is the unstated problem of organisational image building. There is a tendency towards the "branding" of issues especially on the part of the larger organisations. "It is [for] reasons which probably shouldn't really exist but do for some groups. They can lose sight of the overall objective which is the environment and the secondary objective of the organisation becomes the primary objective. They have become more interested in furthering their own organisation. Looking at it in some sense they are commercial rivals looking for the same grants, looking for the same membership subscriptions from a limited pool of disposable income, so there is an element of rivalry." This statement from Earthwatch encapsulates the limitations on more effective networking. 3.7.4 Movement actors and media attention One of the most notable features of the Irish situation during the period under investigation, was that the media was among the primary arenas where interaction between environmental groups and their opponents was played out. The media has become the lens for monitoring the activities of opponents. As already pointed out, the development of synergistic relations between nationally based organisations and locally based groups has been an important feature in opening up public communication on environmental issues. In particular, the professionalisation of communication has become a feature of local organisations. Adding to the stated difficulties of competing for limited resources and the consequent constraints on effective networking is the fact that organisations are now not only competing with business actors and political actors for media coverage, but must also compete with each other for the space to communicate. In effect, the success in reaching out to local campaigns has facilitated the emergence of communicatively competent actors vying for a share of coverage. The general consensus among Irish environmental groups is that the media has become an important context for environmental discourse. In general, the environmental groups in Ireland give a highly differentiated evaluation of the media. The Irish Times is rated highly among many of the nationally organised environmental groups. The locally based organisations also allude to the importance of this newspaper but argue that their Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 87 geographical location has militated against more comprehensive, sustained coverage by the Dublin based media. For the local organisations, particularly CEA, the Cork Examiner is also identified as important from the perspective of getting coverage of localised environmental issues. Greenpeace in general regard the national print media as relatively favourable but identify a need for a more systematic penetration of local media networks, smaller radio stations and with environmental correspondents. Both locally and nationally based environmental groups have a systematic approach to targeting the media. The importance of the media to the strategy of the groups is reflected in the allocation of scarce resources to the production of press releases on particular issues and the creation of press packs for journalists for specific events. Even small groups have established refined communications procedures with access to rudimentary office equipment such as personal computers and fax machines allowing them to target journalists. Environmental groups perceive that there is a bias in the amount of coverage that industrial actors receive on environmental issues, but this is seen as a function of editorial policy and the advertising regime rather than a journalistic bias. The cultivation of contacts with journalists and particularly environmental correspondents was seen as necessarily requiring ongoing development by all of the organisations. Radio and, in particular, local radio was seen as increasingly important for environmental communication. Radio provides many of the groups with an outlet for communication of both news and a discursive forum for particular issues. The question of television, on the other hand drew an almost uniform critique from environmentalists. Many of the organisations conceded that the educative format of nature programming was improving but that television news and current affairs programming was particularly poor in relation to environmental issues. 3.8 INDUSTRY AND THE ENVIRONMENT 3.8.1 Master frame(s) The interviews are drawn from a sample of what could be broadly divided into two categories based on Donati's typology of business cultures. Production oriented firms and consumer oriented firms are the main categorisations implied which Myles (1994) suggests broadly encompasses the distinction between 'risky' enterprises and enterprises with a high component of customer communications. The respondents are all in key management positions with an insight into the institutionalisation of environmental concerns in their firms. The responses of the interviewees are seen as the informed observations of key individuals in the targeted firms rather as 'representative' of their industry's response. In view of this, supplementary documentation in the form of promotional literature, company policies and specialist papers regarding companies environmental policies were consulted in the course of the study. 88 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The production oriented firms which include extraction and manufacturing industries are almost all multinational in character. The prominence of the Chemical/Pharmaceutical Industry in the environmental debate during the last two decades is reflected in the selection of two pharmaceutical companies, Pfizers37 and Yamanouchi38, and a sectoral representative association the Federation of Irish Chemical Industries (FICI). Mining has also been the focus of environmentalist critique and emerged as a controversial environmental issue in the late 1980s during the anti-nuclear debate. Tara Mines, interviewed in this study was taken over in 1986 by Finnish company Ooutukumpu and was the focus of controversy over plans to mine Croagh Patrick.39 Irish Glass is an Irish owned enterprise which manufactures glass for packaging, the company is particularly associated with a glass recycling scheme in co-operation with RE-Hab, the Rehabilitation Institute. Although the company is involved in sales the substantial emphasis of the interview is on manufacturing. In many ways this particular company also demonstrates the communicative characteristic of consumer oriented firms. Consumer oriented firms are more or less for the purposes of this study multiple outlet chains. The companies include the Bodyshop, a multiple outlet retail cosmetic company 37 Pfizers Pharmaceutical Company, a subsidiary of a US multinational pharmaceutical company was the first bulk pharmaceutical manufacturer to set-up Irish operations in 1969. It began pharmaceutical production in 1972 and became embroiled in conflict with An Taisce in 1972 as a result of a public appeal against planning permission. The company threatened to pull its operations out of Cork as a result of the appeal, however it continues in production today. The company also had problems with Greenpeace as a result of its sea dumping arrangements in the late 1980s but has since begun to phase this practice out in compliance with EC regulations. 38 Yamanouchi Ireland is a subsidiary of a Japanese company. Although, the company employed 30 in 1990 they claim that the parent company's environmental philosophy allows adequate resources for environmental protection. The company won the 'Good Environmental Management award' sponsored by CEC and UNEP in 1990. 39 Croagh Patrick is an important place of pilgrimage for Irish Catholics. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 89 established on the principle that 'social responsibility can be the foundation of successful business', Quinsworth, a multiple food chain similar to ASDA in the UK, and Maxol, a retail sales oil company. The distinction between production and customer oriented firms is tenuous as best, given that all of the firms to one degree or another are beginning to adopt communicative approaches to environmental issues. The influence of command and control mechanisms in tandem with critical impulses from the environmental movement have been important catalysts for change within business. However, consistent with the other national studies, this change has not been linear nor is it uniform across all sectors. The master frame of 'Ecological Modernisation' provides many of the business actors with the context for overcoming many of the difficulties that they have been faced with while maintaining the residual economic values of growth and efficiency. By and large the industrial growth metaphor has been the touchstone for Irish business, Government and large sections of the general public. Business engagement of new paradigms is both reactive and reluctant, however, economic considerations such as new markets, competition and insurance liabilities have brought indications of an attitudinal shift and internal structural readjustments in some sectors. The conservative interpretation of sustainable development (Jacobs 1995) sees scientific and modernist managerial assumptions underpinning the framing. The discourse is characterised by the language of scientific limits and monitoring, on the one hand, and new techniques and technologies to dampen adverse impacts while maintaining productivity, on the other. The trade-off between environment and development becomes embedded in a technocratic rational choice model. In some cases even the technocratic model is rejected because of the economic implications and problems are located not in the realm of industrial growth but in consumer behaviour. On the other hand, there are examples among the consumer oriented firms that a stronger model of 'ecological modernisation' has begun to take hold. The Body Shop not only seeks to balance the environment and development criteria of sustainable development but also seeks to engender the principles of equity, futurity and participation. In addition to selling into identity markets, they actively try to politicise those markets by engaging in co-operative actions with political ecology groups and by attempting to foster behavioural change by using their shop fronts and fittings as a billboard. 3.8.2 Strategies for controlling the risky political environment Controlling risky political environments entails the pursuit of a number of general strategies ranging from internal organisational change and the greening of communication to external institutional cooperation. The technical response of industry to the environmental challenge has included the pursuit of change through the deployment of research and development instruments, the introduction of new policy guidelines and management practices, and the use of supplemental exterior expertise. In the case of 90 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * production oriented firms, the ability to introduce technical solutions to problems has been augmented by the technical capacity afforded by their scale and by virtue of their integration into a larger contexts as multinational companies. Despite this, companies in many cases argue that the kind of changes necessary often require retro-fitting which brings prohibitive cost. The motivations for technical responses were varied and included legislative requirements, cost efficiency and conflict avoidance. In the case of consumer oriented firms many of the same motivations prevailed, e.g. one company replaced its CFC emitting refrigeration systems in the face of imminent legislation. The introduction of codes of practise and mission statements regarding the environment are becoming more prevalent among both production oriented firms and consumer oriented firms. There is however a high degree of volunteerism implied in these approaches, with management and staff being encouraged but not required to institute environmental practices. Environmental oriented management has begun to evolve in many companies, although this does not necessarily refer to recognised environmental management systems. Sector specific co-ordination such as the Responsible Care Programme in the chemical/pharmaceutical sector is beginning to take effect on the level of the firm, according to industry representatives. This is reflected in the emergence of specific responsibilities in the management structures for communicating environmental issues. Programmes such as this are in their early stages and will require both structural and cultural modification within the firm as well as a high level of commitment from senior management. Changes in relations outside the firm are also an important consideration with some firms subjecting their suppliers to vendor audit schemes regarding their environmental performance. Consumer oriented firms are also evolving negotiated standards with their suppliers. The Body Shop require suppliers to sign an undertaking that they have not tested their products on animals and selectively source both products and shopfittings based on criteria of sustainability. The regulatory context as well as the market context has arguably become increasingly complexified by environmental claims making. Firms are increasingly going beyond the organisational structure to supplement in-house expertise. The use of external expertise ranges from private sector environmental consultancy to semi-state organisations and supplements technical, administrative and communicative expertise. In the case of some of the consumer oriented firms this includes the utilisation of movement expertise in cooperative relations. While many of these changes have a communicative value, i.e. the substance of communication to consequential collective actors in order to mediate or pre-empt legitimation problems, there are other more immediate concerns such as insurance costs, legislative contexts, market opportunities and an emerging realisation that pollution represents inefficiency. Business actors have been forced, often reluctantly to increase their communications output regarding environmental issues. The traditional strategy of particular segments of industry for controlling risky environments was not to communicate. The strategy of closure proved to have adverse consequences since the lack of communication allowed environmental organisations to publicly shape environmental meaning. While Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 91 communications have altered considerably, the strategy of closure is still utilised in cases where an a priori consent with regard to the parameters of discourse cannot be obtained. Similarly, the communicative strategy where it did emerge was mostly oneway communication. This strategy included professionally run public relations and promotional campaigns on the one hand and educational initiatives on the environment on the other. This communication has been instrumental on both levels. The PR approach has often represented a counter-strategic move to limit the impact of environmentalist critique. Educational initiatives served as a strategy to generate goodwill as they have a public service character, but also challenge the educative goals of the environmental movement in a battle for hearts and minds. Dialogic communication is also becoming a feature of the strategy by business actors to regulate politically risky contexts. The tendency to engage in bilateral negotiation with environmental groups is addressed in more detail below. However, institutional means of communication are evolving on the level of the firm, on a sectoral level and with other consequential actors. 3.8.3 Media profile In general, the media has been viewed historically by production oriented firms as hostile insofar as it was more open to environmentalist interpretations. However, the pro-environmentalist representations in the media under investigation gave way to a balanced approach from the late 1980s onwards. This interpretation is a matter of contestation both within and between sectors. The chemical sector in particular was prominent in the media through the period studied. The media strategy of some sectors of industry regarding environmental issues has been reactive in that it is pursued as a damage limiting exercise. In times of crisis this has extended to one-way communications with a high PR content but, by and large, they prefer to mediate what they acknowledge as legitimate public concern through institutionally regulated channels. The media is seen as an inappropriate forum for communication in conflict situations. It is particularly difficult because scientific de-politicisation and demoralisation are countered with personalisation and moral framing of environmental issues. Faced with a cognitively capable opposition, one-way communication has failed since scientific information can be countered by alternative science. The desired alternative for some aspects of industry is to retract from the public media space to more regulated contexts where communication can be filtered through public representatives or communicated directly to selected consequential actors. Localised communication as opposed to mass mediation is seen as a more rational approach where consensus rather than conflict is the object. The scale of interaction is an important factor since the potential to shape the normative context is greater on a local level where the transaction costs of de-legitimation and public exposure are lessened. 3.8.4 Going technological or dialogical? 92 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * While technical problems are on the one hand portrayed as almost inimical to social demands for environmental protection, technology is seen by most of the business actors in the sample as the panacea for environmental problems. Technical solutions are however underpinned by economic rationality and the Industry by and large would prefer the recasting of the concept of Best Available Technology (BAT) to the more economically amenable Best Available Technology Not Entailing Excessive Cost (BATNEEC). Technical solutions are also linked to other factors. Economies of scale can be achieved by large multinationals who can invest in new technologies but a predisposed corporate culture is also identified by Tara Mines as an important consideration. Consumer oriented firms also regard technical developments as important. However, the Body Shop make the point that technical fixes need to be subject to constant reflexive evaluation and viewed in the context of a constantly evolving learning process rather than a final solution. Social definitions of problems are inextricably linked to technical definitions especially for the Chemical Industry. FICI claim that the position of zero pollution adopted by some of the environmental groups is technically unfeasible and as such impedes the stated desire of industry to reach social consensus on strategies for environmental protection. A contributory factor to defining the environment as a technical problem is the competing messages on the desirability or otherwise of particular technologies. In this respect the Industry challenges the legitimacy of technical statements made by environmentalists. A particular case in point is the thorny issue of incineration in Ireland. The solution to the problem of waste is seen as occurring through co-operative efforts involving a range of actors. The logic underpinning this approach is that the market will provide solutions. There is a perceived need for government supported private enterprises to create solutions, but that large companies need to play a pivotal role because they have the power and the influence to make an impact. The recognition of the environment as a social problem is embedded in the mission statements and self definitions of firms as environmental actors. The social dimension of environmental problems is framed very much as the problem of knowledge. On the one hand, there is the failure of society to grasp the complexity of issues facing business, on the other, is the acknowledged historical recalcitrance of business to 'educate' the public on these issues. The problem was compounded by the Chemical Industry's traditional conception of their social definition in terms of (a) providers of socially valuable products and (b) as good corporate citizens which they measured in terms of their economic contribution to the community, whether this was through employment or to contributions to socially desirable causes. The social definition of environment as a problem did not figure in this erstwhile equation. The solution to the problem posed by this anomaly adopted by business is a higher output in communication strategies. The communication process will not, it is argued, take place in a vacuum. The Federation of Irish Chemical Industries argue that evolving technical definitions of environmental problems will have to be reflected in the social construction of environmental issues: Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 93 "I think as the knowledge base of the true environmental impact of operations becomes more readily understood that people will, both on the environmentally general organisations and on the business organisation side, people will be more inclined to accept that the environmental issue is not a cut and dried affair." Formally the difficulty has been the lack of information available to the public. According to Pfizers, this information belongs by [democratic]right to the public but that it is incumbent on the Industry to frame this information in terms of 'simple science'. Pfizers argue that social definitions of environmental problems are not that far removed from industry's own position. The demand for change is not in itself problematic, the difficulty arises in the contested time frame within which this change will occur. For the industry, the lag occurs due to intervening variables such as technical considerations. Pfizers claim that their social responsibility is a composite of balancing the requirements of their customers, i.e. end users of their pharmaceuticals and the demands for minimal environmental impact. The social problematic for the industry is therefore to balance the social value of the Industry's products and the social consequences of its bi-products. The principle difficulty for going dialogical is argued by industry to be the communication of technical information to a broadly based audience. Transforming the technical scientific discourse into a publicly accessible idiom is seen as a challenge that industry will have to address. Nevertheless the traditional position of closure still persists among many of the production oriented firms towards what are seen as 'unreasonable groups'. Unreasonable groups were seen as those who did not begin from a position proximal to an economic definition of sustainable development. There is however a stated willingness to shift towards dialogue, depending on a recognition by these groups of a balance between environment and development. There are strong indications that the dialogic approach would be the preferred mode of communication. The emphasis in many cases was to discuss the issues in 'unemotional terms'. The advantage of addressing communication in this manner is the potential to remove the 'emotive' component of the discourse which is problematic for industry. The problems arise in the necessity to counter publicly made claims levelled at sectors of industry and to steer the direction of the discourse to a more 'rational' approach. The object of the dialogic approach is therefore to de-politicise communications by establishing conditions in advance of the discourse under the rubric of sustainable development. Under these conditions, there is a move by industry to de-moralise the debate by utilising not only scientification but by demanding consensualist parameters to the discourse and by appealing to collective common interest frames. The increasing favour towards dialogue is tempered by a recognition, particularly by the pharmaceutical sector, that traditional one way communication is a failure. Public relations in these terms has become 'community relations' which implies a more focused and often a more dialogic approach. In this case, public communications have become more sophisticated by segmenting the monolithic general public into consequential publics to whom 94 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * communications are directed. Consensus, containment, damage limitation, legitimacy and image politics are all essential components of dialogic communications for production oriented firms. Dialogic communication, then, is an additional strategic means of mediating risky political environments. However, there are increasing indications that industry is also taking on board the positive implications of environmental discourse. These include cost avoidance, cost reduction and in some instances competitive advantage. Consumer oriented firms, in addition to instrumentalist considerations of context regulation have propagated dialogic relations in an attempt to access new markets. In addition to communicative relations with environmentalists, they have increasingly established cooperative relations with some groups. In many cases environmental discourse does not simply represent a threat but an opportunity. Joint actions with environmental groups act as an educative process for many consumer oriented firms and act as a conduit for alternative technologies and practices that are designed to reduce the environmental impact of business practices. More significantly, however, is the attempt to appeal to emergent identity markets by making corporate images synonymous with environmental awareness. Several consumer oriented firms are endeavouring not simply to be seen to react to the environmental movement but to be identified as its vanguard. The motivations differ from firm to firm, as does the nature of the dialogue. In some cases the dialogic relationship is instrumental. It represents an alliance between environmental organisations and business with the object of image building in a particularly commercial understanding of futurity, i.e. creating an identification between a firm and a young, environmentally aware potential customer base. This sees futurity recast as a sustainable customer base rather than an ethical frame of justice between generations. While the financial returns are not immediate the dialogic approach of today provides the basis for one-way communication of the future. In effect, firms are seeding potential target publics with the message that they are progressive and proactive on environmental issues. On the other end of the scale, are the ideological motivations and convictions of capitalism tempered with social and environmental justice. Dialogue and interaction with environmental groups in this case has a political as well as commercial basis. Education, as well as legitimation, is an important component in the use of dialogic communication. With some of the production oriented firms the object is to educate other consequential collective actors as to the social value of their products. The public, in this line of argument, needs to be educated about the true nature of problems and the feasibility of technical solutions, in unemotive terms. The role of industry and business is therefore education that preempts political engagement. With some consumer oriented firms education is seen as inherently political and communication is highly politicised. Cooperation and dialogue with environmental groups also acts as a basis for traditional one-way communication. Emotional signifiers like those used by environmental organisations are important tools in politicising their markets. These firms are also seeding their markets with environmental identity frames, but the object is to make the markets active. Across the spectrum of both production oriented firms and consumer Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 95 oriented firms economic rationality with the values of growth, efficiency and profit prevail as common denominator. The difference is a matter of degree. Whether the object of communication is to depoliticise the operating environment or to moralise the basis of the commercial endeavour, there is as its basis an attempt to appeal to the master frame of sustainable development. This ranges from the scientism with an emphasis on technical solutions and the importance of experts to ecological modernisation with an emphasis on growth that takes account of social and environmental democracy (Jacobs 1995). 3.9 THE NEW POLICY GAME Eder (1995) proposes an analytical distinction between prescriptive, descriptive and evaluative rule systems. These rule systems are related to one another within a historically specific rule regime. He argues that the cognitive paradigm has traditionally been overlooked in favour of the normative paradigm which has privileged the prescriptive rule system and assumed a socially neutral form of scientific knowledge and a shared cultural consensus. In arguing for a cognitive paradigm, he stresses that processes of social construction generated by cognitive rule regimes are embedded in symbolic practices which presuppose normative rules. The symbolic dimension provides a possible link between the normative level and the cognitive level by relating the cognitive construction of reality back to social interaction processes. If we examine the normative rule systems prevailing in the Irish context we see patterns of both continuity and change. Prescriptive rule systems, especially legal rules have had an important structuring effect on the changing Irish context. In particular, the penetration of international agreements and EC directives have changed the face of the Irish regulatory context. Pressure from the social movement sector has added to the complexity of prescriptive rule systems which has contributed to the process of formal institutional innovation. The 1990s are characterised in Ireland by the establishment of national environmental policy and corresponding institutional forms such as the Environmental Protection Agency. This is a response to prescriptive rules emerging in international context, the legitimation problems of industry and government and the regulatory demands of the environmental movement. While new procedural rules can point to the foundations of new institutional relationships, there is often a process of contraction on the other side to limit the perceived gains of the environmental movement on the other. If we take procedures for participation that change through the influence of prescriptive rules we can see evidence of a zero-sum game. There are differing cognitive classifications that precede a normative basis for participation. These stretch across a range of modes of co-ordinating interest. On one end of the scale there are assumptions that are supported by the prevailing political culture where the dominant mechanism of participation is based on local personal bonds (clientelism) for specific individual or 96 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * group needs. Some of the political actors and the business actors argue that this is the only appropriate mechanism for participation. There are also neo-corporatist forms that have emerged in response to environmental conflict and wider societal structures. However, participation is predicated on an acceptance of the balance between environment and development. The existing rules of the game with regard to industrialisation have changed. While on the one hand institutional forms have evolved which extend participation, e.g. the Advisory Board of the EPA, the right to participate has become more restricted by procedural streamlining. Rudimentary rights of participation which persisted under previous arrangements have been curtailed by the absence of the right to appeal the rulings of the EPA. From an environmentalist perspective this is seen as a game of institutional gerrymandering, where innovation becomes a convenient redrawing of boundaries with little substantive gain. Arguably, in such cases participation has been extended through the influence of changes in prescriptive rules, but the same rules have curtailed existing access. Similarly, where new procedural rules have resulted from the impact of prescriptive rule systems such as freedom of information legislation, new forms of exclusion have arisen which are equated with bureaucratic resistance. Residual actor classifications of reality impact on deciding on who has the right to information that are bound up with descriptive rule systems and evaluative rule systems. The 1990s in Ireland have brought modifications in the descriptive rule systems underpinning the normative institutionalisation of environmentalism. The previous position of industry in particular has softened from a rigidly technocratic position to accommodate a discourse of social and environmental responsibility. The frame of scientific de-moralisation remains one of the central cognitive devices, however, this has increasingly been supplemented by the collective common interest frame. The softening of technocracy among business actors is by no means a universal process and differs substantially between production oriented firms and consumer oriented firms. New forms of interaction and communication are implied but residual descriptive rule systems also contribute to structuring these interactions. For example production oriented firms attempt to structure interactions based on technical limits rather that ecological limits and use such cognitive classifications as the cost of admission to the debate. Communication through institutional channels are seen as possible with environmental groups which emphasise science as an end rather than those who emphasise science as a means to advance moral demands. Consumer oriented firms are less driven by technical imperatives than production oriented firms. They have not been exposed to the critical impulses of environmentalism to the same extent and their communications contain a higher symbolic content than production oriented firms. Quite often the symbolism of their communications mirrors precisely that of social movement organisations and their identity markets are primed with mediated images of corporate social and environmental responsibility. However, with very few exceptions, this has more to with sustaining markets and economic norms Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 97 than any substantive change in the descriptive rules. Environmental responsibility is often annexed to other issues such as quality and consumer preference and although it is considered in decision making is not given priority over other issues. The changes in evaluative rule systems are by and large reactive, in the case of production oriented firms these represent a reaction to social protest, in the case of consumer oriented firms a reaction to consumer preference. To some extent values of efficiency, quality and profitability are becoming infused with environmental concerns. Previously, corporate responsibility was seen as primarily a responsibility to customers, shareholders and employees. In instances where, this has broadened to encompass a reconcilability of existing values with environmental considerations a process of frame modification has taken place whereby pollution has become equated with inefficiency and reduced environmental impact with quality. There is therefore an accommodation in the evaluative rule systems of business actors that takes account of environmental values. Established value systems are not however replaced they are modified to adapt to changing resonance contexts. Business actors have become normatively defined as destroyers of common goods (Eder 1995), by the public communications of environmental actors. This has forced their entry into public communication and rendered them visible in the public discourse on environmentalism. In terms of evaluative rule systems they have become embroiled in a competition to define environmental meanings which not only sees business actors and institutions as having to adapt to new rules but also sees an attempt to define these rules. The key to value change is seen as education. Business actors argued that the public needs to educated with regard to the social value of products in order to make an informed choices regarding environmental limits. Despite the avowed recognition by industry of the need to absorb new evaluative rules, the emphasis on educating and informing public opinion about the social value of its products and by implication the associated technologies appears to represent an attempt at frame bridging (Snow & Benford 1988). In other words if the public and indeed environmental opposition can be educated to accept the values of business actors then there is little need to change. The democratic values of environmental organisations emphasise openness, accountability and participation and many business actors argue that the operation of open-door policies and increased communications outputs are directed towards addressing these issues. On the other hand, they are also seen as having limits since environmentalist values are potentially inimical to the values of business. Previously, after the initial strategy of closure, industry adopted a strategy of limited one way communication of technical information. This technocratic approach opened up discursive opportunity structures because the of cognitive resources of movement organisations and the ability to engage in media communication. Instead of marginalising the movement, it provided a public communication space for the articulation of technical alternatives but also different evaluative rules regarding the relationship to nature. 98 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The theory of postcorporatist order is based on the double process of the cognitive and normative institutionalisation of social movements into the institutional order of modern society. It distinguishes between a number of forms of normative institutionalisation ranging from the social movement activity being swallowed by traditional political institutions to the inter-organisational field in which social movement organisations interact with other collective actors. Many environmentalist fear the first form of normative institutionalisation and retract from too close an association with the political system. An important feature of the discourse of political ecology groups was the constant reiteration that they were political but not party political. In part this has to do with the vagaries of the political mechanism of proportional representation, in that the closest associations would be with parties farthest removed from effective decision making. However, it is also related to a desire to avoid enclosure in a discourse about sustainability that is aligned exclusively with 'ecological modernisation'. Political ecology by and large surrendered the zero-growth option in the 1970s, but did not concede the cultural problematisation of technological growth and environmental decision making. There is a reluctance among some groups to use the concept of sustainable development. Some groups point to the danger that the discursive spaces opened up by political ecology will be colonised by the technological and economic dependencies of 'ecological modernisation'. This is despite the potential for new institutional patterns of decision making that could arise. The state retains a legitimate monopoly on defining national aspirations and projects for the realisation of which they make binding decisions and allocate a part of state resources (Flam 1994: 299; Krasner 1984). Flam emphasises that in practice the state often shares this privilege with powerful organised outside interests whose accommodation and support are necessary for the purpose of the realisation of a particular project (Flam 1994: 300). Environmental protest is seen as a problem that needs to be contained within existing development strategies but does not extend to consistently entering into discursive exchange with environmentalists. However, the corporately organised, dominant interest coalition of the state and economic actors have had to strategically accommodate environmental actors because of the pressure they exert in public communication. This has been done in a number of ways ranging from neo-corporatist arrangements that include environmental actors, to the activation of deliberative settings40, and bi-lateral negotiations between environmentalists and business actors. 40 Flam (1994) speaks of deliberative settings as 'voidable voice arenas' which act as 'voice granting' arenas for the purpose of conflict containment and policy defence. These arenas often take the form of public inquiries which are expert dominated arenas that provide the opportunity to voice discontent and are then in practice annulled. A good example of this in the Irish case was the Sandoz inquiry which imposed stringent conditions on the proposed development of a pharmaceutical facility in Ringiskiddy Co. Cork that were subsequently undermined by changes in the technical specification in the design of an incinerator. These arenas are generally activated in conflict situations. In the Irish case the are the outcome of the incommensurability of conflict through the planning process. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 99 The state and some progressive economic actors structure these interactions according to cognitive classifications that resonate with an understanding of sustainable development as 'ecological modernisation'. The rules of entry are often transcribed by a particularist understanding of this master frame which favour residual rule regimes and seek to dilute non-instrumental views of nature. The state is, however, caught in a dilemma between mediating the interests of economic actors and environmental actors when faced with the increasing strength of the environmental public sphere and the insufficiency of clientelistic brokerage mechanisms to resolve the problems of implementing policies. Some environmental actors are unwilling to concede political ecology in favour of 'ecological modernisation' but are increasingly finding themselves having to operate within this frame in order to have a place in socially constructing environmental meaning. Environmental groups are on the other hand beginning to engage with more fluid bi-lateral arrangements which allow for interaction with business actors where progress can be made, beyond the intervention of the state. Rather than containing protest and marginalising the public these interactions represent selective, issue based engagement with the aspects of 'ecological modernisation' perceived as positive on the one hand, and the ability to disengage where necessary on the other. Environmental groups also retain the ability to continue to contest environmental meaning through the media where common goods are endangered and institutional forms dictate that compromise precede discursive interaction. While at some level many of the actors are well disposed, at least rhetorically, to engage in dialogue as a means to achieving consensus, the new patterns of interaction are generally sporadic and while there is an increased incidence to be observed it is largely unpatterned. 100 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 101 4 Italy: Media Discourse, Actor Strategies and Institutional Rules 4.1 THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE IN ITALY: SELECTING A NEWSPAPER SAMPLE Before looking at the environmental discourse within the Italian newspapers, it is useful to examine briefly the context, economic and political, in which these newspapers operate. The information market in Italy, just as in most European countries, is of a multi-media nature. Radio, television and the press coexist, compete and collaborate for a smaller or larger share of the national audience. The main characteristic of the intermedia competition and collaboration in Italy is the high concentration in terms of ownership and control of the various information enterprises (Gobbo, Scorcu & Mosconi 1988; Mosconi 1992). Thus, in spite of the presence of a large number of radio and TV channels as well as a variety of daily and periodical publications, the information market in Italy has an oligopolistic structure (Triandafyllidou 1993). The relationship between different types of information industry and/or other sectors of production is a close one (Fiat-Rizzoli, just to name one example). The feature of diffusion between the different information sectors together with the high level of concentration has two effects on the market structure. On the one hand, there is a complementarity between the audiovisual and the printed media. The inter-media competition leads to a general increase in the information offered to the public. On the other hand, the public discourse is under the absolute dominance of a restricted number of multimedia enterprises. The above observations on the oligopolistic structure of the information market in Italy are also relevant for the Italian daily press. A closer examination of the situation of the daily newspapers during the last few years is offered in table 1. 102 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Table 1: The ten larger Italian daily newspapers on the basis of their annual circulation 1980 Corriere della Sera Gazzetta dello Sport La Stampa Corriere dello Sport L'Unità Giornale Nuovo Il Messaggero Il Resto del Carlino La Repubblica La Nazione 1986 1988 Gazzetta dello Sport Corriere della Sera Corriere dello Sport La Repubblica La Stampa Il Messaggero Il R.d.Carlino Il Giorno La Nazione Il Sole 24 Ore 199041 La Repubblica Corriere della Sera (9,08) Gazzetta dello Sport Gazzetta d.Sport (8,01) Corriere della Sera La Repubblica (7,72) Corriere dello Sport Corriere dello Sport (6,09) La Stampa La Stampa (5,22) Il Messaggero Il Messaggero (4,76) Il R.d.Carlino Il Sole 24 Ore (3,68) Il Sole 24 Ore Il R.d.Carlino (3,41) Il Giorno Il Giorno (3,06) La Nazione L'Unità (2,74) Source: Mosconi (1992: 83) No significant mobility is observed in the top ten Italian dailies in the course of the last ten years. Furthermore, the concentration of the annual circulation quotas is high. More than one third of the national circulation per year is attributed to the five larger newspapers (the concentration indices for 1990 are 17,09 for the two larger daily newspapers, 36,12 for the five larger ones and 53,77 for the ten larger newspapers) (Garante 1991). 41 The numbers quoted in parenthesis represent the market shares (in%) of each newspaper in 1990 as these were reported in Garante, Relazione al Parlamento (1991). Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 103 Given these characteristics of the market of the press, a first selection of two daily newspapers which circulate at a national level was done for the analysis of the Italian newspaper discourse on the environment. The newspapers selected are La Repubblica and Il Corriere della Sera.42 These two newspapers have been selected as representing the mainstream public discourse generally and in particular on environmental issues. Their moderate political tendency, their large circulation and their national character indicate that they are probably sensitive to topical and relatively new issues without a strong bias towards specific directions or topics.43 The sample under examination includes all articles regarding environmental issues and/or environmentalism, published in La Repubblica and in Corriere della Sera in the period between 1987 and 1991, during the week of the Chernobyl anniversary, namely the week between the 22nd and the 29th of April of each year. A total of 345 articles have been collected and coded. The findings of the analysis of these articles is summarised in this report. The latter is structured into three parts: first, the overall environmentalist discourse in the Italian press is presented, second the Chernobyl 'media story line' is investigated and third, the relationship between political corruption and environmental concerns is discussed. A brief commentary on the overall findings is given in the epilogue. 42 La Repubblica is a large daily published in a tabloid format and of a progressive tendency. It has a specific content feature; the material published in it, is divided in two sections. The general section refers to national and international news and general commentaries on politics, the arts, sports or other types of social activity. On the contrary, a number of intermediate pages of the newspaper refer to news of local relevance and vary according to the place of publication, i.e. Naples, Rome, Florence, Bologna, Milan, Turin, or Genova. La Repubblica belongs to the De Benedetti-L'Espresso group of media enterprises. Corriere della Sera, on the other hand, is the newspaper of Milan par excellence. It is published in the same city but it has a large circulation at a national level. Corriere della Sera belongs to the Fiat-Rizzoli group and is of a centre-right, conservative tendency. 43 The two newspapers (La Repubblica & Il Corriere della Sera) will henceforth be cited as "the Italian press" or "the Italian newspapers" to avoid continuous repetition of their names. However, reference concerns always only the two of them, from which the data is taken. 104 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 4.2 THE ITALIAN NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE ON THE ENVIRONMENT 4.2.1 Environmental Issues The following paragraphs aim at summarising the findings of the research with regard to the environmental problems reported in the sample under examination. The distribution of each set of issues within the period under examination is represented in figure 7: General & Specific Problems (PROBGEN & PROBSP1-5) Chemical and physical effects of pollution on the environment have been the most widely discussed specific environmental issue in the Italian newspaper discourse in the period 1987-1991 (see figure 7). Three problems are specified in relation to chemical pollution: nuclear radiation, toxic waste and soil erosion or contamination. Quite surprisingly, nuclear radiation is not the dominating theme in the newspaper coverage. Chemical pollution and the (in)efficient treatment of toxic waste are covered in considerable magnitude during the period under examination. The disposal of toxic waste and the need for adequate installations at a national level are discussed in several articles. The question is sometimes enlarged to include various types of urban and industrial waste. Toxic waste and industrial units are related in the newspaper discourse. The articles report the pro-environmental attitude of some industries ('the enterprise culture of Solvay industry') and their contribution through the production of environmentally safe materials; plastic for instance is proposed as a 'green' product ('plastic does not pollute'). On the other hand, the general contamination of the environment is discussed with specific references to the sea ('detergents kill the sea'). Two nationally relevant themes are included in the toxic waste/chemical pollution theme. First, the case of Seveso, a small town in the periphery of Milan which suffered from a dangerous chemical accident in the 70s, is discussed. Different versions of the story are Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 105 reported. The administration and the regional authorities assure that 'everything is within the norms' and that no exceptional percentages of cancer disease have been observed. The second nationally relevant theme is the relationship between toxic/industrial waste and corruption in the state apparatus. This issue is developed mainly in 1991 and talks about 'toxic waste traffic' and 'ghost-firms' of industrial waste disposal which make enormous profits (the so-called 'Lario connection'). Within the reports concerning nuclear power, Chernobyl holds a prevalent position. The number of articles referring to Chernobyl varies significantly among the five years . In 1987, competing versions on the implications of the accident for the future of nuclear technology in Europe are presented. The 'remember Chernobyl' appeal is contrasted to the fact that Europe 'although worried proceeds with the nuclear'.44 Secondly, in terms of frequency in the sample studied are the 'general questions', i.e. the relatively unspecified discourse about the environment. This type of discourse is further divided in five sub-issues related to the different types of pollution broadly defined. Among those (soil, air, water or general pollution, and depletion of resources), water pollution and the question of sea quality seems highly relevant. Measurements of and commentaries on the sea water contamination, declarations of the minister and local authorities with respect to the safety of bathing along the Italian coasts and discussion on the possible effects of all these on tourism occupy a large part of the discourse on water pollution. The third most important environmental issue in the Italian press coverage regards the implications of degradation of environment for everyday life, particularly in urban areas where problems like domestic waste or urban planning management emerge in an acute way. Italian newspapers seem mostly preoccupied about health hazards, urban planning and domestic litter. The domestic waste issue is twofold. On the one hand it regards the use of plastic and of non-environment friendly packing material and the possible ways to deal with the problem ('Lesswaste ltd.'). On the other hand, it concerns the treatment of domestic litter. Questions about where litter deposits should be created, competing local interests and the (in)sufficiency of the existing installations are related to the bad management and/or the embezzlement of public money by the administration and business involved in the matter ('Waste weighing gold' or 'the litter-business' are some eloquent article headings). The public health hazards due to environmental damage is also a salient issue in the Italian press coverage. The discourse is to a large extent related to Chernobyl and to its tragic effects on the health and life of the inhabitants of Ukraine. Individual stories and scientific data about the medical treatment are often presented within the same article. Health hazards are related to the Seveso accident also and to smaller incidents/accidents. Urban planning, finally, acquires major importance as an aspect of environmental effects on public life. Questions concerning the creation and management of urban green, the 44 The newspaper coverage with regard to Chernobyl is analysed in more detail below. 106 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * public character of such places and even the reshuffling of the urban planning policy are addressed. Urban planning questions are rarely connected to public corruption however. In summary, various environmental issues are discussed in the Italian newspapers. The sample collected, although Chernobyl-laden because of the anniversary of the accident, is not heavily dominated by nuclear power or risk issues. Environmental problems interfering with everyday/public life occupy a significant part in the newspaper reports. 4.2.2 The "active" social agents As figure 8 shows, there is a multiplicity of social actors reported in the environmental discourse through the press. Actors mentioned in the text (ACTTYP1-13) (those raising the issue at stake) The most important actors, in quantitative terms, are those who participate directly in government and administration, the political parties in government or in the opposition, the local authorities (the local council or the province) and other political actors (the Parliament, for instance). These are characterised as political non-protest actors. Among these, the government and/or the administration perform a significantly large part of the actions (see figure 9). Furthermore, the government is often represented by the local authorities and local public officers who are directly involved in regional environmental problems. The dominant position of the government and the administration among the political non-protest actors is conform with the huge size of the public sector in Italy and its significant weight in the economic and political sphere. It is Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 107 remarkable, however, the fact that local government45 is reported regularly as a main actor in environmental subjects. Reports concerning urban planning policy at the city of Milan and the role and duties of the regional environment office (Assessorato dell'Ambiente), for instance, are extensive. Political/Non-Protest Organizations (ACTTYP2) Protest actors, i.e. the environmental groups (eg. WWF, Lega Ambiente, Amici della Terra, Greenpeace and others) or other collective agents such as groups of citizens, informal networks and the national 'green' parties have a significant presence in the newspaper discourse. Lega Ambiente and local 'greens' groups prevail among other environmental groups. Greenpeace acquires some importance only in 1991 while it is completely absent from newspaper reports in 1988 and 1989. The WWF and organisations concerned with animals have a small but relatively regular participation in the press discourse. In conclusion, the two main characteristics of the newspaper coverage with respect to environmental groups in Italy are the prevalence of Lega Ambiente and local 'greens' among the protest actors and the limited number of environmental groups named explicitly in the news reports and commentaries. 'Green' parties also play an important role in the newspaper discourse. A number of these, the Verdi, 45 N.B.: No distinction between local/regional and national level of government and administration has been made in the coding. Therefore, the relative importance of the local versus national governmental authorities in the environmental discourse reported in the press cannot be calculated. 108 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * are actively involved in Italian political life with representatives in the national and the European Parliament,. A third set of actors reported frequently in the press come from other spheres of social and economic activity. The media, industry and business, scientific institutions and experts cover a relatively large share of the environmental action reported (see figure 8). The industrial sector has a limited but continuous representation in the environmental discourse in the Italian press (see figure 8). A closer look at the distribution of the action initiative between the different categories of industries reported leads to the following two observations. The chemical and environmental industry which by definition is relevant to the environment, accounts for the larger part of environmental action related to the industrial sector. However, frequency of appearance of this actor in each year's sample is irregular.46 4.2.3 Types of environmental discourse The analytical category 'types of environmental discourse' has been built on the basis of pre-existing knowledge and experience on public discourse regarding the environment. The term 'types of discourse' concerns argumentation frameworks which make appeal to one or other aspect of environmental issues and the ways to deal with it. Eight types of discourse have been defined initially: the discourse on technical and industrial growth, namely those articles which relate environmentalism to problems of economic progress and development; the regulatory 'policy' discourse which embraces all articles addressing legal, institutional or other arrangements aiming at the protection of the environment; the participatory discourse which refers to politics and the conflict between the interests of the various social, political or economic agents with respect to the environment; the risk discourse; the nature conservation and protection of animals discourse; the 'deep ecology' discourse, i.e. articles which deal with environmentalism as a specific lifestyle entailing a different conception and meaning of the relations between society and nature; the environmental damage discourse which is mainly descriptive, without direct references to the origin or the solution of the environmental problems. A ninth type of discourse was added during the analysis, i.e. the market discourse which looks at environmentalism in relation to consumer needs and marketing strategies. 46 The chemical industry percentage varies between 20% (in 1989) and 100% (in 1990) and the environmental industry percentage between 10% (in 1988) and 50% (in 1991). Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 109 Three discourse types appear more frequently in the newspaper coverage: the participatory, the regulatory and the environmental damage discourse. These types are developed in more than half of the articles during the period under study (see figure 10). Not surprisingly, the most evident part of environmental problems, i.e. the description of the damage caused to the environment and the problematic of environmental regulation and accommodation of conflictual interests are the themes most largely discussed in the Italian newspapers. The statement of a problem and the discussion of the political conflict around it and/or the adoption of relative policy measures are fundamental aspects of a question which is converted to a public issue.47 Furthermore, environmental concerns are often incorporated to matters related to industrial and technological growth, namely matters of economic nature, and to the question of nature conservation. The industrial growth type of discourse shows a rather unexpected decrease in 1989 and 1990 but returns to its approximately 10% share in 1991. The salience of the two opposite sectors, on the one hand the economic growth and, on the other hand, the protection of nature represents two competing versions of environmentalism. On the one hand, the environment is regarded as a limited pool of material resources which must be preserved so that the economic well-being of society is not endangered by a potential lack of resources. The conservation of nature, on the other hand, addresses environmentalism as a problem of respect and protection of a natural and cultural heritage which should not be let to decline or be destroyed. No further implications are discussed with respect to the gradual damaging of nature and extinction of animals. The under-representation of the 'deep ecology' discourse shows that the appeal to nature as a symbolic element does not attract the interest of the Italian press. The appeal to the natural heritage is meaningful only with respect to the degradation of monuments which have a national cultural significance for Italian people ('il patrimonio culturale'). Quite surprisingly the risk discourse is also neglected by the Italian newspapers. With the exception of a slightly larger share in the years 1987-1988, when the Chernobyl accident was still recent, the risk discourse accounts for a share ranging between 1% and 8% of the total. However, it survives throughout the years in a consistent manner. On the contrary, the market discourse seems to be completely marginal in the Italian press coverage. 47 See Gusfield (1981) about the definition of social problems as public, their ownership by specific social agents and the conflict between social agents competing for the definition of public issues. I argue that the first approach to a problem which acquires a public importance consists of its description, its placement within the existing network of other public problems and public problem owners and the discussion of possible solutions. 110 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Types of Environmental Discourse (MODDISC) In conclusion, the politics, policy and environmental damage discourse prevail in the Italian newspaper reports while the nature conservation and industrial growth approaches come at the second place. The specificity of the Italian coverage lies in the types of discourse which remain marginal. The absence of the risk discourse, in particular, is an interesting point for analysis. It may be attributed to the banning of nuclear energy production in Italy in November 1987, soon after the accident of Chernobyl, which relieved people from feelings of uneasiness and fear. The refusal of the Italian government to re-open the two nuclear stations, Caorso and Montalto, has contributed to such a climate of security. The absence of the 'deep ecology' discourse, on the other hand, indicates the non-revolutionary character of the environmental movement in Italy. 'Green' parties and other formal or informal environmental organisations remain within the framework of the traditional political system. They adopt moderate mobilisation strategies, with the only exception of a few massive mobilisations in the earlier years (1987 and before). 4.3 THE ACCIDENT OF CHERNOBYL IN THE ITALIAN PRESS: A 'MEDIA STORY LINE' A specific event seems to have sealed environmental concerns in Italy during the last decade. Without doubt, it is the nuclear accident which happened at Chernobyl in the region of Ukraine, in April 1986. According to the Italian media, the disaster of Chernobyl has divided the history of environmentalism in two periods; the pre- and the post-Chernobyl era. National environmental policy has been re-examined from a "postChernobyl" point of view. Whether scientific or 'objective' evidence justifies an alarmed post-Chernobyl attitude has seemed to be of limited relevance. The news value of the specific event because of its exceptional and tragic character has sufficed for transforming it into a key-issue for "the future of the Earth and of the human species". Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 111 The main idea supporting this study is that the accident of Chernobyl has been broadened to include a number of diverse public issues which are thus deemed to be interconnected. Moreover, it is sustained that as the news value of Chernobyl decreases, the specific event is being transformed into a 'media story'. The 'story' of Chernobyl is embedded in specific interpretive schemes which condition the perception of the relevant public issues. Following the tradition of frame analysis of media discourse (Gamson & Modigliani 1989), the concept of discursive frames is used as an analytic instrument in order to study the newspaper coverage concerning the Chernobyl accident. The accident anniversary is regarded as the topical event which provides the opportunity for relevant coverage and commentary. The press discourse is organised around specific frames which guide perception and understanding of the relevant issues. These frames involve "a range of positions which allow for a degree of controversy between them but which share a common central organizing idea" (Gamson & Modigliani 1989:3). The specific frames related to the nuclear accident of Chernobyl and their evolution over time constitute the Chernobyl 'media story line'. A 'media story line' includes a main event which is reported and commented by the media at different points in time. A 'story' composed by several frames is constructed around this event. These frames may suggest convergent or divergent interpretations of the main event, they are, however, directly relevant to it. The term "story" is used to highlight the construction of some sort of narrative around a central event through reporting its details or, what is seen as, its consequences. Furthermore, we may talk of a story "line" because of the duration of the coverage over time and the continuous reference to the central event. The story line starts with the occurrence of the specific event and continues as long as it attracts the interest of the newspapers. The coverage of a given event by the press is conceptualised as a 'media story line' to the extent that the core event is being transformed, through the media discourse, to a social metaphor. In effect, the main assumption of this study is that the Chernobyl disaster becomes gradually a metaphor that is used to talk about contemporary society. The media story line is proposed here as a combination of diverse and even opposed interpretive frames which are explicitly linked to a given event. The multiple and to a certain extent contradictory frames embodied in it are expected to lead to a new symbolic construct, i.e. a social metaphor. This metaphor becomes part of the tool kit of symbols, stories or rituals available within a given culture. The concept of the Chernobyl media story line is introduced in an effort to gain a better insight into how the newspapers have made sense of the dramatic accident. The scope of the study is to investigate all possible 'uses' of the Chernobyl disaster in the Italian press. Informational content, namely the (sub-)issues discussed, and the meaning assigned to them through the activation of specific interpretive frames are examined. 4.3.1 'Stories' of Chernobyl in the Italian press discourse 112 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * An analysis of the issues and the framing packages which dominate the Italian press coverage regarding Chernobyl and their evolution over time is taken up here. The scope of the analysis is to highlight the ways in which these issues and frames are related to one another so that a particular 'story' is told by the Italian media with regard to the nuclear accident of Chernobyl. Furthermore, the evolution of the story along the years which leads to the construction of a 'media story line' and, eventually, of a social metaphor is examined. The 'story' is reconstructed for each year separately. An effort is made to highlight the link between the different 'media stories' in order to study the way in which they contribute to building a social metaphor. 1987: Who is to blame? Three main questions are discussed within the Chernobyl (anniversary) press coverage in 1987. Health hazards and the potential health risk involved in the nuclear is a salient issue within the press discourse. Second is developed the problem of energy resources, namely the questioning of the (in)dispensable character of nuclear energy production. Last but not less important is taken up the question of public accountability and the relevant collective mobilisation on the occasion of the Chernobyl anniversary. a) Talking about risk and disaster In the newspaper discourse Chernobyl acquires the symbolic status of an 'absolute disaster'. A dreadful instance in international history. It is characterised as the greatest tragedy, the worst accident of modern times. Furthermore it involves an invisible danger. The threat lies within us and we might not be aware of it: "Chernobyl represents for us (..) a physical presence permanently established in our organism (..) a handful of these atoms which before were participating in nuclear reactions (..) now lives within the muscles and bones of people and animals (..) Each one of these radioisotopes fires minute bullets to all directions (..) some of them may wound vital parts of the cell" (Corriere della Sera, 26.4.87) However, the potential consequences of radiation on the health of Italian citizens tend to be underestimated by the press. Both experts and governmental authorities affirm that "there is absolutely no risk" (Corriere della Sera, 29.4.87). Moreover, health hazards caused by radiation and their confrontation or prevention are represented as part of the everyday routine. An expert communication initiative is used (La Repubblica, 29.4.87) to normalise risk and integrate the possibility of radiation contamination to the range of acceptable everyday dangers. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 113 The Italian press tends also to rationalise risk. The definition of new levels of acceptable food radiation contamination in the E.U. is discussed at one year distance from the accident. Italian authorities disagree on the topic. An economic view of risk: "(..) we cannot throw away all food products which contain a reasonable dose of radiation, a certain limit, a certain risk must be accepted" (Corriere della Sera, 27.4.87, emphasis added) is contrasted to the absolute priority of the citizen health protection: "The health of millions of citizens is no joke" (ibid.). b) A catalyst of political and scientific progress The representation of Chernobyl as a catastrophe is counterbalanced by a positive view of the accident. The latter is often regarded as the catalyst of progress in the Soviet Union and abroad. The catastrophe of Chernobyl seems to have acted as a catalyst for the democratisation of the Soviet regime. The glasnost which was at its initial phase in 1986 has speeded up under popular and international pressure to provide all information available regarding the accident and its effects. Furthermore, international expert discourse reported in the Italian press praises the potential contribution of the accident to the progress of scientific, and medical in particular, research: "the disaster teaches" (La Repubblica 26.4.87). The exceptionally high levels of radiation observed after the accident and the large number of people who were subject to it provide a unique opportunity for the advancement of medical research. c) A normative choice: morality, politics and technology Moral and political concerns involved in the use of technology are also discussed on the occasion of the Chernobyl anniversary. A normative viewpoint is adopted concerning the debate over nuclear energy. Nuclear power involves a factor of risk which makes people reluctant towards its use. However, contemporary energy needs impose nuclear energy as a factor indispensable for the well being of modern society. Both arguments involve objective evidence; the impact of a nuclear accident is already demonstrated by the accident of Chernobyl. On the other hand, technical data offered by experts affirm that nuclear power is necessary for growth. Thus, no definitive 'objective' answer may be given. A normative standpoint is therefore required. Increasing energy needs and, consequently, the request for a comfortable life is contrasted to environmental ethics. According to the latter, the respect of nature at its integrity and the recognition of the unique value of human life make nuclear risk totally unacceptable. 114 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * d) The portrait of a 'hero' The Italian press distinguishes between the Soviet lay people, namely the victims, and the Soviet authorities, i.e. the moral perpetrators of the accident. Furthermore, the selfsacrifice of the fire brigade and the pilots who endangered their lives in the effort to put out the fire at reactor no.4 as well as their bitter struggle ever since against radiation disease receives a lot of attention in the Italian newspaper coverage. A number of 'hero' portraits, like the personal story of the captain of the fire brigade (Corriere della Sera, 25.4.87), are reported in the Italian press. e) Safety, progress and need: an energy discourse The question of nuclear energy production is inherent in any discussion on the Chernobyl catastrophe. Energy is the main product of nuclear plants in times of peace. Thus, an expert discourse regarding energy resources is developed which stresses scientific and technical arguments in favour of the use of nuclear energy. This discourse may be summarised in three key-words: safety, the risk is controllable and, thus, acceptable; progress, opportunity for further research; need of nuclear energy to cope with present and future energy needs. The question of safety of nuclear plants is addressed by both national authorities and international organisations. The discourse is based on scientific data, technical arguments and an 'objective', rational approach to the issue. Probability rates of different types of risk are compared in order to prove that the risk involved in nuclear energy production is acceptable. The expert argumentation emphasises the importance of safety systems. An international nuclear safety program is in preparation, affirm scientific authorities (La Repubblica, 26/27.4.87). Thus, the focus of criticism is transferred from nuclear energy itself to the control and safety measures of nuclear plants. f) Politicisation of the disaster: the 'goodies' and the 'baddies' One of the main features of the Chernobyl accident is its transnational consequences. Consequently, the matter is represented as a symbolic dichotomy in international politics. The 'good' European (or generally 'Western') authorities are contrasted to the 'bad' Soviet government. The democratic decision-making with respect to nuclear power questions and the high level technology used in Europe and the U.S. are emphasised while the accident is attributed to the poor technological means and the totalitarian character of the Soviet regime. Thus, the blame is allocated and the public is re-assured that a similar catastrophe cannot happen "in their backyards". 1988-89: No news about Chernobyl? Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 115 The anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident seems to attract little attention in the years 1988 and 1989. An extremely limited number of articles is included in the database with reference to these years. Furthermore, the frames activated in 1987 seem to be neglected while two new interpretive packages are introduced (see figure 11). political and scientific progress Risk & disaster goodies versus baddies Public protest Catalyst of & politics Heroes discourse Politicisation Energy safety, progress, need Morality Politicisation à-la italiana Blaming the Soviet is (In under Italy) Dramatisation control everything authorities device A calamitous A post-Chernobyl point of view 116 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * a) The news value of public protest The articles regarding Chernobyl published in 1988-1989 are mainly news reports referring to collective mobilisation events which raise a claim for public accountability, with respect to the Soviet authorities in particular (La Repubblica, 28.4.88; Corriere della Sera, 28.4.89; 27.4.89). In 1988, a control and safety discourse is also put forward regarding the decontamination of the territory surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear plan and also new safety measures foreseen by the Soviet government (Corriere della Sera, 26.4.88). The question of energy resources is not addressed and neither is a health risk discourse clearly pronounced. The public issues related to the Chernobyl accident appear fully integrated in a regular information flow in which the actual news value of an event, namely its unusual, unique or dramatic character, is a main criterion for its being reported in the press. Thus collective mobilisation events pass the news value threshold while general energy policy questions or long-term health effects of past nuclear accidents are regarded as less significant. b) Politicisation à-la-Italiana: mistrust towards governmental authorities The politicisation frame acquires a national flavour within the Italian political context. The general mistrust of the citizens towards governmental authorities is mobilised with respect to the post-Chernobyl emergency management. The press casts doubt to the capacity of the government to protect the citizens from serious dangers against their health and property: "Just like after the earthquake of Irpinia it has become clear that it was necessary to refurbish the earthquake safety network, in a totally analogous manner, after the Chernobyl disaster it has become necessary to reorganise the radiation measurement system" (Corriere della Sera, 26.4.87) This frame is consistent with the overall predominance of mistrust and alienation in the relations between Italian citizens and their government. These elements characterise the Italian political culture overall (Almond & Verba 1963, 1980; La Palombara 1965; Sani 1969; 1980)48 and affect in particular the attitudes of Italian citizens towards their 48 In his later work (1987), La Palombara sustains that there is no crisis in the Italian democracy. Later events, in particular those taking place during the last three years in Italy, show that the Italian system has reached a point of saturation. The discussion over the nature of the crisis and the possibilities of change in the Italian political system exceeds, however, the scope of this study. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 117 political and governmental elites (Fabris 1977; Weber 1986). Moreover, the opinion that the Italian system suffers from malfunctioning seems to be widespread (Fabris 1977: 25-36; Calvi 1987: 60) all over the national territory regardless of the traditional cleavage between North and South. Thus, blaming the authorities for the consequences of the Chernobyl accident offers an interpretation that resonates particularly well with the national political tradition. 1990-91: 'Re-discovering' the disaster of Chernobyl a) A calamitous device The year 1990 represents a turning point for the Chernobyl media story line. The risk and disaster framing package re-emerges at four years of distance from the accident. However, it develops along two separate lines. On the one hand, a health risk discourse is developed regarding the consequences of the accident on the Soviet population and territory. Millions of people are reported to live in contaminated regions and cancer disease probability rates are calculated for those inhabitants of the region who have been mostly exposed to radiation. The mobilisation of anxiety is related to the long-term health effects of Chernobyl on the Soviet population but also worldwide: (referring to the photo of a child from Byelorussia who suffered from radiation disease) "Will these be the children of our future?" (La Repubblica, 26.4.91). b) "In Italy everything is under control" Despite the prevalence of a risk discourse within the Chernobyl media story, the public is reassured with respect to the repercussions of the accident in Italy: "The Italian territory has soon absorbed the Chernobyl effect." (La Repubblica, 26.4.90) The national authorities have everything under control: "we can be totally calm thanks to the minute research conducted." (Corriere della Sera, 29.4.90) c) Dramatisation of the anniversary of the accident Protest marches from the Soviet Union and France and staged media events, namely a television marathon to commemorate Chernobyl, make part of the Chernobyl media story in 1990 (Corriere della Sera, 26.4.90; 27.4.90; La Repubblica, 26.4.90). Emphasis is given to the claims raised by Soviet people for better protection from radiation and also the punishment of public officials who concealed information regarding the 118 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * seriousness and magnitude of the accident (Corriere della Sera, 27.4.90). The media story is highly sensationalised: "Twenty-four hours of witnesses, tears and blood, anxiety and prayer and collection of money for that slice of the human species which since four years lives forgotten in the monstrous belly of the atom." (La Repubblica, 26.4.90) d) Blaming the Soviet authorities and praising the glasnost The role of the individual hero is emphasised in the Chernobyl media story. The 'heroes' of Chernobyl have saved their fellow citizens from worse disasters. The system however has ignored them. The victimisation of the 'hero' confirms the blaming of the authorities and of the entire Soviet system (La Repubblica, 26.4.90). e) A post-Chernobyl point of view In the period 1990-1991 the Italian press 're-discovers' the Chernobyl disaster. The spotlights focus once again on the explosion of the reactor no. 4. The media events organised to commemorate Chernobyl provide the opportunity for the press to revive the tragic moments of the accident (La Repubblica, 29.4.90). Detailed reports of the relevant events in their hourly and daily sequence are presented. Photographs of Soviet children hospitalised after the accident are provided to illustrate these reports. Entire columns are dedicated to the personal stories of the Chernobyl 'heroes', namely the fire brigade and pilots who were called to deal with the emergency (La Repubblica, 26.4.90). The whole event re-emerges in the press coverage vested in a large set of objective and subjective information49. The nuclear accident of Chernobyl acquires a prominent position in the collective memory as the "greatest tragedy", "the worst accident of modern society" (Corriere della Sera, 26.4.91). The event is integrated in social cognition as a nightmare, the typical disaster which mobilises feelings of uneasiness and fear. Scientific aspects of nuclear risk are linked to political questions. Chernobyl is regarded as the outcome of political failure combined with technological shortcomings. Thus, despite scientific progress (new techniques for nuclear energy production) and political change (Soviet glasnost) the abandonment of nuclear energy is proposed by the Italian press as the only viable alternative. The explosion of the Chernobyl reactor is transformed to a social metaphor. It symbolises the political and technological shortcomings of contemporary (Italian) society. The media story line on Chernobyl evolves from a mere news reports to a questioning of the modern way of life. The great significance given to the Chernobyl 49 See in particular La Repubblica, 29.4.90; 26.4.90; Corriere della Sera 26.4.91 and La Repubblica, 26.4.91. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 119 disaster is related to feelings of fear and anxiety about the future of modern society. Furthermore, the Chernobyl media story line serves to construct an international blaming structure, namely the 'good' European technology versus the 'bad' Soviet reactors and government. The internationalisation of problems and the necessity for global solutions is matched with a claim for international risk prevention and also accountability in case of accidental failures. 4.3.2 Conclusions: Constructing a 'media story line' Overall the Chernobyl 'media story line' demonstrates a shift in the Italian press discourse towards a pro-environmentalist direction. The renewed interest of the Italian newspapers towards the accident of Chernobyl transforms the latter from a news event to a 'media story line'. The disaster is re-constructed as a 'new' event vested in the relevant reports, commentaries or interviews. The accident is thus used by the press to represent the 'greatest tragedy of modern times', the 'absolute disaster' which demonstrates the unacceptable character of nuclear risk. According to the 'story line' constructed by the media, the nuclear accident of Chernobyl suggests that contemporary (Italian) society is at a crossroads. Societal norms are to be re-examined so that technological progress becomes a blessing and not a curse for the future. Within this framework, Chernobyl becomes a social metaphor for the Italian press; it is represented as the sign of change. The disastrous consequences of the accident are presented not only as a material but also as a symbolic catastrophe. The accident shows that social control over scientific devices has become a pertinent question for Italy and, perhaps, for contemporary society in general, given the transboundary nature of nuclear risk. The Italian press seems to engage in a constructivist socio-cognitive enterprise which transforms the Chernobyl accident into a social metaphor. The aftermath of the disaster gives rise to a wide set of questions regarding nuclear energy and the environment both in Italy and abroad. The Chernobyl accident offers originally the opportunity to raise a public debate on these issues. However, the devastating consequences and the tragic character of the event meet the need for dramatisation of media communication. Thus, as the news value of the accident decreases Chernobyl is being re-constructed as a cultural 'metaphor': the legendary disaster which demonstrates the need to review the moral foundations of our society. Chernobyl becomes a new 'Sodom and Gomorrah' myth. The transcendental force of nature, instead of the rage of God as preaches the Old Testament, has given an example of its immense power. According to the Italian press discourse, 'we', i.e. Italian people, are responsible of interpreting the sign and reflect on the meaning of a 'good life'. This metaphor has an intercultural value. It may be valid in all modern industrial societies that share the Christian religious tradition. The study of the Chernobyl media story line constructed in the Italian press discourse may, thus, be integrated in a 120 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * comparative context. The analysis of the press discourse in different national contexts within Europe may suggest common or divergent cultural patterns with respect to environmental ethics and morality in modern societies. 4.4 THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF ENVIRONMENTALISM The media discourse on environmental issues has to be seen within the Italian political culture context. For this reason, the analysis of the newspaper discourse has included a set of non-environmental issues which are discussed in the newspapers as closely related to environmental problems. The presence of these 'related'50 issues in the Italian newspaper discourse varies in terms of quality and quantity. Some 'related' issues have emerged as of high interest in the national context. Such significant 'related' issues in the Italian context are the question of economic growth and development, the problem of political corruption and political identity issues such as the appeal to the Italian democratic tradition and political values. The assumption of the analysis is that these significant 'related' issues reveal some specificities of the national political culture. Their linking with environmentalism is not based on 'objective' criteria, their relevance for environmental policy for instance, nor is it however casual. It is postulated that these 'related' issues acquire a particular meaning for the Italian audience. In other words, they resonate with the pre-existing attitudes and orientations of Italian people with respect to politics. The question of corruption in public office has been chosen as the most suitable 'related' issue for the analysis. The choice has not been based on quantitative grounds. In terms of frequency of occurrence, political corruption is not the most important 'related' issue. However, it is a topical issue which reaches its peak in 1991, one year before the explosion of the massive judicial investigation and prosecution of several members of the Italian political and economic elites (the so-called 'mani pulite' inquiry). Moreover, the discussion on political corruption reflects a specificity of the Italian political system, namely its twofold organisation at a local and at a national level. One of the most important political actors involved in the environmental discourse is the administration and the government, both regional and national authorities. References to the region, the province, the municipality or to local public officials are frequent in the newspaper articles. Two features of the Italian political culture are selected as highly significant for the popular conception of public issues in Italy (Triandafyllidou 1993). One feature is the relative alienation which characterises the relationship between the state and the individual. The citizen is suspicious and mistrustful towards the state. S/he views the political system and the administration in competitive terms. The second element relates to the fact that Italian politics are overwhelmingly understood in a personalized manner. 50 The term 'related' is used as a shorthand expression referring to the non-environmental questions that are closely related to environmental concerns. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 121 Political action is not represented in collective terms. The social actors are ultimately identified with specific individuals. Problems are not viewed in relation to a set of collective actors but through the network of personal relations among the members of the political class. The relationship between these elements of the Italian political culture and the media discourse on environmental issues is examined through the introduction of an intermediate variable, a non-environmental issue, in the analysis. The issue of political corruption related to environmental problems is used to highlight the influence of the above-specified elements of the Italian political culture on the representation of environmental issues in the newspaper discourse. These two features of Italian political culture, i.e. the discontent and mistrust which characterise the citizens' view of the state authorities and the personalisation of politics and of public problems, are highly relevant for the question of political corruption. One would argue that corruption in public administration fuels popular dissatisfaction and lack of confidence. On the other hand, the newspapers apply a personalisation framework through the identification of the 'corrupted' and the 'corruptors'. Thus, environmental concerns are intertwined with the specific Italian conception of the political realm. The relationship between the two elements is operationalised in terms of a 'narrative structure' which prevails in the accounts of environmentally relevant events. The structure consists of a set of actors, a recurrent pattern of relations between them and the framing of their action in relation to specific interpretive schemes. The narrative structure is rooted in time and space. It reflects political and cultural traditions which characterise the Italian society in the specific historical period. The narrative structure consists of a specific set of actors involved in public policy questions. The actors are related to one another in specific ways and specific roles are assigned to each of them (see figure 12). The opposition parties and the judiciary are the protest actors, namely those against the established socio-political system. The latter is represented by the state apparatus, i.e. the public administration, and the business sector. The two parties are competing against one another for the governing of the commons and, thus, for the protection of the public good. A distinction is made between the 'goodies', i.e. the protest actors, and the 'baddies', the 'corrupted', namely the public sector and the business/financial sector. The actors are identified with specific public figures, more or less famous and important personalities, who are explicitly or implicitly related to a social group. They are identified by their name but most frequently by their professional or political identity or by both. 122 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Opposition parties PCI, PRI, 'Verdi' et al. 'Corrupted' Public officials local regional national level accuse 1987-1990 --------1991 Judiciary Courts, Attorney's office et al. start investigations prosecute 'Corruptors' entrepreneurs, professionals, Bank directors, others The organisation of the discourse following this narrative structure is independent from the specific environmental issues discussed. Issues vary depending on their suitability as news stories or on the occurrence of external events which make salient one or other specific problem. However, the organisation of the discourse remains the same for a number of different issues dealt with. Contrary to its relative autonomy from the issues discussed, the narrative structure is linked in a systematic way with specific frames. The correlation between a narrative structure and specific framing strategies is based on their common background, i.e. their common political culture context. The personalisation framing strategy51, i.e. the identification of a problem or of its solution with a specific person is closely linked to this narrative structure given that one of the composing elements of the structure is the emphasis on specific personalities within politics. However, this tendency is contradicted by the resentment of Italian people towards politics, their low interest in participation and their beliefs that it is relatively unimportant who holds governmental office (Triandafyllidou 1994: 3-5). Therefore, it is 51 A thorough account of the framing strategies used in the Italian press discourse concerning the environment is provided in Triandafyllidou (1993). Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 123 unlikely that public issues are deciphered in terms of political responsibilities of collective actors. Italian people are more likely to understand political issues in relation to antagonistic relationships about private profits. The scope of the analysis of a nationally-specific narrative structure is to investigate the relationship between public, and more particularly media, discourse and political culture. The analysis of the newspaper data in the post-Chernobyl period (1987-1991) shows that the press discourse on environmentalism is influenced by the national context and, more specifically, by the nationally-specific elements of political culture. These elements condition the perception of the public space by the citizens. Moreover, the national political culture influences the popular understanding of the functioning of the sociopolitical system. Thus, environmental concerns are integrated into the self-conception of Italians as a political community organised into a sovereign state and governed under a specific set of rules. Environmentalism interferes with the national self-conception as the latter has been defined by culture and past experience. Partisan ideological orientation seem to be of little relevance with regard to environmental problems. In contrast, an 'identity' framing of environmental discourse is promoted. Pre-existing attitudes and orientations towards politics seem to determine aforehand the main environmental themes. Consequently, environmentalist discourse in Italy reflects the specificity of the national political culture. The investigation of the links between national political culture and public discourse remains however an open question. It is probable that national specificities shape the content and the representation of public problems more than material conditions and/or external factors do. The 'objective' nature of public problems has in fact been disproved by many studies on the mechanisms conditioning the definition of a public problem (Gusfield 1981). However, the internationalisation of public problems due to increasing amount of information and communication exchanged between different and even geographically distant national cultures indicates a certain degree of convergence between national public discourses. Thus, the extent and the type of influence that nationally-specific elements exert on the conception and understanding of public problems remains open for future research. 4.5 THE ITALIAN MEDIA DISCOURSE: A SYMBOLIC OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE The findings of the research lead to the following main conclusion: the media discourse on the environment in Italy is dominated by a nationally-specific resonating structure. This structure is characterised by a number of elements. First, it is based on cultural resonances with the national political tradition. The particular self-conception of Italian society as a dysfunctional political community characterised by problematic relations between the citizens and the state, is reflected in the environmentalist discourse. Second, the resonating structure is dominated by political non-protest actors, government and administration in particular, at both national and regional level. Conform 124 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * with the existence of a disproportionately large public sector, the Italian press discourse reflects the dominance of the state over other political or corporate actors. Third, the resonating structure is organised around a view of contemporary (Italian) society in crisis. The accident of Chernobyl is used as a metaphor to highlight that (Italian, European or global) society has reached a turning point. Change is imminent and, probably, sanctions for mismanagement of the environment (or of public affairs in general) too. This resonating structure conditions the opportunities and the means that CCA52 have at their disposal in pursuing their goals. It determines the symbolic environment in which communicative interaction takes place and policy objectives are formulated. This national resonating structure conditions and is conditioned by the CCA. Collective actors struggle to influence media discourse and to orient it towards a specific direction. However, at the same time, they are constrained by the resonating structure which organises meaning and shapes public issues. Thus, national resonating structure may be defined as a symbolic opportunity structure which constitutes and constrains the communicative potential of consequential collective actors. 4.6 POLITICAL ACTORS 4.6.1 Environmental policy in Italy: general traits It took almost thirty years for an autonomous policy to develop in Italy. The creation of the Environment Department (Ministero per l'Ambiente) in 1986 was actually the most substantial outcome of the increasing attention paid to nature protection and pollution problems by political elites. Earlier, issues with an environmental import had been spread across several departments. The attention for environmental issues has not been restricted to the governmental and parliamentary level, but has instead involved even local institutions and agencies. The 1980s have in particular witnessed the creation in most local administrations of branches devoted specifically to environmental issues, following a few pioneering experiences of the late 1970s. The emergence of a specific environmental policy has also paralleled the growth of political actors specializing in the field, including movement organizations, business associations, public and special interest groups. Sustained interactions between the different individual and corporate actors have similarly started to develop. However, these exchanges have not (yet) resulted in a policy network, characterised by actors 52 Consequential Collective Actors, see Eder (1995). Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 125 sharing the same rules and mutually identifying as legitimate members of the polity. Instead, most interactions have been of a conflicting type, especially since the emergence of the environmental movement in the late Seventies and early Eighties (Lewanski 1990: 306). Moreover, conflicts have often addressed the definition of boundaries for each actor's influence, rather than substantial policy issues. Altogether, environmental policy has been to date most proximate to what has been called (Richardson et al. 1982) a 'mobilizing policy style': "The negotiation arena is not yet regarded as stable by the actors involved; new actors still enter this arena and play an active role within it; standardized operative procedures have not been established yet; there is not a clear agenda; new problems, goals and proposed solutions are constantly being put forward" (Lewanski 1990: 309). The development of coordinated environmental policy actions, involving several departments and public agencies (both at the national, and even more at the local level) is made difficult by two major problems. One is the structure of the Italian public administration. Public bureaucracies are organized along vertical lines, i.e., with little exchanges being planned between different branches. This renders highly difficult a proper treatment of issues, like the environmental ones, that do not necessarily fit conventional partitions of tasks between different offices. Moreover, the spread of competences between several branches and hierarchical levels renders quite difficult to identify which office is responsible for what. As a result, each office/branch tends to devote energy and time only to those projects which it can exert a substantial control on. The other problem has to do with strong partisan competition, not just between government and opposition parties, but also - and often, more importantly - between parties within the same coalition. 4.6.2 Communicating environmental issues: guiding principles All in all, institutional communication of environmental problems seems to be inspired, at least according to the most committed among environmental administrators, by two major goals. The first consists of the relegitimation of public actors before the public opinion; the second, of the spread among citizens of new cultural orientations towards environmental problems. It is largely agreed upon that institutional communication can improve its effectiveness only if the sources of communication, ie, politicians and public agencies, gain in credibility. This is in turn related to institutions increasing their global capacity to act. This may take several forms. Public bureaucracies have to become more open and more easily accessible to the public, thus facilitating the circulation of relevant information. The 'politics of announcement' must be abandoned, in favour of a more pragmatic orientation and a greater capacity to implement specific projects. Public 126 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * action must be rationalized and principles of planning must be extended to all aspects of public action, including energy saving policies and territorial management. Along similar lines, situations of risk (no matter whether real or imagined) should be approached with greater care. The installation of threatening plants like garbage incinerators should always follow other preliminary, softer measures (eg selective collection). This in order to demonstrate the public actors' willingness to undertake all measures, useful to minimize citizens' risks and inconveniences. When dealing with 'recurring emergencies' (eg, air pollution by car emissions), public institutions should drop their tendency to play a constantly reassuring role, regardless of the dangers attached to the specific event. They should act instead as 'responsible' institutions, able to cope with emergencies without concealing them. Emphasis is therefore placed on public institutions gaining in both 'rationality' and 'responsibility'. The same perspective seems ultimately inspire the other major orientation of institutional communication, ie, that to the public opinion. Younger generations must become the target of in-depth efforts, aimed to spread sounder environmental consciousness. In more general terms, emphasis must be put on each citizen's personal responsibility in front of the environmental crisis, although this may be sometimes interpreted by media as a proof of public institutions' shortcomings. Environmental education should become a major part of broader processes of civic education. What are the most proper forms by which to transmit these ideas? There is widespread agreement upon the fact that environmental communication should not be reduced to advertising and self-promotion. Rather, communication should aim at informing citizens about public actors' initiatives. At the same time, it is widely accepted that publicity is an essential component for any policy. If the public does not know about administrators' activities, then a number of positive innovations may be ignored or misunderstood, and their potential impact largely reduced. In spite of the widespread emphasis on the informative aspects of communication, there are indeed varying opinions about the balance one should aim at, between the rational and the emotional components of environmental messages. Some stress the importance of rational arguments, on the ground that emotional information may be misleading: "quando l'emotività ha prevalso presso i cittadini sono state respinte delle navi, giudicate navi dei veleni, che invece trasportavano dei normalissimi rifiuti". Symbols with a strong emotional impact may be useful in early phases of the communicative process, when one has to attract people's attention on a given problem, but later, emphasis must be shifted onto more rational arguments. Massive use should be done of available scientific evidence, including those cases which demonstrate the existence of potentially dangerous situations, even to the risk of fuelling political conflicts: "io sono stato attaccato una volta in giunta perchè ho tirato fuori anche dei dati negativi... che dimostravano che l'aria in città era inquinata". Others are however more Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 127 explicit in noting that one cannot help using messages with a strong emotional power. Rational and scientific reasoning is more difficult to grasp for the man in the street; symbols, practical examples, reference to everyday life experiences, may prove more meaningful, and encourage the start of a reflexive process that might in the end result in a sounder ecological conscience. In any case, styles of communication should be differentiated according to the target. Heavily symbolic, more emotional communication should be preferably addressed to the general public. In contrast, more rational, better focused information should rather aim at very specific targets (business operators, experts, professionals...) or even to publics that are still generic, but can be approached in a more favourable setting, like students 4.6.3 Re-building trust: The role of political actors Current policy-making in the environmental field actually develops in a context where: a) traditional political identities are largely seen as inadequate to provide a proper frame for environmental action, while new actors like the Greens have largely lost the credit and the sympathy they had enjoyed in their early years; b) specific offices and agencies, devoted to environmental policies, are also recent and overall little institutionalized, with a limited recognition and a limited access to real power; while their first actions have been broadly speaking well-meaning, their real impact has been in the best case uncertain and difficult to perceive; c) media often portray a distorted image of the environmental movement as well as of ecological problems, paying undue emphasis to emergencies and emphasizing ideological conflicts, or the role of the most radical actors, within the movement; d) movement-promoted mobilizations enjoy a relative success when they deal with specific and often local issues, and/or with defensive, reactive mobilizations; but prove much more frequently a failure, when they try to address broader and more encompassing themes, in a proactive perspective. Within this context, environmental institutions seem to address their communication efforts to a task which we might call 'the reconstruction of mutual trust'. For this purpose, communication is structured along two main lines: a recovery of public legitimacy, pursued by means of rational argument as well as by the emphasis on opportunities, that sounder and more consistent environmental policies might open up; and the creation of a 'minimalist' definition of the environmental issue, where actors holding different orientations and interests may nonetheless converge (or, in the worst case, neutral enough not to conflict with any of the actors' framing). Within this broader approach, differentiated messages are sent to the different actors. Messages to the public opinion aim at informing it about public representatives and administrators' plans, as well as urged to increase personal consciousness and adopt more ecological lifestyles (it will be noticed that changing one's own private habits for the sake of the common good also requires substantial degrees of mutual trust and collective identity). Communication to movement organizations is instead meant to involve them in the elaboration and management of policy proposals, and to escape their prejudicial 128 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * opposition. In either cases, emphasis is placed on the scientific soundness of public plans; a distinctive emphasis on the importance of mass participation in anti-pollution efforts is added, albeit with obvious differences of emphasis in each case. As for business, efforts are made to turn their dominant perception of environmental policies and regulations as a mere, undesirable constraint over economic activities into a more balanced perception, emphasizing the role of environment protection as an economic opportunity. The potentially radical impact of environmental culture is reduced by breaking the big issue into several, more specific ones, and by emphasizing the role of public actors as 'rationalizing' rather than 'repressing' agents in front of anti-ecological behaviours. Altogether, public actors have been framing and communicating environmental policies in a perspective of consensual and participatory policy making. In a sense this reflects a well-rooted (and all too often not recommendable) practice in Italian politics, i.e., the tendency towards compromise-oriented policy styles. Still, public actors in this field show unusual attention for the public visibility of the decision process, and for the rationality of mediation procedures. These traits detach their interpretation of consensual politics from its compromise-oriented, more traditional version. They also provide a potential alternative to the other critique of consensual politics which developed throughout the 1980s, emphasizing the conflict between independent rational actors, oriented to the maximization of individual gains on a classic costs vs gains (power distribution) basis, and which was best embedded in Mr Craxi's (real or presumed) 'decisionism'. The role of media in this context is controversial. Some observers see them as autonomous actors, able to shape environmental policies and to manipulate public actors' messages according to their own preferences. Others mainly see it as an amplifier of messages from environment-related actors, that institutions must learn to deal with. In this perspective efforts are made to have media providing more rational, more systematic and less emotional and occasional, representations of environmental problems. According to our available evidence, trends toward the institutionalizing of environmental issues and actors along the lines described above have not been fully accomplished yet. They have not yet resulted, in other words, into established procedures, nor in specific identities. Some new channels of participation have actually been created. Environmental offices have been introduced in virtually all Italian local councils. Relevant actors for environmental decision-making are more frequently involved in public meetings, fora, permanent committees than it used to be the case in the past. New local charters, albeit largely not implemented yet, have opened up further chances in this respect. Altogether, however, these opportunities are still largely scattered: resources for environmental branches of the public administration are broadly speaking Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 129 scarce; the extent of power and scope of the new consultation channels is largely dependent on the single administrators' commitment and personal inclination. There are of course examples of quasi-institutionalization, i.e., where the communicative action by public actors is substantially affected by their regular connections to other types of actors, and where the production of meaning regarding environmental issues seems to be dependent on those ties: alderpersons elected from the Green Lists, or originating anyway from movement organizations, are often regularly in touch with these organizations; sometimes, personal connections to public officials facilitate the growth of a mutual understanding and issue definition; other times, connections between small sub-sets of scientific and political elites facilitate the management of policy problems that might turn into non-negotiable, conflicting issues otherwise; public understanding of environmental issues is often affected by regular connections to the scientific and experts community; politicians' linkages to media professionals also affect public framing of environmental issues to a substantial extent. Still, not even in the presence of such ties a situation is usually achieved, where conventions and behavioral regularities become constraints with an explicit normative basis (DiMaggio and Powell 1991a). Actually, persisting connections and the related identities are largely made possible by strictly personal and/or political orientations. Ultimately, it is personal bonds that in fact largely account for both the existence of a message on environmental problems, and its interpretation. Many of the arrangements described above appear as quite unstable, and exposed to drastic redefinition in case of changes in public roles incumbents' characteristics and attitudes. One should also note that the integration of the different communicative codes adopted by the different actors is still far from complete. Significant differences persist for instance between politicians' and business operator's codes, or between the former's and journalists'. As remarks about the difficult relationship between public actors and the press suggest, a stable and consistent way of turning one's views and options into a meaningful message for the recipients is still far from being achieved. All this rises a big question mark about future developments, following the radical change in the country's political orientations that the March 1994 general elections have introduced. In sum, personal ties and connections seem to be an important ingredient, and in many respects an essential precondition and facilitator, of processes of actors' mutual integration and institutionalizing. Still, their relevance is not evenly acknowledged by all political representatives and public administrators. Among our interviewees, actors originating from the Green Lists and from the movement have proved in the average the most reluctant to devote substantial time to the building of solid personal connections to other relevant actors in the field. One wonders whether the less established position of these actors within Italian politics, and their peculiar cultural attitudes, render them less willing to face the heavy costs - in terms of time and personal energy as much as of willingness to negotiate and compromise, that such linkage building inevitably requires. Similarly to more bureaucratic organizations, the establishment of policy networks 130 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * entails heavy transaction costs (Williamson, 1981), that more unstable and more radical actors may be neither willing, nor interested, to face. This might account for instance for the greater hostility some Green alderpersons demonstrate for press operators, or for their mistrust for business actors. This is however just a guiding hypothesis for further investigation. 4.7 MOVEMENT ACTORS The late Eighties witnessed a number of important changes in the behaviour and strategy of environmental movement actors in Italy. The main ones are: a growing unification of its two previously divided "currents", preservationism and political ecology; a clearly visible institutionalization, accompanied by a marked turn towards moderation in the forms of action of the previously conflictual political ecology current; an extended use of media pressure as the dominant strategy, accompanied by a tendency to abandon local grass-roots mobilizations; an attempt to look for direct contacts with business actors and industrial sectors. These changes are interrelated in a number of ways that we shall outline below. 4.7.1 Unification, institutionalization and media-oriented strategies Like in most other countries, the origins of the Italian environmental movement can be traced to two roots: the late Eighteenth century tradition of nature conservation, and the more recent political ecology that emerged from the encounter between the "leftlibertarian" tradition and the anti-nuclear struggles in the second half of the Seventies. These gave rise to two currents with different organizational structures and different ideological positions. The two currents remained clearly separated from each other until about 1986. However, especially since the event of Chernobyl struck Europe and promoted a widespread movement of protest, they have begun to ally with increasing frequency on the most different issues, and to adopt increasingly similar repertoires of action. This shift towards unification may be related to several explanatory factors. First of all there is a widening political opportunity structure. Several long term social and cultural changes came to impact on Italian politics during the Eighties. These include the declining importance of class-based cleavages and politics, the growing general wellbeing and education, the new "postmaterialist" lifestyles. These changes were followed by a decline in voters' loyalties to established coalitions, and by a growing set of political opportunities for new actors. Starting from the late Seventies the Green Lists began to take advantage of these opportunities especially at the local level. Further political opportunities were provided for by the Chernobyl accident in 1986, which was soon followed by the creation of a new Ministry for the Environment. This contributed to offer some access to political institutions for environmental policy. It was above all the Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 131 preservationists who were drawn into the political sphere by these changes, as they started to take a more active political role. Also, during the Eighties, the loss of legitimacy of traditional parties and political coalitions became evident in the rise of an increasing number of local grass-roots protests, promoted by citizen groups often autonomous from the national environmentalist organizations, against chemical plants, coal-powered energy plants, the siting of facilities for the treatment of waste such as incinerators or landfills, and even against the construction of motorways, railroads, parking lots, etc. The major environmentalist organizations tried to coordinate these protests on a national basis especially in the years between 1984 and 1989, when the wave of local mobilizations peaked with the "risk industries" issues. After 1989, however, these same organization began to institutionalize and to turn to more moderate tactics. Besides the changing structure of political opportunities, another important factor contributed to this shift: the media's interest for the environmental question. The interest for the environment on the side of the media came in two waves. the first during the early Eighties was simply an increased attention to nature and nature-related topics. The second wave came about after 1986, and was a more politicized one, were wide coverage started to be given especially of local issues such as air pollution, traffic, water pollution, waste. There is no clear explanation for this phenomenon, Likely explanations include the shifting political equilibria and the loss of legitimation of incumbent politicians, but also the social transformations which brought large strata of the population to be interested in nature, and therefore pushed the media to pay attention to ecology simply because they had to attract wider audiences or keep their share of readers/listeners. This phenomenon offered the major environmental organizations such as WWF and Legambiente, an important channel for pressuring local and national governments, especially as politicians were experiencing a crisis of legitimation. At the same time, however, the interest of the media provided clear opportunities for increased funding of environmental action, both through increased membership, and through business-sponsored environmental programs. The effort to take advantage of this mechanism, however, brought environmentalist organizations to change their internal structure, shifting to professionalised and centralized forms of activism. Traditional grass-roots organizers have been progressively substituted by professional media and press-relations specialists. Centralized structures have increasingly focused on maintaining contact with media organizations, journalists, newspapers' editorial boards, etc., instead of establishing links with the local protesters and constituencies. Local issues, in the Nineties, have thus been abandoned to local activists, and have increasingly been colonized (especially in the north) by other political movements such as the regionalist Leagues; meanwhile, national environmentalist organizations have increasingly become media-dependent. The mobilization of protest and of conflict as a means of political pressure has been substituted by "awareness-raising" forms of action such as media campaigns, legal action, educational programs realized in collaboration 132 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * with school councils, popular science programs for TV, and, in national politics, by more traditional and less disruptive lobbying activities. As this shift has brought especially the political ecology current to become more moderate, it has also pushed the whole movement towards unification, as many of the goals and means of action of political ecology are now perfectly acceptable to preservationists. 4.7.2 The relationship between movement actors and industry In accepting the media game and its technicalities, the major environmentalist organizations are following a clear path towards centralization and professionalization, despite the still burgeoning grass-roots activity at the periphery. While the environment seems to be a terrain for political demands at the local level, this level has been increasingly disregarded by the major environmentalist organizations, in favour of a more broad level at which the interest of the public for environmental themes can be more realistically conceptualized as an interest for better products and services. With it, the interest for new market niches on the side of industrial and commercial firms has grown too, and developing professional skills has allowed the environmentalists to take better advantage of such opportunities as sponsorship from businesses. In fact, this has generated both an increased flow of material-financial resources, and an increased interest on the side of politicians and administrators in search of votes. But the connection between lifestyles and political behaviour, or political demands, has remained quite uncertain. The impression is that the local and the national level are not well connected, and that the growth of environmentally-oriented behaviours hardly means an increased autonomous capacity for political pressure on the side of the environmentalist organizations. The commercial and mediated exploitation of nature and environment-related themes has created both more sensitivity to the issues, and the belief of authorities and political institutions in a "public opinion" movement with important consequences for consensus building, a belief ascribing a relevant pressure potential to the environmentalist organizations. Within this process, the role of the public is at least as important as it is for a pressure group. The difference however is that in this case people's support is not mobilized collectively through an organizational apparatus, but rather mobilized individually under the form of consumers' preferences and purchases. This is very important as environmentalists have often been unaware of its consequences, and their leaders have tended to think of constituents' interest for nature as of a substantial interest in "hard" goods, that could form the basis for the construction of political demands. In fact, the pressure exercised through the media has enabled the environmentalists to force politicians and (national as well as local) governments to allow some room for environmental policy, but the impression is that this has seldom gone much beyond a mere facade operation. For example, a Ministry for the Environment has been created, Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 133 but it has seldom had a say in key matters such as industrial and economic policies. Within national policy processes, a host of new environmental regulation has been promulgated, yet no real working fora have been created in which environmentalists, industry and government could sit together to discuss broader schemes of policy. On the other side, the environmentalists have been more successful in their attempts to deal directly with industry. On this side, several industrial associations, especially in the chemical sector which has come under heavy attack in the second half of the Eighties, have implemented fora for bilateral dialogue with the environmentalists. More recently, in the Nineties, some opportunities have been offered by the activities related to the UNCED Conference of Rio and to the so called "Agenda 21" resolutions. A forum, for example, has been created in order to discuss the aspects related to businesses' environmental statements and balances. A more or less regular dialogue with environmentalist groups, furthermore, has been implemented in the latest years by many large multinational corporations, such as IBM, Dow, etc., on an individual basis. 4.7.3 Mobilization potential and the game of environmental policy Once environmental conflicts and phenomena have begun being regularly covered by the media environmentalist organizations have succeeded in establishing themselves as credible sources of information for the media. At that point however, they have tended not even to put much effort into mobilizing people, but rather to focus their efforts on maintaining media coverage and their influence on public opinion as reflected and endorsed by the media. However, when considered from another vantage point, there is the risk - and it is a fairly real risk, in my opinion - that the mobilization of consensus through the media ends up being considered as a source of funding rather than as a resource for political pressure: Tutte le campagne vengono fatte per aumentare la sensibilità del pubblico, tutte quante (...) per ribadire alcuni concetti ecologisti e per fare più tessere, perchè fare più tessere significa (...) uno dei sistemi per portare nelle casse quel minimo indispensabile per poi pagare le campagne.53 Noi ci rivolgiamo sempre di più alla pubblica opinione. Per quanto riguarda il messaggio, di fatto quello sì che ci interessa è la pressione della pubblica opinione [però] noi siamo un'associazione che si fonda sul contributo dei privati cittadini e niente altro.54 53 Interview to a staff of Lega Ambiente, Milan. 54 Interview to the communication manager of GreenPeace, Rome. 134 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * In some cases this has indeed meant giving priority to the interests of the public opinion as defined by the media rather than to the representation of the interests and demands of constituents: Noi non vendiamo. Non siamo un'azienda che deve vendere per cui deve conoscere meglio i gusti del suo pubblico per adattargli meglio il prodotto.55 Queste sono tutte informazioni che noi abbiamo e che immediatamente riversiamo attraverso i media all'opinione pubblica. Ma non abbiamo una strategia [di vendita] (...) noi non vendiamo il prodotto, non facciamo una analisi del mercato (...) Noi facciamo il lavoro che abbiamo sempre fatto (...) Noi poi ci auguriamo l'interesse delle forze anche economiche, però non siamo quello che vende il prodotto commerciale per cui ne vogliamo ragionare in questo modo. Non ci frega niente di questa analisi.56 This is not bad in itself. There is indeed a sense in which such strategy sounds quite convincing. The media machine, in fact, has worked as a mechanism accelerating environmental discourse and therefore the development of the environmental issue also in the interest of environmentalists' constituents, and partly so does the availability of larger financial and material resources, which no doubt mean an increased capacity for at least some types of political action. The main problem is that the evolution of environmentalists organizational forms toward specialization and professionalization has created further weaknesses on the side of their ability to mobilize their constituents. Politically trained activists have been replaced with journalists, intellectuals, sometimes businesslike "managers". However, if mobilizing people on a wider-than-local scale has always been difficult for environmentalists, media professionalization has made it even more difficult for lack of expertise and relevant organizational skills: 55 Interview to a staff of Lega Ambiente, Milan. 56 Interview to the communication manager of GreenPeace, Rome. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 135 E' molto più pesante organizzare una manifestazione. Nel senso che bisogna essere così capillari e noi basandoci sui militanti non sempre questo... Se non c'è una buona motivazione il militante non si sforza di organizzare il pullman, di coinvolgere 50 persone che vengono con te, di fare lo striscione, di fare il tabellone. (Fare informazione) è più semplice perchè la decidono poche persone e la realizzano in poche persone. Non c'è questa catena... invece quello è uno sforzo in cui bisogna raggiungere un maggior numero di persone, tentare di coinvolgerle, convincerle eccetera... Occorre uno sforzo di questo genere e non è facile basandosi unicamente sui volontari.57 Moreover, when members, supporters and constituents come to be considered mainly as a source of funding, the links connecting them with the organizational center are also tailored to this purpose, rather than to the purpose of mobilization. Members and the general public are contacted only for being "informed" and for fund-raising initiatives. Environmentalist organizations use technologically advanced communication systems to maintain internal links among leaders and core activists, and between these and the information/scientific sources (research labs, etc.). But, despite the amount of resources, skills and technology available, the same organizations are rather poorly linked to constituents, and even to their membership base. These are only contacted through monthly newsletters or bulletins, if not even left to receive the information from the media themselves: I rapporti con l'esterno cioè con la massa degli iscritti viene tenuto secondo me soprattutto attraverso l'uscita sulla stampa e poi anche attraverso dei bollettini regionali o attraverso il bollettino nazionale.58 And this precisely because they are considered mainly as a source of material resources. Because of this, and because of the resulting organizational strategy, members and constituents are more likely to be targetted through demands to sign petitions and to contribute economically, and the latter have become the main "political" strategy and means of pressure. As to fundraising efforts, they are usually carried out through personal contacts, but recently large environmentalist organizations have started implementing mail or media campaigns for raising money as well, using address files or commercial ads. 57 Interview to a staff of Lega Ambiente. 58 Interview with a staff of Lega Ambiente, Milan. 136 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * This opens up at least one question: What will happen if, and when, the interest for nature as a consumption phenomenon will fade away? What will happen if, and when, environmentalist organizations will no longer be able to attract resources via promotional market-like mechanisms and techniques? Will they still be able to mobilize people to create enough political pressure to avoid environmental issues to fall of from the political agenda? So far, this has not happened. What has happened however, is that the potential for local mobilizations has at least in part been eroded by the newly emerging ethno-regional phenomena and by issues of community defense no longer framed in environmental terms (although still linked to a general concept of public "quality of life"). The environmentalists, thus, may be said to have given priority to communication structures and information work, rather than to constructing organizational structures geared towards mobilizing members and sympathizers. That the environmental issues are here to stay there seems to be little doubt. What role the public and the people are going to have in them, however, is quite uncertain, and with it the capacity of green organizations to occupy a central place within the political arena. In fact, this strategy seems to have brought environmentalist organizations to hand over the whole issue to business actors. 4.8 INDUSTRY AND THE ENVIRONMENT 4.8.1 Industry in the political game: lobbying, public relations and the distantiation from politics It is possible to say that industry, during the Eighties was subjected to three types of pressure that contributed to push it towards taking environmental aspects into account. First were the local upsurges especially against chemical and energy plants that in many cases succeeded in blocking operations with considerable losses. These upsurges were at their highest point in Italy between 1984 and 1989; however, not all industries and firms have experienced them. Mostly, it was chemical industry (including the sub-sectors of plastics and agrochemicals) that found itself at the center of protest campaigns, and especially large firms (Montedison and Enichem in particular) which have larger and more visible plants. Second - and this affected all industries - the regulatory pressure increased dramatically especially after 1986, in consequence of the creation of the Ministry of the Environment and also of an increased rate of adoption of european environmental legislation. Although showing a heavy implementation deficit, Italian environmental legislation has often been eager to set formally strict limits and standards. Third, during the Eighties firms seemed to become conscious that society was entering a phase in which people and citizens were paying unprecedented attention to the impact of all kinds of activities on the collective good. While this is no doubt related to the decline of class cleavages, the environment came to represent, even in metaphorical form, such collective good, so that the behaviour towards environmental resources could have major impact on a firm's public image. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 137 In the beginning (i.e., especially in the first half of the Eighties), business tried to react to these pressures by resisting to them. When faced by local protests, firms tried to use the threat of shutting down the plants and of lying off their workers. This generally brought the trade unions on their side, against the environmentalists, but turned out to be largely ineffective. In much the same way, the attempt to use their lobbying capacity to pressure the government (often through the Ministry of industry) and to reverse the regulatory trend, also proved much less effective than expected, and this mostly because politicians and governments (at both local and national level) were under heavy pressure from the media and the public opinion and were therefore unwilling to "let go". In fact, the lobbying activities of industry did achieve some effects in slowing down the implementation of adopted regulation, in preventing the realization of major overall environmental plans, and in obtaining funds for the restructuring, conversion, or substantial technological renovation of polluting activities and processes through specific covenants ("Accordi di programma"). For example, a number of chemical plants were reconverted into safer productions, but no general policy for the chemical sector or for the totality of "risky firms" was ever implemented or even discussed at the national level. Yet, the lobbying pressure of industry was unable to prevent the governments from keeping a steady pace in designing and issuing environmental legislation, often with poor coordination across the different problems and target problems. Because of this, and especially in the sectors that were hit by local protests and blockades, business actors have started around the middle Eighties to devote increasing resources to public relations campaigns and to negotiating collaborative plans with the main environmentalist organizations (especially Legambiente) at both the local and the national level. This strategy has included development and advertising of "ecological" products or services, public relations campaigns, sponsorships of the environmentalist organizations and even, recently, the development and diffusion of educational material for the school system.59 Parallel to this strategy, and especially because they realized that local protests were also generated by a basic dissatisfaction with public authorities, business actors have been careful, in their public relations efforts, to distance themselves from governmental institutions in order not to be involved by the coverage of environmental problems provided by the media. For example, in the case of chemical industries producing pesticides Agrofarma - the Italian association of firms producing chemicals for agriculture - has dealt with the pesticides issue by stressing the scientific value of its research and productive activities, and above all the "socially" useful role of chemical industry in terms of the "common good" of the citizenry. 59 The development of didactic material on ecology and environment has recently mushroomed on the industrialists' side as well. Confindustria, through its Istituto Ambiente has developed a didactic/training program on "Sapere minimo su ambiente e sviluppo", but private companies have also developed similar courses (e.g., EcoDeco - see L'Impresa Ambiente, 1993, n. 6, p. 20), or sponsored some (e.g., Henkel, Barilla). 138 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Thus, business firms put seem to have aimed at building a proper image of (social) efficiency while at the same time discrediting governmental lack of clarity and inefficiency. Social responsibility became their motto. As a manager at Assovetro said: la cosa vuole essere una provocazione perchè in realtà le spiagge pulite dovrebbero dipendere da due cose: il fatto che la gente abbia un senso civico tale per cui non le insozza, e secondo il potere politico dovrebbe occuparsi di pulirle (...) E quindi il senso vuole essere della provocazione del dire oggi ce lo facciamo da noi, ed è non una specie di sfida, però, come dire: io metto a disposizione mezza giornata del mio tempo perchè mi interessa questa cosa (...) e quindi diventa una specie di chiamare alle proprie responsabilità chi dovrebbe occuparsi e dall'altro lato chi invece senza il minimo problema butta roba a destra e a manca. Business actors in Italy have actively combined the strategy of building an image of social responsibility with a political strategy aimed at blocking general policy plans that could have forced industry to increase its environmental compatibility. On the first level, they have actively sought a degree of autonomy from the government, and even a degree of autonomy of each single firm or corporation in designing its own "green" image. On the second level, industry has united in centralized efforts of political lobbying, conducted through Confindustria or the Ministry of industry. In this sense, the central importance of the Ministry of industry for all governmental coalitions and for their economic policies, together with the fact that the environmentalists, despite the creation of the Ministry for the environment, have never been able to place their foothold in it, is likely to have represented a key resource for industry; one by means of which industry has been able to tie the governments' hands. This strategy may be explained by the fact that the lobbying strategy is effective mostly when public opinion is quiescent and the level of public conflict low.60 This is why the level of public relations is important. The case of plastic, and in a much wider sense that of nuclear energy, exemplify the point quite well. These two, are the only cases in which general regulations or policies for specific productive sectors have been designed and implemented. And in both cases, this happened because the attention of public opinion was brought at a high level, either by dramatic events (nuclear energy), or by the convergence of different issues in a sort of scapegoating process (plastics). The conflicts, thus, could not be privatized. But at the end of the 1980's plastic industry for example started to implement a widespread public relations effort61, based on 60 Not a new explanation, indeed. There is a whole tradition, originating from the work of Schattschneider (1975) which has pointed to the game of privatizing versus publicizing conflict. 61 As one interviewee told us: La plastica hanno investito 12 miliardi l'anno scorso per dire a tutto il mondo che è riciclabile, per cui, per dire prima che è indispensabile poi che è riciclabile. Per cui in realtà a differenza di 10 anni fa noi oggi ci troviamo con dei competitor che hanno in qualche modo iniziato a scendere sul terreno che era un nostro terreno privilegiato. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 139 advertising campaigns, conferences, workshops, etc., and since then, in fact, the level of public conflict has lowered and the public perception of plastic seems to have considerably improved. This has not happened instead for the nuclear sector. Here a comparison between the strategies of the two sectors could be very interesting. It might be argued for example that, while the plastic sector has a market-oriented or consumer-oriented dominating culture, predisposing it to negotiate with its public, the nuclear sector is mainly embedded in a technocratic and military-secretive culture, making very difficult for its representatives to understand the benefits of an open confrontation with the public and of a "vulgarization" of the whole topic - which plastic has instead accepted to go through.62 4.8.2 The "green turn" of industry and the role of regulation Despite the attempts at resisting regulation, especially since the second half of the Eighties industry has also responded to the growing regulatory pressure by a great deal of innovation in products, processes and organizational guidelines. The process of development and adoption of environmental innovation has been stimulated by several factors. The first factor is regulation itself, although coupled with some specific conditions. In fact, our research confirmed the finding that in general command and control regulation, in and of itself, tends to be effective in stimulating innovation only when either or both of the following conditions apply: a) the legislative intervention has a clear connection to some uprise in public opinion, and therefore it is the latter that is perceived as the main 62 In one interview, the director of Assoplast told us: Per alcune aziende la pubblicità non esiste e non sono abituate (...) non hanno la mentalità di comunicare con l'esterno. Ma non era solo loro che sapevano comunicare solo tra addetti al mestiere. Tutto il loro entourage aveva lo stesso linguaggio. [Recentemente invece] sono stato ad un convegno in cui hanno parlato alcuni professori universitari e ho notato come hanno imparato a comunicare. All'inizio avevano dei modelli matematici che poi commentavano: una cosa incomprensibile. Oggi cercano di spiegarlo in altro modo. Tutto questo in modo da trasformare un'informazione per renderla comprensibile per comunicare con l'esterno è essenziale. (...) Mentre invece gli ambientalisti erano molto bravi a comunicare col pubblico 140 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * problematic factor; b) there is, in the preparatory stage of new legislation, a long and deep work of reciprocal consultation and influence between government officials and corporate managers or their representatives, so that governmental intentions and general plans can be assessed with some certainty for the future and time is allowed to adequate one's situation. When these conditions are absent, regulation tends to produce mainly reactive-adaptive behaviors and - from the technological point of view the adoption of "add-on" depuration systems rather than of cleaner technology. The role of regulation should not be underestimated, however. First of all, its adoption works as a confirmation that public opinion does have an effect upon the legislator. In many instances, in other words, it is the existence of a legislation that "proves" the impact of public opinion to social actors. Should legislation not exist, the effect of public opinion would be definitely reduced. Likewise, the above mentioned "public image" mechanism generates among business actors the perception that a negative public opinion may easily let an industrial sector (eg., chemical industry) become the target of legislative restrictions, especially if legislators and politicians are in search of easy consensus. This is why, where possible counter-strategies have been implemented through sectoral associations (Federchimica, Assoplast, Agrofarma, Associazione Pellicceria, etc.) who have taken charge of both communication campaigns and of exercising some degree of control (as well as of consultancy on the legal or technical requirements for complying with the proper line of behaviour) upon deviant members that may jeopardize the position of the entire industry. Moreover, legislation's effects on firms' behaviour tend to be more widespread when an "expectation of stricter or new legislation" can be generated which has a reasonable degree of certainty, as this allows a proactive stance, coupled with more time for action and planning into the future. In Italy this attitude seems to have become quite common with respect to European legislation, rather than towards the national one. In fact, besides the connection between the growing regulatory pressure and the increasing concern for the environment registered by opinion polls, the other factor that appears to have enhanced the impact of regulation has been the European Union's steady pace of intervention in environmental matters. In other words, most businesses do perceive that the UE is taking the environment seriously, and that European regulation is going to become both stricter and more extensive, thus pushing the economic bottom line well beyond the possibility of adaptive measures. This factor is clearly not specific of Italy. Indeed, it is above all multinational corporations that have shown to be most conscious about this problem and that (as it has been said by other studies as well) have been more active in terms of technological innovation for the environment. Another important factor stimulating innovation is represented by the possibility of achieving significant financial savings by adopting measures aimed at using less energy or less resources. This straightforward economic mechanism has become evident both in absolute terms, as technological improvement rendered such savings larger and Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 141 larger, and in relative terms, due to the actual or prospected increase in the cost of some resources (a typical example is the cost of waste disposal). The creation of a market for environmental solutions, in combination with the expectation of a growing regulatory pressure, finally, has given rise to a new competitive "game" internal to the business community, where big multinational corporations are trying to reap the economic benefits of the (more or less forced) introduction of new technologies, often at the expense of less powerful sectors and firms. On the other side, the direct pressure of consumers seems to have been of much less import in pushing firms to introduce environmental improvements in products or processes. Product innovation has been led by consumer demands only in limited cases, such as in some food subsectors (eg. dairies), but here the consumer appears to be pushed also by other selective benefits (eg., health, fitness), and not only by the collective good of environmental quality and absence of pollution. This said, also, market effects seem to be stronger for consumer goods (goods whose purchase is renovated at short intervals, even daily, and which imply small expenditures) than for durables. While in fast-moving consumer goods some effect of lifestyle changes seems to be at the origin of environmental pressures to innovation, and even at the origin of the transfer of these pressures backwards to intermediate producers, in other sectors innovation is pushed by a mix of factors which include not only market demands, but also the expectations concerning new regulation and product standards. The consequence is that in industrial markets, today, the competition for environmental improvement seems to be higher than in final consumer markets. On final products, legislation and regulation are still more effective than consumers' demands in generating pressures, but these legislation-induced pressures are then transferred to suppliers through market mechanisms. At least the major producers and manufacturers of final consumer goods, therefore, are in a sense experimenting the possibility of transferring the competition and part of the costs backwards to their suppliers, while another part of these costs can be transferred forward to consumers. This also explains why most producers today seem to be more inclined to accept regulation of products and product use, rather than of productive processes. Technological innovation is pushed by the expectation of increased regulation on final products, or of regulationinduced competition (e.g., eco-labelling programs), and by the expectation of increased environmental costs (eg. of waste disposal). An increased attention to product life-cycle (and therefore to the production of component parts in terms of their characteristics as pollutants and as generators of waste) is paid, which is then transferred backwards on suppliers. 4.8.3 The competitive game of environmental technological innovation Environmental technological innovation is an important mechanism as it tends to transfer its effects forwards and especially backwards along the production chain. In 142 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * general, the setting of environmental requirements on suppliers by client firms is the main mechanism. Client-initiated environmental comakership seems to be frequent above all in the manufacturing sector. Multinational manufacturers, for example, have brought their suppliers to give up on using CFC's or some types of chemical solvents and paintings; or they have been able to ask for technological innovations to chemical suppliers (plastics components, no-CFC gas). In the food sector, large firms are pushing suppliers to innovate packaging or to produce raw foodstuff with less chemicals. Still for manufactured products, a reinforcement to client-initiated comakership has come, especially at the European, but also at the Italian level, from "standard-setting" organizations (CEN, ISO, UNI, etc.) who are contributing to promote and spread some systematic work on environmental requirements of products and components. It is important to notice that most of these demands from client firms are met thanks to substantial transfer of technology to the suppliers. In cases of client-initiated comakership, sheer size seems to be an important factor, and this might explain why it is almost always large multinationals that introduce environmental innovations. For large producers it is easier to exert pressure and influence on suppliers for technological innovation and adaptation of intermediate products. Yet, even for large firms, market power may not be enough face to a scarce offer of technology, ad the typical transaction costs that arise in these situations. Moreover, suppliers may not be willing to invest in innovations, or to grant exclusive supply of innovated components or raw materials once they have developed it. Along with the need to transfer and share new technologies, therefore, effective partnership in product innovation requires building reciprocal trust and reliability regardless of firm size. What makes the difference, then, seems to be the capacity for reputation, or the image factor. A leadership position in the sector - which is of course easier for large firms - is one of the shortcuts to a trust capital that helps innovative pressure on suppliers to succeed. This appears to be one of the mechanisms through which environmental (but not only) innovation can be made successful, and one of the reasons why leading firms are quicker in adopting innovations and eager to participate in innovation programs. Waste recycling, and especially plastics waste, is one area in which a good deal of such programs have been adopted, especially in the automobile sector and almost only for durables. Here, all major chemical multinationals are developing new technologies and types of plastics to help car manufacturers to solve the problem of re-use of plastic components. Several pilot projects have taken place in which automobile producers, chemical firms, suppliers of plastic component parts, and even firms who build the machinery for moulding and casting these components, have jointly participated. Projects have been initiated both by chemical suppliers and by client manufacturers. Environmental comakership, of course, may have several advantages. Chemical producers of raw materials are interested in avoiding or limiting the introduction of new regulation, by showing their responsibility and their willingness to address the problems autonomously. Together with manufacturers, they appear to aim at introducing Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 143 innovations before they will be made compulsory by regulation, so that they can exploit market and lifestyle factors and have final consumers pay the costs of environmental responsibility. However, reaping these benefits requires that viable programs find available commercial and technological partners, as well as trustful governments and legislators. But these, in turn, require a reserve of expendable trust capital that only leading innovators may have. Indeed, plastics and chemical producers have an interest in the image return of R&D programs in environmental technology, for both market and "political" (i.e., related to the social responsibility and usefulness of chemicals and plastics) factors. It is because of this that environmental innovation programs in the automotive (but also in home appliances) sector represent an image opportunity for suppliers too, as the problem of durables and used car disposal enjoys a lot of attention from the public, the media, and authorities. 4.9 THE NEW POLICY GAME As the stakes of environmental innovation have grown considerably in the recent years, however, the game has changed at the political level as well. Although these changes have taken place at the European level, rather than in Italy, it is worth mentioning them because the new game seems to have acquired a key importance. This new game is basically one in which big transnational corporations are pooling political pressure resources in order to control the direction of technological innovation as it is affected and guided by environmental regulation. The aim is that of increasing one's control on the market while securing that small and medium-sized competitors will not be able to dodge the regulations and to compete on a cost basis just because they can avoid to introduce innovations. The game focuses on one side on the control of the development of new regulation, and on the other on the promotion of more sophisticated attitudes on the side of consumers in order to have them choose products with a given minimum level of environmental quality (moreover, producers are still trying to elicit enough market demand so that they can transfer development costs to customers, rather than being forced by legislation to pay them). While the latter part is played mostly by firms individually, the former part, instead, has entailed a reorganization of lobbying. In fact, recent trends in environmental lobbying activities in Brussels appear to be conducted not through traditional sectoral industrial associations, but rather through ad hoc associations whose membership is restricted to the major multinationals. Multinational firms that command highly technological resources thus end up constituting a sort of "club" of environmental (but not only) innovators. The task of these "clubs" is that of promoting reciprocal confrontation, definition and coordination of policy proposals and innovations on (quite) specific domains. Sometimes, these are called "forum" associations. Relevant examples at the European level ICC's World Industry Council for Environment, several associations funded by chemical producers, such as 144 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * SPOLD, or SETAC, and ERRA (European Recovery & Recycling Association), an association in which especially producers, users (mass-market and trade firms) and recyclers of packaging materials are represented. In Italy, Centromarca seems to have a similar - although of much less import - role. These associations do not deal with the generality of environmental problems, but only with those that appear to have specific relevance for the aspects that constitute their focus (eg., packaging, eco-labelling, product life-cycle, etc.). Often their members overlap, and they are mostly found among large (multinational) firms, who are also the promoters of these same associations and hold within them a dominant position. Membership is thus more restricted than in traditional industrial associations63, but because these members associate on the basis of some specific shared interest, connections go beyond those made possible by geographical vicinity or sectorial affinity. These associations do not have official access to legislators and governments, but they act like think tanks, by promoting confrontation and discussion, and by developing solutions to very specific issues, and subsequently by "selling" them as a sort of technical advice, through a variety of public relations strategies (mainly newsletters, round-tables, international seminars, etc.) aimed at reaching public decision-makers. Often, these solutions are experimented in (environmental) R&D joint projects. Because of the limited number of members and of their specific focus, they are likely to be freer in experimenting with proposals and in developing them than traditional associations. Their role, therefore, is an important one in setting agendas, in disseminating solutions that may be acceptable to all industrial firms and in exercising a leadership within the business world, and above all in constituting a relevant source of influence on policymakers through lobbying and through softer communication strategies based on "scientific" evidence and advice. These associations are preferred to the traditional industrial associations because environmental problems often involve a high level of technicality and a very important role is played by technical information and scientific experts. Here, sheer lobbying within the parliament is no longer enough and the efforts are aimed at transforming technical definitions into the main battlefield and at uncovering and promoting areas of knowledge and technical expertise that policy-makers are then in need to control. Formally, the aim is always that of offering policy-makers and governmental experts a "support" in terms of technical advice and "objective" information. The area of waste processing and regulation is one key example of this new game. Indeed, waste processing technologies are likely to be a key to the direction of environmental regulation and innovation. Through current and upcoming waste 63 ERRA for example has about 30 members in Europe. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 145 processing policies, large advanced corporations seem to expect to achieve the double function of restraining and orienting competition among themselves on one side, and of establishing an environmental policy that favours and supports technological investments (and the firms who can take advantage of them), on the other. Technological evolution is a game played among large firms who have big stakes in productive processes. Competition therefore has here a restricted access thanks to the fact that big stakes create collusion among players. The competitive game, therefore, overlaps to a substantial extent with the technological game. It is also - in industrial and advanced technological sectors - mainly international in nature. The Italian national landscape from this point of view is much less interesting. It is not indeed perceived as a relevant context for this advanced competition (except, maybe, for some specific markets such as food). But the Italian context generates low interest also because of the perceived difficulties with the current environmental legislation and with access to the policy-makers. Multinational firms are almost always critical of Italian environmental regulation, although as I said they are generally not against all regulation. They find Italian legislation on the environment too complex, punitive, bureaucratic, and even irrational from the point of view of a more global design. Firms complain above all about the complexity of authoritative procedures that delay initiatives even for months. The recent events of Italian national politics (with the 1994 elections) seem to be bound to reinforce this negative role. The disregard with which the new government has treated environmental policy is likely to confirm the fact that no environmental policy game of some significance will go on in Italian politics. While it is clear that the above disregard is much in the (short term?) interest of the small businesses that so strongly influence Italian politics and society, the result will likely be that of making Italian environmental policy completely dependent on Brussels. To the extent that some interaction between the three types of actors is still present in Italy, this seems mainly that between environmentalists and firms, and it is one aimed mainly at providing a positive image for the latter, and financial resources for the former. At the same time, EC legislation and environmental regulation is increasingly becoming the main reference point especially for large multinational firms, and they seem to concentrate their policy resources at that level. In turn, this depends both on evaluations of the objective role of the European institutions, and on the perception that (multinational) firms have quite larger chances of influencing the policy process at the European level than within the Italian political system. Although some large Italian firms may feel that they are poorly considered in Brussels (and this also because of the faults of Italian politicians), and even if EC institutions are often said to have anti-industrial attitudes, and to be more concerned with environmental protection than with free market, most multinationals seem to perceive the policy process in Brussels as more rational and less (directly) subject to the influence of "external" opinion processes. 146 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * In conclusion, therefore, it is large leading multinational firms that one should look to in order to understand how the environmental issue evolves as a global interactive game. The strategy of these leading firms has progressively shifted its center from a) (the legislator), to b) (public opinion), to c) (competition). Indeed, it is not that the legislator has lost importance, as this would not be possible. The point is rather that the issue has shifted from a "privatized" issue (in the late Sixties) in which traditional lobbying activities were enacted by firms in order to solve relatively minor problems, to being a major industrial and social issue in which the focal mediation between industry and the legislator had to pass through public opinion. The issue was therefore "socialized" (Schattschneider 1975), and public relation or public communication strategies had to be used. Today, finally, the issue is still mainly a public one, but the center of its socialized character is once again shifting, and this time towards technological competition, which is becoming the main object of regulation and of the activity of the so-called "forum associations".64 In traditional forms of political action, interest groups compete for exercising pressure on legislators. This type of situation (in environmental issues) came to an end when the issue became a public issue, thanks to cultural and political changes (Diani 1988) which allowed environmentalist movement organizations to succeed in putting effective pressure on legislators. The socialization of the issue reached a peak in the period which goes from Chernobyl to the end of the 1980s. As the political system was under pressure, and many local authorities were unable to implement decisions concerning industrial and infrastructural siting, lobbying became ineffective. The fear of losing consensus made legislators more sensitive to public opinion than to interest groups that could access traditionally private channels of political exchange (Lindblom 1977). Face to the new situation, industry had therefore to find an alternative strategy. Mainly through its associations, and with the help of public relations consultants, it developed a strategy oriented at opening a dialogue with the population and with environmentalist groups. This means that industry had to come down to the terrain of social issues, and to face the challenge of its (re)legitimation. Industry (here it must always be kept in mind that we are talking mainly about large firms and some relevant associations such as Federchimica) was forced to admit that a change of (social) priorities was needed. But this renegotiation allowed firms to transpose the environmentalist concepts in a new frame. Rather than denying the bases of environmentalist discourse, its arguments were 64 Notice that, indeed, it might be that the very beginning of environmental issues, would be better characterized as a public game of technological competition. In the late Sixties, in fact, some large multinationals were quite active in publicizing the problems of desertification, over-population, urban life, etc. (see eg. Paccino 1972). Apart from this, it may be said, although in very broad terms, that the environmental issue has moved from being an issue of social and industrial policy to being a problem of trade policy; this despite the environmentalist movement's attempts at achieving a solution at the social level. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 147 used in order to legitimate industry's very existence. Industry tried to earn for itself the title of "specialist" of the environment: by stressing the gigantic investments in R&D; by claiming almost unique technical competencies; by giving publicity to the continuous discoveries and new products that (allegedly) improve the quality of life and of the environment. The aim of this reframing was that of obtaining a better image in front of the public opinion, that of positioning industry as the technical specialist, the realistic and knowledgeable consultant in front of the legislator and, for single firms, that of improving one's competitive position on the market. At least two factors certainly concurred to make this strategy a viable one. The first was the fact that environmentalists themselves had founded their critical positions on science. This allowed industry to regain control of the rational side of discourse and to bring discourse back to the search for technological solutions. The second factor is represented by the end of the left-right cleavage and by the final defeat of the anti-capitalist utopias symbolized by the eastern regimes. This made the strategy of social confrontation easier, as it foreclosed the possibility of fundamental alternatives to the industrial system. But the stage of direct social confrontation through dialogue is already being replaced by a new one. By showing that it could bring about viable solutions to environmental problems, industry is lowering the degree of conflict with the environmentalist movement and is re-gaining influence on the legislator. At this point, the issue might even be brought back to a more traditional privatized terrain, although this is sometimes made difficult by the fact that industry's campaigns are themselves contributing to socialize rather than to privatize the conflict. Despite the fact that industry is trying to maintain a low public profile, it is in the essence of the game that it has to exploit its position as innovator by emphasizing its response to social and economic responsibility of industry and of firms. Yet, industry is clearly trying to depoliticize the issue. First, it stresses concreteness in designing and achieving feasible and viable solutions. Second, it does so by introducing on the market a new element of competition for consumer preferences, which also emphasizes the commitment of firms to the solution of the most important problems. Third, the process creates increasing expectations of environmental care and protection among industry's public, and even at the level of legislation, but the emphasis is clearly put on technological and scientific achievements, often with the collaboration of environmentalist organizations themselves (and at the expense of political actors who are the less endowed in terms of scientific and technical knowledge). The impossibility of a return to privatized politics, then, is pushing corporations towards the stage of technological regulation. At this stage - which has developed at the beginning of the 1990s and for the moment may be seen as working mainly at the international and European level - industry becomes the legitimate proponent of environment-oriented solutions as well as the techno-scientific consultant of legislators. Within this new game (which in a sense is an acceleration of the game that 148 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * environmentalists had started twenty years ago), industry is re-gaining control of the process of environmental regulation. But it is also marginalizing the environmentalists from it thanks to its superior resources in the area of applied science. Environmentalist groups, who had monopolized the field of scientific critique to industrial civilization, are now losing ground in front of the new applications of science itself that industry is providing, and are forced to grant their consent to the new applications. The large multinationals seem to keep contact with environmentalist organizations mainly for the purpose of spreading the desired level of environmental consciousness, which will help the new technologies to gain hold, among the public. Instead, they do not need to dialogue with the environmentalists for strictly political purposes. Indeed, by looking at the work of the Commission and of the Directorates Generals in Brussels, there already is evidence that industrial associations are monopolizing the field of technical and scientific advice and consulting. To re-gain control of the game, the movement should turn once again to mobilizing the public in order to bring the issue back at the social level. This seems however unlikely, given that the mobilization capacity of the movement has substantially reduced over the last years, following a strategy geared mainly towards institutionalization and intensive media use. In the new situation, firms are no longer acting through the traditional peak or sectoral associations. Rather, the game is led by a few leading multinationals who act on sets of well defined but key problems. Through exclusive associations, the leading firms not only act as "consultant" to governments, by actively defining the main problems and the proposals for governmental and legislative intervention; They also develop a terrain on which competition for technological innovation can develop in a controlled way. Not all firms, of course, can access these arenas. National firms, medium-sized or even large ones who are not part of international groups (and even in central sectors such as chemical industry), are left out of the game of techno-regulation. They participate in the sectoral associations but, as the public communication strategies based on dialogue with the environmentalists and the population lose their importance, and as the process shifts back from the social to the technical level, they are progressively deprived of their political role. Small firms, of course, are forced to accept both environmental problems and solutions without having much say. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 149 5 Germany: Media Discourse, Actor Strategies and Institutional Rules 5.1 THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE The following summary of the media analysis intends to provide insight into the development of the environmental discourse after Chernobyl and its dominant frames. It does not represent the whole range of the environmental debate. Rather, by analysing three different aspects of this discourse in detail it tries to shed light on the particular resonance structure of environmentalism in Germany. As in the other national case studies, these three aspects are (a) the media coverage of environmental issues for a limited time span, (b) the Chernobyl media story, and (c) a selected issue revealing the specific resonance of environmentalism in the political culture of Germany. For this purpose, we chose the debate on German unification and its relation to environmental questions. The analysis follows four hypotheses based on historical studies and empirical findings on German political culture (e.g. Almond/Verba 1963, Berg-Schlosser 1990, Conradt 1980, Mohler & Götze 1992, Rohe & Dörner 1990): 1. There is a dominant tradition of a state-centered, legalistic political culture in Germany. We therefore expect that the government is still the dominant addressee and actor in environmental conflicts in Germany ("state-centredness of environmental conflicts"). 2. Another characteristic of the political culture of Germany is its discontinuity which renders the question of "German identity" a permanent problem. After World War II, West Germany found a new (precarious) political identity by means of a decided break with the traditions that gave rise to Hitler Fascism and by the adoption of the Western model of parliamentary democracy. Being part of a divided country, West Germany stabilized this new political identity through ideological opposition to the Eastern, communist German State. As this East-West-polarization framed most of the political conflicts in West Germany in a particular way, we expect this to hold true for the environmental conflict as well - even if the ecological questions gave rise to a new conflict line that cross-cuts the left-right cleavage to some degree ("dominance of EastWest-polarization in political conflict discourses"). 3. Empirical findings show that from the fifties through the eighties, economic sufficiency and growing material wealth is the decisive source of national pride in West Germany. Consequently, we expect that the environmental discourse, in all positions of the institutionalized debate, is closely connected to economic arguments ("dominance of economic discourse"). 4. This new, economy-centered identity of the West Germans has been challenged since the late 1960s by successive waves of "new social movements" which developed a new (as just precarious) counter-identity based on moral principles of radical 150 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * democracy, humanitarianism, and an ecologically conscious way of life. The strong effects of these movements on the cultural and political life in West Germany led to a high moralization of questions of ecological behaviour not only in "green" milieus but also in wider circles of the middle classes ("high moralization of environmental questions"). Below, we will analyse to what degree the results of the three parts (on media analysis) provide evidence for or shed doubt on those assumptions. 5.2 THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN GERMANY The analysis of the media coverage of environmental issues in Germany refers to the years 1987 to 1992 and the last week of April (April 24 to April 30; leaving aside the Sundays we coded 6 days each year). With regard to the strong media representation of environmental issues in German newspapers and the expected high number of articles, the sample was reduced to the nationwide and international sections of four daily newspapers. These modifications left a final total of n=485 coded articles. The newspapers are among the most important dailies in Germany and represent a range from conservative, liberal and leftist political positions to the "yellow press" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Tageszeitung, Bild). Regarding their formal characteristics, a first finding is a clear decrease in media coverage on environmental issues from 1987 to 1992 and an almost "cyclical" course with peaks in 1987, 1989 and 1991 (see figure 13). Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 151 An analysis of the special subjects shows that a very large part of the articles deals with the field of atomic energy65 (this is true for 52% of all articles, n=250). Another main subject is the field of chemical problems and chemistry (it is relevant in 25% of all articles, n=123), which has gained importance in the last three years; it influences the total increase in 1991 and decrease in 1992. A comparison of the whole media coverage (based on the sample) and the articles dealing with the field of atomic energy shows that the first one more or less copies the issue-specific media coverage on atomic energy. On the other hand, the field of chemical problems and chemistry "marks" the course of the media coverage not concerned with atomic energy. Both subjects together: the field of atomic energy and chemical problems and chemistry, are relevant in 77% of the coded articles (n=373). 5.2.1 Issue structure and issue context The analysis of the issue structure indicates the complexity of articles on environmental issues. Regarding the issue definitions (see figure 14), chemical and radioactive problems are dominant (41%, n=248), followed by "daily life" problems (23%, n=136) and general issues (18%, n=110).66 Looking at the relations between the phenomena, there is a (relative) decrease in chemical and radioactive problems after 1990 (1987: 47%, 1990: 38% and less); regarding the whole time period, there is also a (relative) decrease of "daily life" problems, interrupted by an interim increase in 1990 (1987: 29%, 1989 to 1990: 16% to 24%, 1992: 19%), whereas, for example, flora/fauna problems and global problems concerning climate/nature increase (they reach quotas of about 13% in 1992, but in both cases this cannot be seen as a permanent trend, especially the increase of global climate/nature problems is exceptional). 65 The field of atomic energy includes atomic energy as a contested issue as well as single radioactive problems. This also applies for the field of chemical problems and chemistry which refers to the contested issue and to single chemical problems. 66 The percentages refer to the total amount of indications in the respective category, here e.g. issue definitions. This total amount of indications can be higher than the number of articles. The absolute numbers (n=) always refer to the number of articles. 152 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * In the dimension of contested issues, energy production and the use of resources are highly dominant (65%, n=319), followed by chemistry (15%, n=73) which is particularly prominent in 1991 and 1992. Regarding energy production alone, atomic energy (75%, n=241) plays the most important role during the first three years, after which its relative quota decreases, and the discussion on conventional energies appears to become more important. The represented solutions are strongly dominated by policy and administrative regulations (31%, n=252), followed by risk management (16%, n=132), "hard" (conventional) technical solutions (12%, n=94) and "alternative" technologies (11%, n=86). However, the relative quota of policy and administrative regulations (1987: 33%, 1991/92: about 25%) decreases - especially since 1991 - (risk management also shows a downward trend), whereas "hard" technical solutions became temporarily more important in that year (1987: 10%, 1991: 15%). Referring to the issue context, we find a high dominance of political and economic subjects (56%, n=216) with a decrease only in 1991 (1991: 47%, the other years: 56% to 67%). So this issue context can be seen as the most important sphere to talk about environmental issues. Social and demographic subjects (relatively) increase in 1992; this is probably influenced by "Rio" and corresponds to the higher importance of global problems in this year. 1989 shows an exceptionally high quota of references to economic subjects. 5.2.2 Actors Looking at the actors, there is a high dominance of political actors (n=323; above all: government and administration), followed by business/industry (n=168) and environmental organisations (n=163), and finally experts/scientific institutions (n=163) (see figure 15). The other actors play a subordinate role. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 153 A closer consideration of the four leading groups and their development over the years shows that above all, the relative quota of political actors remains on a rather stable level (1987: 38%, 1992: 37%; there is an increase during the time period from 1988 to 1991 with quota about 43%, 40%, 44%).67 Looking at the whole time period, the (relative) quota of business actors increases (especially in 1992; altogether they move from 19% in 1987 to 26% in 1992), while the environmental or protest actors decrease (from 24% to 19%). In this context, one interesting result is a kind of oscillating relation between business actors and environmental actors: In 1987 the latter group is more important, this shifts in 1988 towards a higher importance of business actors, in 1989 the environmental actors catch up again, the business actors remain on their level, and both are represented rather equally from 1989 to 1991 (including a similar decrease in 1991); in 1992 the business actors come to the fore, whereas the environmental actors stay on the lower level. The relative quota of experts (1987: 19%, 1992: 19%) shows a clear drop in 1989 (10%), in this year they are "replaced" by environmental and business actors; vice versa they reach their highest level in 1991 (20%) when the environmental actors and the business actors decrease. These findings show that the representation of business and environmental actors (and to a certain degree the experts) is interwoven and that there are some reciprocal effects. In contrast to this, the political actors claim an established and hence more unaffected position. 5.2.3 Types of the discourse 67 The relative quota refer to a basic sample of the four most important groups of actors. 154 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The findings about the types of discourse show a high dominance of regulatory environmental discourse in the sense of "ecological modernisation" (28%, n=211), followed by regulatory environmental discourse in the sense of "technical environmental protection" (21%, n=161) and the "catastrophe discourse" (17%, n=129). These types are followed at some distance - by the technical-industrial growth discourse (8%, n=61), the nature conversation discourse (7%, n=52), the radical-ecological criticism discourse (radikalökologisch-systemkritischer Diskurs; 5%, n=39) and environmental damage (5%, n=34) (see figure 16). Other types are not very important, we interpret this partially as a reference to the fact that they are either a part of the types mentioned above or specific discourses which do not appear in the dailies. If we look at the time dimension, we can see some more or less turbulent movements: "ecological modernisation" increases clearly in 1988 and especially in 1989, it decreases afterwards - interrupted by an interim increase in 1991 - towards the same level as in 1987 (the final level is a little lower). The quota of technical environmental protection are lower, but they move up and down over the years in a very similar way and finally reach the original level of 1987. The catastrophe discourse is also characterised by some fluctuations. Striking is the course of the technical-industrial growth discourse, which can be seen as one of the traditional "counter-discourses" to environmental matters: it has a very low quota after 1987 (1987: 13%, 1988: 8%), and nearly disappears in 1990 (3%); however, it clearly catches up in 1992 (14%). 5.2.4 Issue- and actor-specific configurations In addition to such a content analysis, which does not systematically deal with issue- or actor-specific structures, we analysed some issue- and actor-specific configurations. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 155 This is necessary for methodological reasons - i.e. to answer the question of generalizability or specificity - and it is interesting in view of the relations between issues and actors. One main interest (in view of the high dominance of atomic energy and chemical problems and chemistry mentioned above) was to examine and to compare the representation of actors in the parts of the media coverage concerned with atomic energy, in the media coverage without atomic energy, in the field of chemical problems and chemistry and their "general" structure (not taking into account the particular issues). These analysed examples led to the following results: 1) The representation of actors - given in our sample - is influenced by specific issues. 2) These impacts vary from actor to actor and depend on the type of issues, their strength and relevance through the years. - In short we can state that the representation of political actors in the issue-specific fields is very similar to the general structure. However, there are some "aberrations": In 1992, the quota of political actors in the field of chemical problems and chemistry is much lower than their quota in the general (issue-independent) structure; in contrast to this, in 1988 and 1990 their quota in the field of atomic energy is higher, and in 1989 their quota in the media coverage without atomic energy preponderates. Looking at the general structure, these exceptions level out; but nevertheless the representation of political actors is influenced by atomic energy and chemical problems and chemistry (while the latter is less effective, especially in 1992). These are, however, "masked" effects, on account of which the political actors show a high stability throughout the years. - Comparing the representation of business actors, we can see that it is particularly influenced by chemical problems and chemistry. So in 1991, the decrease of business actors in the field of atomic energy is not compensated, but more or less corrected by chemical problems and chemistry. The general increase of business actors in 1992 is also related to this field, but it is supported by an increase in the field of atomic energy as well. The increase in 1988 is above all an increase of the representation of business actors in the atomic energy arena. - The representation of environmental organisations depends especially on the issue career of atomic energy - at least this is true for the first two years. Thus, in 1987 their relatively high quota is clearly determined by atomic energy which appears as one typical "playground" for those organisations (they are rather unimportant in the field of chemical problems and chemistry). But the general decrease of environmental actors in 1988 also depends on atomic energy - namely their loss of importance in this field to the advantage of the business actors. Looking at different years, there are no striking issue-specific influences. - Finally, the representation of experts is influenced by atomic energy in the last two years; this field determines their increasing representation in 1991 as well as the decrease in 1992. In contrast to this, their decreasing "general" representation in 1988 156 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * is mostly a result of their declining quota in the field of chemical problems and chemistry. To summarize: The emerging issue-specific structure of actors is not identical with the general (issue-independent) structure, i.e. there are differences. However, these differences are not too big, so the issue-specific trends are more overt, but similar. Thus, the issue-specific structure - related to the both major subjects - shapes the general structure. On the one hand, these findings can be seen as a clear empirical reference to be careful with statements about "the" media discourse and to be aware of its contingencies - in this case it is focused by the Chernobyl context. On the other hand in a more distant view - the stated issue-independent structures seem to reflect some permanent tendencies: They include a high dominance of political and economic issue contexts, of political actors and of regulatory discourses (completed by the fact that "solving" environmental problems is mainly understood as a political task). These tendencies indicate a high degree of "bureaucratization" of environmental issues. They clearly seem to support the first thesis, the state-centredness of the environmental discourse in Germany. Compared with other countries, the importance of economic issue contexts (in addition to political issues) also suggests that economic questions play a dominant role in the field of environmental discourse (see thesis 3). Furthermore the high relevance of technical solutions (both: conventional and "alternative" technologies) as well as the importance of the "technical environmental protection" discourse points to another dimension of the German political culture: the central role of "technical efficiency" and "technological superiority". However, this thesis still has to be corroborated by further findings. We will see which characteristics of German environmentalism move to the fore in the Chernobyl story. 5.3 "SOCIALIST SLOPPINESS HAS REACHED ITS CLIMAX": THE CHERNOBYL MEDIA STORY Discourses are fields of collective production of meanings, thus contributing to the social construction of reality. Based on this understanding, the analysis of the media discourse on Chernobyl from 1987 to 1991 intends to reconstruct the central frames that give the Chernobyl incident a special meaning. Seen from a dynamic perspective, the analysis aims to work out the discourse's basic narrative structure or story line. The idea of "story line" refers to a kind of structured discourse, i.e. to processes of how the Chernobylissue has been framed over time as a specific story or narrative. This story can be seen as a cultural self-commentary of society. A more general question then arises about the ways in which the Chernobyl incident is coped with by society, and how it was integrated - as a collective experience - into the prevailing symbolic order of reality. 5.3.1 Method Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 157 The analysis traces the media coverage in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). The media landscape in Germany is characterized by three different political-ideological lines: The conservative discourse (FAZ), the leftist-liberal (SZ) and the green, leftistlibertarian discourse (taz). The discourse in the FAZ is sympathetic with interests of the economy and the government. In contrast to the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and the tageszeitung (taz), it represents the traditional, dominant political framing patterns of the nuclear energy topic and its risks in the FRG; this discourse was challenged by the antinuclear movement and the greens since the late 1970s. Since the 1980s their "green" frames (which ever since were to be found predominantly in the taz) also disseminated into the liberal discourse - pushed by the Chernobyl incident. In order to analyse the specificities of the German media story on Chernobyl, it seemed useful to concentrate on the traditional conservative discourse and its treatment of the Chernobyl incident on the symbolic level. We will briefly contrast this story line of the conservative mainstream with the story line of the liberal mainstream as it is represented in the SZ. The qualitative analysis is based on a sample of newspaper articles published in the FAZ in each last week of April of the years 1987-1992.68 Advertisements, information on programs etc. as well as news from other newspapers (cited in "Voices of others") were not considered. The methodological procedure followed the criteria of hermeneutical interpretation. 5.3.2 East and West or the exteriorization of the problem: The conservative discourse on Chernobyl in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) The risk discourse represents the general framework of the debate on Chernobyl, a framework which is linked in specific ways to other issues. In the case of the conservative media discourse in the FAZ it is predominantly linked with the East-Westcontrast. While there is variation in terms of issues and, above all, in the way issues are put on the agenda, a basic modification of this symbolic linkage does not take place. One striking reaction to Chernobyl, however, is the change of perception of nuclear risks in the conservative discourse: Whereas these risks have been dealt with before Chernobyl as negligible, after Chernobyl it is conceded that nuclear energy is a risky technology and that the "imaginary catastrophe" has indeed occurred. At the same time, however, the risks are defined as controllable risks. This pattern of interpretation maintains the traditional notion of mastering risks which is based on the cultural heritage of mastering nature. The key element of this point of view refers to the way atomic energy is handled; thus the Western or especially German standards: i.e. the German expertise, the scientific and technical know-how, the institutional practices, appear as a "guarantor of security". In this context, the admission of nuclear risks is used to legit68 Based on the anniversary of the accident (April 26th), the weeks from April 24th to April 30th were looked at. In the final year of the covered years, i.e. 1992, there are no articles on Chernobyl in the FAZ in that week. So the case analysis' description ended in 1991 and is based on a sample of n=26 articles. The Süddeutsche Zeitung includes n=61 articles from 1987 to 1992. 158 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * imate (and even confirm) the "official" pro-nuclear politics in Germany, and it can be seen as clear reaction to the emergence of a critical, competing counter-discourse (as described below). With regard to the process of defining political problems, one general mechanism is to create a "causal story" (Stone 1989) which attributes cause, blame and responsibility and transforms situations from the realm of fate into the realm of human agency. This mechanism also constitutes an essential prerequisite for defining Chernobyl as a political issue. What makes this type of discourse an interesting example, is that in the context of a permanent exteriorization of the problem two stories are actually told. The central frames determining the perception of problems are, on the one hand, controlling and security (as the concrete elements of the risk frame), and, on the other, the EastWest-contrast, respectively the question concerning the political system. Both frames are continuously interwoven. This means that the problem of risks attains special meaning in the context of the frame "political system", and, further, that this combination is also the basis for the unfolding story line. An additional frame can be characterized by the term "civilization", respectively by the categories of progress/ backwardness. This classification scheme - divided into technical, political, economical and historical components - represents a bridge between the two frames mentioned above. This bridge is embedded in a specific understanding of modernity; it is characterized by the contradiction between a (modernization-related) universalism of the problem of risks on the one hand, and a (system-related) particularization of this problem on the other. According to this view, progress or the process of modernization is always accompanied by the problem of risks, but only the Western model of modernity is able to accomplish and to master it in an "adequate" way. In contrast the East, respectively the (former) Soviet Union, represents the failure, the unsuccessful modernity. The Chernobyl incident in the end symbolizes the "Fall" of the socialist system in all its different dimensions: accused are the political culture (which appears as a culture of secrecy, non-democracy), the culture of experts (unqualified, breeding little confidence), the political and institutional practices (incapable of handling the risks, neglecting human interests and human life), and also the process of "Glasnost" (which is interpreted as an important step towards Western modernity) remains rather pale in view of the unfolding sights of victims and damage throughout the years. One striking aspect is the clear sympathy for the protest actors, the independent movements and, in general, the growing public voice in the Soviet Union; this sharply contrasts with the rejection of the environmental protest actors in Germany. The connection between the frames of "risk" and "political system" can be identified for every year in a specific way: - 1987: Within the course of civilization and progress, risks are inevitable and controllable. (Non-)Security is a question of the political system involved. The superior West stands for progress, security, and control of risks, the inferior East stands for backwardness, non-security, and non-control of risks. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 159 - 1988/89: "Chernobyl" advances to a social drama. (Non-)Security remains a question of the political system involved, the Soviet Union has not learned. There are initiators of risks and persons affected by it, there are offenders and victims. Resistance and conflicts in the East have arisen. - 1990: The social drama reaches its climax. "Chernobyl" has caused great suffering. The soviet central power failed, its institutions act irresponsibly. An emerging public charges the government with this, the ancien regime begins to stagger. - 1991: Continuities and discontinuities. In the East, a tragedy takes place. The ruins of "Chernobyl" symbolize the decline of the East. "Chernobyl" becomes a memorial standing for the risks involved with progress, and for the sins of the socialist system. In the course of the years there is a process of transformation in which the "political system"-frame gains importance. Taken as a whole, within the conservative discourse about risks a political story is being told; it is the success story of the West and above all the decline story of the East. The symbolic staging of the Chernobyl-issue can be described as a social drama. It is embedded in a period in which the historical context is undergoing drastic change. Considering the connection between the frames of "risk" and "political system" the dissolution of the Eastern bloc also shaped the development of the Chernobyl story line. At the drama's end there are continuities and breaks - an ambivalence that refers, among other things, to these changes in political world affairs.69 5.3.3 Chernobyl as a symbol of the non-controllability of modern technological risks: The liberal story line The conservative discourse does not represent the whole range of media discourse on Chernobyl in Germany. It can be contrasted with another main type of discourse as reflected in the leftist-liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). This counter-discourse can be described as a critical reform-oriented discourse on risks, pro-environmental, in general following the ideas of "ecological modernisation". The SZ-media coverage of Chernobyl is much more extensive and detailed (including a lot of articles on the local level of everyday life). In contrast to the conservative discourse the critical discourse stresses the catastrophic potential of atomic energy and the non-controllability of risks which is interpreted as an immanent problem of technology (not or not solely of its use alone). This is one central frame. It is symbolically linked to another frame which refers to the questions of the "way of life" as a decisive problem for modern societies; this includes, above all, the decision whether the hitherto unknown technological risks and their "new quality" (being invisible, causing irreversible effects etc.) should be accepted or not. As well as in the conservative discourse, there is a kind of bridge between the two central frames: in the critical discourse it is the idea of "responsibility/irresponsibility" which 69 The exception proves the rule. In 1991, there is one article in the FAZ which deviates from the usual patterns by de-coupling the frames of "risk" and "political system". Indeed, this text (to a certain degree) indicates another type of discourse. 160 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * throughout the years - works as a deeply moral or ethical, humanitarian founded interpretation scheme. Thus, on the one hand, the critical discourse is clearly concentrated on the threats to life-world, on health and other damage; on the other, political and administrative institutions (including some experts), their reactions to the Chernobyl incident (as being irresponsible, because of denying dangers etc.), and the usual institutional patterns in defending atomic energy are accused. This discourse more or less reflects the voice of protest actors. The one striking difference is that the critical discourse on risks attacks the Soviet and the German institutions as well as the consequences of the incident in the Soviet Union and in Germany: i.e. for the East and the West. In these processes of framing a rather symmetrical order of the discourse can be reconstructed: whereas the conservative discourse is based on the mechanism of exteriorization, the critical discourse is characterized by a continuous interiorization of the problem. The corresponding patterns of interpretation explicitly go beyond the (riskrelated) distinction between East and West, the universalism of the problem of risks moves to the fore. The leading idea is that "Chernobyl is everywhere". In this sense the model of the industrial modernity in general, and its ideology of technical progress and permanent growth become the main contested issue. To summarize: In both discourses Chernobyl serves as a metaphor for the risks of progress. However, in the case of the conservative mainstream, the German Chernobyl media story shows the overriding influence of the East-West-polarization on the political world view also in (highly controversial) environmental questions. This is opposed by a moral discourse that stresses the risks of modern technologies for mankind as such. Both discourses, thus, underline thesis two and four. Nevertheless, thesis four has to be completed. Looking at the Chernobyl media story, the polarization of the environmental discourse in West Germany does not emerge as an opposition of "moral" versus "economic growth", but as an opposition of "moral" ("irresponsible (unverantwortbare) risks") versus "technical efficiency" and "technological superiority" ("safe Western, especially safe German reactors"). This supports the findings about the media coverage, according to which "technical efficiency" and "technological superiority" - in addition to the aspects of the political culture mentioned in the beginning - represent an important dimension of the cultural resonating structure of the environmental debate in Germany (concerning e.g. hard technologies as well the field of environmental protection). 5.4 GERMAN UNIFICATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE. A STUDY ON THE GERMAN POLITICAL CULTURE OF ENVIRONMENTALISM The study's main objective is to answer the question of why Germans are so "green" by looking at the particular kind of resonance German political culture provides for environmental debates. The study proceeds from the idea that discussions about future Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 161 developments in Eastern Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 provide an ideal setting for this question. At no other time in the history of Western Germany, topics of national identity have been publicly discussed to such an extent as in the years following German unification. This debate implied the problem of how "green" Eastern Germany should become. Given the tremendous costs of unification, the question was which role ecological concerns should play in the economic and social reconstruction of Eastern Germany. Based on the assumption that this debate indicates specificities of the Germans' preoccupation with ecological problems, the study analyses the media discourse on this question during three years following the fall of the "wall". 5.4.1 Method The data basis of the study were articles taken from three daily newspapers covering the left-right spectrum of German media landscape: from the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), the biggest German daily which holds a liberal position, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the second biggest daily which stands for a neo-liberal, conservative position, and from the green, left-libertarian tageszeitung (taz). These dailies were searched for articles dealing with ecological problems in the context of the reconstruction of Eastern Germany in the period from January through April 1990. Excluding articles that dealt with these problems only on a local level, this resulted in a sample of n=117 (SZ), n=124 (FAZ), and n=132 (taz). In addition, articles of the Süddeutsche Zeitung of two other, successive periods - July through October 1991 (n=92), and January through April 1993 (n=118) - were analysed to identify changes in public discourse. The study uses the method of frame analysis. Widely drawing on the coding scheme developed for the media step of the "Framing" project, we distinguish between four dimensions: issues, issue contexts, events and frames. Diverging from the more standardized way of content analysis in the media step, however, we chose an open, hermeneutic approach to text material. On the one hand, this approach allowed for focusing on the dominant issues and issue contexts of the public debate (with regard to our question). On the other hand, it also allowed for a qualitative reconstruction of frames. Both enables us to test for the four hypotheses mentioned in the beginning. 5.4.2 Results There are five issues crucially coupling ecological with other questions of Eastern German transformation: the debate on reorganizing patterns of power supply, on improving infrastructure, on old toxic remnants and wastes, and on general ecological development. These issues reflect the kind of environmental problems which found highest public attention (at the national level) in connection with the reconstruction of East Germany. This, however, does not tell much about the way how these issues were thematized. A first answer to the question can be given by identifying dominant issue 162 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * contexts, i.e. economic growth, jobs, the differences of Eastern and Western German levels of material welfare, democratic participation and judicial, i.e. legal procedures (see figure 17). The context of ecological issues on the basis of 358 articles in FAZ, taz and SZ The analysis shows an overwhelming influence of economic issue contexts. Summing up the first three categories as "economic" ones, they cover approximately 90% in the FAZ, more than 75% in the SZ, and even still 65% in the taz. The findings of a strong economic affiliation of environmental debate are substantiated when we look at conflicting frames of the respective debates. Altogether, we were able to distinguish six frames (see figure 18), namely * "Model Germany" (Modell Deutschland) * "Growth Priority" (Wachstumspriorität) * "Ecological market economy" (Ökologische Marktwirtschaft) * "New Ecological Model" (Neues Ökologisches Modell) * "Democratic Participation" (Demokratische Partizipation) * "Ecological Apocalypse" (Ökologische Apokalyse) Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 163 Frames in the SZ in the periods of 1.1.90 - 30.4.90, 1.7.91 - 31.8.91 and 1.1.93 30.4.93 and in the FAZ and taz in the periods of 1.1.90 - 30.4.90 In both mainstream dailies, the liberal SZ, and the conservative FAZ, the frame "Model Germany" is dominant in 1990. Because the catastrophic environmental situation of the former GDR became evident in the year of 1990, the superiority of the Western model seemed to be apparent on the field of environmental protection, too. Thus, if the East adopt West German standards an enormous improvement in the environmental pollution of Germany would have been achieved. There are marked differences, however, between both dailies. In the SZ the frame "Model Germany" adds up to only 37%, in the FAZ, however, to 58%. This underlines the finding of the Chernobyl story line that the East-West contrast played a dominant role in the conservatives' framing of political questions. However, a comparison to media coverage by the SZ during the two later periods demonstrates that in the course of deepening economic recession these arguments loose much in importance in favour of the frame "Growth Priority" (34% in 1993). From this point of view, environmentalism became to be discussed again mainly in terms of financial costs, i.e. high standards of environmental protection were viewed obstructing economic upswing in East Germany. While this frame reflects the position of economic interests - and can be found in the SZ consequently mainly in the section "economy" the frame "Ecological Market Economy" gains also importance in the coverage of the SZ (from 17% in 1990 to 28% in 1993). This frame expresses the reformist belief that an ecological modernization of economy could best provide for a promising social and economic reconstruction of East Germany. 164 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * It is not astonishing that media coverage of the taz puts its emphasis quite different. Whereas the "Growth Priority" frame is nearly non-existent, the frame "New Ecological Model" which pleads for a radical departure from an industrial growth model is dominant in about 45% of all articles (compared with about 15% in the SZ and 4% in the FAZ). Together with "Democratic Participation" (about 15%) and "Ecological Apocalypse" (about 8%) non-economic, libertarian, ecological frames prevail in about two thirds of the articles. This strongly supports the hypotheses, that, firstly, the debate on environmental issues in Germany is dominated (in a positive or negative sense) by an economic discourse, and secondly, that this debate is still divided into two separate discourses. The mainstream discourse (liberal and conservative) is preoccupied with economic efficiency and competitiveness. This can be spelled out either in traditional terms of economic growth (and this tendency grows with the deepening of the economic crisis), or in terms of ecological modernization. The first interpretation is dominant in conservative, the latter one in liberal dailies. The minority discourse is preoccupied with a new model of man-nature relations acknowledging an intrinsic value of nature as a "partner" of mankind. This frame demands not only for an ecological modernization of the economy but for a more or less radical break with prevailing patterns of production and consumption. The dominance of this moral frame in the green, libertarian taz confirms the hypothesis that the radical ecological discourse is still based on a counter-identity that has emerged from of the new social movements' milieus. There is no longer a strict demarcation line between both discourses, however. Instead, the intersection between both increases: the frame "Ecological Modernization" is represented in the taz to the same degree as the frame "New Ecological Model" appears in the SZ. The same is true for the frame "Democratic Participation". At least in the liberal middle the moral plead for a 'necessary change' in the patterns of Western life-style seems to find the same resonance as the appeal to the improvement of economic efficiency by ecological modernization. There remains the hypothesis of the "state-centeredness" of German environmentalism. At first, we can test it by looking at the kinds of events the papers report. Into which arenas are events grouped? We identified six such arenas: scientific debates, judicial conflicts, events in the political arena, actions and statements of environmental groups and, last but not least, economic events (figure 19). Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 165 Arenas of ecological debate in the course of the German reunification The analysis shows the centrality of the political arena. This is not only true for the conservative FAZ and the liberal SZ but also for the green, libertarian taz. In all three dailies, about 50% of the reported events happened in the political arena, followed by economic events with a share of about 20% (SZ) and 30% (FAZ) respectively. While this could still be explained by selective media attention to established political sources of information, the assumption of a strong "state-centeredness" of German environmentalism is supported by an in-depth analysis of the six frames we have identified in the media discourse on environmental problems connected with reconstruction of East Germany. In all of them, demands are addressed primarily to political actors either to facilitate economic investments, or to push ecological modernization (e.g. eco-taxes), or to bring about even more radical change towards a "sustainable" society. The ecological frames are accompanied only by a vague appeal to the responsibility of citizens to change their patterns of behaviour. Even though there is a demand for more "Democratic Participation" in green and liberal positions, the actual environmental debate predominantly still shows the old characteristic features of a legalistic "state-culture" in Germany. 5.5 THE SYMBOLIC OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ACTORS IN GERMANY The findings of the three parts of the study point to the fact that the environmental debate in Germany does not gain its specific, high resonance predominantly from German traditions of nature romanticism. This cliche is often revived in international discussions about the peculiar power of the German environmentalist movement, the worried German reaction to the "Waldsterben", or the high significance of green 166 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * consumerism in Germany. However, it does not seem to correspond with reality. Our data basis does not preclude that the nature and social romanticist lines of tradition which were formed in the 19th century and politically effective up to National Socialism are still lasting and create corresponding resonance on the level of collective mentalities. Yet such habitual patterns can not (or only indirectly) be grasped on the level of nationwide and international media coverage. Other aspects of the German resonance structure that are essentially connected to the Federal Republic's history and self-image, become obvious from the empirical studies. First, there is a tradition of bureaucratic legalism effective beyond all discontinuities of German history, and even beyond the "participative revolution" of the 1970s. This gave central importance to the political actors, particularly to the national administration (despite the Federal Republic's federalist structure), in the development of the environmental conflict. The state-centeredness of the German environmental debate in turn shaped the environmentalist movement which initially, in the 1970s and early 80s, as part of the "new social movements" developed a fundamentalist, anti-institutional self-image. This strong, critical-of-the-system opposition of the environmentalist movement has been considerably intensified by another feature of the Federal Republic's political culture: the question of German identity that throughout the discontinuities of German history has again and again been framed in different ways. The reaction to the collapse of Nazi Germany and West Germany's integration into the Western bloc made for a West German ersatz identity that internally based on the economic efficiency of the Federal Republic's "social market economy" and externally on the East-West conflict and the opposition to the communist German Democratic Republic. The student movement of 1968 and the "new social movements" of the 1970s and early 80s tried to set off against this very identity. The counter-identity that emerged from these movement milieus was based on moral stimuli, on the utopian counter-image of a "gentle society", oriented according to democratic, humanitarian and ecological principles. The existing political and economic order was institutionally made to support the dominating technical-economic growth interests which at the same time were the central identity-building factor for the majority of the Germans, in particular the older generations. On the other hand, the new "post-materialist" interests as represented by parts of the younger generation were institutionally left out. This antagonism of two different models of lifestyle and identity, symbolized by the opposition of economy versus ecology, of "peace" (with both humankind and nature) versus "hard technologies" and "military strength", makes for the vehemence of the ecological conflict in West Germany in the 1970s and early 80s. This conflict structure still effects the German ecological debate today: 1) when an again-increasing number of advocates of economic growth (in the name of securing the "Wirtschaftsstandort Deutschland" (economic location factor Germany)) and the moral claim for a radical change of the Western affluent society model (with reference to global environmental Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 167 problems), and 2) when "Risikooptimisten" (risk optimists) believing in technical progress and the capability to master technological risks and "Risikopessimisten" (risk pessimists) stressing the uncontrollability and the political, economic, social and human "costs" of such risks are opposed. The institutionalization of the ecological theme has eased the opposition of economy (=material wealth) versus ecology (=morally responsible lifestyle) - as well as the opposition of "belief" in technical progress versus criticism of technology - considerably. The high importance of economic and technical efficiency for the self-image of the Germans now takes effect in an ecologically modernized form: in the administrativeinstitutional discourse on the need to develop an "ecological market economy". The environmentalist movement has difficulties to avoid this ecologically modernized, economy-centered discourse. The moral, life-world-centered discourse nevertheless remains present in public debate, and has become rooted in the liberal spectrum, too. The question that remains is how this discourse will get redefined under the conditions of "post-corporatist" forms of regulation. Thus the discursive environment of environmental conflict in Germany shows a dynamics which is determined by the specifically German resonance structure. However, such a perspective needs to be complemented by a second one which is the question of to what extent general economic trends shape the dynamics of environmental conflict. This problems requires to relate the cultural analysis of environmentalism to the broader structural trends in society of which the problem of environment is only a part. In general, changes in the pattern of environmental conflict are caused by the interaction between broader structural trends and situationally varying factors that depend on particular economic trends. Accordingly, the development of the environmental conflict in Germany can more or less clearly be divided into five phases since the seventies: - a first phase (1969-73) of establishing environmental politics as a particular policy field propelled by a general reform enthusiasm of the social-liberal government under chancellor Willy Brandt (1969-73); - a second phase (1974-80) of withdrawal from the reform claims of the previous period as a reaction to the severe economic recession after the first oil crisis; this was accompanied by a growing polarization with regard to environmental issues ("economy versus ecology") focusing on the conflicts over nuclear energy and giving rise to a strong, left-libertarian ecological movement; - a third phase of re-dynamization of environmental policy paralleled by a general greening of politics and of public debate: ecology goes mainstream (1981-89); - a fourth phase of stagnation of environmental politics due to the problems of German unification and a marked economic recession, giving social and economic problems a special emphasis in the public debate (1990-93). 168 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Since 1994, with the recovery of economy, a restructuration of the field of environmental conflict has been going on. In cognitive terms, this is organized into the new masterframe "sustainable development". Within the time period under study here, however, only the beginnings of this process can be traced. The time period covered by the study shows a marked break in the overall greening of public life in the second half of the eighties. This was not restricted to media discourse, party politics or green consumption: Even industry began to struggle for a better environmental image. In about 1987, large parts of industry began to undergo a rapid change in their strategy. Environmental protection was firmly established in the policies of many of the large companies; above all, in the chemical and the car industry. In addition to end-of-pipe technologies, a process- and product-integrated environmental protection increasingly gained importance. Environmental management became a central topic in industrial debates, and eco-consulting a booming industry. Part of this new strategy was to redefine the relation to environmental groups. "Ecological modernization" (of economy) became the central organizing idea of this development. This overall trend was distinctly altered by the revolutionary events in the Eastern Bloc which made the unification of Germany and its resulting problems the central issue of public debate for several years. Thus, the ecology issue not only lost significance in the public perception of urgent problems. The drastic social and economic difficulties in the transformation process of East Germany also changed the dominant framing of issues and gave new momentum to traditional concepts of a policy of economic growth. These tendencies were yet considerably enforced by the increasing economic crisis in the years of 1992 and 1993. Environmentalist organizations, economy and political administration each reacted differently to this situation. While in the field of environmental politics the scope for innovative nation-wide action was reduced considerably, the economy emphasized aspects of continuity in terms of ecological modernization. However, this was accompanied by a massive call for a reduction of the expenses caused by environmental protection measures, in order to secure the "economic location factor Germany" ("Wirtschaftsstandort Deutschland"). The question is whether there is a fundamental break in the process of ecological modernization or only a cyclical downswing in the salience of environmental issues that does not really affect structural trends. A third possibility could be, that under the surface of stagnation the crisis of established environmental politics accelerates the emergence of new institutional patterns of dealing with environmental problems and conflicts. 5.6 POLITICAL ACTORS To answer the question of how the structure of environmental conflict varies over time, the actors in the field of environmental conflict have to be taken into account. The symbolic opportunity structure of political culture and public discourse provides the Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 169 context for their action. To understand this "culture in action" we will sketch the structural changes in the issue awareness, and strategies of communication and action of the three main actors that are visible throughout the stagnation period of environmental politics in the early 1990s. We will analyse actor strategies with the following two questions in mind: Firstly, how the patterns of interaction between movement, political and economic actors have changed at the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties, and, secondly, how these changes are shaped by and depend upon the particularities of the institutional context of German politics. Finally, the emerging new rules of the institutional game will be identified. Up until 1990, West German environmental policy followed an "emission-oriented problem-solving approach linked with detailed regulation" (Heritier 1994: 1) reflecting the old German policy style of detailed bureaucratic regulation and intervention. It was based on the principles of causation and precaution obliging industrial actors to apply the most advanced environmental (end-of-pipe) technologies. These characteristics of environmental policy were reinforced when in 1986 the Federal Ministry of the Environment (BMU), organizationally bundling up environmental competences, was created. From 1987 onwards the Minister of the Environment, Klaus Töpfer, energetically extended - highly visible for the public - the web of environmental regulations. The discontinuous series of environmental issues and catastrophes steering the public environmental debate in the 1980s - e.g. dying of the forests, algae blossom, dying of seals, pollution of the North and Baltic Sea, Chernobyl, the debate on toxic chemicals, on CFC's and dioxin, transportation of hazardous waste etc. - only provided varying occasions for an increasingly extended and more precisely defined net of environmental regulations. Up to that time this kind of regulation was - despite industry's complaints about "overregulation" - more or less accepted by all sides; Greens and the Social Democrats only demanded for stricter standards. However, the problem of waste disposal ("Müllnotstand") and the greenhouse effect which reached its peak at the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties changed the focus from media-specific emissions to the polluting effects of products as such. This made increasingly visible that an environmental policy based on repairing and "end-of-pipe" technologies was deficient. Even the Federal Minister of the Environment conceded now that policies involving decrees, prohibition and the setting of standards leads to a shift of problems (e.g. filter residues, sewage muds) and not its solution. Altogether, at the beginning of the nineties a clear shift to a new definition of problems among political actors becomes visible. The concentration on catastrophes as spectacular single events looses importance; the consciousness of an overall ecological responsibility grows. What is claimed now is a transformation towards precautionary, media-crosscutting environmental policies also involving different political instruments. The UNCEDconference in Rio and its preparing processes played a catalytic role in this reorientation of environmental policy. It made the concept of "sustainable development" a central 170 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * principle of the internal administrative debate. It also shifted emphasis from the national to the international level of environmental policy. This reorientation, however, coincided with a profound change in political priorities: at first, in the beginning 1990s, the issue of unification and its social impacts determined the domestic political debate; then, from 1992/93 onwards, the impacts of the general economic recession moved to the fore. Environmental policy thus became fixed between new priorities for economic growth, and a reorientation towards a precautionary, integrated environmental policy caused by the internal dynamics of the environmental debate. This very situation tilted the former existing, broad consensus. The continuation of previous environmental policies was blocked in so far as they meant additional costs for industry; claims for institutional innovation could not mobilize majorities because environmental issues lost their importance in the public. One (defensive) reaction of the BMU to this blockade was symbolic politics, the public redefinition of problems: As German environmental standards have already reached an unparalleled level, the money spent in the further improvement of Western environmental technologies would be better invested in Eastern Germany or Eastern Europe. Not only in the federal government but also within the opposition (Social Democratic Party), the view became prominent that considering the global scale of environmental problems, it would make more sense to work on the improvement of standards on an international level. While this argument (plausible as it is at first sight) allowed for the diversion of public attention from domestic environmental stagnation, the climate debate and the officially proclaimed target of a 30% reduction of CO2 till 2005 also caused another, innovative answer to the situation of blockade: innovations on the organizational level and with regard to the procedures and instruments of regulation. New cross-sectional institutions - like the Inter-departmental Work Group on the Reduction of CO2 emissions chaired by the BMU - were established in order for them to integrate sectoral politics - e.g. in the sectors of traffic, economy, regional planning, and development and research - under ecological aspects. Two Federal Parliamentary (Inquiry) Commissions played an important role in the reorientation of environmental debate: the "Commission on the Protection of the Earth's Atmosphere ..." which directed attention to political consequences of climate change (in particular in the areas of energy and transportation policy), and the "Commission on Protection of Man and Environment" which considered material flows, material balance sheets, alternative product lines, etc. and forcefully introduced the concept of a (material) "circulatory economy" into public debate. The central importance which is now given to a global integrating perspective of environmental problems not least finds its expression in the creation of the new "Scientific Advisory Council on Global Environmental Change" in 1993. This reorientation also affected the regulatory style. Whereas the established ways of detailed bureaucratic emission-oriented regulation still form the core of environmental policy, almost all interview partners of the Ministry of Environment emphasized that Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 171 policies based exclusively on regulative instruments have reached their end. Pure regulation has to be complemented by "other, completely different" instruments that provide for pushing through the principle of precaution. This "new" environmental policy tries to combine a mixture of all possible instruments (regulation, voluntary measures, economic instruments etc.), and to integrate all major stakeholders at the national (municipalities, states, industry, environmental organizations, citizens, etc.) and international (EU, OECD, G7 countries, UN, etc.) level to the largest possible extent. The intention is to equip this process with a "dynamic of its own" so that it is being carried by resulting vested interests. "Economic instruments" are viewed as the crucial means to achieve this objective. So, many of the interview partners plead for an ecological tax reform based on indirect incentives. This approach, however, is (in administration) only bound to the theoretical-programmatic level. Currently, concrete measures will not succeed neither at the national nor at the European level. At the national level, central obstruction is seen by the close tie between the power supply industry and the Ministry of Economy. This makes the principle of cooperation, for the time being, the only instrument left for action. Thus, self-commitment agreements of industry are praised, environmental initiatives by municipalities are backed as far as possible (e.g. as part of the Agenda 21 process), and the cooperation of the environmentally conscious citizen is being highly valued. The reorientation of German environmental politics is partly set forth by the EC directives on environmental policy, too. Whereas the Federal Republic in the 1980s had succeeded (for the sake of its own industry of environmental technology) in affecting the EC legislation on environmental politics by its emission-oriented style of regulation, the strong emphasis on procedural and voluntary principles in the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive, the Access to Information Directive, and the Eco-Auditing Directive causes trouble both to the German administration and industry (Héritier 1994). While industry might be afraid of loosing market opportunities in the sector of environmental technologies, the present, only hesitant realization of those directives by the administration is predominantly due to the fact that this way of procedural regulation contradicts the German administrative tradition. Additionally, there is a fear - shared by the environmental actors - that the existing standards may thereby be watered down. Though the German government within the EC therefore stands for stricter emission standards and the best-available technology approach, the Ec directives mentioned above speed up the ongoing process of change of the self-image and style of regulation of administrative actors. Since its foundation the BMU has viewed communicative presence in public as very important; and mass media plays a crucial role here. It has been the personal strategy of Klaus Töpfer to go on to the offensive whenever possible in order to have the power of definition in public debate. This public relation strategy also fits in with the new 172 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * emphasis on dialogical cooperation and voluntary measures. Direct contacts with groups of society are increasingly sought for because "the individual has to participate". Cases in point are, among other measures, efforts to increase participatory inclusion of interested citizens, to foster contacts with municipalities and their top level associations, and to motivate firms by various means. For the BMU, the need for a more dialogueoriented public relation accrues mainly within the context of a preventive, precautionary environmental policy. Consequently, the BMU does not perceive itself any longer as a (passive) mediator between various interests but as an (active) moderator of a comprehensive societal dialogue, integrating all relevant actors in numerous formal and informal rounds of talks. More clearly than on the national level, such onsets of a new, dialogue-oriented self-identity of administrative actors are visible on the regional and local levels where mediation procedures, "round tables", or "political dialogues" are more and more practised in order to come to conjoint decisions on sites (particularly for waste disposal sites or waste incinerators), find solutions for traffic or water problems or to develop regional concepts of "sustainable development" with broad public participation. Another prominent example for this (even though the talks failed at the first attempt) is the establishment of national "consensus talks" in the field of energy policy in 1993 also including the Greens and most of the environmental groups, upon initiative of Gerhard Schröder, the social democratic president of Lower Saxony, and Klaus Piltz, the chairman of the RWE, the biggest energy company in Germany. However, much of the new claim for dialogical cooperation remains lip service. Institutionalized participatory rights are in parts also being reduced, as in the case of the Act for speeding up construction of transportation devices in Eastern Germany (Beschleunigungsgesetze) which caused severe debates between government and environmentalists. These contradictory tendencies reflect different interests and competences among the federal cabinet. In general, relations with print media are regarded positively by representatives of the BMU even though there is a significant drawback of media interest due to economic recession and the Ministry's loss of influence on federal politics in recent years. As to the relations with industry, the interviews provide the image of a lover whose intense courtship is being responded only hesitantly. Since the early 1990s, the BMU's policy fully builds on a gradual diffusion of environmental thinking into industry, pushing the argument that a consequent ecological modernization will increase competitiveness of German industry even in short-term range and create a lot of new, less crisis-prone jobs. The recommended turn to economic instruments that would lay ground for this process in management's self-interests has under the conditions of economic crisis during the last years been rejected by industry with the argument that this would endanger the "economic location factor Germany". Optimistic expectations thus mix up with disappointment about the reluctance of industry to follow a strategy which would be in their own "rational" interest. The cooperation with environmental groups - once the chosen adversary - is sought for different reasons. The own exertion of influence is seen as dependent on the pressures Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 173 coming from "below". "The strongest troops are mass media, environmental organizations, and the general public" (Interview, BMU). As a matter of fact, the BMU sees itself backed by claims of environmental groups although it does not approve every single action. Greenpeace, for example, "has a supportive role although their claims are naturally more encompassing than industry and politics are able to meet. They have outstanding and competent scientists; the relationship could not be better" (Interview, BMU). No wonder thus that the ministry promotes "open talks" with all environmental groups. This is true also on the Länder level. In addition, environmental groups (with the exception of Greenpeace) are funded by the federal and state governments "with the declared objective to create a counter-lobby" (Interview with a Länder Minister of Environment). While public presence and mass media-mediated pressure of environmental groups is unanimously evaluated as positive and supportive at times, there is also criticism of "incompetence" with regard to environmental representatives (but not with regard to ecological scientists) in public hearings. What is demanded is a professionalism that can weaken industry's arguments on its own turf, and not only on moral grounds and on general criticism. Thus, environmental lobbies and their mobilized expertise become indispensable auxiliaries from the perspective of environmental policy. 5.7 ENVIRONMENTAL ACTORS Like in other countries, the German environmental movement is based upon three pillars (Rucht 1994): firstly, the sector of autonomous, loosely connected local grass-root groups; secondly, the sector consisting of traditionally established nature conservation groups and of a new generation of ecology-oriented environmental organizations; thirdly, the sector of electoral organization and parties. In the 1970's, autonomous citizen initiatives with their regional and issue-specific networks dominated appearance and self-understanding of the German environmental movement. Their foremost mobilizing focus was the anti-nuclear movement. By the end of the decade, political ecology and its "ecotopian" visions of an alternative society had become a symbolically integrating nucleus for the whole sector of new social movements in Germany. Although a lot of these basic groups remained (not necessarily as single entities but in relative terms of size), particularly in medium-sized and large cities, they lost their central importance in the development of the environmental movement in the 1980's. Instead, during these years the sector of modernized traditional and of new environmental organizations continuously gained members and influence. This especially holds true for the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz (BUND, Federation for Environmental and Nature Protection), established in 1975, which took a middle position between traditional nature protection groups and radical groups of political ecology. One of the best-known and strongest groups - in terms of resources within the new generation of environmental movement organizations is the German 174 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * branch of Greenpeace founded in 1980. Other typical representatives of this new generation of environmental organizations are the Verkehrsclub Deutschland (Transportation Club Germany), the Allgemeine Deutsche Fahrradclub (General German Bicycle Club), and scientific eco-institutes, for instance the Eco-Institute Freiburg founded in 1977. The third organizational pillar of the German environmental movement is the Green Party (Raschke 1993). The Green party established itself as a federal political party in 1980 with a clear left-libertarian profile. While the Greens yielded good election results at local foci of ecological conflict (at least during hot mobilisation periods), their core basis was to be found in the new green-alternative milieus of university towns. Due to state party financing, the electoral success at the municipal, state, and federal level - the Green party entered the German Bundestag in 1983 with a 5.6 % share of the votes resulted in considerable financial allocations that boosted and speeded up the extension of a green expert community within the ecological movement. Until the middle of the 1980s, the Green party despite its relatively small membership figures became the dominant, most mobilizing and resourceful organization within the ecological movement. The bitter conflict between the "Realos" and "Fundis" in the second half of the 1980's then took away a lot of the party's progressive appeal. In 1990, overwhelmed and surprised by the event of German unification the Green party had to leave the Bundestag for four years. This shocking experience caused a phase of selfconsciousness and consolidation among the Greens; more "realistic" positions began to become dominant - represented foremost by the then minister of the environment of the state Hesse, Joschka Fischer. In 1993, after a long phase of negotiations Bündnis '90 (the political organization of the East-German civic movement) and the Green party joined, and this new alliance had no problems to re-enter the German Bundestag in 1994. While the Green party in search for a new political identity went through a conflictual, non-attractive phase of detachment from their fundamentalistic self-understanding, other environmental actors, most prominently Greenpeace and the BUND, came to the fore in terms of public perception. Moreover, the Chernobyl accident of 1986 brought about a new grass-roots movement: Mütter gegen Atomkraft (Mothers Against Nuclear Power). However, the emergence of this new generation of anti-nuclear activists did not change the overall trend of a rapid institutionalization of ecological concerns. Chernobyl dramatized the public feeling of catastrophic risks inherent in modern technologies and speeded up the symbolic greening of private and public life. It also resulted in the establishment of a federal Ministry for Environment (BMU) in order to demonstrate the government's willingness and capacity to react energetically to those public concerns. Mobilization thus became more difficult for environmental groups. "The simple debates are gone. Simple confrontation, simple issues, easy mobilization - all that is gone. All has become much more complex" (Interview, BUND). Environmental issues do not have Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 175 to be forced into public awareness any longer. Controversial are no longer environmental claims as such but their appropriate and efficient realization. In adapting to these changing circumstances, environmental organizations differentiated their fields of action. They work in parliamentary commissions, they outline alternative concepts of transportation and energy policies, and take part in their implementation at the municipal and state levels. They have standing in court or support citizens in their legal claims. They - especially the big ones - finance scientific studies to support issue campaigns. But they also initiate consumer boycotts (e.g. on tropical lumber) and, if needed, organize confrontational protest actions, demonstrations, or stage spectacular blockages. Last but not least, some of them act at the local level (like the local and youth groups of the BUND) in the classical field of protection of nature and species. The differentiation of fields of action is accompanied by a continuous professionalization. In the second half of the 1980s, scientific experts gained importance in all major organizations. For large parts of the environmental movement, specialized qualifications have become an essential part of their self-understanding. This causes new problems, however. As compared to catchy slogans, differentiated arguments are harder to convey to the public. Thus, marketing methods entered public relations management of the big environmental organizations. A role model for this is the public relation work of Greenpeace which became the biggest and most known environmental organization in the second half of the 1980's due to its high mass media presence. While this change did not take place without fierce fights, the conflict lost importance during the past years of progressive cooperation between political, industrial and movement actors. Most of the environmental groups are now operating with marketing strategies. People coming from the movement are partially replaced by staff qualified in marketing and management. These tendencies are accompanied by growing organizational rivalry between the big organizations. Striving for distinctive individual profiles gains in importance. Environmental organizations have become, in contrast to the prime of ecological mass mobilization, single competitors. Smaller environmental organizations that will or can not keep up with these tendencies face extraordinary existential problems. Consequently, the professionalization of the environmental movement brings about a new internal differentiation. Whereas ideologically, a tendency towards a pragmatic environmental protection is visible among the traditional nature conservationists as well as among the radical groups of political ecology, a new distinction gains in significance: between, on the one hand, the big, professional working groups (that is, in particular, Greenpeace, BUND and the Green party) that dominate environmental discourse on a national scale, and, on the other hand, the smaller groups concentrating on special issues or local conflicts. Only the latter groups keep up the traditional style of movement politics. Compared to the early 1980s, relations between environmental and political actors have improved considerably. As we have seen, there is a high willingness for dialogue on part of the political administration which environmental actors make use of. However, there 176 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * are complaints that the influence of environmental groups in talks is still marginal compared to the industry's influence, and there is much discontent over the results of these talks. In particular, during the time the interviews were conducted, disappointment with political parties and government has grown. In contrast, industry with some of its ecological innovative actors remains an attractive partner in talks and cooperation for environmental actors. Thilo Bode for example, chair of Greenpeace Germany, finds talks with ecologically enlightened managers "much more exciting than all talks with politicians. A lot of things are astir. Industry approaches us, we approach them" (Die ZEIT, 17.06.94, p. 42). That results in consulting activities for single firms, or even in limited financial co-operation in order to facilitate marketability for new technologies or products - for instance, chlorine-free paper or refrigerators. BUND representatives also seek co-operation with ecological first movers within industry. "When we think this is a serious concern, and a firm wants to move the cause, to improve something, then we are willing to co-operate with this firm and to offer our help" (Interview, BUND). While cooperation with environmentally progressive parts of industry is sought for, relations between business and environmental actors are usually rather conflictual. This is true not only for the politically highly debated issues of nuclear energy, chlorine chemistry, genetic engineering and motor car traffic, but also for the numerous local environmental initiatives that emerged as a reaction and in conflict to polluting firms. But as in the conflictual fields of chemical production and transportation policy, even here a simple strategy of confrontation has, in many cases, given way to a double strategy of public mobilization, and of partial co-operation in order to solve problems. Wherever serious offers for "dialogues" exist, environmental groups usually readily participate. Consequently, one can see the emergence of interorganizational systems of negotiations at the local level in order to defuse conflict potentials by dialogue (e.g. between the chemical corporation Hoechst A.G. and the local citizen action group "Hoechster Schüffler un Maagucker"). The strategy of polarization with its typical accompanying rituals - disclosure, moral indignation, and demonstrative actions on the one side, trials to ignore, to discriminate against, and to criminalize on the other - yields to an inclusion of protest groups into negotiation and decision-making talks. In general, however, the attitude towards the industry remains ambivalent. There is always the suspicion that "the environment is utilized as a pure marketing argument" (Interview, BUND). On the one hand, arguments are used vis-a-vis the economy that make believe that ecological modernization goes hand in hand with economic interests, with an improvement in competitiveness on the world market. On the other hand, environmental groups stress the moral need for a drastic change of our Western model of prosperity which necessarily collides with economic interests. While the first argument was dominant in the pase of dialogue (at the end of the eighties) when politics and industry seemed to follow an irreversible path towards ecological modernization, the disillusion over the resurgence of traditional politics of growth in the wake of economic crisis moves the latter argument to the fore. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 177 The assumption of an in-principle compatibility of ecology and economy is now seen as a naive projection of a phase of economic sunshine politics. A tougher attitude towards industry and politics is therefore demanded not only from groups always sceptical about a smooth strategy, but also from those who believed in dialogue for a long time. It is, however, no longer the single companies who are primarily blamed for the blocking of ecological demands. Industry as a whole, and individual companies are no longer demonized. Partly, it is acknowledged that industrial companies have to act the way they act because of market necessities. So, none of our interview partners pleads for a recurrence to old strategies of confrontation. Rather, environmental groups now demand a new concentration on structural causes of environmental destruction and on question of life style. Taking up the ideas of Rio, the vision of a worldwide "reproducible model of affluence" gains significance in the strategic debates of the environmental movement. This goes hand in hand with the public career of the concept of "sustainable development" since 1994. Time will tell if practicable concepts of a "reproducible model of affluence" become the centre of future environmental mobilization. This, at least, is the intention of the action plan "Sustainable Germany" which will be published in summer 1995 by the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy commissioned by the BUND and MISEREOR. Environmental organizations will face a major dilemma, however. Whereas fights against "the industry", or against catching "innocent" whales are highly visible in, and appreciated by, the public, claims for a sustained change of life styles and economic structures are not very popular. Thus, marketing-oriented PR work geared at issue resonance by the public contradicts the announcement of necessary but unpopular measures. The crucial question is how environmental organisations will deal with these contradictions. 5.8 INDUSTRIAL ACTORS With a 21% share and an export figure of 35 billion Deutschmark in 1990, Germany is by far the biggest exporter of environmental goods, particularly in the field of high technology. At the beginning of the 1990s, industry nevertheless looks sceptically at cost-benefit relations of environmental protection. This is due to the uneven distribution of financial burdens and chances of environmental protection. While only a small part of the economy profits from an expanding environmental market - the environmental market volume is estimated to amount to 40-50 billion Deutschmark, not including disposal industry - "environmentally sensible branches", i.e. those branches with above average environmental costs, comprise an estimated market volume of nearly 240 billion Deutschmarks and provide for 1.9 million jobs, nearly tripling environmental job figures. Thus, manufacturers from these branches, in particular those with high export figures, at the head the chemical industry with a 40% figure, complain about disadvantages on international markets. Therefore, it is not astonishing that an offensive environmental management still is "rather the exception than the rule" in German industry, as a government report states in 178 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 1993 (Umweltbundesamt 1993). While the themes of "integrated environmental protection" and of a material circulatory economy ("Kreislaufwirtschaft") have become common sense in industrial rhetoric, current practices of environmental protection are far from being consequent. As a "micro-political" analysis of firm-internal conflicts and negotiations shows, this environmental incrementalism is considerably less determined by cost reasons than public arguments by industrial actors suggest. More important seems to be to be the fact that the necessary re-design of material flows, production technology, firm and work organization set up by a consequent environmental management is contingent and risky in several aspects; in addition, it questions traditional organizational culture and vested interests on all managerial levels. Thus, the visible reorientation towards integrated environmental protection shows - even in cases of ecological pilot projects - a "patchwork" character (Birke/Schwarz 1994). Despite the many inconsistencies, developments since the second half of the 1980s show a general trend towards a continuous greening of industry. This trend accrues to three roots: firstly, the increasing cost pressures of traditional end-of-pipe technologies; secondly, the environmental debate's thematic shift away from emissions by pollutants to global problems and to questions of material recycling; thirdly, the public pressure on industry by moralizing and politicizing ecological impacts of economic action (Dyllick 1989). It is presumably the latter aspect which accelerated the greening of industry the most. The more a firm or an economic branch is exposed within the environmental debate - and this is particularly true for the chemical and car industry, but more generally for all sectors of consumer goods industry in Germany - the higher the pressure to present itself to the public as acting environmentally responsible. This also puts increased internal pressure on the realization of consequent environmental management. The integration of ecological concerns into economy becomes evident in the - typical statement of one interviewee: "Ecology and economy do not contradict each other, they are two sides of a coin - and ecology always means long-term economy". Environmental protection in this view is a precondition for "sustained growth". Clear differences from the environmental movement are visible with regard to the question of how ecology and economy could be reconciled. Nearly all representatives of industry share the assumption that ecological problems can be solved only by technical innovation on the basis of economic growth. Looking critically at the claims of radical environmental groups, the Federation of German Industry thus states: "We do not solve problems by giving up satisfaction of needs, i.e. by a 'soft drop out' out of industrial society ... but by technology. Moreover, we cannot solve the real dangers for our environment, i.e. rapidly growing world population, without the use of technology and economic growth" (BDI 1990: 11). An excess of orders, decrees, and bureaucracy is also viewed to be misleading. Instead, there are claims for a removal of bureaucratic obstacles to technological innovation, for instance by speeding up approval procedures, or by mobilizing self- Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 179 interest in environmental protection. Usually, business actors are interested in framework setting tasks of the state only in view of an necessary harmonization of European environmental standards either to reduce competitive disadvantages of German industry, or to enlarge the market for environmental technology. There are, however, self-critical voices as well - most typical of firms profiting by environmental protection asserting that industry does nothing or little on a voluntarily basis or without state laws and regulation. For all representatives of industry interviewed, mass media has a central role in environmental discourse. Most representatives view it as a forum for the industry-critical discourse of the environmental movement. "Environmental activists and environmentally interested groups are clearly mostly heard by press, and most coverage is on them. In press, in public discussion there actually is always a (...) anti-industrial basic tendency" (Interview). Is this coverage leading to a broader change in general conscience, "then politics comes in and makes these new issues to parts of their party platforms" (Interview). The role of the state in the development of this discourse is seen as ambivalent. On the one hand, politics is open to lobby influences - and industry knows about that power. On the other hand, politicians, in industry's view, run behind issue-cycles, highlights presented my mass media, and the "daily political ranking". This not only opens up ways for the influence of industry-critical environmental discourse but also deprives politics of the ability to act in a long-term manner adequate to the issues at hand. The public's responses to environmental issues compel the state to act, even if only symbolically or in form of bureaucratic regulation that is "inadequate". As ecological problems had top priority in the public consciousness throughout the eighties, according to a BDI representative, "the state was acting ... and industry reacted". But response to mass media debate not only influences firms indirectly by state regulation. There is also direct influence by reactions of consumers, firm staff, and residents of firms. As firms are dependent on trust, industry has learned to adopt communication and interaction strategies which allow to regain lost confidence of an ecologically sensibilized public. This is particularly true for the chemical industry that suffered from a dramatic loss of image in the eighties. One aspect of these new strategies is systematic monitoring. As economic actors meanwhile know very well about their dependency on the mass media, the environmental debate is, at least in the bigger firms, systematically followed, and daily or weekly newspaper clippings, larger reports on environmental activities and on positions of major stakeholders are being prepared for the top management level. At least for representatives of the umbrella organizations, a clear picture exists about different streams and main emphases of the environmental movement. Their own public relations work is carried out in a more professional way, too. Where technicians, business people, and advertising specialists sat before, trained journalists now take their places. This is due to the expectation that they can better 180 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * mediate between the "way of thinking" of engineers and business people on the one and an ecological sensitive public on the other side. How does this systematic observation of the ecological discourse and its actors contribute to the intention to develop new strategies of confidence building? In our interviews,two main communicative patterns of reaction towards public criticism become visible: an old but limited one, applicable only in specific contexts (matter-of-fact approach), and a new one (communicative opening, dialogue). Conventional strategies, mostly corresponding to rationale and style of problem solving of engineers and business people try to "de-emotionalize" public debates. Information and instruction which stem from a perspective of superior competence in taskorientation, and (shall) demonstrate incompetence of critics is, however, not well suited to regain lost confidence. At least the new generation of industry's PR managers is conscious of this. To a certain extent, authority and rationality have to be conceded to public criticism. Thus, in building confidence and defusing conflict this strategy is predominantly functioning in the context of direct talks between opponents. Representatives of environmental groups in these talks see themselves urged to leave the level of sweeping moral accusations (which need public staging), and to enter a level of "unbiased rational" arguments. "All these activists, when we first get there and say `Hello, we'd like to talk with you`, then we are the `evil', the ugly industry. When we get there a second time, then they get reasonable, then one can talk with them in reasonable terms. And then we often learn `Nobody told us before'. They learn from us, and we learn from them" (Interview). But such talks first of all have to come into being. That supposes a communicative opening for all societal groups making environmental claims on the company. That is the second, up to now hardly institutionalized but apparently more successful new strategy. The slogan for this communicative opening is "dialogue". We cannot evaluate how consequently this communicative opening has already had its way in industry. Beside ecological pioneer enterprises, it is at least being practised by the big chemical and some major car companies (e.g. BMW) in a highly visible way. The application of dialogical strategies of communication, however, often encounters firm-internal conflicts. According to many voices, this new strategy has to be pushed through by a new generation of staff against considerable resistance of old management. Meanwhile contacts with representatives of environmental groups seem to have reached a high level of familiarity and matter of course. This is true not only for the umbrella organizations of industry that are in touch with environmental groups in many institutional (e.g. political clearing authorities) and informal (panel discussions, environmental days, etc.) ways, but also for bigger firms. "You sit together, discuss specific issues, less controversial than sometimes expected. At times, there are even consensual statement papers which have been coordinated, that is, I think, not much of a problem" (Interview). Usually, however, a distinction is made between those "who one Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 181 can attest honest efforts" and those "who are simply repeating watchwords". It is the "honest", competent part of the environmental movement that has advanced to an accepted partner in talks with industry; with the latter group of "ideologists" a meaningful, problem-related discussion still seems to be impossible. How have business actors reacted to the loss of importance of environmental issues in public awareness after German unification and the subsequent economic recession? Although representatives of the Federation of German Industry (BDI) emphasized in our interviews that environmental issues will keep their central importance, as a matter of fact, the BDI uses this constellation in a very offensive way to demand a halt in environmental policy and insists on speeding up approval procedures, thus implying severe reductions of institutional opportunities for participation. It forcefully pleads for a policy improving the competitiveness of German industry by reducing the costs of production. Otherwise the "economic location factor Germany" and thousands of jobs will be seriously at risk. While the BDI has been rather successful in framing public debate, and in blocking environmental politics at the national level by massive lobbying during these years, at a less visible level it has unintentionally speeded up the discussion among experts of all political parties on adequate instruments for environmental policies under changed conditions in the 1990s. Given the structural trend of the greening of industry, it also doesn't surprise that nearly all of our interview partners from single companies stress the necessity to continue with the implementation of environmental management. Given the selection of our interview partners from those branches highly exposed to ecological criticism, there are two reasons why they plead for such a strategy. The first one is image politics, the fear to again loose public acceptance which they have tried to seriously regain over the past years. Secondly, there are growing markets for environmental techniques, 'green' products and services which favour (on part of those profiting) the perception of ecological problems as a lasting, global problem which demands for a "real" ecological modernization of economy. Thus, on the one hand, the industrial actors use the economic crisis rhetorically as a means to improve their own standing in public discourse on ecological problems and regulation. On the other hand, structural trends of the greening of industry do not really seem to be affected by the economic crisis. 5.9 CHANGING RULES OF THE GAME The developing patterns of communication and interaction of the three central actors of environmental conflict in Germany thus show that since the mid-eighties the tendencies toward an institutionalization of ecological conflict are increasing, yet this at the same time goes hand in hand with the emergence of a new institutional regime. In political terms, the traditional German, emission-oriented style of regulation increasingly meets its limits of efficiency and requires a transition to an integrated, precautionary 182 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * environmental policy. This is feasible only by a new mixture of policy instruments which are linked to the self-interest of economic actors, and by a transition to procedural principles of regulation integrating all relevant societal stakeholders by a dialogical process of cooperation. Regarding the economy, this tendency is supported by two tendencies: on the one hand, by the increasing costs and the decreasing returns of endof-pipe technologies; on the other hand by the necessity to develop an open, dialogical style of communication in order to regain the trust of the public. Though the environmental movement has developed a new scepticism about dialogical strategies due to the disappointments of the recent years, returning to old strategies of conflict is not a realistic option any more. Paradoxically, the economic blockages due to unification and recession speeded up the shift towards a more procedural style of regulation. Those blockages also accelerated the strategic reorientation of the environmental movement by pressing for a more integrated way of looking at ecological, social and economic problems. The public career of the discourse on "sustainable development" provided and still provides an effective frame for this institutional reorientation of environmental politics. This transformation is, however, not at all a linear, quasi-automatic process. It happens in a still unclear and fluid field of conflicts. Cooperative, dialogical ways of conflict solving thus are also (strategically) used as a means of reducing uncertainty in a risky social environment. This presupposes not only a clear picture of the opponents' arguments, a systematic mutual monitoring. It also goes hand in hand with a new emphasis on the field of public discourses. The high degree of politicisation and moralization of environmental problems makes necessary that the participating actors find legitimation for their particular interests and ends in public conflictual discourses. Effective framing of problems thus has become one of the major topics of professional PR of each of the three collective actors. It is the struggle in this field of public discourses that decides how given opportunity structures (economic crisis, electoral successes, accidents, scandals etc.) can be used by the respective actors in order to increase their chances of enforcement in dialogues and horizontal negotiations. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 183 184 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 6 United Kingdom: Media Discourse, Actor Strategies and Institutional Rules 6.1 A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF THE BRITISH MEDIA DISCOURSE ON ENVIRONMENTALISM 1987 TO 1991 The following analysis is based on a reconstruction of the environmental discourse in Britain that was produced from the coding of articles during the news week for the anniversary of the Chernobyl accident for the years 1987 to 1991. The two daily opinion leading newspapers that were used to gather the sample are The Independent and The Guardian. Ninety one articles relating to appeared in The Independent and one hundred and forty four in The Guardian. 6.1.1 Environmental Themes An overview of the structure of environmental issues within the British media discourse is given by the aggregate recorded presences for each issue category per year. There are six coded issue categories, namely: general environmental problems; global problems climate/natural; chemical/physical problems; flora & fauna; public life problems; and other problems. The distribution of references to these categories of problems for each successive year is represented in figure 20 (Environmental themes): Environmental themes At this macro level of interpretation the composition of the environmental issue structure of the British discourse appears to be "stable" across the time period of the sample. Chemical/physical problems predominate as the largest single category in each year. This bias is not surprising as the sample covers the Chernobyl anniversary news week Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 185 and references to nuclear radiation are recorded by the chemical/physical category. The second and third most resonant issue categories for the five years are either general environmental problems and public life problems. Flora and fauna problems account for approximately 10% of references to environmental themes in each year. This indicates that nature conservation has a stable presence within the structure of the British environmental discourse. The prominence of chemical/physical problems tends to decrease over the five years from 45% in 1987 to 30% in 1991. At the same time the proportion of references to global problems tends to increase, from 10% in 1987 to 20% in 1991. This may indicate that over the time period the nuclear issues change from single issue packages related to specific events to a discourse which integrates and develops themes of a wider and global significance. 6.1.2 Actors in the Environmental Discourse An overview of the actors in the British media discourse on the environment is provided by an aggregation of all the different types of actors who appear in the sample of news coverage. This information is presented for each year in the following figure 21: Actors in media discourse on environmentalism Thirteen categories of actors are coded from the texts: general/non-specific; political organisations (non-protest); environmental organisations; protest organisations; Other organisations; business/industry organisations; agricultural sector organisations; service sector organisations; experts/scientific organisations; public figures; media actors; legal actors; and others. 186 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * As in the case of the environmental issues, the distribution of types of actor per year tends to be relatively stable over the five year period. The most prominent actors in the environmental discourse are the political organisations of Government which account for approximately 20% of the references to actors. This is not surprising as these actors and their activities tend to be the targets, references points and (sometimes) the sources of environmental communication. Taken together references to environmental organisations and protest organisations account for a further 20% of references to actors. These actors are most likely to serve as sources for the environmental discourse, providing critiques of targeted opponents. Their high prominence is not surprising. Business and industry actors tend to be the third most prominent single category of actors in the British sample. Once more like the Government, these actors and their actions are the targets, reference point and are the occasional source of environmental communication. Other noteworthy features from the British case are the slightly increasing prominence of experts and scientists from 1989 to 1991, who account for just less than 10% of references to actors, and the parallel increase in the appearance of media actors who account for 5% of actors in 1990 and 1991. This may indicate that in the last two years of the sample the media actors begin to take on a role as sources and influential commentators on environmental discourse rather than simply reporting events. Similarly references to scientists and their expert scientific knowledge may be becoming more common place. In the last three years of the sample the frequency of other organisations also rises to just less than 10%. This may indicate an extension of the environmental discourse to institutional arenas beyond those of public protest. These trends indicate that the environmental discourse may be moving to the mainstream of social discourse in Britain from 1989 onwards. 6.1.3 Type of Environmental Discourse Eight categories of environmental discourse were coded: technological-industrial growth critique; regulatory environmental policy; participatory/conflict "politics"; risk; nature conservation; deep ecology/lifestyle/meaning of life; environmental damage; market. The distribution of the sample between these eight categories is given for each year 1987-91 in figure 22: Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 187 Type of environmental discourse The most prominent category overall is risk discourse. Risk discourses comprise 30% of the British environmental discourse in 1987, decreasing to 20% in 1989, and then increasing once more to 40% in 1991. This pattern can be attributed to the effect of the Chernobyl discourse which follows a similar pattern of decline then growth (see below). By 1991 risk discourses have been extended from the nuclear issue to issues of health. The second and third most prominent types of environmental discourse in the British case are those relating to participatory and institutional politics. Taken together the regulatory policy and participatory politics categories increase from 40% in 1987 to 55% in 1989, and then decrease to 30% in 1991. This trend is in contrast to that of the risk discourse category, which suggests that there is a trade off between discourses referring to politics and those referring to risks. Nature conservation discourses are a minor if omnipresent element as are the discourses on environmental damage. Discourses on environmental damage and deep ecology tend to increase in the last two years 1990 and 1991 at the expense of nature conservation discourses. The increase in discourses on environmental damage is produced by the reporting of natural disasters in Africa. However, the increase in the deep ecology discourse is more likely to be produced by a radicalisation of the nature conservation discourse due to the increasing penetration of risk definitions by 1991. Nature becomes a source as well as an object for discourse by 1991. It is worth noting that market discourses on the environment are a feature of the British case accounting for 5%. This may be due to the contemporary dominance of market definitions within British political life and the British Government's preference for market solutions to environmental problems. 188 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 6.2 THE BRITISH MEDIA DISCOURSE ON CHERNOBYL 1987-1991 6.2.1 Chernobyl Contents From the overall news sample of 235 articles in the British database, forty four make reference to Chernobyl. This Chernobyl sample constitutes the total news coverage on Chernobyl in two opinion-leading dailies, The Guardian and The Independent, for the six "news days" from the anniversary week of the accident over the five year period from 1987 to 1991. News section of Chernobyl sample Figure 23 shows the quantitative distribution of the articles in the Chernobyl news sample over the five anniversary news weeks 1987-1991 and indicates the section of the newspaper from which the articles are drawn. From a peak in the 1987 anniversary week, the coverage declines to a trough in 1989 and then rises once more to a new peak in the 1991 anniversary week. News of the Chernobyl anniversary initially appeared in mainstream and foreign news sections in 1987 and 1988, then became an item of specialised economic and political sections in the trough of 1989, to re-emerge as a an item for foreign news, features and editorial sections in 1990 and 1991. This pattern of distribution of articles shows that Chernobyl re-emerged as a news story as the years progressed from the initial news event of the accident and its first commemoration in 1987. At the same time the type of Chernobyl news changed from the genre reporting 'external' events in 1987 and 1988, to those where journalists and editors elaborate opinions and prognoses in 1990 and 1991. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 189 Environmental themes in Chernobyl sample Figure 24 shows the comparative distribution of coded environmental themes in the five anniversary news weeks of Chernobyl. Not surprisingly, in each year the chemical/physical category which covers problems of nuclear radiation and atomic waste is the most prominent. In the earliest year 1987 this type of environmental problem accounts for more than two thirds of the coded problems, however by 1991 the prominence of this category has diminished to a third of the named environmental themes, being displaced by the increasing prominence of the public life problems from 1987 to 1991. At the same time global environmental problems are named more frequently in 1990 and 1991, whereas in contrast flora and fauna problems, i.e. the physical consequences of environmental damage, diminish in 1990 and 1991. These changes in the contents of the environmental problems raised in the successive Chernobyl news discourses, indicate that from 1987 to 1991 the single issue theme of nuclear radiation problems became represented as a multi-issue theme relating also to the problems of public life and more often with a global reference. The increasing prominence of public life problems in the years from 1987 to 1991 was primarily due to an exponential rise in the in the citation of health hazards as an environmental problem in the news. Concerns with risks that are posed to health become an increasingly key element within the environmental themes that are raised by references to Chernobyl. The Chernobyl anniversary news sample witnesses a qualitative change in contents and reporting style from 1987 to 1991. By 1991 the Chernobyl discourse has become a reflexive discourse where issues relating to public health are raised regularly in the debates on the "causes and effects" of nuclear radiation. This shift towards a moralisation of the discourse on nuclear power is reflected also in a shift towards more editorial and opinion-leading types of news reporting in the later part of the sample. 6.2.2 Chernobyl News Stories 1987 to 1989 - Soviet Disaster and Domestic Concern 190 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The news events that appear in the 1987 Chernobyl sample are split into coverage over foreign and domestic affairs. Reassessments of the safety of nuclear power within both the national and supra-national context are mixed with descriptions of the events of the Chernobyl accident of the previous year and its ongoing effects on indigenous peoples in the Ukraine. The articles cover protest actions against nuclear power in Western Europe, including Britain, and descriptions of the problems and uncertainties of the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the wake of the Chernobyl "accident". In 1987 the Chernobyl discourse refers to the "accident" as an event with supra-national repercussions, but one which primarily concerns Britain from the outside, as an external affair. The accident is seen as a result of the Soviet system of technocratic government, both as an effect of inferior design capabilities of Soviet science and as an outcome of the non-accountability of the Soviet authorities to their people. In this sense Chernobyl serves to raise the "Cold War" discourses that are critical of the Soviet regime and which place the event as an affair that is primarily external to British influence. According to this interpretation, the Chernobyl accident was caused by the technological deficiencies of the Soviet system. Nuclear accidents are not universal risks and are unlikely to occur in Western Europe where scientists and technocrats possess the knowledge to control them. "the fact is that though there were plenty of technical lessons for Soviet industry, there were precious few that applied directly to Western reactors ... the good news from Chernobyl is that the same accident could not happen here. The bad news is we cannot afford any nuclear accident on such a scale, whatever the cause." Countdown to Chaos The Lessons of Chernobyl (#234) From this external viewpoint the Ukrainian people are represented as the "victims" of the corrupt, undemocratic, non-accountable technological management that caused the accident, that failed to inform them of their exposure to radiation as well as shifting them en masse during the "clear up" evacuation. The Chernobyl "event" covering the accident and the clear up gives ample opportunity for raising claims for the civil liberties denied to the people of the Soviet Union. The "lessons of Chernobyl" becomes a frame that is used for describing the changes in the Soviet system of Government under the leadership of Gorbachev. Not only are the Soviet people the prime "victims" of the "effects" of Chernobyl but they are also the "victims" of oppression in a political system where they are ruled by technocrats and denied free access to information. Because the Soviet Union had to demand external help in controlling and clearing up the accident, Chernobyl makes the Soviet system of Government accountable to the West. The West has a self-interest in ensuring that the Soviet system can manage its technological risks. More and freer exchanges of information between the Soviet leadership and people are seen as a prerequisite for this. The "lessons of Chernobyl" are given from West to East and serve as a frame which advocates change and liberalisation within the Soviet system of Government. This promotes the idea of a speeding up of the processes of li- Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 191 beralisation and openness which have started under the leadership of Gorbachev. After Chernobyl, Glasnost is a legitimate indigenous plea for Soviet democracy that the West needs. "Chernobyl has been the catalyst for Mr Gorbachev's policy of opening up Soviet society warts and all ... Chernobyl has played a huge part by showing that a cover-up can be far more embarrassing and damaging in the end than even unpleasant truth. No single event has so discredited those opponents of Mr Gorbachev who see glasnost as an invisible radiation of its own kind, threatening the cosy system under which they have flourished ... '." How Chernobyl tragedy helped to bridge the credibility gap (#326) In 1987 the environmental protest movement uses the First Chernobyl anniversary to mobilise opposition against domestic use of nuclear power. Demonstrations, peace chains and marches are reported across Europe and Greenpeace stages media events to attract media attention and focus doubt on the safety of nuclear installations in Britain. Here the claims of the activists are pitted against the scientific knowledge of the technocratic experts of the Central Electricity Generating Board. Britain risks a new Chernobyl, says Greenpeace. CEGB insists accident 'would be against laws of physics' (#240) In 1988 the "effects" of Chernobyl become a focus for internal concern as a national domestic and Western issue. Chernobyl "effects" appear everywhere and are no longer just a filter for critically analysing the Soviet system of Government and the secrecy surrounding national debates on nuclear power. In contrast to 1987 Chernobyl becomes a mainstream national risk frame. Radioactive contamination of pastures and animals in Cumbria and Wales has increased in the two years since Chernobyl. This contradicted the forecasts of scientists who said that it would diminish and has subsequently rendered inadequate the Government measures to control the damage (that were based on expert knowledge). The "effects" of Chernobyl have given a lesson to the scientists who are now represented as not being able to predict the patterns, processes and outcomes of radiation contamination. Chernobyl has dealt a blow to science. "Chernobyl fallout continues to defy official predictions. After more than two years it is still presenting contamination problems for upland sheep farmers. Worse, it is behaving in ways not foreseen in the radiation protection models used to assess and calculate fallout food chain hazards ... It turns out that the real world is more complicated than man's attempts to model it and, in this case, potentially more dangerous." The new chain metals. Silver lines the Chernobyl cloud but it is not good news (#257) Food scares and in particular the increasing radiation levels recorded in sheep makes Chernobyl a lesson in the limits to scientific knowledge and unknown risks to public health from radiation. The longevity and unexpected persistence of high radiation levels 192 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * across wide geographical areas in the West unifies the Chernobyl "effects" into a global risk discourse. High radiation levels become a domestic news item. No longer is concern limited to nuclear protestors but is a mainstream concern for public life. In Britain the threat to the "food chain" from contaminated lamb confronts the lifeworld of the British public with unknown risks. Chernobyl penetrates the private sphere and makes the public an actor with an interest in the debate about radiation risks. Questions of accountability no longer focus on the freedom of information in relation to nuclear power but highlight the responsibility of the Government to protect the public and justly compensate the sheep farmers. With scientific knowledge and technocratic control removed from the pedestal of authority 'good husbandry' and management is proposed as the most rational strategy for dealing with the radiation risks. The 1989 anniversary news week of Chernobyl represents the nadir of reporting. The Chernobyl risk discourse is no longer an active element in the national culture, but the discourses on the plight of sheep farmers, the restrictions imposed by Government, and possible food scares are 'institutionalised' as elements of Parliamentary debate. The resonance of the Chernobyl risk discourses of the previous years has brought the Government's pro-nuclear energy policy under public scrutiny and criticism. This means that opponents of the Government are able to use references to the national "effects" of Chernobyl to de-legitimise the Government and Nuclear industry. In this stage of the post-Chernobyl era the British nuclear industry is forced to take a defensive stance. The industry has suffered a legitimation crisis within British political culture due to the increasingly resonance of risks relating to the Chernobyl event and the notion of a possible repetition within the national context. By 1989 Chernobyl has not only exposed Soviet nuclear science as incompetent but has de-legitimised the British nuclear industry. The national and global "effects" of Chernobyl are becoming increasingly difficult to deny. 6.2.3 Chernobyl news stories 1990 to 1991 - fatalism in the face of global risks In 1990 Chernobyl re-emerges as a disastrous event. The full long-term "effects" of the exposure to radiation fallout are beginning to produce "new" news events that remobilise and extend the significance of the Chernobyl disaster. As in 1987 the primary focus of attention is on events in the Soviet Republics though the significance of events is related in a global context. The 1990 discourse focuses on the human "victims" of the Chernobyl accident. The Chernobyl event was not a one-off occurrence that happened four years ago but released radiation that has damaged and continues to damage the life system of the contaminated areas and its indigenous peoples in particular. The new "effects" of Chernobyl are becoming apparent in an increase in cancer rates in the affected peoples and in particular among children. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 193 In the Soviet context the imminent evacuation of 14.000 people from the contaminated area and the indigenous pleas of deputies from Byelorussia for the evacuation of 115 000 people raises the scale of the disaster to a mass human tragedy. Four years on Chernobyl becomes a new disaster story, one that emphasizes the true quantitative and qualitative "effects" that have increased far beyond the initial predictions. The quantitative scale of the disaster is presented by the numbers of the affected people, the qualitative scale by descriptions of deformities and increasing cancer rates. Both are used to indicate that the "real" disaster is becoming apparent only now. As their predictions of "effects" have been confirmed by events and are an accepted mainstream "reality" the British environmental protest organisations no longer need to publicly attack the nuclear industry. The lessons of Chernobyl are deemed selfexplanatory. Instead their campaigning role in alliance with Ukrainian and Byelorussian support groups shifts towards proposing Western charitable aid and medical assistance for Chernobyl "victims". These appear as joint open letters to the public from the organisations. The numerical scale of the damage to human health and its concentration on innocent lives, namely the "children of Chernobyl", aims to mobilise Western sympathy and charitable support for the "victims" by making the Ukrainian and Byelorussian peoples' suffering a human event that transcends geographical, political and historical boundaries. The plea for aid is made on humanitarian grounds. The Chernobyl "victims" become the focus for human interest stories by the media in 1990. The plight of the "victims" at home and abroad are told as personal narratives. This genre permits sensationalist descriptions of human tragedies, the irreparable damage to life-styles, families, and communities and the horrific deformities and risks that people face as a consequence of high level radiation exposure. Here the new "Chernobyl effects" appear as a threat which kills communities, the risks of nuclear radiation to everyday life is spelt out to the reading public. It is worth noting that the lead environmental editorial on the new Chernobyl "effects" in the Ukraine is a translation of an article from the Süddeutsche Zeitung. This suggests that the new Chernobyl "effects" risk frame as a principal threat to human life may initially have been imported from German culture, as it presents a symbolism and narrative that is far more radical and personalised than any previous commentary on Chernobyl in the British discourse. In Life in a land without birds (#296), Chernobyl appears as a "death zone" that may be repeated elsewhere. Furthermore the piece is supplemented by an environmental editorial on the national "victims" of Chernobyl that is stylised in a similar way. Disaster that fell with the rain on a bleak hill (#297), mimics the symbolism for the barrenness and desolation of the regions affected by Chernobyl radiation in the Ukraine but focuses on communities in North Wales. This unification of foreign and national "victims" indicates that the Chernobyl "effects" are everywhere, and a concern for everyone, but also that Chernobyl itself is becoming a transnational metaphor for death, which is the risk to human life that is presented by nuclear power. 194 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The plight of the Ukrainian and Byelorussian "victims" of Chernobyl serves as more than a plea for aid, it is a metaphor for a lost spirituality in the world, the essence of life has been destroyed, the laws of nature have been perverted by man's intervention. The description of the region and its distorted landscape is laden with the symbolism of death, the outcome of a Faustian tampering with nature. " 'The explosion of the reactor destroyed our souls, too', says Yuri Trachenko ... A few hundred metres further on, yet another evacuated village. Barbed wire, the death's head, armed guards. Then more agriculture. And the landscape. An increasingly uncanny landscape in which only first impressions appear harmless. One inevitably picks up all the signals: something is wrong here. The air is dense, the calm unnatural. Suddenly the reason strikes you: there are no birds ... the Moscow geneticist Vladimir Shevchenko characterised the post-Chernobyl flora by stating: 'The structure of nature has been deranged.' New absurd varieties come into being ..." Life in a land without birds. Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of the explosion at Chernobyl. Christian Werner returns to the death zone. (#296) A symbolically potent category of "victims" are "the children of Chernobyl". "Innocent" by definition, post-dating the accident and untarnished by historical association with the Soviet regime, the "children" serve as a potent metaphor for communicating the horrors of radiation to the West. The message is clear: it is the innocent not the guilty (nor the responsible) who suffer the consequences of radiation. Graphic descriptions of the scale of the radiation exposure, health risks and their consequences on "victims" abound. Furthermore the distortion of nature that has killed the birds, is producing perverted plant species is not confined solely to those exposed to radiation but has penetrated the human life cycle. The real "victims" are the children, the bearers of the future that Chernobyl has killed. "We visit Irina Subbota, one of hundreds of children in the region suffering from cancer. At the time of the explosion, Irina was a bright slim three-year-old ... Treatment has made her fatter and fatter until today, at the age of seven, she weighs 56 kilos. Her hair falls out and her eyes goggle. Physically she is a horror." Life in a land without birds. Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of the explosion at Chernobyl. Christian Werner returns to the death zone. (#296) By 1991 the scale of the "effects" of Chernobyl are no longer in contention. Similarly the technical-fix solutions of the nuclear industry are no considered plausible or legitimate methods for dealing with the immense risks that are posed to the world by another nuclear accident. Chernobyl is acknowledged as a global disaster that has left an indelible imprint on world history. In 1991 the global risk to life discourse is predominant within the British media discourse on Chernobyl. With the Chernobyl "effects" established beyond reasonable doubt the Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 195 public discourse concerns itself with the moral dilemma of dealing with immense and genuine threats to human life. In 1990 the evaluation of the threats to human life and the distortions of nature that are the outcome of radiation exposure were confined to stylised accounts of the personal plights of "victims" at home and abroad. Now such risks take centre stage as the basis for forming a set of moral prognoses about the future of humankind. In 1991 the British media discourse reflexively articulates the risks of nuclear power as a global threat to human existence: We are all potential victims of the nuclear threat. The "new" effects of Chernobyl have produced the "new" lessons of Chernobyl. In the face of the immense threat to human life, societies and the structure of nature that is posed by radiation, Chernobyl becomes a symbol for a universal danger, a global risk to humankind. Media actors, society's public opinion leaders, appoint themselves as the "new" experts on the "lessons" of Chernobyl. As society becomes reflexive about the risks to life which it creates and faces, journalists embed their articulation of such risks in the imagery of a global culture set in a world historical context. The geographical location of the Chernobyl "effects" is extended to a universal and grander historical significance. Furthermore the British opinion leaders no longer seek rational solutions in the name of science and progress, but on the contrary confirm that personal and collective fears relating to the global threat of nuclear radiation are perfectly rational. "The disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power station five years ago did far more than pollute the environment and kill people in the vicinity. It left an imprint on the mind similar to that of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Like them, it marked the threshold of a new era. The lurking fear that civilian nuclear power could get out of control was suddenly fulfilled with devastating effect. That fear was never irrational, as Chernobyl demonstrated, but it gained added potency from the scale of the accident, the human bungling that it revealed, and the special horror evoked by radiation, with its mysterious, invisible and often delayed effects on the structures of life." The lessons of Chernobyl (#382) This first paragraph of The Independent's lead editorial combines the elements of the 'risk to life' anti-nuclear discourse that are present in the preceding years: a description of the accident and its "effects" on indigenous peoples; a reference to the scale and global significance of the damage by analogies to other world historical events of human destruction, such as Hiroshima; the notion of nuclear power being beyond human control by science; situations and dangers being intensified by technocratic mismanagement of the disaster; and the unknown dangers of large scale exposure to radiation with its concomitant risks and irreversible effects on the life system. Furthermore these elements from the Chernobyl discourse are integrated into a systematic argumentation that establishes the present as the era of global risks. Scientific facts are no longer used as the basis for mobilising political claims about the future of nuclear power. Evocative language, humanist moral appeals, references to historical antecedents, and images of death symbolism make Chernobyl into a metaphor 196 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * for the threat to global life. Chernobyl itself has become the symbol of a universal death threat hanging over the world. Journalistic hyperbole offers a spiritual, almost otherworldly, apocalyptical response to the threat of radiation for life. For the first time the future of nuclear power is seen as a global rather than a British question. Now that the risks raised by anti-nuclear movement in 1987 are legitimate elements of the mainstream discourse on nuclear power, the questions of risk management which are posed through the filter of Chernobyl references extend beyond national domestic policy concerns. Chernobyl has made the nuclear power dilemma global and internationalised the scope of responsibility for regulating nuclear power in the future. Britain is no longer a nuclear island. Calls for political and regulatory responses to the post-Chernobyl nuclear risks focus on the international arena. "(T)he biggest lesson of Chernobyl, which is that nuclear safety cannot be left entirely to nation states, not only because of the special expertise that is needed but also because the effects of negligence can spread far beyond national boundaries ... Given that many members of the United Nations rate their sovereignty higher than their international responsibilities, the chances of persuading them to expand the powers of the IAEA70 look slim." The lessons of Chernobyl (#382) 6.2.4 Summary In 1987 the "lessons" of Chernobyl consisted of strategies for better scientific management and international regulation of nuclear installations that was to be guided from West to East in the guise of glasnost. By 1991 the penetration of risk discourses relating the Chernobyl "effects" on human health and livelihoods for both the national and Soviet "victims" means that expert knowledge is no longer a criteria for entering the debate on the implications of Chernobyl. Scientists are no longer needed to explain possible outcomes or technical solutions, neither are doctors needed to explain the possible risks to health. Such factors are now common knowledge. Chernobyl has become an overridingly moral question about the future of society. 6.3 LANDSCAPE IN THE BRITISH MEDIA DISCOURSE: A RESONATING THEME IN BRITAIN 6.3.1 Landscape: ideas of nature and nation 70 IAEA is the International Atomic Energy Authority an agency of the United Nations based in Vienna and funded by the UN member states. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 197 Specific landscapes are a contentious idea of "place". Indeed this is why analyses on the social usage of landscape metaphor and symbolism are invariably drawn into a debate concerning the structure of class and social relationships and cultural hegemony in the nation (Williams 1972, 1973, Olwig 1984, Pugh 1988). Raymond Williams sees the function of the "idea of nature" as ideological: "What is often being argued, it seems to me, in the idea of nature is the idea of man; and not only generally, or in ultimate ways, but the idea of man in society, indeed the ideas of kinds of societies." (1972: 150) Ideas of nature are ideological constructs, but they derive their meaning from the anthropocentric context of their production. In other words they are specific social constructions that are used by actors to produce normative values about social relationships. Landscape metaphors and symbolic images are active elements of a culture, they serve as a reflexive way for actors to place their identity within the wider national cultural framework. They are a symbolic device or "frame" which actors use for claiming to belong to a culture, or a specific context of social relationships. This is why "landscape" disputes tend to be emotive issues. Landscape metaphor and imagery has a key communicative function in a national culture. It serves as a symbolic resource from which actors may make framing devices that mobilise their identity(ies) in relation to "place". "Landscape" frames are used by actors for relating their particular identities within a broader framework of cultural meanings that refer to the social relationships of a society. People's association with "place" or environment places them in a wider framework of "places" and social space. An specific usage or understanding of "landscape" framing is particular to an actor: it is an ideological construct. Thus constructing "landscapes" is a creative moment, that occurs when people apply ideas of nature to a visual or conceptual form. It is a reflexive moment. "Landscape" forms derive their rich communicative potential by relating ideas of nature to ideas of social relationships. Anthropology tells us that nature is one of the richest cultural resources for social communication in primitive societies (Douglas 1966). However, as the emergence of environmental politics testifies, nature is also a potent source for political communication in contemporary societies. Is there a new or emergent landscape critique to challenge the established national discourse on the landscape in Britain? If so, what image of the nation, if any, does it mobilise? 6.3.2 Landscape in the news: sample definition The environmental themes relating to the natural world (flora and fauna) were recorded as a constant feature of the British environmental news database, accounting for about 10% of all coded environmental themes in each of the five years 1987 to 1991 (see 1. above). It is well documented that ideas of nature serve as a source for national identity (e.g. Olwig 1984). It is also well documented that environmental concerns in Britain 198 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * experienced a cycle of interest and access to mainstream politics after Prime Minister Thatcher's speech to the Royal Society in 1988 (e.g. Grove-White 1993). The representation of landscape was selected as a topic for qualitative analysis in the British media discourse 1987-1991, because it serves both as an indicator for a traditional British concern with nature, and having a constant presence throughout the five years of the sample it also serves as an indicator for new types of ideological constructions that may be mobilised within the British variant of environmental culture. Landscape symbolism is an enduring metaphor for national identity, and provides a cultural resource for actors to construct normative arguments that express political claims. A qualitative analysis of the British media discourse on environmentalism 1987 to 1991 was undertaken to determine what elements of British, English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish national identities71 are available in the symbolic opportunity structure that is present in the environmental discourse in Britain. How do ideas of nature combine with ideas of nation in the British political culture of environmentalism? A landscape frame is an experiential event, a social construction. Identified landscapes may be urban or rural areas; land, sea, or lunar; conceptual, real, or fictional; contemporary, past, or eternal. This open quality of landscape metaphor and imagery, its communicative potential, makes it a pertinent analytic tool for gauging which norms and values currently resonate in the British media discourse on environmentalism. At the same time it presents a methodological difficulty: If landscape definition is open, how do we recognise a landscape as a research object when we see it, and how do we collect examples of landscape from the media discourse? The sample of articles of landscape framing in the news was retrieved from the overall database by the following three criteria: 1) the landscape framing sample must be pertinent to the contemporary environmental discourse in Britain. This is an outcome of the total sample being retrieved on a "catch all" basis from the hard copy news texts on environmentalism for a specific news week in five successive years (1987-91). 2) the thematic contents of the news in the landscape framing sample must refer to the nation or a sub-category of the nation. This excludes uses of landscape framing that refer beyond the national context of identity formation. 71 In fact the analysis is restricted only to a discussion of landscape as a source for English and Welsh national identity construction. The sample did not contain references to Scotland (which has its own press) or Northern Ireland (which has a distinct and contested national identity). Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 199 3) the landscape framing sample must use a constructed idea of nature, i.e. it must be based on a use of nature symbolism. This biases the sample towards representations of the natural environment. These criteria focus the landscape framing sample in the news on the national countryside and urban greenery discourses, whilst leaving it open to heritage and other elaborate cultural discourses that are developed from within the context of British environmental discourse, but which extend beyond in semantic meaning. After applying the three analytic criteria the landscape framing news sample comprised eighteen articles from the total sample of 235 Daily newspaper articles. Ten articles were from The Guardian and eight from The Independent. 6.3.3 Landscape framing in the news News discourse often uses landscape metaphors and symbolism to express an aspect of contemporary social life. This constructive process may involve a fictional journey through time. For example, representations of the English countryside draw on images of an eternal English past, the Garden of England, which suggests a fixed and established hierarchy of class relationships from the Lord of the Manor downwards. They use historical analogies to reinforce countryside images that are resonant and popular elements of public perception, but are fictitious representations of the actual structures of social relationships in contemporary societies. Here I analyse interpretations of "landscape" in the framework of British culture using the news as a data source for the public discourse in Britain. Framing occurs when actors make an interpretation of an social event or idea that places it within a broader cultural framework. The "landscape" meanings in the sample all appear in newspaper discourse. This introduces another dimension of "framing". Not only are the examples "landscape" framings, but they have also been "framed" in their context as "news". News framing adds "news values" to the format of an article: these vary between different types of genre of news, different types of newspaper, and different types of media (Fowler 1991). Four categories of "landscape framing in the news" appear in the sample. Firstly, the first two result from making the distinction for "landscape framing" between landscape as the object of framing and landscape as the subject of framing. When landscape is the object of framing, the landscape is framed as an image or by a metaphor in the news article as an object or context. In this case the ideological construction takes place by the reference to the landscape as a place or object. When landscape is the subject of framing, the landscape is used as an image or a metaphor to represent ideas that extend beyond the notion of a place. This is a more elaborate form of ideological production than when landscape is the object of framing. 200 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Secondly, the other two categories result from defining the "news framing" properties of these categories, using the distinction made in van Dijk's (1985 1991) linguistic news analysis between the thematic macrostructure - i.e. the thematic contents - and the news structure - i.e. the style, type, genre of the article. This identifies how a case of landscape framing takes place within the structure of a news story. These two analytic distinctions define the four categories of landscape framing in the news. The following table shows the combinations that are described in the respective chapters below. landscape as object landscape as subject news structure chapter 6.3.4.1 chapter 6.3.5.1 thematic macrostructure chapter 6.3.4.2 chapter 6.3.5.2 6.3.4 How people define nature: landscape as framed object 6.3.4.1 In news context In the seven articles in this category landscape framing occurs primarily within the news structure of the article. Landscape metaphor and/or image is a framing device used by journalists to contextualize an event that is reported as news. Five articles simply used photographs of an objective image of a landscape, this serves to confirm that the reported news event occurs in a specific setting. In each case the landscape is objectified by the news narrative, e.g. as an object that is being used for scavenging coal or leisure pursuits, or being damaged by poisoning and toxic industrial pollution or being protected. 6.3.4.2 In place context: country life in England and Wales For the seven articles in this category, landscape framing occurs as a contextualizing theme which adds values to the reported events in the text. The reported event or news story is framed by values that are contextually mobilised by an association with "place". In contrast to the examples above (3.1.1), the landscape framing in this category takes place in the news theme rather than in the news structure. Many of this type of landscape framings refer to the countryside and the events which are contextualised in this specific "place". Although we are still dealing with landscape Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 201 as the object of framing, this type of landscape framing nonetheless maintains a potential for elaborating ideas about "places". In particular it mobilises discourses about the countryside in England and Wales, as a real and as an imaginary context, that is laden with ideas about identity, lifestyles and society. This occurs in the news narrative as citations from actors, descriptions and reviews of events on and about location, and applications of historical analogies and comparisons to the main news theme. What claims are made for the values of country, country life, and country lifestyles in England and Wales, and how do these claims "work" in British culture? One public actor that mobilises ideas about the country is the environmental organisation the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE). "People who live in cities want open spaces and wildlife to enjoy on their doorsteps as well as in the wider countryside beyond the urban area." Greening the Cities (#228) In this example the green urban areas and countryside are landscape objects. Specialists, the CPRE, are introduced to raise the claims that are made about the public value of landscape. The aestheticisation of the landscape, i.e. its beauty, plays no role in attributing its normative value. The landscape is politicised as a public utility. For the case of a personality who is afforded a special structural position in the national culture, there is a greater scope for the aestheticisation of landscape into values that make contingent claims. Prince attacks new developers (#125), reports the opening speech by Prince Charles for the Civic Trust's "Build a Better Britain" campaign. "The need to restore life to British communities "laid waste by economic and social change" was evident, he said. "If you were dropped, blindfolded into the heart of any British village and had the blindfold removed, would you know where you are?" ...housing estates could be anywhere for the materials used were universal. "The norm is what we see in ever increasing numbers on the edges of our precious villages, or squashed like bad sets of irregular teeth between the cottage and the school" he told his audience. They all knew of the type of developer who had no real interest in the villages' lives except in the profit they might bring. "If we are to build a better Britain, we must search out that quality which our forbearers knew so well"." For Charles, the values communicated through landscape images mean more than natural objects, they serve to naturalize a specific set of values into a representation of the nation. Charles' Britain draws on a re-construction of the values of Britain's past, the heritage which he himself embodies which is opposed to that of a modern developer's concern with "profit". Here a specific image of landscape is framed as an eternal quality of Britishness under threat by modernity. This landscape image of Britain, an eternal heritage that is of intrinsic value and to be defended against change: "our precious villages" (sic.), is a fictional representation of contemporary rural life. However, it shows that ideas of the countryside - represented by 202 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * descriptions of its visual form - serve as a framing device for actors to mobilise ideas of national heritage that span across time. The visual form of the countryside is a key signifier for ideas about British society. In contrast, the other articles in this category discuss events that are located in the country. Three refer to England and two to the country in Wales. All three articles about the English country use the visual effect of photographic images and descriptions about the form of the landscape to construct ideas relating to "country life". The articles report about the difference between the popularly perceived images of "English country life" and the "realities" of living in the "country". One example reviews this theme directly, Life beyond the M40: Getting away for the weekend is one thing. Getting away for good to a rural retreat is something entirely different (#279). In contrast, A surfeit of ever-glossier monthlies on the country. Duff HartDavies reviews the competition for the hearts and the pounds of the weekenders in Stoke Poges (#30), reviews the representation of "English country life" that appears in countryside magazines. In both articles, journalists contextualize popularly held sets of ideas and opinions about the country and claim that these constitute a significant element in English culture. "(T)he country magazine is a peculiarly English institution, and does not exist in, for instance, France or Germany. Civilisations like those of France and Spain.., are citybased. "Paris is the centre of France, Madrid the centre of Spain. But it has never been quite the same in Britain. Ideas about Britain have always been based on our countryside, and so in way we are at the centre of the nation's consciousness"." (#30) Both articles make a distinction between the popular images of "country life" and "real country life", where the country is seen as a justifiable cultural territory for people to fantasise and mobilise fictional ideas about their identities. The country is a symbolic resource for people to be reflexive. It is a resource for their aspirations to a specific lifestyle and the values of identity that are defined within the idea of nation. It enables people to "place" themselves in a set of national aspirations to wealth and status. After all, in the English version the cultural trappings of "country life" are a sign of status and aristocracy "to the Manor born", whether they appear in a Laura Ashley catalogue or actually in the country. It appears that the reason the country is important for English culture is because Britain is primarily an urban society. The country is an imaginary "landscape" for British city-dwellers, and one's ability to make the dream become "reality" and cross to rural life is sign of status that gives national prestige. "Country life, we believe, is somehow nearer our true nature than life in the city....None of us actually lives in the country yet. But we all believe that rural life is "out there" at the end of the motorway, waiting to welcome us....Each of us likes to think of ourselves as a countryperson at heart." (#279) Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 203 English country "landscapes" draw their significance from beyond the activities that take place on location. In many cases such communication is produced by the special significance of the opposition between town and country in English culture. The other articles deal with events in the country in Wales. The representation of the Welsh country is different than the English. Rather than being contextualised by issues of heritage and the difference between the real and imaginary, the Welsh country appears as a context where people have real lives and livelihoods. The articles cover Welsh farming events: one describes the effects of radiation fallout from Chernobyl on the livelihood and stock of the Welsh farmers, Disaster that fell with the rain on a bleak hill (#297); whereas the second concerns the diversification of Welsh farmers to wood cropping, Gathering a rich harvest from the mighty oak. Welsh farmers are discovering there is real money to be made from wood (#386). In the case of the wood harvesting the farming practice is seen as compatible and beneficial to aesthetic concerns. The Welsh farmers are not seen as the conservationists' enemy (unlike their English counterparts). They are people who work the land for modest returns. "Long after we have stopped feather bedding the grain barons, there will be money in oak -not a fortune, but quite enough to keep the woodland standing...because they survive in the most prominent sites in hills and lowlands, Welsh woods are visually important in the landscape. They also provide cover for internationally important wildlife. The red kite, found only in Wales, depends on upland woods for its nest sites." (#386) In the example on Chernobyl risks (#297), it is the values represented by these farming people who are part of the Welsh country that is under threat. The landscape framing contextualises the Welsh farming livelihood as valid way of life that will disappear unless the state intervenes to take responsibility for the damage. "Its uncertainty about the future that is getting to people...Our countryside will be depopulated. It will become a play area, a wilderness...Our whole way of life has changed and if everyone else is compensated we should be. After all we did nothing to bring this to Wales." (G #296) Wales and Welsh farming life, framed in its land, is the victim of Chernobyl and the British Government. 6.3.5 How nature defines people: landscape as framing subject 6.3.5.1 As the idea of green times: scientific futures The articles in this category are written by experts in the environment-related fields of science, biology and natural history. Experts write their authoritative opinions about their 204 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * specialist subjects. Their opinions appear as primary constructions throughout the texts. In these examples, landscapes are the subject of framing: the authors explicitly frame elements of nature to make claims about their fields of science, biology and natural history. They use landscape framing as a way of popularising the most recent findings of scientific knowledge in their disciplines. For example, Unravelling a green mystery. John Allen looks at research casting new light on how plants convert the Sun's energy (#350), starts: "Across the country, the British are trying to tame the most important biological process on earth. The familiar ritual of extracting lawnmowers from their whither hibernation and distracting the quiet of the urban weekend is prompted by the unruly spring growth of grass. For most people this is the most obvious sign of the power of photosynthesis: the ability of green plants (and other living cells) to harness the energy of the sun's light." It is worth noting that all three articles appeared in the second half of the 1987-91 sample. Indeed the examples in this category suggest that the news presentation of scientific discourse about the environment has been radicalised by the popularisation of British version of the "new environmental consciousness" the (Jamison/Eyerman/Cramer 1990). In this radicalised format the British "landscape" is no longer an objectified visual form or "place" signifying an eternal set of values. Instead nature itself becomes the subject of framing and this has the effect of producing ideas about the basis of society, which has a new source of life and a new time span beyond the idea of the nation: that mobilised by the natural elements. In these articles scientific experts make nature into a "landscape" that defines the future and the eternal source of life. Nature becomes a source for a new set of social values, and a new relation between man and the environment. We no longer control nature, but nature becomes the source of all civilisation past, present and future. "The energy in our food was converted from radiant energy recently, when the plants that we eat used sunlight for their growth. So the wheels of a bicycle are driven by nuclear fusion that happened a few years ago in a reactor at the safe distance of 93 million miles. The wheels of a car go round for the same reason, but in that case the energy was converted a long time ago, when 100 million years of sunlight was compressed into the coal, oil and gas on which our style of civilisation can briefly depend. Photosynthesis has come a long way in the 3,000 million years or so of evolution." (#350) Natural elements are used by the authors as symbols for green futures. In one, research into the process of photosynthesis provides the clue to life and may provide health benefits: Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 205 "The answers should tell us about vision, smell and hormone action." (#350) In another the author defines magnesium as the source for future environmental and social benefits: "By the end of the next century, production of this versatile metal is expected to exceed 500, 000 tons a year as car makers discover the environmental benefits of magnesium for lighter and longer-lasting vehicles." (#33) Natural elements are defined by the authors in a way that mobilises claims for future environmental benefits. This shows that environmental claims are on the scientific agenda, or at least serve as a way for justifying natural scientific research in the public arena. In British culture scientific futurism is no longer tied to space rockets and men in white coats, but has become part of the public arena of environmental claims. Nature rather than material progress has become a resource for actors to justify scientific practice. 6.3.5.2 As the idea of a green "place": a new Britain? I have discussed the role of nature as the subject of framing (3.3.2.1), and prior to that I showed that the visual form of the country is a key signifier for British society (3.3.1.2). This final category combines elements of both these uses of landscape framing. The article, The sap is rising. For bluebells and butterflies, for bats, birds and tree - and the ecologist - even the Great October Storm has a silver lining (#166), makes landscape the object and subject of framing. The British woodlands are framed as an object, but in a way that they (along with the readers) are represented as actors in the news narrative. The writer of the text takes an authoritative role, like that of the scientific experts (3.3.2.1), and mobilises opinions as primary constructions. However, he attributes the elements of nature with the role of primary actor. He uses nature as a subject, living and changing. His natural living landscape becomes the source for mobilising other ideas, and it is at this point where the idea of national heritage reemerges. "If you go down to the woods today, will you be in for a great surprise? Last October's storm felled some 12 million trees in a giant swathe across southern England...A disaster? Well, at the time it was a catastrophe, but here is a different story. From this spring and over the next years, we could be witnessing a rebirth of the great British countryside: fitter, richer and with a lot of dead wood removed." (#116) Unlike the Prince Charles speech, and the "country life" reviews (3.3.1.2), the readers are invited into an eco-centric as opposed to an anthropocentric perspective: 206 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * "Look at it from a plant's point of view. To a wood sorrel, primrose, or foxglove, woodlands are fiercely competitive places. The trees and shrubs above you are shading out most sunlight, so you have to flower before they open their leaves..." (#116) This framing not only serves as an example for the natural environment becoming a popular element of contemporary British culture, i.e. the British "new environmental consciousness", but it gives an indication of the type of meanings that are mobilised by eco-framing in Britain. Readers are drawn into this specific framing of the natural "landscape" that has parallels with the reality of which they have personal experience: the wood is a competitive place. In other words, it is a market. Plants have to face the same realities as British people, and make the most of being subject to the "effects" of natural forces over which they have no control. "A rebirth of the great British countryside: fitter, richer and with a lot of dead wood removed" becomes a metaphor for the new economic Britain. No longer is the countryside controlled, and heritage preserved, by the status of Charles and the aristocracy, it is a classless free market that presents opportunity to those who best know how to prosper competitively. Its future is dependent on change. Nature is giving lessons to the British people. 6.3.6 Summary The analysis of landscape framing in the British news sample has shown that references to nature are a key element for mobilising national identity and that there are several distinct and competing ideological versions that appear in the public discourse. There is a version where the aesthetic qualities of the English landscape are considered to be a justification for the defence of the status quo against the threat of modernity, change and development. There is a related version where one's ability to acquire the status of a countryperson is a signifier for wealth, and the English landscape becomes a focus for social aspirations. Whereas the English landscape is a fictional environment of order and peace, the Welsh landscape is a wilderness where real lives and the harsh realities of farming take place. In recent years nature symbolism has been used to give a popular credibility to the practice of science. Environmental concerns have replaced the progress of mankind as justifications for science. However, far from the dreams of deep ecology, it appears that the resonant eco-centric ideas in British culture may tell us more about our present society than our "deeper" selves. Eco-centric ideas appear to serve as a justification of neo-liberal policies. For the case of Britain, perhaps we might agree with Oscar Wilde (1894): "It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out." 6.4 PATTERNS OF COHERENCE AND CONFLICTUALITY IN THE BRITISH ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 207 Whereas the content analysis (1.) indicated that the in the period from 1987 to 1991, the thematic issues, actors and types of environmental discourse that were represented in the British media were relatively stable, the two qualitative cases studies on Chernobyl (2.) and on the representation of landscape (3.) have indicated that this period witnessed a cycle of change in the in the type of environmental argumentations that were being used and attributed and in the reporting style of environmental news. It appears that from 1988 onwards there was an increasing propensity to attribute a mainstream credibility and legitimacy to the environmental claims which were previously cited as the opinions of environmental pressure groups. Nature symbolism has become dissipated throughout the news. The Chernobyl story showed that science has lost a degree of public legitimacy as a justification for nuclear power. At the same time the landscape case study has shown that scientists are increasingly using nature symbolism and appealing to environmental benefits to justify the pursuit of scientific practice. The British variant of environmental norms that has become ascendent in the media discourse over the period of the sample may serve primarily to justify neo-liberal policies of free-market regulation for society. The emergence of the environmental critique in the news discourse from 1987 to 1991 indicates that environmental beliefs have become popularised in Britain, but paradoxically this emergence from the margins to the cultural mainstream may have weakened the influential resonance of the environmental movement in the media. When there are more actors talking, it is harder to be heard. This effect can be shown while looking at the different actors who claim a voice in ecological communication. 6.5 POLITICAL ACTORS 6.5.1 Masterframes In the period from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s the cultural orientation of policy actors in Britain in respect of the environment has changed profoundly. Until around 1989 the framing of environmental issues by policy actors was characterised by a number of related features. Firstly, the environment itself has historically been largely perceived as a technical and administrative, rather than a political matter, and one subservient to the goal of national economic welfare (Grove-White 1991: 23). The creation of the Department of the Environment in 1970 is a case in point here. In the Department's perceptions, environmental protection has been understood largely to fall under the heading of pollution control, reinforcing the tendency for environmental issues to be seen as technocratic matters, capable of solution through the application of science and technology to basically unchanged industrial practices (Grove-White n.d.: II 14-17). But one of the main motivations for the creation of the DoE was less concern about environmental 208 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * quality per se than a chronic anxiety about national economic performance, a preoccupation that meant that in 1989 only 10% of its staff were engaged in directly environmental areas. Secondly, institutional and legislative changes have been characterised by what McCormick, following Lindblom, has called "disjointed incrementalism" (McCormick 1991: 10). It has followed a largely reactive course, characterised by continuity rather than discontinuous reforms, such that attempts are made to absorb changed regulatory goals within existing practices, legislation and institutions rather than creating new ones. Thus British environmental policy had by the mid-1980s become "an accretion of common law, statutes, agencies, procedures and policies", rather than a rational, integrated system (Lowe and Flynn 1989: 256). Thirdly, relationships between regulator and regulated has generally been characterised by consensus and consultation, in a policy style of "bureaucratic accommodation" (Jordan and Richardson 1982: 81), or "negotiated compliance" (Hawkins 1984). The British state, certainly until 1989 has been signally unwilling to use coercion against business, and has preferred to follow implicit standards of decency rather than strict rule-governance. Industry thus has enjoyed a close working relationship with the regulatory agencies in an arrangement which gave the former more influence over policy than has been enjoyed by the environmental groups. In the environmental sphere this has resulted in environmental legislation which, in both form and implementation, has been highly 'pragmatic' (Ball and Bell 1991: 14). But since the late 1980s there has been a detectable shift in the masterframe of policy actors, largely under pressure to meet obligations entered into at the international level. In terms of the understanding of the environment itself, there has been an at least implicit recognition of the more human, negotiated aspects of environmental issues in the adoption of more participatory approaches within the Sustainable Development framework adopted since the UNCED conference in 1992. The presumption in favour of economic development has also been perceptibly modulated, such as in the softening of transport policy under DoE influence. In respect of institutional changes, the creation of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution (HMIP) in 1987, the first unified national agency for pollution control in Britain, (Lowe and Flynn 1989: 278), represented a major departure from the British policy style of 'disjointed incrementalism'. For the first time, every major polluter is regulated by a single inspector. Over this period, the relations between regulator and regulated have shifted away from 'negotiated compliance' towards a more formalised, legalistic regulatory style. The neoliberal Thatcher government of the 1980s manifested a deep hostility towards any kind of regulation that might constrain economic activity (Lowe and Flynn 1989: 261). Furthermore, during this period the reduction of public sector expenditure meant that more and more environmental regulatory responsibility was been passed to the regulated (O'Riordan 1988: 42). Nevertheless, and particularly under pressure from the Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 209 EU, a more centralised and formalised approach to pollution control has been instituted - first with HMIP, and then with the creation of the National Rivers Authority (NRA) in 1989. With the privatisation of the water industry by the Thatcher government it was the intention that control of water pollution would itself pass over into the private sector. However, a combination of EC directives and public opinion resulted in the creation of the NRA. The most fundamental change introduced by the NRA was the move from negotiated compliance to a more European, legalistic style of pollution control. This formalisation process will result in a new unified Environmental Protection Agency for England and Wales, likely to be a combination of HMIP and the NRA and their respective approaches. Changes at the level of local government have also been significant over this period. In Britain, while much environmental regulation has traditionally been devolved to the local level (Lowe and Flynn 1989: 257), local government is notoriously weak (Grove-White 1991: 9-10; McCormick 1991: 13) - even more the case after the Thatcher administration (Lowe and Flynn 1989: 262). This paradox has been part of the reason for Britain's poor record on environmental regulation. Nevertheless, since the beginning of the 1990s local authorities have embraced first 'environment' and then 'sustainable development' as a framework for the rejustification of local government after the experience of the 1980s. While not being granted many significant new powers or responsibilities by central government, and indeed suffering from a serious diminution of resources, they have nevertheless endeavoured to integrate hitherto separate aspects of their activities - waste management, environmental health, parks and so on - plus a few new ones - recycling, habitat management - within a coherent environmental framework. The result of this has been to raise the status of environmental policy within local government, to significantly alter practices in certain environmental policy areas such as transport and nature conservation, and to encourage the application of environmental principles to the running of the authorities themselves (LGMB 1992). 6.5.2 New fora for politics and policy-making Since the late 1980s there have been an increasing number of fora for consultation in respect of environmental policy-making, involving participants from a range of social sectors - notably industry, environmental groups and government at various levels. Generally these have been government-initiated responses to international environmental initiatives such as the EU's Fifth Action Programme on the Environment and UNCED. Such round tables attempted to agree on a common position to take to UNCED, synthesising the views of industry, local government, environmental groups and development groups. They have also proliferated since UNCED, such as in attempts to agree on a national Sustainable Development Plan, and on meeting obligations to reduce greenhouse gases. At the same time, under the Agenda 21 commitments made by the UK government at UNCED, local authorities have also been obliged to apply "the partnership approach to achieve action for sustainable devel- 210 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * opment at local level" (LGMB 1994: 5). To this end they have been an important facilitator of multi-sectoral consultative initiatives involving local industry, environmental and community groups, and local government representatives. 6.5.3 Information strategies: closed or open? The British policy style has generally been one oriented towards secrecy and discretion (Grove-White 1991: 7-8). The notorious Official Secrets Act makes any government information, however routine, confidential without specific decree. In the area of pollution, for example, there has long been a strong resistance to the publicisation of data on individual emissions (Tinker 1972). Even though such secrecy has frequently been flouted by civil servants in order to keep environmental groups informed of the activities of government, this practice has often had the effect of more closely binding the environmental groups into the closed and secretive policy networks, rather than genuinely encouraging open public debate (O'Riordan 1988: 7). One reason for this is that government and administration in Britain tends always to perceive civil society in terms of 'interests'. In respect of pollution control, information about consents and discharges have long only been made available to those holding an "interest" in them - this interest understood in the very narrow sense of property rights (Tinker 1972: 530). With land-use policy, 'interests' are generally divided into four categories - public policy, local government, individual property owners and 'third parties'. Environmental groups are interpreted as belonging to the category of 'third parties', and thus as representing a particular, merely sectional interest (Grove-White n.d.: II 20-2). Thus, although British environmental groups have enjoyed greater influence on the policy process than is the case in many other countries, access to the court-like British political culture has always been contingent on their adherence to implicit codes of moderation and discretion (Grove-White 1991: 8; Lowe & Flynn 1989: 270). There has nevertheless been a different general pattern of communication and relationships in the pollution and land-use areas in the post-war period. The operations of pollution control policy has tended to be hidden, fragmented across a number of relatively secretive institutions. The land use planning system, by contrast, is traditionally far more open to public participation and consultation through the public inquiry system (although there has been a deeply ingrained practice of only considering developments on their own individual merits rather than in terms of cumulative impact) (Grove-White 1991: 18; Grove-White n.d.: II 23). This general secrecy and discretion in respect of environmental policy has been softened in the 1990s, encouraged by the more liberal style of Derek Osborn, the Director General of Environmental Protection at the Department of the Environment, and by the need to adopt a role of 'partnership' with the environmental groups necessitated by the rising importance of Sustainable Development as a framework for environmental policy. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 211 6.6 MOVEMENT ACTORS 6.6.1 Masterframes During the 1980s, in many ways there was a convergence of worldviews between the many and varied environmental groups in Britain. Older groups such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), which had concentrated largely on practical conservation and fundraising, came to the view that they could not achieve their aims unless they engaged directly with the policy-making machinery of government, like newer groups such as Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Greenpeace. Conservation groups like RSPB and WWF had tended to see nature as a purely asocial realm to be protected from human activity, but under the influence of the 'political ecology' of the newer groups had come closer to a style of ecological politics which saw environmental issues as cross-cutting policy areas in complex ways. The newer groups, for their part, became more institutionalised like the older groups, more oriented towards direct political lobbying like the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) rather than towards high-profile, media-oriented direct action, and their arguments became more grounded in the hard, physical sciences - at least publicly rather than in ideological critique. In particular, they moved away from a utopian, alternative vision of society towards a relatively more accommodatory stance towards existing societal and industrial practices. Nevertheless, it would be mistake to overemphasise this convergence. Across the range of groups there still exists a variety of orientations towards the changed circumstances in which British environmentalism finds itself in the 1990s. These can basically be reduced to four basic 'frames': A - THE INSTITUTION-BUILDING FRAME (RSPB, WWF, Green Alliance, CPRE (partly)) - "Direct action is no longer justified, if it ever was. To continue would be (i) unnecessary and (ii) counterproductive alienating the institutions whose cooperation is needed. What is needed now is to sit round the table with all parties, government, industry, and other environmental groups, and to formulate policies and institutions which can make practical contributions to averting ecological destruction." B - THE 'GREEN-WASH' FRAME (FoE, CPRE, Women's Environmental Network (WEN)) - "Nothing substantially has changed. All that has happened is that government and industry have learnt the language of ecology, so better to mask the inadequacy of their actual responses. What is needed is to continue with the strategies of expose and pressure, just adding another level - the debunking of rhetoric, so that the public are not lulled into thinking the battle has been won." C - THE 'SELL-OUT' FRAME (Earth First!, AntiRoads Lobby) 212 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * - This is a version of the 'Green-Wash' frame. "Not only has the conversion of government and industry to environmental principles only been skin-deep, but the established environmental groups have become drawn into this world, and are no longer capable of taking a lead in environmental politics. What is needed is a radical, decentralised network of non-professional grass-roots groups, taking direct action. Only then can the pressure be kept up against the forces of environmental destruction." D - THE NEW TIMES FRAME (Greenpeace) - "Environmentalism has entered a qualitatively different era. The established environmental groups have now become major players in civil society, commanding an impressive amount of members, income, organisational skills and legitimacy. The broad acceptance of the environmentalist message has opened up institutional arenas which have hitherto been closed to environmentalist participation and influence. But this paradigm shift does not mean a shift to the 'normal' politics of rational discussion and institution-building. What is needed is a wholesale examination of the new political, social and cultural context within which the environmental groups are operating, so that the radical impulse which they have been carrying can be taken forward into the post1989 world." 6.6.2 Degree of institutionalisation reached The environmental groups underwent a rapid institutionalisation as the 1980s proceeded. The growth in public awareness and concern led to a huge increase in membership, and thus income, which enabled them to expand their staff and operations, creating new organisational pressures towards centralisation and bureaucracy. It also created a new openness to environmental issues on behalf of the central institutions of society - the state and the economy. As environmental campaigners started to find doors that had stayed firmly shut to them began to open, they encountered more subtle pressures to start speaking the languages of those institutions. This process can usefully be seen as having five aspects. Firstly, the huge growth in the environmental groups size and sphere of operations made possible by the explosion in membership and income in the 1980s brought its own internal pressures towards the fragmenting of organisational structures into more formally defined, functionally specific units. For example, WWF now consists of five sections - Operations, Programmes, Marketing, Communications, and Finance and Services, each with its own Functional Director. These break down further into 36 units - the Programmes section, for example, consisting of units concerned with education, countryside, industry, aid and development, law and treaties, and forestry (World Wide Fund for Nature 1991). Greenpeace, too, was structurally transformed beyond recognition through this era. In 1980 it was a "small, anarchic group" of about six individuals (Grove-White 1991: 29). By 1993 it had eight sections - Campaigns, Finance and Administration, Marketing, Programmes, Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 213 Legal, Personnel and Creative - employing over a hundred people (Rawcliffe 1993: 145). Secondly, the functional differentiation of the larger environmental groups during the 1980s itself led to another aspect of professionalisation and institutionalisation - the increased tendency to import 'neutral' professionals - to appoint people on the basis of their professional skills rather than environmentalist commitment. Around the conservation or campaign staff have sprung up departments of specialists, who often have no particular reason to work for an environmental group rather than for any other company. Typically, such specialists, with financial, media or management skills, see themselves as providing services to the campaigning staff, but their presence often subtly shapes the aims and culture of the organisations. This is particularly the case with the conservation groups, RSPB and WWF. In CPRE, FoE and Greenpeace, by contrast, the environmentalist, campaigning ethos is much more widespread within the organisation. Thirdly, as the environmental groups became large and complex organisations, there arose the need to institute formal coordinating mechanisms in order to mitigate the centripetal tendencies of functionally divided organisations. Such mechanisms have ranged from conventional line management techniques through regular meetings to cross-cutting Public Awareness Themes. For all the more issue-based environmental groups - CPRE, FoE and Greenpeace - one of the most pressing concerns has been the coordination of relatively autonomous campaigns. Just like CPRE with their Policy Team meetings, FoE and Greenpeace have tried to institute mechanisms whereby campaigns can interact with each other. Fourthly, the transformation in the mid-1980s of the large environmental groups into well-established and respected actors on the public stage, with a salaried staff and an apparently indispensable role in environmental policy formation, created the conditions for the emergence of career environmentalism. Increasingly, environmental group staff can move in a career path from one organisation to the other. It is a sign of the size, complexity, resources and degree of organisation of the world of environmental groups that it can offer career paths such as that having been taken by Chris Rose, who has worked for the London Wildlife Trust, BANC, WWF International, Friends of the Earth UK, was then the Director of Media Natura, and is presently Programmes Director at Greenpeace UK (Rawcliffe 1993: 17). But as the environmentalist imperative has gained purchase on other institutional realms in society, environmental campaigners have become able to follow career paths that lead into more 'conventional' areas such as government agencies, corporations and entrepreneurial capitalism. Tom Burke, for example, once Executive Director of FoE, and then Director of the Green Alliance, is now Special Advisor on the Environment within the Department of the Environment. Des Wilson, once Director of CLEAR (The Campaign for Lead-Free Air) and then Chair of FoE, is now Head of Corporate and Public Affairs at the British Airports Authority. 214 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Fifthly, to varying degrees, there has been a cultural convergence between the environmental groups and the 'establishment', with the former achieving some degree of insider status. In recent years the mainstream worlds of business and government have themselves come to accept, at least in their own terms, the basic claims of the environmentalists - partly due to generational changes in the personnel of the former. And, for their part, with the increased formalisation and bureaucratization of their activities, their expanding technical and legal capabilities, and their general shift away from protest and expose and towards discussion and practical solutions, the environmental groups in their language and action repertoires have become more similar to the business and policy worlds. This has thus made possible, and been reinforced by, a transition that environmentalists have undergone from marginalised pariahs to more-or-less respected insiders within British policy communities (Evans 1992). This process has not occurred to any great extent amongst the number of smaller, more specialised environmental groups that have proliferated since the late 1970s, having affected mainly the older, larger groups. Amongst such groups concern is frequently voiced that this institutionalisation has not been without its costs. The most fundamental concern, felt by many in Greenpeace for example, is that these changes - functional differentiation, the hiring of outside professionals, formal integrating mechanisms, careerism and insider status - might have the cumulative effect of affecting the 'core values' of the organisation. More widely, there is a widespread perception, particularly amongst younger people, that the environmental groups have 'sold out' by their acceptance of insider status - to the extent that they are regarded with much the same disdain as is increasingly directed at politicians (Macnaghten & Scott 1994). It is partly this perception which has fuelled the rise of the direct action groups such as Earth First! and the anti-roads protest groups such as the Dongas (Vidal 1994). The very fact that the marginalised niche which the environmental groups have all but abandoned is being colonised by a newer generation of informal groups and movements is an indication of some of the energies which the older groups might have sacrificed by their move towards insider status. One of the most powerful arenas within which resistance to the professionalisation of environmentalism has manifest itself in Britain is that of gender. The professionalisation of the environmental groups has put an increasing strain on the relationship between environmental politics and the wider emancipatory goals such as those of the women's movement. When movement organisations were small and informal, and when they were frequently organised at a local, grass-roots level, women felt they could have an important role. However, as the environmental groups became more formally structured, with functionally differentiated departments and clear hierarchical structures, this was seen by many women within the environmental groups as favouring the men at the expense of the women. The development of career environmentalism also tended to exclude many women, for whom involvement with environmental politics tends to take a Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 215 cyclical form, rather than the linear progression assumed by a conventional, formal career pattern. Finally, many aspects of internal specialisation also clashed with the feminist commitment to egalitarianism and empowerment. It was largely because of these growing tensions that the Women's Environmental Network was born in 1988. There are several ways in which WEN can be seen as resisting the professionalisation project operating in the mainstream environmental groups - its egalitarian ethos, its high evaluation on the local, grass-roots work where women's political involvement is traditionally situated, and its strong emphasis on empowering each individual - including volunteers - and developing their capacities, and its concern for the emotional needs of its workers. The difference between this kind of organisational culture and that of the mainstream environmental groups goes part of the way to explaining the appeal of the new direct action groups, where women have been very prominent (Vidal 1993). Despite their new-found resources and expertise, the larger environmental groups seem particularly badly placed to take advantage of the energies of those, particularly women, for whom the new bureaucratic, professionalised structures are profoundly alienating (Szerszynski 1994). 6.6.3 Division of labour between movement organisations In many ways the environmental groups are in a competitive relationship with each other. They compete for members. Other organisations often have very similar goals to their own - WWF's membership clearly being affected by the emergence since 1990 of smaller groups concerned with the conservation of single species (Rawcliffe 1993: 10). They also often draw their supporters from similar social backgrounds - notably Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and, increasingly, WWF. They compete for funds, both in terms of membership fees (having a high non-renewal rate) and in terms of corporate and industrial sponsorship. They compete for media coverage, particularly the high membership organisations who need to maintain their public profile. Finally, they compete for legitimacy, generally and in terms of specific issues, as the organisation to turn to for authoritative opinions. But at the same time there is a surprising degree of complementarity between environmental groups. In a general sense, as a WWF respondent put it, they tend to occupy different 'niches' in environmental politics. There are several aspects to this complementarity. Firstly, the environmental groups often in fact draw their public support from different sections of the population - CPRE's tends to be elderly, middle-class and rural, WWF's tends to be middle-aged and female, as does RSPB's, but with a large number of working-class members (RSPB 1993). Secondly, they are often pursuing complementary political roles. Thirdly, having the different environmental groups giving slightly - or even very - different messages seems to have a cumulatively positive effect on environmental politics in Britain. One aspect of this is simply that having contrasting voices adds to the richness of the environmentalist case. Another is that the respect- 216 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * ability of one can serve to enhance the radicalness of another, and vice versa. Yet another is that the more radical voices can act as the 'conscience' of the others, serving as a brake on the movement towards incorporation into the establishment. Fourthly, the environmental groups are able to bring different kinds of influence to bear on the political process, from media-friendly direct action to 'insider' lobbying. Finally, the environmental groups tend to complement each other's activities at the local level. For example, FoE and Greenpeace local groups coexisting in the same locality can offer options for individuals who want to campaign and those that do not respectively, thus rarely actually compete for active members. 6.6.4 Media attention and mobilisation Both direct action by, and media attention to, environmental groups peaked in Britain in the late 1980s. The period of rapid expansion enjoyed by the environmental groups in the mid 1980s allowed all of them to expand their sphere of operations. For the more media-oriented, campaigning groups like FoE and Greenpeace, this allowed them, amongst other things, to expand the range of their campaigns, and pursue them along a number of different tracks at once, including scientific research, legal challenges, public education and so on, while continuing and stepping up their protest activities. But as expansion and institutionalisation continued, and the environmental groups achieved a greater degree of 'insider status' as mentioned above, they have tended to move away from protest action into the more acceptable forms of campaigning and lobbying. At the same time, since about 1990 the environment has slipped down the media agenda against a background of sustained economic problems, and familiar processes of media fatigue - not just in relation to environmental issues generally, but also to arguably overused images of confrontation and heroism. In institutional terms, environmental journalism has contracted markedly as a specialism within the press and broadcast media. Many former environmental journalists have been moved onto a wider brief, taking in, for example, transport or science. Thus there are less journalists actually pursuing environmental stories. But at the same time there are still an increased number of actors trying to communicate environmental 'messages', creating a media bottleneck. Partly because of this many of the environmental groups have shifted to a slightly different use of the media. There are several ways this shift can be seen - a relative decline in the use of scatter-shot press releases, and a concentration on personal, directed contacts with individual journalists; the use of specialised media, such as issuebased newsletters (energy, nuclear, etc.), or newsletters directed to particular audiences such as industry; and the in-house production of video or radio footage to be syndicated out. While the established environmental groups might have moved away from protest action, this does not mean that there is no such action occurring. Since the beginning of the 1990s there has emerged a whole new generation of grass-roots, direct-action environmental organisations. This is partly a generational phenomenon - even the more Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 217 radical established environmental groups such as Greenpeace are seen by many young adults as part of their parents' generation, and distant from their own political identities and commitments (Macnaghten & Scott 1994). It also reflects a wider political-cultural shift amongst the rising generation, away from mass-representative parties and lobbies and towards a more eclectic, pluralistic set of networks, merging style and music with highly symbol-laden forms of resistance and protest. These informal activist groups Earth First!, the Dongas, the Environmental Liberation Front, and countless anti-roads groups (Alarm UK estimates that there are now 250 groups fighting road schemes around the country (Chaudhary 1994)) - could be said to be reviving the cognitive praxis of the early 1970s environmental movement, in that they deploy both apocalyptic and utopian representations of nature, within a broadly new left framework of social activism and prefigurative political practices (Jamison et al. 1990: 9-10). Direct action groups such as these can be seen in many ways as reacting to what might be seen as the incorporation of the mainstream environmental groups into the 'establishment'. Confounding any simple account of the entry of environmentalism into respectable middle age, they present a particular challenge to environmental groups such as FoE and Greenpeace who have hitherto been seen as at the more radical end of the environmentalist spectrum. But the cultural shift these groups represent also poses a challenge to all environmental groups - and indeed to the government - as they seek to keep a grasp on the public's perceptions and concerns about the environment. 6.7 INDUSTRIAL ACTORS 6.7.1 Masterframes The changing cultural frames through which British industry understands the environment can usefully be summarised by looking at the changing response of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) to environmental issues in the thirty years since its formation in 1965. The CBI is British industry's peak association. Although it cannot claim to represent all of British business, it is a forum within which firms of all sizes and from all of the key sectors of the economy participate and in which concerted political strategies are formulated, and it remains the leading institutional voice of industry as a whole. The CBI thus presents a microcosm within which the adaptive response of a cross-section of leading firms within British industry to the challenge of environmental issues can be traced. One can discern a distinct shift in the CBI's framing of environmental issues over this period, which corresponds to increases in the level of environmentalist, governmental and media activity in the environmental arena. This shift can usefully be broken into three periods, which the next sections will deal with in turn. Firstly, in the earlier, pre-1970 period, the CBI's approach to environmental issues was characterised primarily by the deployment of technical expertise to mitigate the effects of legislation on the activities of business. Secondly, during the period 218 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * following 1970, these regulatory concerns continued and periodically intensified as the level of legislative activity increased. The increased salience of environmental issues was also reflected in a number of strategic moves. The CBI made symbolic changes to its organisational structure and also resolved to play a more prominent role in public debate on environmental issues. Overall, however, its stance was essentially reactive and tended to be defensive. Thirdly, in the 1980s this began to change, as the CBI began to adopt a more positive, proactive stance and began to look for ways to translate its new commitments into action. In 1990 this led it to make further changes to its internal structures and, in 1992, to launch the CBI Environmental Business Forum, a national network of firms which had committed themselves to continual improvement in and greater public accountability for their environmental performance. 6.7.2 Strategies of controlling the risky political environment Many of the developments observable in British industry since the mid-1980s have taken a voluntaristic form, and can thus not easily be explained by direct regulatory pressure. Why were such voluntary measures taken up with such enthusiasm by industry, when they had long approached environmental concerns with a technical, compliance-led approach? Apart from the role of 'issue-champions' within individual firms, there does seem to have been a wider institutional dynamic involved in these developments - one driven by the need for industry to reduce the uncertainty in its social environment, and to translate the environmental agenda into a form which industry itself could better absorb and control within its own terms. The 1970s, and even more so the 1980s, had seen a number of developments which had heightened uncertainty for industry in respect of the environment: rising public anxieties, fed by high-profile issues such as Chernobyl, ozone depletion and North Sea pollution; intensifying environmental group activity, and a huge growth in their membership and legitimacy; the 15% vote enjoyed by the Green Party in the 1989 European Election; and the emergence of a 'green consumer' phenomenon, with rapid shifts in market behaviour. At the regulatory level too, legislative and institutional changes did little to clarify and harmonise environmental regulatory practices, with confusing tensions and inconsistencies between the role of HMIP and that of the NRA, and with different environmental standards being applied to different plants - even those owned by the same company. On many levels, environmental pressures were introducing and being confounded by uncertainties which made extremely difficult the implementation of any kind of policy or operating standard. Against this background, the various voluntary measures adopted by companies can be seen as a way to reduce these uncertainties, and the transaction costs involved in environmental regulation, and generally to regain control. Firstly, many individual firms underwent structural and cultural changes. During the 1980s large companies started appointing corporate environmental managers. The end of the 1980s and the early 1990s saw companies completing the shift towards a high-profile, strategic approach Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 219 involving the appointment of board-level executives with responsibility for environmental matters. At the same time, many larger firms also started producing environmental policies, and making statements concerning the environment in their annual reports. Such policy statements were initially driven by the need for impression management in the face of public concern, and the introduction of new, pro-active environmental management structures by the need to legitimate these statements through concrete actions. These developments, however narrow the original intentions, often introduced their own dynamics within firm cultures, changing the behaviour and perceptions of the company. Secondly, many individual firms started monitoring the environmental performance of their suppliers and contractors, building on the supply-chain management models already familiar due to the increasingly widespread Total Quality Management corporate philosophy. Once again, this change generally involved the larger firms, but given that most of the suppliers and contractors of such firms are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the latter, too, often found themselves being pressured and mentored towards better environmental performance and monitoring. Such developments seem to have been driven by the need felt by larger firms to reduce the social risks which environmental awareness and increased environmental regulation had brought to their relationships with suppliers and contractors. An environmental incident involving a contractor such as a waste management firm could result in a damaged public image, itself resulting in public antipathy, the hostile attentions of environmental groups or regulatory authorities, or the adverse reactions of potential or actual investors. Similarly, a professed commitment to environmental standards could be compromised by the mere association with a firm whose commitment was less than reliable. Thirdly, at the level of particular industries, voluntary schemes were instigated, often by industry associations, which involved their members making various different kinds of commitments, but generally stopped short of certification. The Responsible Care scheme developed by the Chemical Industries Association in the late 1980s, for example, combined general principles and specific guidelines on environment, health, safety and public communication, with the encouragement of 'learning-cells' - networks of firms exchanging information on responsible company practice. Industry-wide schemes such as this, and the various restoration schemes introduced by the minerals industry, can be seen as ways of trying to avoid the danger of increased regulation. If they can show themselves to be capable of self-regulation, they might be able to avert the imposition of a regulatory framework, and a timescale for environmental improvements, outside of their own control. Even if they do not succeed, such foresighted industry initiatives can serve to shape any subsequent legislation more effectively than any consultation and negotiation that might take place after the process of producing new regulations or institutions has commenced. 220 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Fourthly, pan-industrial schemes were introduced, both developed and certified by third parties, which offered the certification of environmental management systems to agreed standards. Modelled on BS5750, their Quality Management Standard System, the British Standards Institute developed BS7750, an Environmental Management Standard System. Following on this, the European Union introduced their own standard, the Environmental Management and Auditing Scheme. Both schemes, again building on familiar Total Quality Management practices, offered alternative but compatible routes but still entirely voluntary - to the adoption of good environmental practice, involving the detailed documentation of production processes, and a commitment to constant improvement. The adoption of such schemes seems to have served as a surrogate for control in relations between firms. Actual control, in the form of the monitoring of each others' activities, would involve high transaction costs, in terms of both financial cost and disruption of activities, for both monitorer and monitored. The adoption of an environmental management standard, as well as often providing a competitive advantage, can also bypass the need for such expensive monitoring. 6.7.3 Media profile A series of unrelated events helped to generate a continuing high level of media attention on the environmental impact of industry's activities in the late 1980s. Not least among these was the Chernobyl explosion, which sent a cloud of radioactive fall-out across the British Isles at the beginning of May 1986. By late 1986, a survey of Consumers' Association members found that nine out of ten of them described themselves as worried about pollution or other environmental problems.72 By 1988, media coverage of environmental issues was fuller than ever, and all of the national press had appointed environmental correspondents. During the summer, a number of high profile stories provided a focus for public anxieties The first, highlighting the pollution of the North Sea, dated from the widely derided defence of Britain's record on pollution by Nicholas Ridley, the Secretary of State for the Environment, at an international conference on the North Sea attended by environment ministers in London in November 1987. But in late July reports appeared in all of the national media, particularly in the popular tabloid the Daily Mail, that a viral infection, associated with algal blooms, had claimed the lives of about a third of the North and Baltic Seas' population of 16,000 harbour seals, and was threatening the 7,000 British seals inhabiting the Wash. There were also reports that 16 dolphin carcasses had been washed up on German and Danish shores, raising fears that the virus might be spreading to other marine mammals. The problem was linked by Greenpeace and other environmental groups to industrial pollution, and increased the pressure on government to act. 72 Reported in Which? Magazine, February 1987, in a special public interest feature on pollution. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 221 The second concerned the international trade in toxic waste. Early in the summer there were reports about the dumping of Europe's toxic wastes in Third World countries. Then, in June 1988, media attention focused on the movements of the Karin B, one of four ships transporting potentially explosive industrial waste from Italy to a dump in Nigeria. The ships were refused permission to unload at a succession of ports around the world, and public ire was aroused in August when the Karin B unsuccessfully attempted to off-load her cargo for destruction by merchant waste incinerators in Britain. The third, and crucial, area of concern focused on the thinning of the ozone layer, and the subsequent possible increased risk of human skin cancer. Mounting scientific evidence pointed to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as playing a significant part in its destruction, and rising public concern was given a vehicle for expression in August 1988 with the publication by FoE of a booklet, The Aerosol Connection, listing aerosol brands which did not contain CFC propellants. FoE's campaign focused the public's inchoate concern and offered individuals a way of actually doing something about it. Both the timing and the content of the issue were just right for FoE's campaign to catch this rising tide of public concern to great effect. As suggested above, under these kind of pressures many sectors of industry became more proactive in the late 1980s in respect of their media profile on environmental issues. In the 1960s their strategy had been one of almost complete silence on the matter, justified by an ideology of technical expertise and authority. In the 1970s this strategy of 'closure' turned into one of defensiveness, again justified by a technocratic ideology, as the critiques aimed at them by the new environmental groups began to harm their public image. Finally, in the 1980s, and especially in the latter part of the decade, industry responded to an increasingly unpredictable and even hostile social environment by a more proactive approach towards their media image. For industry in general, the environment ceased to be a compliance-oriented, technical matter, and became an issue of strategic importance. Through a number of developments, such as the marketing of 'green' products, partnership with and sponsorship of environmental groups, and highly symbol-laden forms of communication to the public, industry have tried to wrest more control over their media profile than experienced hitherto. In many respects, this 'strategy' seems to have been successful, to the extent that environmental groups have more difficulty in establishing their claim to define 'the' appropriate environmentalist framing of a given issue. 6.7.4 Going technological or dialogical? It might reasonably be expected that consumer oriented firms would be more open to dialogical forms of communication than production-oriented firms (Donati 1993: 16ff). Production-oriented firms such as chemical companies have a natural affinity with technical forms of knowledge, and have been subjected to relatively close state regulation for some time due to the perceived riskiness of their operations. These firms 222 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * produce mainly for the secondary manufacturing sector, providing 'inputs' at the firm level, and bulk-type goods at the individual consumer level. By contrast, consumeroriented firms in this analysis are seen as generally being more involved in direct symbolic communication (packaging, advertising, marketing, etc.), are driven less by technical imperatives than by consumer preference, and have been subjected to less in the way of government regulation concerning their environmental impact. But, although more dialogical relationships are indeed an important feature of environmental regulation amongst industry, it is not particularly associated with consumer-oriented firms. It is certainly the case that, after the disorganisation of consumer capitalism known as 'post-fordism', with its shift from mass-markets to nichemarkets, consumer oriented firms are far more sensitive to new and nuanced market pressures. But the absence of an organised green consumer movement in Britain, itself partly caused by lack of trust amongst consumers about the claims made by manufacturers and retailers, meant that the initial boom in ecological consumption in the late 1980s was not sustained to any great degree. By contrast, many of the most production-oriented firms, such as those in the chemicals industry, have become acutely aware of their public image in respect of environmental concerns, and have been early and vigorous in their adoption of many of the 'voluntary' measures outlined above. The reasons for this has clearly been the greater regulatory and public attention these industries have felt. This itself has been due to a combination of the more directly environmentally damaging nature of their activities and the lack of connection which people feel between those activities - be it chemical production or minerals extraction and their own consumption of their products in the form of roads, buildings and consumer goods. But in many such industries there has been a cultural shift, with the more closed, technical framings of their activities being overlaid by a more accommodatory, public-oriented cultural style. Whether this has made a lasting contribution to the reduction of environmental conflicts is another matter. 6.8 RULES OF THE GAME/POLICY STYLE British political culture has long been characterised by two features, both in some tension with the other: a strong presumption towards the centralisation of political power, discretion and secrecy; and an equally strong presumption in favour of individual freedom, particularly as expressed through private property rights (Grove-White 1991: 7-8). In terms of policy making, this has meant that the tendency towards centralised power in the British polity has been tempered by a complex lobby of property-based interest groups - a lobby which has been itself been joined by a variety of nongovernmental organisations such as the environmental groups. These lobby in terms of the 'public', rather than private, interest, but are generally only consulted at later stages in the policy process - and even then are often regarded as little more than 'third party' interests (Lowe and Flynn 1989: 269; see below). This combination of deference towards centralised political power and discretion, and the emergence of lobbying groups promoting private or public interests, produces a Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 223 political culture characterised by 'policy networks' rather than by a 'policy community' (Grant et al. 1988: 282, 309). In other political cultures, such as that of Germany, policies are arrived at through more or less open discussion amongst a policy community. This community generally consists of a diverse set of participants with very different interests, but who work towards shared and explicit understandings and expectations through formal debate. The policy networks that characterise the British polity, by contrast, produce policies grounded in the shared, closed culture of their members. Between government departments, a high degree of consensus is generally achieved even before taking positions out to external fora, a situation encouraged by the village-like culture of Whitehall (Heclo and Wildavsky 1974). But this kind of pattern is also to be found amongst the wider "interest groups" that have access to the policy process. Individual actors have an 'insider' status in respect of this shared culture, and are assumed to have good intentions. This has been increasingly the case in the twentieth century. The growing power of the British executive in relation to the legislature has increased the extent to which policy has come to be shaped by relatively stable policy networks to which access is often severely restricted. McCormick describes this as a growth of "indirect government" (McCormick 1991: 22). In the postwar era this pattern became increasingly inflexible as, inserted into the informal, closed policy networks of British political culture, corporatist ideals resulted in a further domination of the polity by entrenched interest groupings. The system thus became rigid and unresponsive to emergent issues - such as that of the environment - that fell outside its established agendas (Grove-White 1991: 10-11). In this context, as mentioned above, the British approach has been one of informal negotiation, case-by-case discretion, voluntary measures, self-regulation and codes of practice, rather than the confrontational imposition of legalistic standards (Lowe and Flynn 1989: 257). Even major environmental legislation has largely been shaped by those established interests it has sought to regulate. For example, the shape of the 1974 Control of Pollution Act was largely determined by industry and local government, and that of the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act by farmers and landowners, despite vigorous lobbying by environmental groups in both cases (O'Riordan 1988: 7). Similarly, according to a leader in the Times, the reason for the failure of Secretary of State for the Environment Chris Patten to secure more radical approaches to pollution control was that his cabinet colleagues "are not free agents but regard themselves as delegates of interest groups: the oil and gas companies, the motoring lobby, road builders" and so on (McCormick 1991: 170). In contrast to the regulatory relationship in, say, the United States, British regulators before the NRA tended to adopt a co-operative stance, advising firms on how to achieve the required standards, rather than assuming an overtly punitive role (Vogel 1986). This has long been the case for the chemicals industry, regulated as they are through a mass of individually negotiated consents dating back to the Victorian era. But this close relationship also means that commitments to technologies such as the private car as a 224 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * method of urban transport, nuclear energy, and intensive agriculture have been driven by such policy networks of shared interests, hidden from the glare of public awareness or debate - a situation to which the emergence of the new environmental groups in the early 1970s can partly be seen as a response (Grove-White 1991: 10-11). However, the 'rules of the game' seem to have altered at least to some extent since the mid-to-late 1980s. Firstly, environmental groups have become more accepted as a legitimate 'interest' which can play a rightful part in the policy-making process. Not only have they secured relatively easy access to the offices of ministers and civil servants, but they are even in some cases coming close to being seen as legitimate actors within corporatist-style policy making. (To some extent, of course, this is less a change in the game itself than the entry of another player to the existing one.) Secondly, both industry and government have shifted away from a narrowly technical - and depoliticised understanding of environmental problems and their solutions towards a relatively more open and dialogical one. This itself has made possible a closer relationship with an environmental movement itself largely transformed into legitimate and, in many cases, more moderate institutional actors. Thirdly, at the level of policy style there has been a shift - as yet tentative but none the less significant - away from informal negotiation amongst closed policy networks dominated by interest groups and towards a more open, formalised and legalistic policy style. Although Britain still retains many distinctive features in its public communication and institutionalisation of environmental issues, in this respect it seems to be moving closer to many of its European partners. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 225 7 France: Media Discourse, Actor Strategies and Institutional Rules 7.1 THE MEDIA IN FRANCE: THE CHOICE OF NEWSPAPERS The following media analysis confines itself to the major French daily newspapers in the period 20 to 30 April from 1987 to 1991. The following dailies were chosen: Le Figaro is the main daily, politically oriented to the right (Hersan press consortium). Le Parisien and France Soir are the two popular French dailies. However, these bear no resemblance to the British popular press; instead, they aim to cover major global events. Le Monde is the most internationally renowned of the newspapers. Libération, created during the events of May 1968, has become the main centrist daily. L'Humanité is the daily published by the French Communist Party. As to the period of analysis, we can see from the number of articles on the environment that the newspapers react differently to the events at the end of April 1987: Le Parisien may have published more articles on the environment, but France Soir included very little. It should be noted that there is a variation between the newspapers in the amount of text, and from this perspective, France Soir is a newspaper with less text. However, it is still possible to compare the evolution of the number of articles in each newspaper. There is extensive coverage in 1987, which falls in 1988, revives in 1989 and 1990, and then fades throughout 1991. 7.2 QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF MEDIA DISCOURSE ON THE ENVIRONMENT IN FRANCE Environmental topics (PROBGEN-PROBSP1-5) can be categorised according to their characteristics (Fig.25). It is immediately noticeable that the "Chemical and physical effects" category is the primary environmental topic receiving attention in the French press. The media impact of two events is responsible for this: the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident and its consequences, and the oil pollution (the so-called "black tide") which reached French shores in 1991. As has been seen in the study on media reaction to the Chernobyl disaster, the years 1987 and 1988 saw the largest increase of articles referring directly or indirectly to the event, which in turn explains the concomitant peaking of the "Chemical and physical effects" category and its subsequent reduction in 1989 and 1990. The 1991 increase is linked to the sudden arrival of the black tide. The articles on this subject, as well as bolstering the previous category, might also have been responsible for the relative increase in the "Fauna and flora" category in 1991 because, as opposed to the effects of Chernobyl, the black tide had many visible effects, such as dirty beaches, dead birds, etc. 226 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Environmental Themes (PROBGEN-PROBSP1-5) The importance of the "Chemical and physical effects" category can be contrasted with the relative paucity of material covering "Effects on daily life" and especially "Climate and nature". The French press devotes a large percentage of its articles to "events" which have an effect on national daily life as a whole: the Chernobyl disaster and its troubling effects on France, linked to the safety of French nuclear power stations and to nuclear waste (for example, transport and storage); the black tide and its negative economic effects on a region, in terms of both the tourist industry and fishing. Conversely, the effects on daily life and major global consequences are left in the background. From the hypothesis that the regional and local press will reflect the effects of environmental questions on daily life more clearly, one would surprisingly conclude that "planetary dangers", such as the greenhouse effect, global deforestation and the hole in the ozone layer, occupy a marginal place in the national French press. It seems that the reaction to environmental problems relies upon to what extent they are perceived as catastrophes which have an effect on the nation, and ignores both the micro-level of effects on daily life and especially the more abstract macro-level of global considerations. The latter are perceived more as international problems to be solved by diplomacy rather than by direct action; thus they are not generally classified as purely environmental problems. This explanation should be contextualised according to the period of analysis, i.e. the anniversaries of the Chernobyl disaster: the "General problems" category stays relatively constant and not insignificant, including topics such as pollution of the water table or those such as illegal dumping which cannot be entirely separated from the quality of life aspect (food, drinking-water, etc.). Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 227 As concerns the actors cited in the texts (ACTTYP1-13) the most striking feature is the weakness of "Environmental actors" and "Other environmental protest groups" in relation to "Non-environmental political actors" as, combined, they only represent one-third of other political actors. It is also noteworthy that "Industrial actors" occupy a more prominent position than the various environmental actors combined. If service sector actors (and less importantly the agricultural sector) are added to the industrial sector, the economic actors are largely dominant, being almost equal to "Non-environmental political actors" (Fig. 26). Environmental Actors (ACTTYP1-13) Similarly, in this case, the dominance of major national topics might explain the weak role of environmental actors in the coverage of "topics of national importance" in the press. Furthermore, the sectors affected by these catastrophes are responsible for the growing coverage of actors such as CEA, EDF, COGEMA and the oil companies. The weakness of the "Experts and scientific institutions" category is surprising because the "Chemical and physical effects" category, being of a technical nature, is particularly relevant to this area. One reason might be the even weaker role of the "Climate and nature" category which is of yet greater relevance. Another reason would lie in its links to the weak environmental protest groups which do not have an independent technical network and thus provide scant polemic on scientific and technical matters. Moreover, the close links between technology and industry, itself strongly linked to state actors, also weaken the apparent role of the scientific community, e.g. a technical advisor from CEA or EDF which are industrial actors controlled by the state. From this perspective, "non-independent experts" are often deprived of the label "expert". The relative instability of the "action indicators" (INDICAT1-5) makes analysis of the 228 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * results uncertain. Nevertheless, the importance of the "Knowledge/expertise" category is evident which confirms the role of scientific and technical classification of environmental problems in France, without necessarily any actual structuring of the field of expertise (Fig. 27). Indicators for Action-Events (INDICAT1-5) The way in which protest, judicial, intermediary organisation and legislative/administrative action all interact can form the basis of certain hypotheses. Public protest does not occur through judicial action - this is probably linked to the French tradition of employing the administrative rather than the judicial sphere for the resolution of collective conflict - but instead through the highly organised network of intermediary organisations. Therefore it seems that public protest action directly influences legislative and administrative action. This seems in keeping with the weakness of "environmental" actors as compared with "non-environmental political" actors. Environmental problems can thus enter the public domain through the intervention of traditional political actors rather than necessitating the medium of protest action. The discourse strategies of actors (FR1-10) shows a continued use of technology and science in media communication (Fig. 28). Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 229 Framing Strategies of Actors (FR1-10) The importance of the "scientific/technological" approach to environmental questions in 1987, 1988 and 1991 is linked to major national disasters and thus to the "fear/worry" category - these two categories are largely dominant in actors' strategies. The other strategies are not sufficiently striking to suscitate any significant conclusions. However, it should be noted that the rise of "aesthetism" in 1991 is probably linked to the black tide and its effects on the beauty of coastal areas. The appeal to general interest, which seems more important than the appeal to populist sentiment, can be explained by the the dominance of major national causes, and the belief (trust) in the capacity of science and technology to overcome fear and worry, rather than recourse to the ritual stigmatisation of an enemy. Modes of environmental discourse (MODDISC) are dominated by the discourse on risk (Fig. 29). 230 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Type of Environmental Discourse (MODDISC) It is to be expected, considering the previous arguments, that risk should occupy a dominant position in relation to other modes of discourse: the nuclear question, reinforced by the Chernobyl disaster (and notably the question of waste disposal) and, more generally, catastrophic events are always couched in terms of "risk", whether at the level of control or protection. The low level of "criticism of economic growth" is not as surprising as that of "hard-line environmental arguments", which one might suppose would be strongly correlated to the importance of protest groups and of their role in the framing of environmental issues. Above all, it is worth noting the over-emphasis on the Chernobyl disaster in a general context of major catastrophes having a national impact being given special treatment in the press. As a result, the "risk" and "fear/worry" duo take centre-stage in media discourse. At the same time, confidence in the ability of science and technology to overcome such problems is prevalent, which explains why the domination of major national concerns is accompanied not by populist rhetoric but rather by appeals to general interest. Furthermore, this exemplifies the marginalised position of protest action, whether by environmental groups or independent experts: the framing of environmental discourse relies far more upon non-environmental political actors and industrial actors, both closely linked to the state and possessing national rather than partisan status. Thus, environmental discourse seems to have little ideological content, with few critics of economic growth and an absence of hard-line environmentalism. In a clearly discernable manner, the environment stimulates national questions which established political actors, as well as the state, are in a position to address for the general interest. 7.3 QUALITATIVE STUDY OF CHERNOBYL MEDIA COVERAGE Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 231 The aim of analysing the media coverage of the Chernobyl disaster is to identify via this analysis the correlation or links between the environmental issue and community feeling, and to highlight national specificities within the cultural paradigm of "the environment". The analysis in this paper aims simply at providing data with which to perform a systematic comparison with the other national analyses, from which differences illustrating cultural diversity may be discerned. Initially, it is necessary to provide a dynamic illustration of the construction of the phenomenon "The Chernobyl Disaster" as an event perceived in the public space.73 This work does not consider the reception of the event (such as the public's reading or conversational behaviour in response to the event itself) but rather looks at the appearance and growth of the event per se in the press. This framework illustrates the evolution of the new phenomenon through collective perception into an "event". Once the phenomenon has been labelled as an event, its reiteration and recapitulation are evaluated to consider the impact of its initial meaning, and to see whether this has then been transformed into a more simplified, shared and common phenomenon. Thus the aim is to describe fully the way in which the media iterate and reiterate the Chernobyl phenomenon. This must however avoid the trap of forgetting that every description will be "informed" by previous descriptions, and that over time, these "redescriptions" by external observers will simply reiterate their predecessors in a format modified either by selection of material or some organisational schema as simple even as paraphrasing. In considering the material from this perspective, we can see two stages in the French press coverage of the Chernobyl disaster. Between 1986 and 1989, there is a rapid expansion of the geographic radius considered by coverage of Chernobyl. The disaster, initially confined to its epicentre in the Ukraine, soon extends to affect the whole of Europe, and then the world. But this expansion stops at France's borders: despite initial fears, France does not become a victim of the disaster as the effects of the radioactive cloud on its soil are negligeable. Conversely, the nuclear industry appears as a victim - behind the actual victims of the explosion whose numbers are cited according to deaths and injuries - because of the tarnished reputation of French nuclear power stations. The cause of the accident is attributed to the corrupt Soviet regime, and also notably to low-quality Soviet technology. This 73 The body of texts are articles taken from the six major dailies - Le Monde, Libération, Le Figaro, L'Humanité, Le Parisien, France-Soir - on the first five anniversaries of the disaster, as well as the months following the accident in 1986. 232 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * political condemnation absolves French nuclear power from any criticism (a "French Chernobyl" being impossible) but does not stop the French press from calling for a "French glasnost" to allow a greater freedom and transfer of nuclear technology. In general, French technology at the level of technical capability and medicine is presented as the hero, having the capactity to help the victims and contain the reactor. During the second phase, from 1990 to 1991, the description of the disaster changes. The disaster of the explosion fades into the past and is replaced by the contemporary disaster with its present and future effects. The stigmatisation of the Soviet regime, men's incompetence and the low quality of Soviet technology is replaced by a natural enemy - the effects of radiation. The possibility of on-the-scene reports and eye-witness accounts relocates the centre of the coverage to the Ukraine and then to Chernobyl itself. The colateral damage is forgotten in the face of the human suffering and the monstrosities that had been unimaginable in the immediate aftermath, but become evident as long-term effects. French technology becomes impotent leaving only pity and pledges of solidarity with the victims: the story looks at the irresolvable tragedy which cannot be hidden from sight. Thus the Chernobyl disaster seems more like a metaphor for human suffering than for the lack of technological control man exercises. The period which follows the disaster in 1986 allows the gradual building of the narrative structures. Successive descriptions generally follow this scheme. The period covering 1987 to 1989 reproduces the main themes of this narrative, although in a simplified format, despite significant changes such as the temporal aspect. This aspect is responsible for initialising the transition to the third period, from 1990 to 1991. Its defining aspects are an entire redefinition of the situation via that of the actors, especially of the victims and the oppressors. Schematically, one might say that, between the three periods, there is a logical trajectory from a policy of condemnation to one of pity; from criticism of a political system to acceptance of an unattributable evil; from intangible economic costs to human suffering; from suppressed evidence to open defeat; in short, from drama to tragedy. If it is by the successive repetition of the story and commemorative gestures that the final collective memories are produced, perhaps it should be concluded that this is a slow process which has not yet reached its conclusion, even if the period from 1990 to 1991 might be held to provide a definitive version of the Chernobyl event. However, it is not certain that a redefinition of the situation will not occur and that new heros and a new ending will emerge from the changes. 7.4 THE THEME OF THE COUNTRYSIDE IN FRENCH MEDIA DISCOURSE The theme of the countryside is a major aspect of French media discourse on the environment. This is all the more true due to its inclusion in many diverse areas of national newspapers: politics, territorial divisions, culture, agriculture, tourism, regional Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 233 life, environment. The resonance of the countryside theme in media discourse is explained by a single reason: it concerns the identity of individuals, whether at the local, the regional or the national level. The countryside represents the visual organisation of space, its stability and constancy; the fear centres on controlling change, modernisation, and the dismantling not only of the patterns which govern the perception of space but also of the social links which are contained within and which are thus collectively perceived and understood. Through a typology of spaces which are labelled "countryside", we have attempted to show that the endowment of an aesthetic quality to space (the general category of "beauty" which is subdivided into "picturesque" and "sublime") constitutes a significant cognitive strategy in preserving the territorial status quo and assuring the continuity of its social linkage. This type of strategy has a long history beginning in the nineteenth century at the latest and still at the disposal of political actors, ad hoc associations and social groups in general. From a broader perspective, the theme of the countryside holds both a dominant and specific position inasmuch as its effects have a bearing upon changes in political identity at the level of decentralisation (public policy on territorial organisation), the future of rural France, the pressures of the tourist industry and, more generally, upon the accelerated disappearance of spatial and temporal boundaries in France and the reactions to this process. 7.5 SYMBOLISM IN THE POLITICS OF NATURE It is evident to what extent political power can employ the symbolism of places to secure its foundations. François Mitterrand was the first to appear on an electoral poster in front of an image of the countryside and a village with its bell-tower. More recently, the countryside has become a place of veneration as nature itself has become a metaphor for the nation's glory. "Normally, a head of state makes a visit in order to inaugurate a large construction project or to lay the first stone of a bridge, dam, dyke or harbour. (...). For many decades, the sand deposits in the bay have had a magnetic attraction to environmentalists and defenders of the national heritage (...). In other words, nature must be given back its rights, and seas and rivers must be allowed to perform their traditional role of pumping, blocking and redistributing alluvial sediment. (...) M.Mitterrand has climbed many steps to the "marvel" of Solutré." ["The 'marvel' and science: M.Mitterrand launches the desedimentation of Mont-Saint-Michel", Le Monde, 27 June 1983.] "François Mitterrand has said on numerous occasions that if he had had his way, there would have been an additional sector in his 1981 nationalisation programme: the forests. With his love for trees, he is unhappy that property rights allow people to destroy, burn and generally harm one of the most beautiful forests in Europe's history - 234 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * and then buy timber from Finland." ["After the forest, the State", Le Nouvel Observateur, 21-27 August 1987.) A photograph illustrating an article on the President when he was visiting an area of environmental resistance after a day of reflection on natural parklands showed a landscape with a bridge straddling a river in the valley and sported the caption, "The regional park of Morvan, an area of environmental protection, and a gentle wilderness dear to the President." ["Mitterrand-in-Boots", La Croix, 28 June 1991.] As Paul Quilès, the former Socialist Minister for Works and Transport, observed: "Our country is a space constructed by men in our own image. The French countryside is our greatest history book where one can read of France's genius and success. (...) Faced with the growing trend towards homogenisation, nations can and should assert their identity. This identity which plays a role in social cohesion and economic prosperity is also present in architecture and the countryside..." [Le Monde, 15 August 1991.] Therefore, the question of the countryside in France demonstrates a vast process of temporal expansion (the countryside in its "natural" state as a boundary of historical description) and of spatial expansion (territory) of the national heritage. Whether sublime or picturesque, it always tells a story in that it is engraved with the narrative identities of communities and resides in the territorial space itself. 7.6 INSTITUTIONAL ACTORS This analysis of collective actors in the environmental sphere is based mainly upon interviews with representatives from environmental groups, large companies - mostly multinationals - and from the administration. Our presence at a colloquium where several important environmental figures participated allowed us to understand their conception of the area. From this perspective, the content of their public discourses on the environment and their answers to our questions in the interviews did not differ significantly. This is a result of their answers to the latter already being designed for public communication. The format of our questionnaire did not manage to disrupt the logic of this discourse - unsurprisingly, as those we interviewed perform this task on a regular basis, and so their replies are already well thought out. However, this revelation does not debase our research: it simply allows us to get a closer look at the public discourse of these actors. The study of the different types of environmental communication is based primarily upon interviews conducted with different administrative and political actors. One part of the administrative group was the Ministry for the Environment and the Conseil régional of the Île-de-France. Some representatives from the companies were members of the commission which set up "Eco-Emballage", an organisation created on state initiative to Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 235 develop a waste-disposal policy. Another section of the interviews was made up of all the major parties, except for the Socialist party which declined our invitation. The parties of the right were composed of the Parti Réublicain (PR) which is part of the Union Démocratique Française (UDF) and the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR). The parties of the left we interviewed were the Parti Communiste Française (PCF) and the "Mouvement des citoyens" (Citizens' movement). The image of the Ministry for the Environment is recognised by other actors: for example, the representative from the Conseil régional told us that the Ministry for the Environment had a strong image because it had sought out media attention. Towns are concerned about their public image and as a result the environment has become a sensitive subject in local politics. The infrastructure of municipal services takes into account environmental management. The two municipalities we considered in our research - Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye - have implemented an "environmental protection executive" and an "environmental executive", respectively. At the regional level, the decentralisation laws of 1982 and 1986/7 did not give environmental powers to the regional councils. It is important to recognise here the juncture of administrative and political procedures. Regional policies on the environment are the result of pressure from the two ecology parties, "Génération écologie" and "Les Verts" (the Greens). As the representative of the Conseil régional of the Île de France observed, the interest of the regional councils at the environmental level depend on the results of the preious elections: the two ecology parties "Les Verts" and "Génération écologie" play the role of environmental boosters. Similarly, the adoption of environmental policies by the traditional parties of the left and right is a product of competition by the ecology parties. The same logic lies behind environmental communication, which is seen as the result of electoral pressure. The creation of "Eco-Emballage" to define more precisely waste-disposal policy in France exemplifies the transfer of responsibility to producers and consumers. Even though the current policies might not concern consumers directly, they are still affected by the general waste-disposal policy which is now iterated more precisely than before. The fucntion of "Eco-Emballage" should therefore be considered in a wider context. Unlike countries such as Germany, no restrictions on consumer behaviour are envisaged. Any responsibility of the consumer is seen as a moral issue. To participate in enviromental protection, the consumers are encouraged to use the containers provided when they can. The development of pilot schemes for waste-sorting by local companies in France follows this principle. Environmental communication by French administrations follows a pedagogical and aesthetic logic. The recourse to sponsors is not a strategy exclusively used by environmental associations. The Ministry for the Environment appealed to sponsors to help organise its "1000 challenges for my planet" initiative. But in this particular case, the partnership did not supply direct financial aid - this campaign was based on offers 236 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * made to the Ministry. Posters and radio advertising were supplied to the Ministry without charge. Certain public organisations were also partners in the venture. The Ministry also initiated an educational service. The Minister Michel Barnier made this part of the scheme his priority for 1994. The "1000 challenges for my planet" initiative benefited particularly from its links with the Ministries of Education, Youth and Sport, and Agriculture. It has been planned to continue in 1995. In addition, together with "Operation Spring Cleaning", the Ministry is trying to educate the French population on the problem of waste and to encourage them to clean rivers and public areas, for example. It is also seeking to mobilise primary school children on Wednesdays (the traditional day off school) and associations at weekends. The Conseil régional of the Île-de-France feels that environmental education is a lynchpin of environmental communication. This is partially in response to teachers who wish to organise exhibitions, conferences and the like, and who want pedagogical materials to explain the major environmental problems. The only major initiative that had been organised until then had been a pedagogical one. Named "Let's draw for nature", it took place in May 1991 and invited people, principally children, to go to parks and gardens in their communes and draw a huge fresco depicting nature. Pieces of this fresco were then put together in the Jardin de Bagatelle where a large exhibition on the Earth had been organised. The pedagogical role derives from the fact that the nation's youth is the target of these communication campaigns. To the same end, the Conseil régional of the Île-de-France publishes a small newspaper, the "feuille de choux", which is distributed in schools for educational purposes. The routes followed by a walk designed by the organisers of the Haute vallée de Chevreuse national park, a state creation, are meant to bring its walkers into contact with nature to an educational end. The walk is a means of showing different plants and trees, and, for example, the way water is purified. Communication relies primarily upon the aesthetic value of the park. Firstly, one is meant to appreciate the park via its walking routes. Secondly, the educational value is introduced: waste cannot be disposed of no matter how. Pedagogy, aesthetics and responsibility are the three aspects that must be communicated. The aesthetic quality is destined for the whole world. Responsibility is aimed at those who decide - the elected, the administrators. Aesthetic matters are a major preoccupation of the mayor of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. His rise to power is one of the most interesting. Before his election, he was one of the first people to make a television programme on environmental protection in France in the 1970s - "La France défigurée" ["France disfigured"] which looked at water and air pollution. The programme dealt at length with aesthetic matters. Currently, this concern has been prolonged in his everyday activities as mayor. He considers aesthetic environmental matters from an urbanist perspective. But, at the same time, environmental communication in Saint-Germain-en-Laye must be simple and direct. Inhabitants of the town must not feel constrained by environmental protection. The Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 237 policy of waste-sorting, which might be perceived as too restrictive, is presented as a "pilot scheme", for example. The need for simplicity in communication is acknowledged by other actors. The representative of the Haute vallée de Chevreuse national park underlines the fact that environmental problems dealt with in films and television programmes will not have any public feedback if they are of a technical nature. Communication which succeeds links the environment to nature. This view should therefore encourage us not to exclude aesthetic considerations from the dimensions of communication. However, if administrative environmental comunication is notable by its homogeneity, that of political parties follows a different logic. It is the ideological structures of the parties that determine the content of their environmental communication. 7.7 BUSINESS ACTORS The actors interviewed for this section are representatives of the communication and environmental departments of various companies. Firstly, it is important to note the delay of French companies in acknowledging environmental protection as a necessary consideration. This finally occurred after they noticed companies in other countries taking an interest in the environment. For example, the "Monoprix" representative cites a Swiss company as the model to follow in environmental matters. Such actors concluded that if neighbouring companies were taking an interest in the environment, so should France. These concerns were then structured and given a place within the framework of the companies' commercial policy. Evidently, because the costs and effects of such a venture could be high, companies would only embark on an environmental programme if they were convinced of its importance. However, the delay of French companies in implementing such policies should be seen in context. Some companies wish to emphasise the fact that their concern for the environment is by no means a recent development. These companies tamper with history in an attempt to present themselves as actors who have developed a coherent strategy over a number of years. From this premise we can ask what motivated the comapnies to adopt such a strategy in the first place. The interviews demonstrate that the initial motivation was economic. The observation then imitation of actions abroad, as with "Monoprix", structures the development of these concerns: competition provides the stimulus in environmental matters. Occasionally, companies claim the motivation came from state incentives. In 1990, the Ministry for the Environment issued its "National plan for the environment" which urged companies to produce their own "green" plan. "Ciba Geigy", a Swiss multinational, claims this motivated its initial choice to produce an environmental plan. 238 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The communication of such environmental concerns is structured according to different business sectors. Retail groups have developed a mass advertising strategy. The hypermarket chain "Carrefour" have placed Jack Pot machines at their entrances, which allow a client to insert a used can and have the chance of winning anything from a packet of chewing gum to a holiday abroad. Ten months later, two million cans had been collected and sent to recycling plants. Equally, "Monoprix" has started to collect its old carrier-bags to convert them into its own-brand dustbin-liners. However, this advertising strategy has not been employed by most industrial production companies. Many firms do not target the public as the latter do not know of their existence. From this perspective, they target other companies in their communication strategy. For example, they may participate in seminars on the environment. L'Expansion, a major journal on industrial activity, organised a seminar series, for example. Such communication on the environment requires an alteration of the company structures, and thus improves these changes by considering each others attempts to do so. It is noticeable that companies must also include moral considerations in their environmental attitudes. The link between commercial activity and the environment is a problematic one: any company intervention must be justified, and they are well aware that any hint of cost-cutting will result in their being stigmatised. Oil companies whose wells are to be found in the Third World are the most affected by moral considerations. Their massive profits contrast heavily with the living conditions of local populations. The level of wealth can be measured by the opulence of their offices. "Elf" owns an entire tower in "La Défense", the business quarter of Paris. This tower is a small town with shops and its own savings bank for employees. "Elf" may reside in luxury, but certain tangible concerns have highlighted the need for discussion of specific social problems. The environment is one such concern. Environmental problems can also be considered via technology. Such a case is that of "Elf Aquitaine" whose prevention policy states that technology should be used to reconcile production and the environment. Air, water, sea and environmental toxicology are all areas which allow "Elf" to demonstrate its technical capabilities. Expertise can also allow companies to demonstrate their environmental credibility. "Sollac", the subsidiary of "Usinor" which deals with steel for packaging, has carried out numerous environmental investigations. It particularly vaunts the success of its "Eco-bilan" group which provides "environmental balance-sheets". The technological advances are often publicised via pedagogical means. Teaching dossiers are sent to biology and geology teachers in secondary schools, to sensitise students to environmental protection. Thus, "Elf" has embarked on a costly project to enable teachers to pursue the environmental theme. This activity in schools teaches students about water, air, natural elements, soil and waste - subjects which form the Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 239 bulk of oil companies' environmental concerns. As such, the "Sacilor" group has embarked upon a similar project. Many of the companies involved in the survey have embarked upon publicity campaigns based on trees. In the case of "Nestlé", the tree may not have originally been seen as a communicative symbol for the environment, but since then it has been developed as a means of demonstrating the quality of products whilst supporting the environmental theme. In the same manner, as explained by the "Monoprix" representative, planting trees can be used for environmental communication purposes. In other cases, employees can personally take part in the process. "Bull", the French computer company, has sent some of its employees to plant trees. In this case, environmental communication is functioning in tandem with the concern for social cohesion within the company. In an area which is currently experiencing economic difficulties, such as the computer industry in France, the director of environmental defence for a company like "Bull" can support its actions by claiming that they have an internal, as well as environmental function, namely that of stimulating interest in the company by its employees. Elsewhere, "Carrefour" in Marseille and Nice has organised a reforestation campaign. "Carrefour" has also sponsored a nature reserve in le Bugey around the Lavours swamp where Irish cows and horses have been introduced to graze on a hectare of grass which is spreading through the marsh. The majority of communication by companies emphasises their environmental activities. The publication of brochures serves this end. But companies try to avoid presenting an image of this activity as self-glorification: for example, "Carrefour" and "Monoprix" have published books on the environment in which their activities do not appear. In all of the cases that we have mentioned, the companies must demonstrate that they are not exclusively interested in pursuing commercial activities. These forms of environmental communication are seen as following an incrementally non-economic strategy. The "Fondation d'entreprises" also follows this logic. But the Fondation is a tool that is only available to the biggest companies, such as "Bull" and GDF. However, not associating the name of a company directly with environmental activities carries the advantage of limiting the risks associated with communication for actors. As the environmental goal of companies involves manipulating environmental identity, such communication carries the risk of clouding the environmental message. Although they use communication on environmental issues, no company claims this as their central message. "We talk about our products, not about the environment", "Vedette" told us. The same message comes from "Nestlé": "We talk about our products, not about our packaging". In a different format from "Ciba Geigy": "It is part of our policy not to make the environment an isolated subject of communication". Thus, environmental references are presented as additions to the traditional arguments. Environmental identity is a facet of companies produced by themselves, and only used at certain times. 240 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Environmental protection activities in conjunction with environmental groups appear to be firstly a method of countering the risk of being seen as profiting from the ecological issue, and secondly a method of increasing the force of actions by involving other actors. It also provides a means of legitimating environmental actions by companies. "Carrefour" is careful to publish the addresses of the main environmental organisations at the back of its guides: France Nature Environnement, the World Wildlife Fund, Friends of the Earth, Bulle Bleue ["Blue Bubble"]. 7.8 ENVIRONMENTAL ASSOCIATIONS Our interviews with environmental associations, and actors such as the CFDT union confederation, which take part in collective mobilisation targeted at environmental defence and the nuclear industry, have allowed us to identify two bases of environmentalism in France. The professional origins of environmental activity is the first thing to notice. Environmental groups attempt to produce arguments that centre on environmental defence and health considerations. In these cases, the associations avoid concepts based upon the "back to nature" principle. "We are fighting for nature, for the use of nature but not for a return to nature", declared a representative from "Friends of the Earth". The introduction of science to environmental matters has allowed the eradication of former romantic notions. This scientific slant is often fundamental - "Bulle Bleue", formed according to the 1901 law in 1987, concerns itself with the ozone layer from a essentially scientific perspective. Secondly, the protest aspect to environmentalism is clearly discernable. Considering the communication of environmental themes from an historical point of view, anti-nuclear movements undeniably represent the first spread of environmental criticism at the national level. The provincialism of the protests combined at the media level for national communication. These protests eventually provided the basis for a permanent consideration of environmental movements' discourse. This trajectory differs from previous nature campaigns, such as the Vanoise valley episode in 1969, which were only reported sporadically in the national press. However, environmental actors which lack institutional support are faced with a major risk: collective action can spill over into violent action provoked by either militants or even the police. On the other hand, disasters provide large-scale media coverage for environmental groups, although this is only temporary. For example, the Amoco Cadiz oil spill, which heavily polluted the Brittany coast in 1978, brought support for environmental arguments in the short term. The associations we interviewed no longer employ a protest strategy in the 1990s. The French association "Le Jour de la terre", a subsidiary of "Earth Day", founded in 1970 in Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 241 the USA by Denis Haye, and delegated by President Carter - amongst others - to advise him on the environment, is one of the few organisations which engages in various forms of collective mobilisation. It organises symbolic actions which, rather than using a protest strategy, employs institutional strategies to support environmental action by companies and by local government. To reiterate: the associations we studied did not employ protest strategies - they are trying to differentiate themselves from political actors on the Left. Therefore, to understand the role of these associations in diffusing environmental discourse in France, we must combine the challenge to the protest content and the concepts of environment handed down from the social struggles of the 1960s. The change in strategy of "Friends of the Earth" policy is very revealing on this matter. In 1974, "Friends of the Earth" and other environmental groups presented a candidate for the French presidential elections. Yet, today, there has been a clear change of strategy, and for several reasons. For this association, environmental protection is now presented as an inalienable right which no one party can monopolise: nature is a common good that cannot be divided according to political cleavages. Linked to this first reason, the association is also seeking to avoid internal divisions which might stem from the diverse political views of members. The CFDT has developed the argument that there is a risk to democracy if governmental decisions are taken without discussion within society beforehand. The implementation of work structures which affect the environment by the CFDT reveals the change in perceptions of environmental problems between the 1970s and 1980s. The administrative structures for the environment demonstrate the increased autonomy of the area; indeed, the environment sector per se has only existed since 1990. Interest in the environment by the union group was traditionally dominated by problems in the nuclear industry and thus by political conflicts. The MNLE [the National Movement for the Defence of the Environment] is a prime example of an association which aims to divorce itself from political cleavages in the public's view. Comprised mainly of Communist Party militants and members of the Communist union, the CGT, the association shares issues with the workers' movement. It is trying to link protest references with government issues (the Communist Party runs municipalities and was in government in 1981) which are normally distinct from those involving environmental groups. Even though it is succeeding in allying these two streams - the radical and the moderate - it is still trying to discard the "green " label which, it feels, misrepresents its representation of workers and its Communist image in general. 7.9 THE NEW POLITICAL GAME 242 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * An analysis of changes which affect the structure of environmental discourse must take into consideration modifications which are made within the scope of activity of each of the three actors. Environmental associations have taken various forms of action in France in recent decades. During the 1970s, they were dominated by anti-nuclear groups in the definition of environmental discourse. The political socialisation of militants in May 1968 produced a pattern of collective mobilisation via direct action. In the 1980s, this type of mobilisation died out after the nuclear programme was suspended by the new Socialist government in 1981. The institutionalisation of the environmental groups, following the "green politics" strategy born during the nadir of the old collective mentality, aided the adoption of environmental issues by other actors and led to profound changes in environmental discourse. We think that the French state structure contributes to explaining the growth of environmental communication in France. This structure has allowed the adoption of environmental discourse by economic, administrative and political actors precisely because this area of discourse has been legitimised by its recognition by the very same institutional structures. The institutionalisation of environmentalists in political structures such as the administration or the Socialist party has allowed for a diffusion of these themes in administrative and political spheres. The early instigation of a Ministry for the Environment and the integration of certain environmental actors via the Socialist government has contributed to communication of the discourse. The institutional strategy of the environmental militant Brice Lalonde - subsequently Minister for the Environment - his media skills and his general strategy demonstrate the capacity of a single actor to aid the development of discourse. The political structure and the interaction of actors seems to us to be essential in explaining the growth of environmental communication in France. The strength of the state profoundly affects environmental communication in France. Firstly, the origins in protest of this discourse keeps many groups in opposition to the state nuclear programme. The adoption of this discourse by economic actors has been led mainly by state industries, such as "Péchiney" and "Sacilor". The Ministry for the Environment, although possessing little power, has come to provide a reference-point for acceptable discourse. Its view centres on the responsibility of the French as a nation, and a call for "green citizenship" - this is in close harmony with economic actors who are trying to produce more responsible companies. The environmental symbolism of the tree (the reference to tree planting in 1789 is indicative) provides a republican slant to environmental communication in France. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 243 244 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 8 Basque country: Media Discourse, Actor Strategies and Institutional Rules 8.1 POLITICAL CONTEXT Before analysing the structure of resonance a brief description both of the Basque Country's political context and of some of the main actors' features and evolution is necessary.73 The environmental discourse was introduced in Spain as a whole, and especially in the Basque Country, much later than in the rest of Europe.74 The Basque Country which emerges in the late 1970's, a period marked by the transition from a dictatorship to a democratic regime, is clearly obsessed by the problems linked to the formation of a more democratic and self-governed Basque Country. The dominant master frames in Basque society were those which refer to the acceptance, criticism or non-acceptance of both the zigzagging and problematic process of democratic institutionalization, and the different proposals of legal frameworks related to selfgovernment. Due to this, an independent, "neutral", environmental culture had a marginal and alien character. It was excluded from the main arena where the collective actors were inserting their discourses. Moreover, the Basque Country's first ecological movements were profoundly embedded in this national democratic conflict. A brief analysis of the history of this actor (and of its relation to the institutional ones) will clarify this argument. The history of the ecological movement in the Basque Country began with the antinuclear movement against the construction of the Lemoniz nuclear power plant. The anti-nuclear committees started in 1977 with a single aim: to stop the building of the nuclear power plant in Lemoniz. The building of this plant was finally stopped in 1982. The political spectrum covered by the activists of these committees, most of whom came from the Tenants Associations, was exclusively left-wing, accompanied by a gradual predominance of Basque nationalist militants (from the independentist groups linked to the armed organization ETA). The anti-nuclear committees constantly organized actions and demonstrations some of which were absolutely massive. At the same time they supported, or at least did not reject, violent actions undertaken by ETA against managers of the building firm and against the site itself. From the early eighties onwards the strategy and discourse of anti-nuclear committees coincided with the aims and political framework of this radical 73 Due to the fact that, first of all, we joined the overall research project when it had already started, and that secondly we had a limited territory of analysis (not a state-nation, but only "administratively speaking" a region) this summary has some distinct features which differentiate it from the other country studies. 74 Even in a survey carried out in the Basque Country in 1978, only 27% of those questioned disagreed with the following statement: "The pollution of air and water if effective laws are passed, is a necessary evil we must accept as the price to be paid for our comfort and industrial development". Source: Ruiz de Olabuenaga, J.I. (1979). "Clases sociales y aspiraciones Vascas". Chamber of Commerce. Bilbao. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 245 nationalist group, and they were perceived as such by Basque society. It is quite clear that the anti-nuclear struggle was basically put forward as a way of defending the construction of one independent Basque nation, which these groups thought was under attack by the central Spanish State and its ally, the Basque capitalist oligarchy, through the imposition of the nuclear power plant. During the years 1983-1987, the anti-nuclear movements while still having as a strategic target the demolition of the Lemoniz plant (they were afraid that the construction work could start any time in the near future) began to take on board other environmental issues. Nevertheless, from 1986 onwards a new and ad hoc ecological movement arose. Although it was limited to a concrete issue, and disappeared in 1992, it was of utmost importance. It took part in the most relevant environmental conflict since Lemoniz. This conflict originated when, at the institutional level, it was decided to begin building a motorway between Guipuzcoa (a Basque county) and Navarra (a region bordering the Basque Country). Local ecological groups rejected this construction because they felt it would cause substantial environmental damage, especially in the valley of Leizarán. Opposition soon spread and an organization was created to co-ordinate the groups: "La Coordinadora Lurraldea". This body proposed that the main road be improved, believing that it was irrational to build a motorway. The Basque institutions (Diputación of Guipuzcoa and Diputación of Navarra) continued to remain inflexible and uncooperative. ETA was to involve itself in the conflict in 1989, considering both the motorway under construction and the managerial staff as legitimate targets for their actions. ETA supported Lurraldea. And Lurraldea gradually became yet another part of the area of influence of the BNLM (Basque National Liberation Movement). From 1990 onwards, the real central actors were the BNLM and the political institutions. Lurraldea-BNLM were demanding dialogue, negotiation and finally an agreement. The institutions refused to negotiate in the face of what they considered to be ETA's blackmail. Finally, and after a prior agreement between the PNV (the moderate Basque Nationalist Party in power) and Lurraldea, on April 22nd 1992, the Diputación General (the County authority) of Guipuzcoa decided to modify the route the motorway was to follow. This new route still affects the Leizarán valley, but has less damaging consequences for the environment than the original one. In the following the role the main institutional actors will be analysed. These actors are, firstly, the political institutions of the Autonomous Basque Community: the Basque Government, Diputaciones (County-wide administrations) and the Ayuntamientos (Town councils), and, secondly, the main Basque political parties, which control some political presence in the institutions: the above mentioned PNV, and the PSE (the Spanish Socialist Party in the Basque Country). The institutional actors maintained a limited discourse on environmental issues during most of the 1980's although at the end of the decade a "local" environmental policy was 246 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * started. The "youthfulness" of the Basque institutions forced them to devote a lot of time for addressing the "classical problems" (industrialization, unemployment, education) and for the new political powers they had just received. The environment was at this time for institutional actors a marginal and exotic issue.75 In addition, the institutions equated the ecological groups with the Basque radical nationalists. Because of this, the institutions did not talk about environmental conflicts. They thought that if they did, it would in some way legitimize their worst foe, the radical nationalists. Therefore, during the last decade, though the origins go back to the 1960's, the entire political and social life of the Basque Country has been marked by a central cleavage. On one side of this conflict we find the political institutions, most of the political parties, and growing sectors of Basque society, which accept, at least in the short term, the legal and political autonomous framework and participate in the institutions. On the other side there is the BNLM; it rejects the aforementioned framework, does not take part in the central Basque institutions, demands immediate national sovereignty of the Basque Country, and supports the violence employed by ETA. 8.2 RESONATING STRUCTURES 8.2.1 The media Each actor sets its discourse in motion through different media. The institutional voice uses, preferably, the daily newspaper "EL Correo Español". The voice of the movement actor is reflected in the pages of the daily Egin. This newspaper is a much more committed one, in that it represents the BNLM. But at the same time, and at least during the period under study (1987-1991), it was practically the only newspaper to report on the activities and demands of the ecological movements. In the following the media discourse is analysed looking at the way in which it represents the different groups engaged (for different reasons) in environmental issues. 8.2.2 Main coding indicators (i) Environmental issues (Figure 30/31). General and specific problems (PROBGENSP) CORREO 75 EGIN Practically until 1990 the Basque institutions did not develop their own political agenda on environmental issues. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 247 The structure shown by these figures reflects each actor's communicative strategies. El Correo grounds its information on two axes: first of all, international problems ("global problems climate and nature") which are not especially linked to the Basque Country's situation. Secondly, non-conflictive local problems ("Flora/fauna"-beaches, public parks). All this is done with a common aim: to distance the environmental issue from the open political conflicts, i.e. from those conflicts which radical nationalism could use. This does not mean that the institutional actor lacks a political strategy. What we mean is that the political framing is concentrated above all in pointing out the institutions' political capacity to resolve the ecological problems, and also in the refusal to include the environmental problems in the general political confrontation. In Egin, the dominant issues are ecological education ("general problems") for which since 1988 there exists a specific weekly section on environmental education and above all the politicized treatment of the conflictual issues (especially the Leizarán problem - "Flora/fauna problems"- from 1990 onwards) in which the Basque national and democratic project is put on the agenda. Finally, both actors refer to the nuclear issue, combining both the memory of Chernobyl and the memory of Lemoniz ("Chemical/physical problems"). It is interesting to note that the positions held by each actor in reference to Lemoniz are not that far apart. The institutional voice believes because of technical and economic reasons that nuclear energy cannot be brought back to life. And the movement's voice also rejects due to national policy reasons, this possibility. (ii) Environmental agents This item we have modified with respect to the standard coding. We felt it more appropriate to classify the actors in two different ways: on the one hand (Figure 32, referring to the Correo, and Figure 33, referring to Egin), the mere appearance of the actor in the text, whatever the treatment given might be, and on the other, the actor's position in the text. This is described as positive when its relevance in the news is apparent; when it is intentionally described as positive; or when, regardless of its relevance or treatment, it is the only actor that appears in the text. It is seen as negative when it is intentionally described as thus. And as neutral when, without any treatment at all, it just appears in the text with other actors. Specifically, we have chosen to see these different treatments in the two agents which appear most in the text: governmental and protest organizations (Figure 34/35/36/37). 248 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Government administration CORREO EGIN Protest organizations CORREO EGIN The data are revealing. In El Correo, the political institutions are constantly present. And they are dealt with positively most of the time.76 What characterizes the treatment given 76 The negative treatment given by El Correo to the institutions in 1988, emerges in the letters to the editor, Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 249 to the protest organizations (the Basque ecological movement) is indifference. Without paying attention to whether it is positive or negative, its presence is minimal in the articles published in El Correo. In Egin, the institutions do appear, and also consistently. But in most cases the treatment is negative. They are described as the actors who provoke environmental problems, or as those who obstruct their solution. And, quite clearly, the local protest organization is the most mentioned actor in the text, and at the same time, practically always has a positive treatment. (iii) Type of environmental discourse (Figure 38/39) CORREO EGIN These figures show the following: - The "policy discourse", the discourse on local management policy ("policy" in the figure) progressively increases in El Correo. On the contrary, in Egin, the "politics discourse" is much more important (especially since 1989 with the Leizarán struggle). It is the discourse ("polit" in the figure) which is inserted in the Basque Country's national and democratic conflict. - The discourses on nature conservation ("conser" in the figure) and environmental damage ("damage" in the figure) do not show any significant change. We cannot obtain any significant or relevant conclusion from this data. - The risk discourse ("risk" in the figure), appears linked to the nuclear issue, having, as such, a strong presence in 1987, the first anniversary of Chernobyl. - Egin maintains a permanent but sparse discourse against the technological/industrial growth ("indus" in the figure). If we add to this data the absence of the deep ecology where we can find 'deeply respectful' criticisms towards local environmental policies. We should remember that after 1988, the situation is reversed. The County authorities took into their hands the leading role in the institutional voice. 250 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * discourse ("style' in the figure), we must conclude that the actor's discourse is neither anthropomorphic or conservationist, but a political ecology one. (iv) Differences and similarities There are, however, also some similarities, the main one being that both actors operate with a common political ecological frame. Certainly, in our case, the ecologists and the Basque political institutions disagree as to how the authorities should intervene and what the content of that intervention should be. But both coincide in that the most relevant role in the resolution of the Basque environmental conflict should be awarded to the political authorities. It will be analysed based on the figures we have included above to what degree we find such coincidences. In the "generic environmental issues" ("the problems"), the history, as can be observed in Fig. 28/29, is as follows. In 1987, for both, the movements (Egin) and the institutions (Correo), the main problem was radioactivity ("chemical-physical"). On its first anniversary, Chernobyl was the dominant issue. However, in 1991, the panorama had changed. For the Correo, although quantitatively the most important issue was radioactivity, nevertheless, from a comparative point of view, it had dramatically lost the relevance it previously held (in 1987, radioactivity comprised 90% of all the issues ). On the other hand, problems linked more to public services (scarcity of drinking water) or directly connected with political action (destruction of fauna due to the "famous " motorway ) started to occupy an quantitative media space which equalled that of radioactivity. In Egin, the development is even more noticeable. In 1991, the issue of the potential destruction of the natural environment ("flora-fauna problems"), owing to the institutional motorway project, ranked first. Taking into account that Egin deals far more with the ecological question than the Correo does we may draw the conclusion that the number one issue in 1991, as taken overall, was that of "flora-fauna". The similarities in the political discourse are more striking in the figures relating to the actors. As can be seen from Fig. 38/39, the Administration and the Government, the "political institutional actor", hold the first place, both for 1987 and 1991.77 The movements, though they might criticize the decisions taken by the institutions, are not opposed to the political actor taking part in the environmental conflict. What they do insist on, however, is that this intervention in the environment should be more careful. The way the "type of discourse" develops is somewhat more complex, given that it is not always easy to distinguish what the dominant type of discourse is in each article. It should be pointed out that, in 1987, the first position was held by the "risk" discourse, 77 Although in Egin, the presence ("named in the text") of the protest actor is slightly more frequent than that of the institutional actor (32.8% as against 27%), the overwhelming but inverse difference in the Correo (48% for the institutional actor; as against 7.4% for the protest actor) leads us to grant overall first place to the institutional actor in 1991. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 251 obviously linked to the Chernobyl catastrophe; and, in 1991, this place was occupied by the "politics" discourse, where the debate was focused on the troubled relationship between the different political and social actors.78 ISSUES 1987 1991 Radioactivity Flora/Fauna Public life 1 2 3 2 1 3 1987 1991 1 2 3 1 2 3 ACTORS Political Local protest Experts TYPE OF DISCOURSE 1987 1991 Risk Politics Policy Damage Nature 1 3 2 - 1 2 3 From these results, summarized in the table above where the changes in the ranking of the three items are charted, it is apparent that today, in the Basque Country, the master frame of environmental politics is that of political ecology. 8.3 THE CHERNOBYL STORY LINE 78 Notice how in the Correo (the institutions), the "policy" discourse (that is to say, the discourse around how the institutions are dealing with environmental problems) is the most frequent one (31.6%). Nevertheless, given that Egin lays much more emphasis on the "politics" discourse than on other discourses, and that, as we have seen from a general quantitative point of view, it deals far more than the Correo does with the environmental question, we give overall first place to the "politics" discourse. 252 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * First of all, and from a quantitative point of view, the evolution in the media's interest in the Chernobyl accident follows the obvious evolution. In 1986 there are 58 reports in the two media (El Correo and Egin) we have analysed. In 1987 - first anniversary - there is still some interest on the issue (14 items), which starts to decrease during the following years (4 items in 1990). On the fifth anniversary of the event, this interest increases with a total of 14 items. The coverage of this issue finally decreases in the following years. From a qualitative perspective, the different discursive strategies used in the Basque Country in relation with the Chernobyl accident employed a different narrative structure, a master frame, at least in a first phase, which is the national/democratic one (to be analysed more extensively below). Both in the year the accident took place and in its first anniversary the master competition field between both actors (institutional and communitary) is the one defined, above all but not exclusively, through the traditional East/West ideological conflict. The institutional actor employs the Chernobyl catastrophe to "demonize" the Soviet regime in particular and socialist regimes in general. At the same time it uses the event to criticize the ecological movements due to their scarce response to the accident. Accusing them of "false" anti-nuclear and "real" pro-soviets: "What is the reason behind the passiveness of the green and ecologist groups who until now always seemed ready for even most intensive activism.... They have not made their voice heard or carried out protests despite the fact that the danger is much closer than that of Harrisburg" (Editorial of The Correo, May 4, 1986). The community actor maintains during this first phase, genuinely an ambiguous position. On the one hand, its "historical" fight against Lemoniz, the paralysed Basque nuclear power plant, necessarily leads it to denounce the nuclear risk and Chernobyl's dramatic consequences. But on the other hand, even in 1986 we find that in the anti-nuclear leftwing's culture the prestige of the Soviet Union is still alive. In this sense, this actor shows a certain caution when openly criticizing the Soviet Union: "Chernobyl is already under control and radioactivity has gone down" (Egin, May 3, 1986). As the years go by, this field of confrontation starts to dilute. The institutional actor starts to consider that nuclear energy in itself, and so including the Western one, is too dangerous. So it accepts that its initial support of the Basque nuclear plant might have been erroneous. "Lemoniz will never be operational... In the Lemoniz situation many circumstances came together. There were many mistakes made as regards to communication and democratic procedure, in a country where the dictatorship was in its last death throes; Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 253 nor was the siting of the plant the right one" ( quoting the Basque Autonomous Government's adviser on Industry and Energy. The Correo, April 28, 1989). The communitary (or movement) actor will cease to link itself with the attraction emerging from "real socialism", adopting a "deeper" anti-nuclear position and using, as was to be expected, a more nationalist frame. "Anything connected not just with nuclear energy, but also the question of the generation of energy as a whole... must be decided democratically, socially and be approved by a majority.... We are talking about our future as a people/nation, and about the future of humanity itself. This is Chernobyl's great negative lesson, and the great positive lesson to be learnt from Lemoniz" (Egin, April 26, 1991). Thus at the end of the period a confluence of democratic and national master frames emerges. Moreover, on a deeper level, a new confluence appears. Chernobyl works for the whole Basque Country as a metaphor symbolizing how the harmonic truth of the common people defeats the dangerous arrogance of the powerful few. Chernobyl has turned into a legend, a tale present in the people's collective memory. And so if in a few years a grandparent tells his grandchild the story of Chernobyl, this tale would be more or less the following: "Some years before the Chernobyl fire, during the times when there was a dictator in power in Spain called Franco, they had wanted to make these powerful weapons in a Basque village, in order to produce this powerful fire. Basque people became very worried and demanded of the authorities that they did not allow these plans to go ahead, because the future of their Country was at stake. In the end, not without deaths on both sides, and after much money had been spent in Lemoniz, a village located close to the sea,the Government that had been elected in Madrid decided to take notice of these Basque people and withdrew their plans. Now, after what happened in Chernobyl, those Basques who opposed the bringing of the powerful fire to Euskadi were delighted that they had fought and would repeat that, no matter what the scientists and governments of other countries said, that weapon was bad for all countries and people, and could stir up the plague over the whole planet. That weapon was hard to keep under control, and it was better to either keep it far away, or for it not to exist at all. It had always been surrounded in a shroud of secrecy and nobody could find out anything about, or have their questions answered. The Basques had always desired to have democracy and accountability in their Country. It was much better just to forget about it all, the people of Euskadi ended up saying: let's celebrate and rejoice that Chernobyl is now just history, and that the Lemoniz power plant never started producing its energy. And so everybody lived happily ever after....". 8.4 NATIONALISM, DEMOCRACY AND ENVIRONMENTALISM IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY 8.4.1 Conceptual introduction 254 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * As the Chernobyl story line in the news already showed, the environmentalist message is embedded in a national narrative structure. It is called narrative because it expresses a dynamic, conflictive, living and active way of understanding and accepting - or rejecting - the world. The symbolic package, once it connects up with this "real" culture (real because it is alive) of the society makes the message more consistent and coherent and therefore more credible and able to mobilize. The environmentalist discourse tries to connect the narrative structures, the cultures - in our case the political cultures - and make them resonate. They are relevant because of their special "sensitivity" towards messages from outside. Evidently, not all environmentalist messages use a symbolic package linked to a dominant, national narrative structure.79 But this limited quantitative use in no way means that that framing resource is irrelevant. Quite the opposite. The important environmentalist message is precisely the one which links up with the national narrative structure. The most significant issues are those that, because of their specific content and relation to a real or potential conflict, can better define the identity of each collective actor and can better mobilise society in its support. For this potentiality to come into play and be effective, for it to change the balance of the public discourse in its own favour, it needs to connect with the dominant, national, narrative structures; with those frames with which reality is emotively interpreted. With those that exist, not those that the actors would like to exist. A narrative structure can be described as a conflictual realm, as a scenario where different actors perform and compete. The central argument of the plot is shared by all the actors, but each participant tries to interpret this argument in their own way. They attempt to give a specific and particular sense to the plot. 8.4.2 The narrative structure of the discourse on the Basque country In the Basque case, as already said in the first part of this summary, the shared scenario/narration, the given and invariable script to which the collective actors submit their environmental discourse, is the democratic construction of the Basque nation. This means in the first place the Basque national conflict. This conflict continues to dominate the Basque political discourse. In this conflict, the majority of Basque society is in confrontation - with significant differences of intensity, as will be seen - with the Spanish State because that majority wants a greater degree of self-government than that which 79 In our analysis, as we shall see, we have drawn the conclusion that of 264 articles only 64 were related to the national political structure which we shall define it further on. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 255 they have at present. To this democratic narrative we must add the Basque nationalist narrative. The democratic frame is much more recent. In the Basque Country, the democratic institutions have existed for little more than ten years. Thus we have two elements to consider: national culture and democratic culture. In our case, the synthesis is produced through the alignment of the democratic culture with the national one. To put it another way, democracy is seen as a feature of how the Basque nation must be constructed and shaped. Thus, democracy is a defining feature of the nation, and not vice versa. In the Basque case, it is not that the collective actors use the nationalistic reference in the debate about democracy; in fact, they do the opposite. The demand for democracy is manifested as an aspect, as a mobilising resource, of the main conflict: the national conflict. But the question of a narrative structure underlying Basque political culture becomes more complicated because each actor develops and interprets the shape of the script in a different way. Certainly, each actor (two, as we shall see), uses national democratic culture as a common frame. And they insert environmental issues into it. But each actor has a different concept of what the Basque nation is, and of the role which democracy plays in the national construct. This leads us to the question in which way these actors use these frames in their discourse strategies. Firstly, the institutional actor represents the moderate and majority national culture of Basque society, a culture which conceives the nation more as a society than as a community. Its national sense of belonging and its national claims are weak.80 Therefore, for this culture and its institutional voice, the democratic feature that defines and constructs the Basque nation is the existence of the Basque democratic institutions. Therefore, the institutions must lead the process of national construction. The institutions probably over-inflate the exclusivity of this democratic legitimacy. But this in itself is built on a basic social consensus and reinforced by the following context. Radical nationalism, which is in a minority though very active in the Basque Country,81 keeps up a systematic confrontation with the main political institutions of the Basque Country. This confrontation creates an intensification of the defence of the institutions in the majority of Basque society, due to its rejection of the violence of the radical nationalists. 80 The majority of Basque society would wish to have greater self-government. But only a minority (less than 2O%) is prepared to follow a strategy of strong and open conflict in the fight for full independence. 81 Basque radical nationalism is a conglomerate of groups and organisations, the MLNV (Movement for Basque National Liberation) as they call themselves. The most well-known organisation is ETA. 256 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The second actor is what we call the communitary actor82 which comprise the ecological movements83 and some organisations of radical Basque nationalism (MLNV). Moreover, one has to highlight the fact that the most important ecological organisations are to be found within the cultural field of radical Basque nationalism. They are certainly not formally linked to it, but they participate in and are nourished by its political keys, especially by their democratic/nationalist dimension. The communitary actor interprets nation and democracy in a different way than the institutional actor. For the latter, the Basque nation is more a community than a society. The nation comes prior to the will of individuals. It presents a series of objective features, almost unchangeable, like language in particular, and also Basque physical space, that is to say, Basque nature. The part of the Basque population which feels itself represented by the communitary actor has a much stronger sense of belonging to the Basque nation. For them, democracy is in the community, within the "Pueblo Vasco". From the democratic point of view, what characterises the Basque nation is that it exercises democracy from below. This implies a systematic mistrust of the institutions. And this mistrust turns into open confrontation when it is fuelled by other criticisms. For the communitary actor, nation is the space where resistance is carried out. And to be nationalist is to struggle to construct political power within this space. From a systematic perspective it is necessary to determine whether this shared narrative structure and the different usage each actor makes of it, works as an ideological or identity frame. This question is not an easy one to answer due to nationalism's complex nature. In the nationalist Weltanschauung we find it mixed in an inextricable way. On the one hand, we have feelings of belongingness to a community and its corresponding cohesive glue, a symbolic world, factors which produce and shape a "we", a collective identity. On the other hand, we have projects and political strategies which are posited as objective saviours, factors that are more related to the ideological field. As a 82 We prefer the term "communitary actor" to "movement actor" because is points better to the fact that these actors refer to the community rather than to the state as their field of action. They can become (and often do) movements. But this is not constitutive for their existence. 83 Stable movements like Eguzki and Eki (each one means "sun" in Basque), or ad hoc movements like the "Coordinadora Lurraldea" that fought against the construction of the motorway, and the "Coordinadora Itoiz" that is still fighting against the construction of a reservoir. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 257 consequence, in the discourse of both actors these two frames interact. The specific weight of each of these frames varies. Specifically, the identity frame is weaker (maybe in some cases it practically does not even exist) in the institutional discourse than in the communitary discourse. Nevertheless the use of the ideological frame is more balanced in the two actors. 8.4.3 The Lurraldea case The environmental frame turns up, from the first moment, situated within a more general frame, the national one. Moreover, the 'politicization' in the ecological discourse is clearly reinforced in the most serious environmental conflicts as it drifts towards the contest between diverse framing strategies taking the democratic frame as their reference point, in such a way that the environmental discourse almost loses its ecologist colour, already substantially "politicised" from its inception, and it goes on to take on an even more direct and explicit political content. This politicization, this use in the environmentalist discourse of the national/democratic narrative structure, is especially explicit in the Lemoniz nuclear power plant conflict (1976-1982). And it maintains its relevance in the main environmental conflict of the last years: the Leizarán motorway conflict. Beginning in 1986, the conflict, concerning the Leizaran motorway, caused two groups to clash with each other: the communitary actor, led by an ad hoc group (Coordinadora Lurraldea); and the Basque institutions who were in favour of the construction of the Leizaran motorway. The dispute was still going on in 1991. In April 1992, an agreement was struck between the authorities and the "Coordinadora", which was to build a road that would cause less harm to the environment. In the first place, the actors, both institutional and communitary, centre the frame competition within the lines of an environmental frame, as we highlighted before, defined by the national master frame. It is an attempt to give an answer to the question relative to the development model that is desired for the Basque Nation in the future. The institutional actor puts forward a discourse around the managing of the environment within an autonomous political framework which is integrated easily in the European ambit of development. In fact, for the institutional actor environmentalism is not a defining feature of the Basque nation. What the Basque nation has to do is to progress, to adapt to the modern world: Declaration by the head of the Basque Government. (It is necessary to build the motorway now in the Basque Country) "...Because we are running the risk that traffic and economic movements which circulate from the North to the South of Europe might adopt another route; and we would then find it very hard to recover those lines of communication..." ( The opposition to the building of the motorway) "...It is a veto against progress and modernity...because, in spite of the commitment on the part of 258 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * the institutions,and the support from the great majority in this country, ( the others) only present difficulties and slow down the common effort..." (The Correo, I.5.91). Meanwhile, the communitary actor sets in motion an identity-based national discourse around the environment, placed within a self-centred model of development. Thus, for the communitary actor, the environment certainly is a feature of national identity. The Basque "Pueblo" is a nation insomuch as it loves and respects "its" nature. Its "Lurraldea"(land). Once again, let us hear the actor's voice. Declaration of the Coordinadora Lurraldea. "...Each "pueblo" works out its own model of development...the need for the ecological demands to be immersed in a globality, just as is the case with struggles for national liberation..." (Egin, 29.4.91). At the same time, the frame competition between the actors in conflict was taking place at another level, that of the democratic frame. In the Leizaran scenario, there is a contest around the way to construct the Basque Nation. In this setting, the institutional actor elaborates a discourse around the recognition of the present Basque political subject, as a subject already constituted via the representative democracy that is already in existence. Consequently, there exists an almost complete rejection of extrainstitutional politics. If we were to use a catch-phrase to describe the symbolic package of this discourse, it would run like this: "Have faith in your political institutions. We will manage to sort out any environmental imbalances in this modern Basque Country of ours." The Leizaran conflict frame of competition is established on two levels (environmental and democratic) where the general conflict defined in the national master frame is shaped. Nevertheless, what is really specific in this case is the development of the main competitive space starting off from environmental discourses, typical at the beginning of the conflict, going towards almost strictly political discourses set within the democratic frame, characteristic of the last phase, prior to the negotiation of the final agreement. Which was when the movement's discourse was reduced almost totally to the demand for dialogue, negotiation and participation. This idea is obvious in any analysis of the press from that time, as it is also in the declarations of the ecologist leader Jonan Fernandez: "In the first stages ecologist awareness moves us to try to educate from an ecologist point of view. In the last stage, the idea of social Participation takes on priority, that is to say, social participation,participatory democracy acquires a new prestige". If the latter, in the Lemoniz conflict, above all tried to impose the shutting down of the plant, in the discourse about the motorway this actor extensively took on board the demand for dialogue with the institutions. This demand belongs to the symbolic package as previously defined: the institutions must engage in dialogue with the movements because they represent the national and democratic community. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 259 8.4.4 The narrative structure in other discourses on environmental problems Recognizing the paradigmatic nature of the Leizarán conflict, the various levels of the frame competition in the nationalist scenario are also quite evident in other episodes of the conflict. In the next paragraph we will try to see up to what point this discursive competition is a feature intrinsically linked to the protest cycle in which the Basque ecologist movement is found today. In the period chosen, the articles with environmental issues of each daily were as follows: El Correo, 67; Egin, 197. Of all these,the sample chosen, the articles related to the national narrative structure as described before, are: in El Correo,17 (26% of the total),and in Egin, 47 (23% of the total).84 Although the sampled selection is not very extensive (about 25% of the total), it certainly is significant from the point of view of the communicative strategy of the actors. It is in open conflicts where the events, in a certain way, "force" the receiver of the discourse to take sides; and where cultures, feelings and loyalties are brought into play; and where it is difficult to remain neutral. Thus the environmental discourse enters the stage through open conflicts. (i) Environmental issues The issues in the Correo have the same importance and are focused upon very local problems, such as keeping the beaches clean (17%), the scarcity of drinking water (17%), the pollution of the Bilbao estuary, etc. They are "little" and not "open" conflicts where the institutions can show their ability to provide solutions. It must be pointed out that the issue of radioactivity (the "old" conflict of Lemoniz) is still given special treatment (23%). It still serves as the main environmental framing. In the issues of Egin, the central one (55%) is that of the destruction of the countryside. Here the Leizaran motorway and, to a lesser degree, the Itoiz reservoir conflicts are inserted. These are open conflicts where mobilisations and confrontations of the "pueblo" with the authorities occur. The basic question is why these conflicts have been included in the item "destruction of the countryside". The defence of the landscape does not mean the protection of natural beauty and harmony. Rather, the demand to protect the natural environment (woods, mountains, animals) is made because nature represents and is the "Pueblo Vasco". Nature is "national". It forms part of the Basque nation, and therefore should receive privileged treatment. As one might have supposed, the second most relevant issue is that of radioactivity (19%). Once again the persistence of the memory of the anti-nuclear conflict stands out. 84 We must take into account that of the 197 articles in Egin 31 are very brief communiques from conferences, meetings, books, etc., scarcely without environmental content. If we discount these articles from the total,the samples selected increase to 28%. 260 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * (ii) Agents In El Correo, the political institutions are present in 94% of the articles.85 And they are dealt with positively in 82% of the instances. The local protest organisations only appear in 11%, and they are treated neutrally in the same percentage. It can be said that the ecological movements are purely and simply ignored by the institutional voice. In Egin, the institutions do appear, and consistently so: in 78% of the sample. But, 74% of the treatment is negative. They are described as the actors who provoke the environmental problems, or as those who obstruct their solution. And, quite clearly, the local protest organisations appear in 89% of the cases and are considered in a positive way in 78%.86 (iii) Type of environmental discourse The dominant type of discourse in El Correo is one of specific environmental policies (64%). As was noted above, the environment is described as a limited local problem. A problem is which political responsibility, the administrative rationality of the institutions, is sufficient to deal with. We are aware that the limits between this kind of discourse and the discourse about participation sometimes are rather hazy. In our case, it is evident that the institutions, sensing their ability to act in the environmental field, try, in competition with the other actors, to reinforce their national and democratic leadership. But the call from the institutions to trust their political protagonism does not always appear explicitly. Although the directly political discourses are implicit, we have preferred to include them in the latter item. On the other hand, the political participation discourse is much more direct in Egin, and is the one that predominates (70%). It is, as we have repeatedly seen, tout court, their discourse. 8.4.5 Provisional conclusions The indicators analysed confirm our initial proposition. The environmental problems, the proposals for their solution, the link with other discourses, the position of the 85 On one occasion (Correo 27.5.90), they do not expressly appear: this is in a news item referring to Chernobyl. Nevertheless, in the same article it is implied that the catastrophe would never have been produced with democratic institutions. And so the role of the Basque democratic institutions is implicitly given importance. 86 The appearance in the pages of Egin of more formal movements (Greenpeace, etc.) is always treated in a positive way and that of industry in a negative way, while the treatment of experts is both positive and negative. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 261 agents/actors, the framing strategies, and last of all, the kind of discourse (as a synthesis of all the indicators), come together and, in that process, reaffirm and determine the dominant discursive strategy of each of the actors. The communitary actor inserts nature - "Basque nature" - into the Basque nation. Given the tendentially objective conception of the nation which this actor also holds, this unchangeability of the nation drags nature along with it. It would consequently seem that the environmental discourse is not so much politically ecologist as conservationist (absolute separation and preservation of nature), or anthropomorphic (nature/Basque nation is a living being). That is not true. Objectivist Basque nationalism does not go so far as to give an essentialist character - and far less a sacred one - to the nation and "its" nature. It accepts the inevitable interaction between mankind and nature, though without any doubt it demands a special concern for nature, and a greater control concerning the abuse of it. The coincidence of the discourses is maintained in so far as each actor aligns them with a common narrative structure. In our case, with a national and democratic political culture. Both hang their communicative environmental strategies on this dynamic and extended scenario which is the Basque national conflict and the related democratic debate. But given that each actor has different environmental strategies, and given also that the political culture described above has different interpretations in Basque society, the connection between the environmental issue and the narrative structure varies. In the case of the institutional actor, the issues and their discursive treatment present to us political institutions which as the only expression of democracy are able to solve (in a pragmatic, slow and prudent process of national reconstruction) the local environmental problems. It is the discourse that looks for the support of that part of Basque society which is moderately nationalist, and therefore with a weak sense of national belonging. In the case of the communitary actor, the discourse shows a "Pueblo Vasco" - the trustee of democracy - which mobilises against irresponsible institutions with the aim of defending Basque nature, land and nation. It is the discourse which seeks the backing of that part of society which lives its nationhood in a more communitarian way, and which gets its nourishment from an old resistance culture. 8.4.6 Towards a new interpretative frame? In the last months of 1991, and above all in 1992, the radicalisation of the motorway conflict politicised the discourses even more. It reached such a point that an inversion took place. The narrative political structure was transformed into the main issue of the discourse, and environmentalism into a secondary framing resource. The institutional discourse focuses on a strict political opposition to the ecologist and radical nationalist movements. The environmentalist arguments disappear. The discourse of the communitary actor consists solely in demanding that the institutions negotiate with the 262 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * anti-motorway movement, so that the movements and their main ally, the MLNV, acquire political protagonism. In the last two years, from April 1992 on when an agreement was reached concerning the motorway conflict, a new process of readjustment has taken place. This time the process has taken the opposite direction: one of depoliticization and autonomy of the environmental discourse. Each actor has gradually taken his distance from the already familiar national narrative structure. This depoliticization rests basically on the important decrease in discussion referring to the basis of Basque political society, or to the general models of decision making, in order to get involved in a model which is maybe closer to the management (or even co-management) of ecological problems. However, this does not mean that the political and/or national contents have totally disappeared. To explain this phenomenon of discursive evolution we will propose to consider the following reasons. The first is a more open and sensible attitude on behalf of the institutions in relation to environmental matters as a central factor. The movement realizes its impotence and frustration in those matters in which there is an important clash with the institutions. A second reason is the feeling that the nationalist movement has taken over the purely ecological discourse. Nevertheless we must not forget that the ecologist revindication (like any other one) may be subject to a circular movement.87 From this point of view, we may be living in a period of appeasement in the ecologist revindication following the important conflict into which the Leizarán issue turned into. As a hypothesis, we could think that bearing in mind the two great issues (anti-Lemoniz and anti-Leizarán) which the ecologist movement has had to face the national resonance may act in those periods in which the protest cycle is at its peak, when voices call out to defend the essence of the nation. On the other hand, when the movement is not so strong it may adopt a discourse close to the specific management of the so called "minor" ecological problems. This approach leads us to conclude that when the ecologist movement, due to its own dynamics, or when it strikes a key in some important revindication, starts to increase its activity, it will find the need/opportunity to activate the national resonance which has given them support in past conflicts.88 We do not intend to state that this perspective is just a mere cause-effect relation. We would just like to mention one possibility without closing the door on any other one. When does the movement's own dynamics mobilize national resonance? Is it a strategic decision taken by the movement? Is it imposed on them by their nationalist allies (both new and old)? Is the appeal to the national resonance the only possibility of future general mobilization? Is it necessary in order to achieve success? 87 88 This is a very interesting perspective emerging, among others, from Tarrow's studies. We should remember that the discursive activation triggers off the collaboration between privileged allies. At the same time it also connects with a master frame with which Basque society is nowadays more involved in than with the ecologist one. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 263 The specific nature of the Basque case is due to the fact that the nationalist master frame and the management frame are nowadays somewhat dissociated. The whole discourse of the most important Basque political actors89 clearly separates one area from another on the basis of the unresolved nature of the Basque problem. We might not have to do with an irreversible appeasement so characteristic of other European countries in which both these discursive areas (national/management) are found to be less opposed. While there is a latent national revindication this master frame could allow the conjunctural fuelling up of ecologist conflicts way above the real power of the ecologist movement. 8.5 CONCLUDING REMARKS To understand the "rules of the game" used today by the different environmentalist actors it has to be kept in mind that the field in which the "game" is played has acquired features which have more to do with management than with collective protest. We observe a professionalization of the leaders of the ecological movements. These experts maintain a fluid relationship with the media and not only with those who were "historically" linked to the movements. Moreover, their contacts with the public institutions are normal and in some cases agreements have been achieved in issues which were not too conflictual. This does not mean that the movements have abandoned their public action. Some local conflicts have been kept alight and this activity is shown in demonstrations, chaining oneself, etc. Nevertheless, these conflicts have not acquired a political relevance as that acquired during the peak moments of the environmental confrontation (Lemoniz and Leizarán). We cannot claim yet that the ecological movement in the Basque Country is shaped by a division between professional leaders and local activists. We would only claim a tendency. From an institutionalist point of view, a new form of relationship with the movements has appeared. During the last two years the central institutions (Basque Government and Regional Councils) and especially the local institutions tend to establish talks before undergoing a ecological decision, with the movements or groups of experts linked to these movements. We may state that although the mutual distrust between the actors has not disappeared they no longer see each other as unreconcilable enemies. Quite recently, the industrial actor has entered into the scene with its own voice. When we refer to this actor we are not thinking of the old, and today practically dismantled steel, chemical or shipbuilding industry, which in its day was a symbolic feature of the 89 Basically the radical nationalists, although the moderates know how to differentiate a conjunctural national discourse with an effective management political practice. 264 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * collective identity of the Basque Country. What we have in mind are the new industries (huge shopping malls, high technology industries, etc.). This actor has changed its strategy adopting a more aggressive attitude, promoting initiatives which seek to turn him into a leader in the environmental care. During the last few years the environmental issue has acted more as an element of social cohesion than as a source of conflict, which was not the case during the 1980's. Nevertheless, our conclusion is still a tentative one. The Basque national conflict is yet still unresolved. And it is not clear that movements and institutions have decided to abandon for good this active national frame in order to reactivate and openly confront their environmental strategies. PART III: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS The following comparative analysis seeks to identify similarities and differences between the countries analysed. It proceeds by a threefold comparative analysis: individualizing comparison, in order to identify the peculiarities of the cases, variation finding comparison which tries to identify the conditions which generate such differences, and finally encompassing comparison which treats the cases as elements of an encompassing system (the European system) which in turn reproduces (or changes) the differences between the cases. This procedure follows the methodology of comparative analysis proposed by Tilly (1984). Via this, the degree of differences and the direction of changes in these differences can be assessed. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 267 9 Comparing Media Discourses in Europe 9.1 INDIVIDUALIZING COMPARISON I: THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES SINCE 1987 9.1.1 The selection of indicators The media discourse on environmental issues is characterized by certain structural features which are shared in the different national contexts and across different organizational peculiarities in these countries. The aim is to identify a core discourse in terms of a consistent set of themes (or frames) which are reproduced independently of linguistic differences. Speaking of a European media space does not imply that all speak with the same tongue, but rather that they use comparable frames. For this purpose a structural level and a surface level of media discourse have to be distinguished. The surface level refers to obvious differences in national media discourses. On the structural level, however, the questions concern whether the surface variations can be reduced to a structural logic. Or to put it the other way around: to see whether the variations on the surface level are variations of a common theme, generated by the same set of frames. In the following, it will be checked whether the national media discourses manifest a common set of framing environmental issues which allow the identification of a discursive space, which all participants have to stick to if they want to be listened to. The following content analysis of the national media reports - IT (Italy), UK (Britain), EIRE (Ireland), BRD (Germany), FR (France)90 - focuses initially on the following indicators: 1. Environmental themes/issues 2. Agent types 3. Types of action (BRD, IT, EIRE, FR) 4. Types of environmental discourse 90 The data for this comparison are mainly reproduced in the country studies reported above. In some cases reference is made to the full country reports available form the project coordinator on request. The report on the Basque country is used for further comparison when it seemed to be illuminating the other cases. 268 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 5. Framing strategies (BRD, IT, EIRE, FR) The first two and the fourth dimension establish the substantive references and the social embedding of ecological communication. The third and the fifth dimension define a more specific characteristic of environmental discourse which varies between the countries.91 9.1.2 The definition of environmental issues The categorization of environmental issues is the basic strategy for defining a common discursive ground. There is a distribution of common themes falling under the heading of chemical/physical problems. i. Data The empirical references are listed below (figure numbers refer to the text above): EIRE (Figure 1): 1. general problems (30%, rather stable) 2. flora/fauna problems (25%, rather stable; slightly higher in 1988 and 1992) 3. chemical/physical problems (25-20-15%, decreasing) 4. public life problems (15%, stable) IT (Figure 7): 1. chemical/physical problems (35% 1987, 20% 1988 rather stable 1991 25%) 2. general problems (30-40%, increasing, low in 1988) 3. public life problems (40-20%, decreasing, peak in 1988) 4. fauna/flora + climate/nature (low with a slight increase since 1998) BRD (Figure 14) 1. chemical and radioactive problems (peak 50% in 1987; shift to 38%) 2. daily life problems (23%, declining over the period) 3. general problems (18%, relatively stable) 4. fauna/flora + climate/nature (low with a peak due to climate in 1992: 13%) UK (Figure 20) 1. chemical/physical problems (45-30%, decreasing) 2. public life problems (15-30%) 3. general problems (10-20%, increasing) 91 Such data are not available on UK and France. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 269 4. fauna/flora + climate/nature (20%, increasing due to climate with a peak in 1991: 30%) FR (Figure 25): 1. chemical/physical problems (65% in 1987, 55% in 1988, 35% in 1989, 30% in 1990, 40% in 1991, average 45%) 2. general problems (13% in 1987, 22% in 1988, 21% in 1989, 25% in 1990, 18% in 1991, average 20%) 3. public life problems (13% in 1987, 5% in 1988, 18% in 1989, 22% in 1990, 15% in 1991, average 15%) 4. fauna/flora + climate/nature (less than 10% in 1987, more than 20 % im 1991). ii. Discussion The generic environmental issue category of chemical/physical problems, is the most important one in UK, BRD and FR. In IT chemical/physical problems are somewhat less prominent. The development between 1987 and 1991-92 shows that in UK, BRD and IT its importance decreases; in UK, BRD and FR steadily, and in IT in a more fluctuating way after 1987. In EIRE, the theme remains more or less stable, is lower than in the other countries, and decreases only after 1991. This is due to the predominance of general and flora/fauna problems in the Irish media. All country reports attribute the prominence of the chemical/physical problems to the topic of Chernobyl and explain the overall decreasing trend with the generalization/globalization/internationalization of 'Chernobyl' and environmental issues (see table 1). General problems are predominant both in IT and EIRE, at around 30%. Both see a slight increase in 1991-92, and a similar development of the sub-categories of soil and water pollution. Although general problems score lower in UK and BRD (15%), FR (20% average) they also increase, in 1990 (UK, FR) and 1991 (BRD). The increase after 1990 is explained by the shifting perspective on Chernobyl, which tends to go beyond the discourse of expertise and science and of environmental agents. In the earlier years, the discourse had been characterized by a contestation over the use of nuclear power (compare results development agent and discourse types). The shift to the general (risk) discourse which followed probably took place earlier in IT because nuclear power was less of a contested issue there (in IT nuclear power was banned); and in EIRE because nuclear power problems were expressed through more specific issues such as those of flora and fauna. The German graph (2) showing the most important issues without nuclear energy indicates that reports on other problems increase in importance until 1991. Flora/fauna issues (destruction of landscape and harm to animals) are important in EIRE. These issues are related to the dominance of the depletion of resources category and to the conservation discourse in Irish media. The predominance of the flora/fauna issue is thus to be explained by the national issue context in Ireland, in which the 270 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * preservation of cultural and national identity played an important role (compare landscape study Ireland; landscape stands for positive value of own identity which is threatened). This is also reflected in the relatively high amount of common interest and personalization frames (see section 5). Note that problems of the same order faced in UK were probably integrated into the issue of (human) public life problems. The French case shows up the relative importance of flora/fauna issues in 1991. Public life problems is an important category in the coverage on environmental issues in all countries. However, no systematic similarities or dissimilarities were revealed. Global problems and effects on climate/nature, one of the less important issues, have a similar development in IT and EIRE, increasing in 1988 and decreasing in FR 1991. This is probably related to the higher amount of interest in chemical/physical and general problems (Chernobyl) in these years. However, in Eire a sharp increase is seen in 1992, which probably indicates that 1991 did not mark the beginning of a permanent trend but was significant by itself as the Chernobyl anniversary year. In contrast to IT, the BRD figure indicates that climate/nature effects in 1991 do not decline and even increased in 1992. It is similar to EIRE in that in 1992 an especially sharp increase is seen. Also in the British case the importance of this category increases from 10 to 20% in 1992. The explanation given for these changes suggests that the trend to incorporate issues in a more global perspective started first in UK and was picked up later in other countries (EIRE and BRD), although in the British report on Chernobyl the publication of a translated editorial from a German newspaper in the British press in 1991 suggested the opposite. The same trend might be expressed in the increasing importance of the general problems category (1991 IT). The only possible conclusion is thus that these trends do not have a permanent character. To sum up, BRD, FR and UK are similar in that they both dedicate most reports to chemical/physical problems. However this is also one of the most important issues in IT and EIRE. In all countries this issue becomes less important between 1988 and 1991. IT and EIRE are similar because they both have the highest percentage of general problems, which are much lower in BRD, FR and UK, although in the latter they increase after 1990. All countries share an interest in public life problems. The main difference consists in the fact that in Ireland flora and fauna problems are the most important issue after general problems.92 92 The German case presents an extension with respect to the other studies because it combined the scores for generic environmental issues with the contested environmental issues. Thus, it compared the scores for chemical/physical problems with that of nuclear energy, a sub-category of the contested issue of 'energy production and use of resource'. The latter was esp. after reunification an issue for debate (need for new power plants or other energy resources, waste deposit problem ex-GDR). The issue field of nuclear power problems which resulted from here represented more than half of the coded articles (decreasing from 75% in 1987-1989, then increasing). Nuclear energy is taken as the largest issue category for BRD but is nonexistent in the other case studies which have not reproduced any results on the contested issues. In the German study a second composed category was defined. This issue field of chemistry/chemical problems, another composed category, was however less prominent and showed an increas- Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 271 The distribution of issues remains rather stable over time as the following table 1 shows, with a slight decrease in media coverage. In all countries framing environmental problems in terms of chemical/physical problems provides a stable discursive environment. Table 1: Distribution Chemical/physical problems per year/country chemical/physical problems BRD EIRE IT UK FR 1987 47 25 33 45 65 1988 45 20 20 40 55 1989 40 25 25 40 35 1990 38 20 20 35 30 1991 40 20 25 30 40 1992 30 15 The table shows that the distribution of chemical/physical problems was by and large similar for BRD and UK. The French scores are slightly higher but show a similar development. The Italian scores come second and the Irish third. All countries show the same downward trend. This result can be specified by looking in more detail at the subcategories of chemical/physical problems, namely toxic waste and nuclear radiation. We should expect differences according the degree with which the different countries are confronted with these issues. While in IT and EIRE the problem of toxic waste is predominant, in UK and BRD nuclear radiation is the most frequent problem. Thus, the latter two countries again show similarities. However, while in UK this problem becomes increasingly important between 1987 and 1991, in BRD its importance decreases and in 1991 toxic waste is more important. The development of the toxic waste problem shows an inverted movement also between IT (increasing) and EIRE (decreasing). ing development (average 25%, gaining importance 1990-1991, decreasing in 1992). Together, the development of these issues is clearly related to news on Chernobyl. 272 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The results of the analysis of these subcategories are presented below in table 1.1.93 Table 1.1: Sub-categories environmental theme chemical/physical problems (198792)/country problem/issue BRD EIRE IT UK FR chemical/physical 41 25-15 25 45-30 45 toxic waste 30-60 50-70 50-80 30-10 5-20 nuclear radiation 60-33 <33 45-10 60-95 95-80 It is possible that toxic waste was or became more prominent in those countries where national-local news already had or acquired higher priority in news reporting, whereas nuclear radiation was an international problem (compare the 'innen-außen' distinction in the German Chernobyl report). The growing importance of more generalized and global issues in the Chernobyl story after 1990 might also be an explanation for the decreasing number of specific chemical/physical problems, e.g. in France the importance of the 'marée noire' issue. The topic of nuclear radiation thus received more attention in those newspapers/countries which dedicated consistent space to international news or to a global perspective on the issue of nuclear power. More country-specific news orientation can be found for IT, where the issue of toxic waste was related to the increasing attention for corruption scandals after 1989. In EIRE the prominence of toxic waste problems is also explained by news coverage on conflicts between the chemical industry and local communities. 9.1.3 Types of actors A stable basic framing in environmental communication requires that a set of particular actors are taken into consideration when talking about the environment. Results on this 93 The data are contained in the national country reports which are available at request. The figures: BRD: nuclear radiation (60% in 87 decreasing afterwards); toxic waste (50% 91) IT: toxic waste (50-80%: stable at 60% until 1989, drop in 1990, 80% in 1991) EIRE: toxic waste (70% in 88 and 92; 50% in 91); nuclear radiation (65% in 87 and 90) UK: nuclear radiation (between 60 -95%). Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 273 indicator - in accordance with such expectations - did not reveal any great surprises; they were largely similar for all countries. They all indicated a politicization of the environmental issue. BRD, UK, and EIRE showed a slight decrease in the percentage of business actors involved. The only significant difference is in the predominance of nonspecified actors in the Irish case. i. Data EIRE (figure 3): 1. political non protest actors (24%) 2. general actors (24%) 3. business actors (22%) 4. environmental + protest (13%) 5. experts (12%) IT (figure 8): 1. political actors (30%) 2. general actors (10%) 3. business actors (13%, then declining until 1990, 1991 increase to 16%) 4. environmental + protest organizations (25%) 5. experts (15%, declining to 10% in 1991) BRD (figure 15): 1. political actors (37% with intermediate increase to over 40%) 2. general actors (declining from 20% to 10%) [see full report] 3. business (increase from 19% to 26%) 4. environmental + protest organizations (decrease from 24% to 19%) 5. experts (19%) UK (figure 21): 1. political actors (20%) 2. non specified actors (20-10% decreasing) 3. business actors (10-15%) 4. environmental + protest organizations (20%) 5. experts (1990/91: <10%) FR (figure 26): 1. political non protest actors (30%) 2. general actors (20%) 3. business actors (15%) 4. protest organizations (20% 1989, 5-10% in other years) 5. experts (minimal role) ii. Discussion 274 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Political non protest actors account in all cases for about 20%, and are the most prominent news actors, with in all cases the government as the most significant subcategory. While in EIRE, UK, and BRD the importance of political actors fluctuated, in IT and FR their importance increased over the years. The Italian report states that the prominence of political actors is a result of more general public-issue status-attention principles. It would be interesting to see whether these actors appeared in negative roles (as object of reports on corruption scandals) or as positive actors proposing policies. We may search for an explanation in other indicators, such as the discourse types of politics and policy, which were predominant in Italy (see section 4). In the BRD report the representation of political actors is explained in terms of issue-dependency, i.e, the influence of the predominant issues concerning nuclear energy and the chemical industry. However, political actors were indeed most prominent in the environmental issue arena, with this role further reinforced by media attention (news making routines, dominant news values). In general, the rather stable appearance of this agent types indicates the politicization of environmental issues. In Germany this was further explained by means of the variable of 'Staatszentriertheit'. Environmental and protest organizations account in all cases for about 20% (slightly lower in EIRE, slightly higher in BRD). In the BRD report the representation of environmental agents is connected to the 'career' of nuclear energy issue field, which as we saw was of decreasing importance (see section 1), and to the fact that the position of environmental actors was 'interwoven' with that of business actors. Business actors are represented in EIRE with 22%, in UK and FR with 10-15%. IT lacks a consistent/systematic representation of business actors. BRD business and environmental actors are both important and interconnected, the first steadily increasing, the second decreasing (scissors). In Germany, business actors were the second most important actors after political actors. This was explained by the German issue/political culture, in which economic arguments played an important role, traditionally as a means to increase national pride in economic success. The category of non-specified actors ('the people') is relatively high in EIRE (max 30% in 1988 and 1992). This might be explained by the impact of the independence and national identity issues in the Irish discourse (compare also the high percentage of common interest and moralization framing strategies). In the report on Irish political culture this is explained by means of the variable of legitimation of populist orientations and an appeal to the 'dominance of the people'. In UK and FR the amount of nonspecified actors is also considerable (max 20% in 1987); however, we did not find any explanation for this high percentage in the report. Lower scores are found in the German (max 10% in 1987) and Italian (max 10% in 1990) cases. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 275 Expert actors are among the four most important actor types in the German case, most important in 1987 and then steadily decreasing. They seemed to serve predominantly as carriers of a counter-discourse. Table 2: Types of actors/country (1987-1991/2) BRD EIRE IT UK FR political/non-protest 44-37 24 30 20 30 environmental/ protest 24-19 13 20-25 20 5-20 business and industry 19-26 22 10 10 15 people 20-10 30 10 15 20 experts 19 12 15 10 <3 The representation of actor types shows that the idea of a division of labour between actors who have a stake in the environmental field is rather strong. There are variations regarding the Irish case, where the reference to the people and to protest actors shows a characteristic inversion plausible in a small country with a movement tradition that is focused on specific political goals which are non-negotiable. The discursive space is thus anchored in a shared awareness of general environmental problems and is peopled by actors which are to be regarded as the consequential actors in a modern policy field. It is within these givens that an individualizing comparison makes sense. The first rough indicators of the specificities of the Irish and the German case will be clarified later in a qualitative comparison of these cases. 9.1.4 Types of environmental discourse This indicator extends the range of basic structures underlying the discursive field of environmental communication. It embeds ecological communication in the ideological streams of public debate. This cognitive embedding of ecological communication is central when looking at policy making: it tells us whether there is common ideological ground for engaging in environmental policy making in a double sense: as shared convictions and as clear ideological divisions about what to do. The types of discourses that have been distinguished are listed below. i. Results EIRE (figure 4): 1. nature conservation discourse (23%, with peaks in 88 and 91) 276 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 2. risk discourse (21%) 3. policy discourse (20%, with peak in 90) 4. participatory discourse (> after 89) 5. technical/industrial growth marginal discourse (peak in 88 (8%), 2-3% other years) 6. deep ecology discourse low IT (figure 10): 1. participatory (politics) discourse (30-40%) 2. regulatory (policy) discourse (20%) 3. environmental damage discourse (15-20%) 1-3: more than 50% 4. nature conservation discourse (10-15%) 5. deep ecology discourse (insignificant) 6. risk discourse (relatively low: 1-8%) 7. market discourse (limited percentage and discontinuous presence) BRD (figure 16): 1a. ecological modernization discourse (28%, peak 1987, lowest 1990) 1b. technical environmental protection discourse (21%, stable) 1a + 1b = regulatory discourse (50%) 2. risk discourse (17%, 87 (25%); decrease 88 (20%); further decrease 90 (12%), recovered 91 (25%) 3. industrial growth discourse (8%, decrease after 87, lowest point 90, recovered 91, increase 92) 4. natural conservation discourse (7%) 6. radical ecology discourse (5%) 7. environmental damage (5%) 8. participatory discourse (3%) 9. deep ecology discourse minimal UK (figure 22): 1. risk discourse (30% 87; 20% 89; 40% 91) 2. participatory and institutional politics discourse (40% 87; 55% 89; 30% 91) 3. environmental damage (10-15%) and deep ecology discourse (5-10%) 90,91 > before 4. nature conservation discourse (20-5%); 90,91 < before 5. market discourse 5% FR (figure 29): 1. risk (60-65% 87-88; 40% 89-91) 2. regulatory (20% -89; 18% 91) 3. nature conservation (15% -89; 20% 90) 4. environmental damage (5% 89; 10% 90; 20% 91) Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 277 ii. Discussion The risk discourse was important in all countries, except for Italy. An explanation for the rising significance of the risk discourse in Britain was that in 1987 the British discourse on Chernobyl focused on the containment and prevention of risk; in 1991 instead, the globalization of risk was at the centre of discourse. Risk was likely to be more prominent in Britain than in other countries because the effects of Chernobyl were felt inside the country, and also due to the national discussion on nuclear power. In the Italian discourse risk was not at all prominent, steadily decreased after 1987 and recovered only slightly in 1991. In Italy such discussions had been far less important because nuclear energy was banned from Italy after the Chernobyl accident and thus did not need to be contested. In EIRE, the risk discourse played an important role, more specifically as a result of the resistance to the penetration of chemical/pharmaceutical industries (see political culture abstract): it was rather stable over time; it decreased slightly, in correspondence with the increase in participatory discourses. In BRD the same cycle as in UK is seen: a drop in 1998 and a rise in 1991. Conversely, in FR it increases in 1988 and decreases to 1989. The importance of the risk discourse in BRD is connected to the nuclear energy and chemical issue fields (see also Chernobyl story line report: here the risk discourse seems predominant, e.g. the effects and externalization of risk, 1990). This might indicate that the function of the risk discourse was largely similar in the British and German cases. The explanation for the decrease in the nature conservation discourse by means of the radicalization and increasing penetration of risk definitions by 1991 is applicable only to the British case. The British report argues that in the earlier years there was more necessity (for environmental and protest organizations) to oppose the discourse of technological progress and pro-nuclear discourse with such arguments. After 1990, however, the positions of the former were no longer accepted and so the contestation could focus on other aspects. In the Italian graphs, it is clearly shown that the discourse of nature conservation is competitive with that of industrial and technological growth. Thus, nature conservation decreases in 1991, when there is a recovery of the 10% share of the industrial growth discourse which had dropped after 1988. In all the other cases the technological growth discourse was marginal and not so important as in Italy. The competition can be compared to the 'scissors' effect between environmental and business actors in the German graph for actor types (see section 2); however the same trend is not reflected in the German discourse types. While in UK, FR and IT nature conservation decreases in 1991, in EIRE it increases, and then slightly decreases again in 1992. The large share of nature conservation discourses in EIRE is due to a national specificity, also reflected in the large share of flora and fauna issues: the cultural and national identity issue in Ireland. 278 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The explanations given in the Italian case for the predominance of the political and policy discourses is that policy, politics and damage are the most evident discourses when environmental problems are treated as a public issue (compare the French landscape report on the concept of 'evident' as far as damage discourse is concerned). In EIRE and UK these are also important discourses although they are not the most important ones: the symbolization of the issue as a risk or as a threat to nature is more important in these countries, while this aspect in Italy is either absent or instrumental to the discussion/definition of policies. The rise in participatory and institutional politics in Britain in 1989 was due to parliamentary debates on nuclear power in Britain. In EIRE the share of policy discourse is also explained by the fact that solutions to problems are often policy oriented, both as a critical and legitimating discourse (24-37%). The increase in participatory discourse is here compared with a downward trend in risk discourse in 1991. The significant decrease in participatory discourse in EIRE in 1988 is due to the sudden increase in the technological growth discourse. Also in UK participatory discourses decrease in 1990, and this leads to an increase of risk discourses. However, in 1991 both discourses increase. In FR the regulatory discourse peaks in 1989 and then falls back slightly. The participatory discourse, which is among the most significant types in the other countries, is remarkably low for Germany and France. The explanation might lay in the use of different coding categories (see under a.). Another possibility is the explanation found in the report on reunification, which hints at a participatory deficit due to 'Staatszentriertheit' and to the definition of the reunification debate, in which there was also a participatory deficit. In the German case the amount of participatory (politics) discourses was thus negligible, whereas the policy (regulatory) discourse was predominant. The German report comments on the results for actor types with the fact that issues have acquired mostly a political/administrative character. The lack of participation might be explained by the larger amount of mediatory environmental organizations or interest (business) groups which voice opinions mainly to political actors, or to the fact that newspapers focused on large-scale political action and less on the local actions of smaller groups. In all countries the category of deep ecology is low, with a slight increase seen in 1988 in FR and in 1991 in UK. In UK the discourses of 'hard' deep ecology and 'soft' nature conservation are mutually competitive: the first increases in 1991 while the second decreases; this is attributed to a radicalization of the environmental discourse after 1990. Radical ecology, a separate coding category in the German case (also defined as 'systemkritisch') is also quite low, while deep ecology is represented only in 1987 and 1991. The explanation given in this case is the fact that such discourses are too specific a topic for mainstream newspapers. In 1989, Italy showed a higher number of public actions and also deep ecology increases - is this the year in which this movement was launched? However, the environmental movement in Italy is said to not be radical in nature but accommodated to Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 279 traditional parties and means of mobilization. In EIRE deep ecology is also represented only in radical newspapers, while environmentalist actors are said to generally remain within the confines of the political system. To sum up, the largest differences are in the nature conservation discourse prominent in EIRE, the almost absent risk discourse in Italy, and in the low amount of participatory discourse in BRD and FR where regulatory discourses are predominant. These differences are related to national-specific issue agendas. The largest similarities were found for the risk (UK), political and policy (UK, IT EIRE) and environmental damage discourses (UK and IT). Further explanations for the differences between the environmental discourse types in the four countries can be found in the reports on the Chernobyl story line. From the comparison of these reports we learn that in 1987 the Italian discourse contained 'frames' which appear only later in other countries. These frames, i.e. the general thematization of environmental problems as a threat to human life, globalization, and personalization emerged in UK only in 1990. The distinction between 'Täter-Opfer' which was found in the German discourse in 1989-90, was present already in 1987. Finally, the German representation of Chernobyl as a catalyst of democratization and glasnost in the Soviet Union is to similar to that in UK. In 1990-91 the Italian case again reveals more similarities with the British case. The references to global disaster are similar, as are the comparison with Hiroshima, the emphasis on anxiety and fear, the symbol of the children, the use of Chernobyl as a social metaphor, the globalization and internationalization of the problem perspective and the definitive abandonment of the pro-nuclear position. Other elements were present in UK already in 1987, such as the reassuring discourse on the risks at home and the praise of glasnost (this is in fact described as the late 'rediscovery' of the Chernobyl story in the Italian press). This position on glasnost in the Italian and British press is opposed to the persistent attitude of mistrust in the FAZ analysed for the German case. The Irish case showed the decreasing importance of the use of Chernobyl as a 'social metaphor' in 1992. This might confirm what is said in the other studies, indicating that 1991 was a cyclic arrival point rather than the starting point of a trend. Table 3: Types of environmental discourse BRD EIRE IT UK FR risk 17 21 1-8 30 50 participatory 3 15-20 20 40 2-3 regulatory 50 20 20 35-15 20 environmental damage 5 15-5 15 8-15 10-20 280 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * nature conservation 7 23 10-15 15-5 15-20 9.1.5 Types of action This indicator is available for only four countries (EIRE, IT, BRD, FR). It nevertheless offers an insight into the way in which in these countries the action on the environment has been represented. i. Data EIRE [figure - see full report]: 1. knowledge production (30-45%) 2. legislative/administrative (21-31%) 3. intermediary organizations /semi-public (30-20%) 4. public action (3+4: 34%) IT [figure - see full report]: 1. information production (40-30%) 2. public action (35-20%) 3. legislative administrative (15-20%) 4. semi-public (10-20%) BRD [figure - see full report]: 1. public actions (30-25%, drop 1988 and 1990) 2. legislative/administrative (20-17%, peak 1988 and 1990) 3. accidents/catastrophes (25-20%, peak 1987 and 1991) FR (figure 27): 1. expert (45-60% 1990) 2. public action (30-25%) 3. legislative/administrative (30-20%) 4. intermediary organizations (10-20%) ii. Discussion In both IT and EIRE, information production, legislative and administrative and NGOs action (defined as actions with social function and environmental action) account for the largest proportion of actions (IT: 65-70%; EIRE almost 85%). The category of scientific information was not as prominent in Germany as in the other countries: in BRD it was defined more narrowly as 'Expertisen', whereas in FR expertise was the most important action type. The second most prominent action type in BRD was legislative/administrative with approximately 35% in 1987, then slightly decreasing. Information production scores lower than in other countries, and therefore the sum of the above mentioned categories is lower as well. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 281 Public and semi-public actions account for 50% in Italy with an increase in public actions in 1988 an 1990, and for 34% in EIRE, with an increase in semi-public actions in 1988. However, in EIRE public protest action is low (less than 10%), while in Italy public action is much higher, but comprises not only rallies and marches, but also speeches and public discussions (35% in 1988 and 1990). Thus, the main difference with EIRE is that in IT there is more public action than semi-public (intermediary) action, although it should not be excluded that this difference is due to a different conception of coding categories. In Germany the number of semi-public actions is also lower than 10%. The opposite is true for Ireland, where we have more semi-public action than in Italy and Germany. This may be partly explained by the populist orientation of Irish political culture. FR was more public than semi-public orientated. The explanation given for this low figure in the Irish case was that public concern about the environment was not yet developed but was mainly mediated. The Italian report offered the explanation that public actions more often involved participation of citizens in the role of attendant than in the role of promoter of actions. The press reported mainly symbolic actions and commemorative events. The Italian report also stressed that in years other than 1988 and 1990, actions with a social function and environmental action in the form of information production were clearly predominant over general public actions. It is not possible however to draw any generalizing conclusions from these figures, as they refer only to one week of news coverage which is likely to have a higher amount of public actions than average, given the Chernobyl anniversaries. It is therefore even more remarkable that the highest score of public actions did not fall in 1987 and 1991. In these years, instead, the production of information seems to be predominant and higher than in other years in both IT and EIRE. Public action mobilization is therefore likely to be rather connected to nationally defined public issues. Also in the German case public and semi-public actions were the most prominent. However, in contrast to the other two cases here the peaks did in fact fall in 1987 and 1991, the first and fifth anniversary year (n=266 - full report p. 51, graph 15): approximately n=75 in 1987; 30 in 1988 and 1990; 50 in 1991 and 40 in 1992). In France, the peaks are in 1990. The importance in BRD of the accidents/catastrophes action type (n=137) was different to other categories. This category is more important in 1987 and 1991 (graph 16 - full report: approximate amount of 50), and seems thus to be directly influenced by 'Chernobyl'. However in the report on the reunification discourse we read also that the influence of problems in the ex-GDR led to the creation of a catastrophe 'discourse' (see discourse types). Note, however, that this category was not coded/measured in the other studies, so that this figure has no comparative value. In the other studies this category is likely to coincide with the information production category, which is more of an action category proper. Another category which was coded separately in the German case 282 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * alone was that of scientific conferences/meeting which in the other cases could be part of the information production category. The low amount (less than 10%) of judicial actions reported is the same for IT, BRD and EIRE. To sum up, in the distribution of public actions, information production and legal/administrative action types, the Italian and Irish cases show large similarities. This may also be attributed to the fact that these studies coordinated the use of coding schemes already in earlier phase of analysis. However, only one major difference was found for the German case, namely the large share of the accidents/catastrophes category, which was not included as a category in the other cases. Table 4: Action types/country (1987-1991/2) BRD IT EIRE FR public 30-25 35-20 10-5 30-25 semi-public 5 10-20 30-20 10-20 legal/administrative 20-17 15-20 25 30-20 information 10 40-30 30-45 60-40 9.1.6 Framing Strategies This last indicator was compared for the Irish, Italian, German, and French case. i. Data EIRE (table 4) [figure - see also full report]: direct politicization frame cluster 57%-67% 1. collective common interest 22%; personalization 22% 2. moralization 19% (decreasing) 3. scientification 17% (increasing) 4. mobilization of fear 6-10% IT [figure - see full report]: Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 283 direct politicization frame cluster 35-50% 1. scientification/technologization (30-15%; peaks in 1987 and 1991) 2. mobilization of fear relatively high (10-25%, peak 1988) 3. personalization (8-20%) 4. collective common interest (8-18%) BRD [figure - see full report]: 1. moralization 40%, shift 1988-90, more than 50% in 1990 (increasing trend) 2. scientification/technologization 1987 30%, down 1988-90, 25-20% 1992 (overall downwards trend) 3. mobilization of fear 1988/89 imp, 1990 low (overall downwards trend) 4. collective interests gaining interest from 1/8-1/9 in 87 to 1/5 in 92 (upwards trend) FR (figure 28): 1. moralization 20-10% 2. scientification 60-20% 3. mobilization of fear 20-30% 4. collective interests 20-10%, personalization 10-3% ii. Discussion The German case shows a similarity with the Italian in that both give importance to the mobilization of fear strategy. This strategy reaches 30% in 1987 in BRD and almost 30% in IT in 1988, where fear is mainly represented in news on events and accidents, and in abstract debates. In EIRE it does not go beyond 10%, and is said to be used mainly by environmental groups as a concrete action strategy. In the German case, this strategy seems to act in tandem with the scientification strategy (which is thus used to dramatize it?), as both show a downward trend; this is not so for the Italian case. The importance of the scientification/technologization strategy shows the second similarity between IT and BRD. In BRD this frame was indicative of a trend to change the use of energy resources etc., rather than of playing down the risk. However, the Italian case shows a slight downward trend in 1989-1990 but recovers to the level of 1987 in 1991. In the French case it is extremely high, especially in 1987, then decreasing and recovering only in 1991 (tied to expert discourse). In the Italian and Irish case this strategy mainly had a function of de-politicization/de-moralization (i.e. for political actors or experts to show objectivity through the use of technical information). Instead, the substrategy of dramatization (through the use of scientific information) was prominent in EIRE - in the report on political culture this was explained by the 'uneven transition to scientific-technological society'. In the Italian case this strategy of dramatization/politicization was less prominent but increased in importance after 1989 connected to national/local corruption scandals. 284 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * IT, BRD and EIRE have in common the relative importance of collective common interest appeals as a framing strategy. EIRE was different from IT in that it took controversy as an assumption in the appeal to collective interests, which was used in political culture on a local basis to establish solidarity. This strategy was part of the politicization cluster (see below). Personalization was a constantly important strategy only in EIRE. The predominance of both the collective interest and personalization strategies hints at a populist tendency in Irish political culture. This frame was used as a blaming strategy in combination with other strategies in a cluster, such as moralization and appeals to responsibility or collective interest. The functions of these frames was to politicize or depoliticize the issues, and they were used by environmental, and, to a lesser extent, business actors. In Italy it gained importance after 1989 as a result of news coverage on corruption scandals. The increase in moralization in BRD is combined with a growing appeal to collective interests in the German discourse. The moralization strategy could either attribute blame to others (such as external causes) or appeal to scientific responsibility for the Chernobyl accident or for environmental problems in general. Reading the Chernobyl report it seems that this strategy was activated to install a 'system-critical' discourse which maintained a strong polarization between the West and the East, whereas in other countries more hope and trust was expressed towards the positive changes in the Soviet Union. In the report on reunification, it is said that moralization was part of a general framing of political culture around romanticized life-style problems and 'Sekundärtugenden'. Moralization was significant in EIRE with 17%, and might be explained by the influence of the religious and other oppositional representations in Irish political culture. Moralization was also represented with +/- 10% in the overall Italian sample. In both countries the main function of this strategy was to draw attention to the responsibility of political and economic actors in an international perspective, rather than on that of scientific actors. The direct politicization frame was a cluster of framing strategies proposed in the Italian and Irish reports. It comprised the following strategies: personalization, collective interest, anti-elitism, law & order needs, and the sub-strategy of scientification to politicize. This cluster was probably created because the single categories were considered too specialized and had too low scores in order to show any significant results. By doing so, the Italian and Irish reports concluded that in a large part of the sample environmentalism was framed from a political point of view. In cross-comparison with agent types for the Irish case, it is shown that this view is voiced not only by environmental agents, but also by political and business actors. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 285 To sum up, the direct politicization of environmental issues was higher in EIRE than in IT, and in both countries increased over the years. The link of environmental problems and politics showed that environmental problems were of a predominant political nature both in IT and EIRE. It seems that oppositional discourses which used personalization and dramatization were more prominent in the Irish press, while the Italian press built more on a consensual model or hypothetical disputes. The mobilization of fear was high in IT and BRD but remarkably low and insignificant in EIRE. Moralization does not go beyond 10% in Italy, while it is already higher in EIRE, and the dominant and relatively stable strategy in the BRD discourse. It is not completely clear from the report to which factors the relevance of this strategy is to be attributed. Table 5: Framing strategies/country BRD IT EIRE FR mobilization fear 2515 10-25 6-10 20-30 personalization 10 5-20 22 10-3 collective common interest 1020 10 22 20-10 moralization 5040 10 19 20-10 scientification 3020 30-15 17 60-20 Framing strategies are compound interpretations of the world in which environmental issues are embedded. Their comparison reveals differences which have to be analysed for the way in which they internally structure the discursive universe of environmentalism in Europe. Whether it is a question here of separated cultures of communication or whether they are related in their specific difference has to be clarified later. On these grounds alone we cannot exclude that an encompassing comparison will show up complementarities indicating specific power structures in the European discursive universe of ecological communication. 9.1.7 Concluding remarks The main similarities were found between IT and UK and IT and EIRE for different indicators and categories: The similarities between IT and EIRE were based on their specific cultural and national identities. 286 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The similarities between IT and UK were based on the international and global perspective on environmental problems. From here we can deduce that the Italian discourse was more heterogeneous, as it managed to incorporate both points of view. BRD differs from the other countries with respect to the importance of catastrophes as motives for action and moralization as a framing strategy. It shares with other discourses the emphasis on chemical/physical problems, risk and scientific discourses. EIRE differs regarding the prominence of flora/fauna problems, personalization and coll/common interest frames, and its nature conservation discourse. Further comparison of the in-depth analyses of the resonance of environmental issues in national political cultures is needed to explain the differences and similarities detected in this exploratory analysis of quantitative data. 9.2 INDIVIDUALIZING COMPARISON II: THE CHERNOBYL MEDIA STORY LINES SINCE 1987 9.2.1 The principles of analysis The intention of these case analyses is to show the basic narrative structure or story line of the environmental discourse in the media. A 'story line' is more than a series of frames around an event, but also includes the linkages between them. Thus the story line refers to a kind of structured discourse, i.e. to processes of framing problems in a way that amounts to a specific handling of the Chernobyl issue over time - a specific story or narrative. This story can be seen as a cultural self-commentary of society. A corresponding superior question refers to the ways in which the Chernobyl incident is coped with by society, and how it is - as a collective experience - integrated into societal interpretations of reality. Similarities and differences in the media story lines were identified for the way in which: (i) responsibility or blame for the accident was sought and attributed and to whom; (ii) risk was exteriorized/interiorized, was defined and evaluated as controllable or uncontrollable, and on the basis of which criteria; (iii) position was taken towards the situation in the Soviet Union, towards Glasnost and popular resistance movements; (iv) internal risk discourses were framed at political-institutional-expert-popular level; (v) final story lines and Chernobyl metaphors emerged in the context of national political cultures. The following comparison follows the three stages that this discourse has gone through in a parallel manner in all the countries studied. This is again an indicator of the high degree of coherence of the discursive universe of ecological communication in Europe. 9.2.2 The initial story 1987 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 287 In the initial phase the risk discourse was predominant and was mainly used to present external risk in terms of East-West contrasts. The West's technological and politicalideological superiority was used to frame the risks related to nuclear energy use as controllable. Both Ireland and France made use of historical metaphors to describe the impact of the accident, in Ireland for the reason of absence of culture of nuclear power and in France as a more general heuristic device. Both Germany and Britain asked for international cooperation in risk prevention. In Germany politicization was related to debates between different political parties and movements on nuclear energy use; the discourse of controllability of risk and technological progress as a guarantee to safety prevailed and was used as a legitimation for the use of nuclear energy. In France as well the internal risks of its own nuclear energy use were denied, but the accident was nevertheless perceived as a threat to the public consensus on the French plants. Thus, while Germany made explicit reference to progress and civilization as a means of ideologically tainting the allegedly backward and less civilized Soviet Union, in France it was simply claimed that French nuclear plants were safe. The latter claim was based rather on a nationalist self-commentary. The initial story lines (1987, the first year after Chernobyl) tell the following: UK: Glasnosting the Soviet risks BRD:Within the course of civilization and progress, risks are inevitable and controllable (FAZ) uncontrollable (SZ) EIRE: Kremlinisation of risk, historical embedding, symbolic containment of crisis, barometer change S.U. IT: political and technological superiority with respect to S.U.94 FR: political condemnation of S.U., France controls risk i. The blame for risks All countries exteriorized blame for the Chernobyl accident to the Soviet system. By doing so, the risks of nuclear power were exteriorized and explained by the East-West contrast in explicitly ideological-political terms (Ireland, Germany FAZ, Italy). In France, this was partly replaced by explanations in terms of human error, and in Britain by a focus on technological deficiency, in both cases already in 1987. ii. The (un)controllability of risks The controllability of risk was supported by the idea of technological superiority of the West in general (Italy) or in particular of the country in question (Germany, France). In 94 The 1987 title 'Who is to blame?' in reality is only reflected in the politicisation of the disaster, but it is not clear how it relates to the other frames which are identified in the report, as no clear story line has yet emerged yet in this initial phase (see Italian case 5.2.2). 288 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Germany, progress was not viewed as risky in itself but rather as the precondition for mastering risks. In Britain, Italy and Germany and Ireland the use of expert and scientific discourse was most prominent in minimizing risk. In Ireland, not only the Soviet Union but also the British authorities were held responsible for the risks connected with the use of nuclear power. The British and German SZ discourses showed that environmental protest actors viewed the risks as uncontrollable. The claim that nuclear radiation damaged the lifeworld was predominant throughout the sample of SZ, and became the generalized and most prominent interpretative scheme in the UK in 1990-1991. In this final phase it also appeared in Italy, France and Ireland (see below). In France, public accountability and safety matters were raised, as the belief in a technological superiority of the West was fading and the risk discourse was internalized (la 'nationalisation' du phénomène, Le Monde). On the other hand, the interests of the domestic nuclear energy industry were given protection by downplaying risk (Le Parisien) and by replacing the risk discourse with appeals to greater openness (L'Humanité). The demand for openness was thus present already in 1987 whereas in other countries this came up only in the second phase. Both France and Britain were different in that they witnessed a nascent internalization of the nuclear issue already in this first phase. iii. Glasnost Whereas Ireland, Britain and Italy recognized the positive role of Glasnost already in 1987, generally speaking Germany did not until 1991. Britain took a more active stand by making pleas for support of Glasnost, and viewed this as a means of containing the external risks of nuclear disasters in the S.U.. Thus, in Britain the positive impact of Glasnost was given more emphasis and despite the exteriorisation of guilt and the downplaying of internal risk through scientific discourse, some effort was made in the initial phase to posit the problems deriving from Chernobyl in an international perspective of change and as an opportunity to demand for an increasing openness towards dealing with risks in the use of nuclear energy. In the second phase, in France (although without explicit mention of Glasnost), Britain, Italy, and Ireland, Glasnost became a metaphor for the need of effective information about both the effects of Chernobyl (where mistrust was expressed towards the management of the accident by experts and Soviet authorities) and of nuclear energy risks at home ("eco-glasnost") for reasons of public accountability rather than for reasons of technological control. In Ireland, environmental actors and experts expressed criticism of secrecy at British Energy Policy (the risk of Sellafield), and at Irish government and NEB with the aim of increasing public accountability on the risks of Chernobyl to health and its economic consequences. In Britain the positive Glasnost Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 289 symbol was counterbalanced by adverting risks in eastern European countries, which again revealed its international perspective on Chernobyl news. German discourse seemed more sceptical about Glasnost effect: the need for openness was applied only to the S.U. and not to information about internal nuclear energy problems, as it was assumed that in modern Germany risks were under control. The absence of positive reference to Glasnost, present in all other countries, was to be explained by the predominantly negative image of the Soviet political system in the FAZ, counterbalanced only by sympathy and positive evaluation of Soviet protest actors, especially in 1990/91. This "Glasnost from below" was viewed as a form of modernization and democratization on the Western model (resistance to the system). Thus, in Germany Chernobyl was either taken to symbolize the decline and the sins of the socialist system (1991, FAZ) or to express sympathy with S.U. dissidents. Instead, in Ireland the focus was on the democratization project (1991) and the effective positive changes in S.U. (1992), as these were taken as an example for national selfdetermination projects in Ireland. The following table shows the framing of the risk discourse with respect to the blame for risks (first row), the (un)controllability of risks (second row) and the attitude towards Glasnost (third row). Table 1: 1987 initial risk discourse Germany S.U.: culture of experts, institutional practices (FAZ); critical of S.U. and German institutions (SZ) Italy S.U. versus Europe: unreliable political system, poor technology Ireland both S.U. (secrecy, but also internal dissidents) and Britain as second exterior variable Britain S.U.: science, nonaccountability, technological deficiencies; conclusion: West should help France S.U.: human deficiency, technical deficiency leading to political condemnation inevitable, controllable (technical efficiency) (FAZ); non-controllable and irresponsible (SZ) normalization and rationalization in expert discourse on safety and technological progress (acceptable risk) versus less strong, ethical discourse (unacceptable risk) risk of nuclear power questioned politically (relation to Britain), technology, however, not risky in itself controllable (expert discourse) versus report on risks by activists (internal risk discourse nascent); concerns: safety and freedom, information; national debate on nuclear power controllable safety at home; secrecy should be broken; superior technology and science as legitimating devices 290 remains pale Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * positive role shift from traditional position of closure registered in S.U. appeal for support as a plea for liberation from Soviet control lack of information 9.2.3 Second phase 1988/89: Interiorisation The story lines of this phase can be summarized as follows: UK: Unexpected consequences in the West - risks home and abroad (1988) Reassessing risks - a parliamentary affair (1989) IT: Public protest and mistrust towards government BRD:Social drama of Chernobyl, security is a question of the political system involved (no internalization, no risk) EIRE: NEB versus government, internal safety matters, effects radiation on public health and economics FR: disinformation affects France, Chernobyl affects public health In the second phase, the greatest common denominator of all country studies was politicization and the interiorisation of risk, i.e. the doubts (because of disinformation, France), uncertainty (because of a changing political situation, Italy), conflicts (Ireland) and contrasts (between political parties, Germany) deriving from there. Interiorisation was partly a direct consequence of new information on the effects of the accident on the national territory, in Britain and Ireland most clearly in food contamination and harm to animals. The Irish and Italian case showed the same predominance of a politicization frame which revealed the mobilization of mistrust towards the home institutions, for reasons related to the political cultures of the two countries. In Italy this led to a - symbolic comparison of domestic problems with those abroad and in Ireland and France to demands for eco-glasnost in the national discourse. Both in Ireland and Italy institutions were at the centre of conflict. The institutions themselves tried to de-politicize the issue, in contrast here to Britain. In Britain mobilization questioning the use of nuclear power was extended to parliament; environmental issues were placed on the political agenda. The scientific discourse's contribution to the claim of controllable risks was delegitimated by new information on the real effects of Chernobyl. In the Irish case, expert discourse continued to play a role in the expression of criticism. Both in Ireland and Britain, questions of accountability started to deal more with the protection of the public and collective common interest. The German FAZ discourse was different in that it continued to externalize blame and risks by way of moralization, and scandalization and the attribution of blame became more prominent. Criticism of the Soviet political system had thus even risen in importance while in other countries it lost importance. In addition, the politicization of Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 291 internal issues directed at nuclear energy use sees a polarization between expert and institutional discourses legitimating pro-nuclear energy politics and critical discourses (in SZ) countering it. 9.2.4 1990-91 Climax: continuities and change The third phase shows the following story lines: UK: The 'new' victims of Chernobyl: human tragedy and pleas for aid. Global risks and disturbing natures - rituals in the face of a universal death threat FR: as UK a pity discourse, damaging effects without causal agent, human life threat IT: positive role glasnost, questioning modernity, future of modern society, risk is unacceptable, moralization, need for change BRD:focus on suffering caused by irresponsibility Soviet institutions, attention to public protest inside S.U.. The decline of the East, the sins of the socialist system and the risks involved in progress (moralization) EIRE: radiation effects Ireland criticism of secrecy, ineffectual state response, effects on public health and economy. In the third phase, the five story lines partially converged, although specific features remained, depending on the national political cultures in which environment is embedded. After having mentioned the main similarities, these country-specific features are briefly included in this treatment of the final story lines. All national cases witnessed an increasing emphasis on risks to human life, long-term effects in terms of health hazards and global life risks, and a progressive replacement of expert discourses by public perspectives on risks. This process was most evident in the British case; however it was also registered in the other countries. The solution of the nuclear dilemma in public discourse led to an increasing use of the frames of mobilization of fear, personalization and moralization in most countries. The dramatization of events by the image of suffering victims and children was common to all countries in 1990. The resulting anxiety frames were supported by medical expertise (1990) and produced appeals to international solidarity and aid (FR 1990, BRD 1990, UK 1991). In both Britain and Italy the international perspective was linked to risk prevention and accountability, and to the mobilization of a global risk. This was also related to the admission of nuclear risks in these countries. All countries with the exception of Germany now recognized global responsibility for risks related to nuclear energy use. This also led to a shift in the Chernobyl story lines away from acceptance of nuclear technology towards pro-environmental positions. In Germany (FAZ) and France this shift was more feeble as only safety questions were raised. In Italy and Britain the rejection was stronger, as pro-environmentalist discourses were more widely accepted and institutionalized. Table 2 summarizes whether the one to be blamed/made responsible is external or internal (or both or none) to the country in the final story line (1990-1991). 292 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Table 2: Blame/responsibility in final story line (1990-1991) Germany (both) socialist system (FAZ); progress (SZ) Italy (external) S.U. is to be blamed, no risk in Italy (1990) Ireland (external) Britain to be blamed for risk Sellafield poses to Ireland; Irish state of secrecy and ineffectual response; individual responsibility (marginal, 1992) Britain (both) uncontrollable risks are caused by S.U. and Western nuclear complex France (no-one) fall of mankind caused by radiation 9.2.5 Elements of the emerging environmental discourse: Chernobyl metaphors Four different symbols of Chernobyl were found in the five country media discourses. The symbols also included conceptions of blame or responsibility and criteria for actions to be taken - these are treated separately. i. Chernobyl symbolizes an unacceptable universal risk (IT, EIRE, Germany (SZ)) or a fatal threat (UK, FR) to health, to human (1990) and global (1991) life From the conception of this symbol followed the demand to abandon nuclear energy, in IT, EIRE and Germany (in Ireland in opposition to Britain and the Irish state; in German SZ in opposition to the myth of progress kept alive by experts and political system). Instead, Britain and France focused on the international and global solutions to nuclear energy risks and repercussions of Chernobyl. ii. Chernobyl symbolizes death and destruction, the fall of civilization and mankind (IT, UK, FR) The Italian discourse stated the fall of civilization with a moralizing aim: it was a risk which could be turned by restating the attachment to the good life starting at the national level. On the other hand, the Italian discourse insisted - however less importantly - on the exteriorisation of blame on the Soviet authorities and the denial of internal risk. Both France and Britain created anxiety with the Chernobyl metaphor of death and destruction. They transformed Chernobyl into a metaphor of the absolute doom of mankind. Responses to remove this doom either were pragmatistic, in the case of Britain, or presented a conception of impossible redemption with solidarity as a form of exorcism, in the case of France. iii. Chernobyl is a sign of change (IT, EIRE) Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 293 Chernobyl was used in Italy to represent a specific feature of the national political culture (see above). This indicated that the Chernobyl metaphor served as a more optimistic aim for a change starting from within the national context. In the Irish discourse the optimism expressed towards 1991 instead referred to the rebirth of the Soviet people, whereas anxiety filled the discourse on the national context, where exterior causes still prevailed. The fact that both Italy and Ireland transformed the metaphor into a possibility for change might be connected to their strong Catholic culture, in the sense of a belief in a possible redemption of mankind even after the greatest tragedy. Optimism was absent in the British and French discourses. iv. Chernobyl symbolizes the fall of the socialist system (Germany (FAZ)). In the German case, the tragedy was not that universal and absolute as in the British and French case, but it was not optimistic about changes in the Soviet Union either. The FAZ took Chernobyl as a metaphor of the fall of the socialist system. This more rigid position is explained by the predominance of East-West polarization throughout the German FAZ sample. Table 3: Chernobyl metaphors 1990-1991 Germany Italy Ireland Britain France risks of progress East-West technical and technological progress versus fall and sins of socialist system (FAZ) moral stance internal (SZ) fall of civilization and unacceptable worldwide health risks. Change, turning point (politicization), choice for life (moral stance) opportunity and rebirth: a new social order has emerged in S.U.; politicization of internal health risks and economic consequences threat to human life, death, lost spirituality, unknown and permanent threats to human life (1990) and global life (1991) universal suffering of humanity, impossible redemption, fall of mankind 9.2.6 Typifying the different media story lines In the following, the cases are presented with the aim of identifying their similiarities and differences. This methodological strategy tries to maximize differences and similiarities between the cases in order to identify types of environmental culture in Europe. i. French and British landscape 294 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The French media stories, instead of supporting personalization frames, witnessed a depersonalization and de-politicization in the attribution of responsibility: the main risk was radiation. These impersonal accounts completely removed the search for agents responsible for radiation effects. The French discourse was similar to the British in its representation of the effects of radiation on human life and landscape, which is confirmed in the resonating theme of 'landscape' in both countries' environmental discourses. ii. German (FAZ) collective identity and ideological contrasts The German FAZ continued to exteriorize blame on to the Soviet Union for having caused the suffering of the victims. Thus, instead of personalization frames and the globalization of risk, moralization was predominant. The East-West opposition, the idea of superiority, and the combination of political system and risk frames were maintained without being altered. The reason is that in political conflict discourses in Germany ideology is a crucial building block of collective identity. This is also reflected in the analysis of the resonating theme of reunification. Furthermore, the prominence of technological superiority and technical efficiency discourses shows that German pro-nuclear energy policies were supported by a strong expert culture. As was stated above, in other countries the role of expert discourses had been replaced by attention to public concerns. In the German FAZ discourse such an alternative notion emerged only timidly in 1991. Chernobyl became a warning sign not only for the sins of the Soviet system but for the internal risks of progress.95 The marginalisation of internal critical discourses was opposed to a sympathy for opponents of the political system in the East. The popular protest and resistance movement in the Soviet Union was seen as a positive sign of change, as it was identified as a change towards the Western model of democracy. The other countries had not only viewed this "Glasnost from below" positively but also the original Glasnost. 95 This alternative interpretation separated the risk and political system frames, and questioned the controllability of risk and the limits to progress. However, this admission of risk was misleading, as it was used as an apparent concession to the critical discourse of opponents to nuclear power, while in reality the aim was to legitimate its use (see German summary statement, 5.2.2). Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 295 iii. Italian exceptionalism In part of the Italian discourse, risk was denied and rephrased in terms of control. This might be explained by the fact that Italy had decided to ban nuclear energy and thus had already taken on responsibility in this sense. On the other hand, the interiorisation of risk in the Italian discourse's moralizing questions on modern society and life style was similar to the SZ discourse in Germany in earlier phases. The SZ used this to impose a pro-environmental moral ethical interpretation on the general risks of progress. Instead, in Italy it had the function of symbolizing not only the devastating effects of nuclear disaster but also possible changes within Italian society, given the ongoing transformation of the political system which had started with the 'mani pulite' affair. iv. Irish dependency In Ireland the exteriorisation of risks was marked by its relations with Britain and the debate over Sellafield. The resistance of separate Soviet states to the central system and their struggle for independence was positively identified with in relation to Ireland's own historical problem of 'dependency'. These types emerge from the analysis of the different political cultures in which environmentalism is embedded (see above the respective subchapters in the national country studies). Here the Basque country offers a particularly intriguing additional case insofar as it provides an explicit instrumentalization of environmental issues and conflicts by political groups. It remains an open question to what extent environmental politics will survive this instrumentalization after having used the politicizing starter for its own case. The Basque case shows that such a politicization might hamper seriously the development of a genuine environmental politics. 9.3 VARIATION FINDING COMPARISON: ACCOUNTING FOR THE DIVERSITY OF ENVIRONMENTAL CULTURES EUROPEAN 9.3.1 Cultural biases: the political culture of environmentalism For the purpose of variation finding comparison, the cases can be classified as to their degree of 'homogeneity' (or 'heterogeneity'). The homogenizing discourses are presented by the British and the French case, which show a clear linear development of environmental discourse. The story lines identified in the media analysis of the coverage of post-Chernobyl indicate this clearly. The Italian and Irish cases' heterogeneity depends on their political cultures. The German case is characterized by ideological cleavages. The German FAZ discourse on technical efficiency and technological 296 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * superiority is opposed to the moral/ethical discourse of the SZ. In the FAZ solutions to nuclear energy risks continue to be framed within the East-West opposition exclusively. In the SZ they are framed in terms of a limit to progress.96 i. Similarities between Britain and France: stable political systems Britain and France have relatively stable political cultures which is reflected in their use of the resonating theme of landscape, reinforcing the sense of national belonging: in Fr in a more metaphysical way and in UK a more practical critical sense. In these countries the issue culture on environmental issues is more consolidated. In fact, the UK displays pragmatism in its proposals for solutions at international level and is, together with Ireland, the most unprejudiced towards changes in the Soviet Union. ii. Similarities between Italy and Ireland: internalization directed at political change Both Italy and Ireland have relatively unstable political systems. Neither country has nuclear plants themselves. Both express mistrust towards political institutions, although in Ireland anti-British sentiment is more outspoken. Ireland is in fact different from Italy in its emphasis on national identity. In the Irish case the diversity depends on the issue of dependency in Irish-British relations and resistance to British nuclear industry, as well as on conflicts between local communities and the Irish state. This emphasis is not apparent in the Italian case, something which may be explained by the instability of its political culture and thus of the cultural orientations and self-comments on Italian society, which mainly reveal the need for change as reflected in the popular protest against political corruption. iii. Religious identity The religious identity (Catholicism) in the Irish and Italian cases may account for a different form of moralization and as we said a more positive outlook on the possibility of change. This is reflected in the use of biblical metaphors in the symbolization of Chernobyl. In addition, this religious identity may favour moralization on national community level (especially in Ireland), without translating these into individual life-style choices, as in Germany, and without urging for international political responsibility, as in 96 This probably depends also on the sample selection. For example, the same ideological cleavages could have been found for Italy on the basis of a different sample selection, i.e. by comparing the discourse of Il Manifesto and Il Corriere. However, il Manifesto does not have the same political importance as the SZ. In any case, the same would not be true for Britain and France. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 297 Britain. The shift away from political responsibility is of course also related to the mistrust of political institutions (see above). iv. Ideology based versus anxiety based beliefs Germany is ideology based; both expert discourse and moralization frames remain prominent also in the final phase. Britain and Italy are anxiety based, and take a proenvironmental stance. They both witness a globalization and personalization of the nuclear threat. The British 'de-scientification of the nuclear dilemma into a moral problem to be resolved in public discourse' is rather similar to the Irish case's opposition to the state. France is anxiety based to some extent, but the discourse is also determined by nationalism, as in the Irish case's opposition to British nuclear energy. v. Community-based versus individual approaches UK: international community; individual right to safety EIRE: national community versus Britain and EC and local communities versus the state (personalization and collective common interest frames equally strong); individual responsibility marginal BRD:collective identity, but focus on individual responsibility in SZ. IT: collective common interest in opposition to corrupt political system and in the formulation of the need for change FR national community 9.3.2 Degree and direction of the variation The environment is embedded in national political cultures; it is thus linked to other nonenvironmental themes via general patterns of cultural resonances which pervade national societies. Resonating themes are nationally specific. They are defined as the umbrella framings of environmental issues. They give affective impetus to environmental problems, generate public attention and influence attention cycles. We identified the following themes: - "landscape" in England and France (and partially Germany) - "political corruption" in Italy - "dependency" in Ireland - "collective identity" in Germany and the Basque country (and partially France) These cultural themes express different cultural biases (Thompson et al. 1990; Douglas 1966, 1992). In the following scheme a theoretical model of cultural biases is presented which will allow us to make sense of the differences in resonance structure in the countries studied. This model, the grid/group theory, claims that cultural biases are the product of strong/weak grid (which is outside control) and strong/weak group ties. Combining these two factors we arrive at the following classification of cultural biases: grid + 298 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * fatalism group - hierarchy autonomy individualism group + egalitarianism grid - The four biases, "fatalism", "individualism", "egalitarianism" and "hierarchy" (including a fifth bias which is a peculiar idealized bias called "autonomy") represent the end points of a quadratic field within which our cases can be located. Abstracting from the social particularities and emphasizing the structural features which make the cases different we arrive at the following comparative conclusion: fatalism "political corruption" hierarchy "dependency" individualism "landscape" egalitarianism "collective identity" + "nationalism" An interpretation of these cases would be no more than a summary of the summary: Europe contains in itself the full range of resonance structures which might be theoretically imagined. But to simply refer to cultural heterogeneity is too simple as a conclusion because these differences interact. War and trade have been the two classic modes of interaction which have contributed to the further differentiation of these biases. Reciprocal observation and repetition of the way in which one culture sees the other (the so-called "prejudices") have again reproduced these biases. National media discourses with their preferred themes and frames, different national stories about the same objective event, different political cultures shaping environmental politics are the cultural carriers of these differences. One interesting point refers to the bias "autonomy". It is a cultural bias which contains other biases as deficient options. This ideal cultural bias is claimed by "Europe": it transcends the cultural biases of its constituent parts. This "bias of biases" has a peculiar cultural carrier: no specific media discourse, no specific story line, no specific political culture. It is a cultural bias which can create itself out of competing national biases. It will be a reflectively constructed bias. This is what autonomy means: to construct the culture within which one wants to live. In the environmental field there are interesting signs of such an emerging cultural bias: a media discourse targeting environmental issues in Europe, a new story invented, the sustainability frame, and an elitist institutional culture specific to European institutions. This cultural bias is however lacking one central binding force: affective identification. Cultural biases are highly affective - with the exception of the "autonomous" who exists beyond affective bonds. Whether this is a stable sociocultural foundation is an open problem. We will see what Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 299 this implies in terms of defining a field of interaction between social actors. The resonance structure of public discourse defines cultural rules of the game. It defines a shared world between social actors which is the precondition of acting together. How this cultural context is mobilized by actors and how this allows the creation of an institutional network with specific rules of the game will be analysed within the second part of our comparative analysis: the analysis of actor strategies in the environmental field and the environmetnal regime emerging from these strategies.97 97 The term "regime", often used in present-day social-science literature, denotes nothing more that a specific configuration of institutional rules which constrain the options of the different actors in the field. The meaning of "regime" covers well this phenomenon of limiting options for action. 300 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 10 Comparing Environmental Regimes in Europe 10.1 INDIVIDUALIZING COMPARISON I: THE CONSTRUCTION OF A POLICY FIELD Given the shift of politics into the public realm and the emergence of a politics which trespasses the institutional boundaries of politics, the role of political actors changes. They become specialists for organizing meetings, managing committees, and presenting decisions to the electoral body. They become professionals for procedural problems. The procedural forms typical for bureaucratic or judicial institutions extend beyond their realm: they have to handle institutions for communication. This trend is especially pronounced in the field of environmental policy making in which the communication is constitutive, firstly, because through communication it is to be defined what the problem is, and secondly, because communication is necessary to find a solution which neutralizes egoistic interests in favour of creating a common good. Within this context the communication strategies of political actors have a meaning which amounts to more than mere symbolic politics. To make sense of the comparative evidence on the strategies of political actors we have to take into account the cultural framing of their activities as well as the institution-building efforts they are engaged in. The construction of an environmental policy field is dependent on the cultural framing of the issue98 and on the organizational forms through which these issues are dealt with. Therefore we will treat comparatively in detail the following three dimensions of the strategies of political actors: (1) the policy style, (2) the information style, and (3) the institutions built for reducing the transaction costs of environmental policy making. The results of the research on political actors can be summarized in the following propositions: IRELAND: ambivalent image of political actors (confidence regarding nuclear issue, lack of confidence regarding chemical industry policy) ITALY: image of delegitimized and incompetent political actors prevalent, policy actions mainly on subnational/local levels where reliance is on traditional networks of communication GERMANY: legalistic/rational political actors with a strong tendency toward establishing dialogic institutions 98 See for this argument Eder (1994). Here the cultural context of environmental policy making has been emphasized and radicalized to the point that the cultural framing of the issue is constitutive for political action on environmental problems and the related policy activities. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 301 UNITED KINGDOM: political actors acting in a legalistic/rational way, tending toward openness and communicative institutions FRANCE: bureaucratically detached, coopting actors in the environmental field into administrative procedures The dimensions identified in these descriptions point to particular configurations of the policy field. They show an interesting similarity between Germany and the United Kingdom which combine legal-rationalistic orientations with a careful openness toward communication. Surprisingly enough, this opening of the policy field has more barriers to overcome in Britain than in Germany, due to the formers' long and continuous tradition of a secrecy style in state politics. In the latters' case there is more historical discontinuity which can explain the rather strong orientation toward emerging new policy styles. Given that environmental policy making is so dependent upon public consent and support the openness toward communicative styles of bargaining might explain the fact that concern for the environment is so well embedded in German political life. This does not imply that its environmental policy is further advanced. The contrary could be the case when we take into account that the emerging new communicative institutions open new spaces for strategic behaviour which can block further developments in environmental policy making (e.g., through "communicative filibustering"). The difference between France and Italy is striking in terms of representing two extreme ways of involving political actors into the field of environmental policy making. France co-opts, whereas Italy excludes those political actors who have a stake in this policy field. The effects are in both cases similar regarding the role of the public: it creates rather strong legitimation problems for which no institutional filter or way of dealing with the problem is available. The privatization of the issue or its subordination to higher national aims implies that any collective mode of sensitizing, mobilizing and solving environmental problems is excluded. This runs the danger of estrangement of the public with casual protests which however can be generalized in terms of increasing nonsupport for the existing institutions. In times of crisis such institutional arrangements of politics normally are no longer capable of reacting adequately. Recourse to traditional symbolic politics (with national symbols or personalizing politics) is the means left. Innovations in the field of environmental politics are not to be expected from such a configuration. Changes will have to be induced from the outside. Ireland represents - together with the Basque case - an intermediate case between the two extremes of Germany/UK and France/Italy. As developing polities they are using new collective orientations for overcoming traditional cleavages and constraints. The environment is an ideal case for doing so: against England in the Irish case, against Spain in the Basque case. The national tones provide the collective background for politics. The risk is that this reference is stronger than the concern for the environment which it is supposed to substitute for. 10.2 INDIVIDUALIZING COMPARISON II: THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF PROTEST 302 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The first actor to be looked at are the social movements that have been the main promoters of the environmental issues since the seventies. The development of environmental movement organizations is the key to the understanding of this collective actor in the game. Movement actors are profiting from a risky and moralized environment. The cultural setting favours their organizational stabilization. The nuclear issue is only a historically important case which has served these actors to establish themselves as public interest groups of sufficient organizational strength. Since the issues in the environmental field are numerous, any issue can be moralized and made the object of a risk discourse or an alternative moralizing discourse. The media analysis has shown to what extent different issues were linked to specific moral frames which in turn set the stage for movement actors. Comparative evidence on the strategies of movement actors will focus on three related aspects: (1) the action repertoire of these actors and the division of labour between these actors, (2) the media-related activities which make practical use of the moral frames set in action through movement-specific action repertoire, and (3) the specific risks of participation in collective action with non-movement actors, i.e. political and industrial actors. The results of the research on movement actors can be summarized in the following propositions: IRELAND: institutionalization of the conservation wing; positive media attention (however somewhat declining) ITALY: growing institutionalization as public interest groups; declining media attention GERMANY: early institutionalization through party organization; strong split between pragmatic and fundamentalist streams; recognition as an institutional actor in the political field UNITED KINGDOM: high professionalization of environmental movements; establishment of movement organizations called "NGO's" (non-governmental organizations) which put them on an equal standing with other actors; strong relevance of the local level FRANCE: strong institutionalization; pragmatic transformation of movement actors in economic interest groups (consumer interest groups); precarious institutionalization as political parties These descriptions show that social movements in the environmental field have less to do with the image of a collective mobilization against decisions taken by the state but Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 303 with a movement organization which becomes a kind of public interest group. This solves the problem of collective action through permanent organizational staff in these movement organizations. The organizational transformation of social movements has led to an increase in unification of the diverse groupings and a specific division of labour between the different organizations regarding target groups (movement organizations specialize for the more conservative middle-aged groups, others for the young or the more leftlibertarian new middle classes) and for issue (conservation versus pollution issues). The increasing role of media coverage of environmentalist actions has fostered the differentiation between the supporting public and the acting movement organizations. Grass-roots organizations retreat, even in a cyclical way. When new issues arise grassroots organizations gain ground, but the cycles become increasingly shorter. The latter serve to sensitize. Then movement organizations take over in case the sense for a cause can be used for organizational action. They engage in systematic "awarenessraising" activities using media and educational programs. This trend is most clearly developed in Germany and Britain. Italy follows the same path, however with less impact on environmental politics. Their presence is realized more an individual basis, on individual relationships with industrial actors and/or political actors. Given the same tendency in France where movement organizations try to get rid of the image of being "écolo" and "de gauche". In the course of these transformations the successful movement organizations have become integrated into the institutional system. It is exactly this transformation which has allowed other collective actors, i.e. the elite actors of the French institutional system, to reappropriate the discourse of the ecologists and to reframe its contents. Finally, the Irish and the Basque movements remain tied to the traditional forms of collective mobilizations because of the close link of the national and the environmental question. The processes of professionalization and mediatization which can be observed in the other cases remain secondary. This means that the institutional role of these organizational actors varies considerably. Below the general trend of transforming collective protest into professional movement organizations the different institutional context exert different constraints on this tendency. The only way to overcome these constraints is to organize movement actions on a transnational level thus making national differences a problem of the lower levels of movement organizations, i.e. the problem of national charters of an organization.99 The 99 This development is another argument for increasing organizational isomorphism in the field of environmental politics: movement organizations follow the model of international corporations which has been developed by business. 304 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * problem as to what extent this transnationalization contributes to the professionalization of social movements and to their transformation into public interest groups will be taken up below. 10.3 INDIVIDUALIZING COMPARISON III: THE GREENING OF INDUSTRY The greening of industry is a process common to all countries. It is mainly carried by big industry, and the internationalization of big business is one of the keys for the dynamics of this process of greening. Industry experiences a risky environment which has led to increased efforts to control it. It is shaped by organizational learning. Three dimensions will be looked at comparatively: (1) the role of green image construction, (2) the communication campaigns in the media which are oriented toward regaining some control over a diffuse organizational environment, and (3) the engagement in institutionalized processes of negotiation and mediation over environmental implication of economic production (cooperative games). The results of the research on business actors can be summarized in the following propositions: IRELAND: positive image of industrial actors; strong emphasis on industrial growth and use of ecological arguments for compensating difficulties with the development option; technocratic orientation and at the same time cooperative actions with environmental groups ITALY: technology oriented; low media profile and decline of public attention; clientelistic system; no political cooperation; predominant market-orientation GERMANY: strong emphasis on media campaigns in order to establishing a positive green image; developing specialized groups for public communication within business organizations; extended engagement on cooperative action UNITED KINGDOM: developing toward a proactive positive stance on environmental issues which is related to increasing participation and reaction to media discourse on the environment; high media profile; adoption of voluntary schemes of environmental responsibility; intensive cooperation with policy actors; trend toward a more open and dialogical style of business behaviour FRANCE: market oriented green profiles; technical orientation combined with educational programmes; mere symbolic forms of business politics widespread; treating ecological communication as part of business culture (cultural investments); strategy of integration of environmentalist organizations Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 305 The greening of business as the general tendency shows, however, different paths of development. The French case is oriented toward keeping control by dividing the matter of environmental problems into technical and cultural issues, with the technical side is dominated by the market interests of the firm and the cultural side by contributing to investments in business culture. This results in a high preponderance of symbolic politics with an emphasis on a top-down model of ecological communication. The other extreme is represented by the German and British cases, which enter into a relationship with other collective actors and the public, something characterised by horizontal links between actors and a cultural reinterpretation of the technically possible. Informal and formal systems of negotiation are either put into practice or joined, thus taking part in the new "dialogical" game. The Italian case presents an interesting paradox: business tries to keep a low profile and at the same time enter public debate in order to avoid negative images. This paradoxical goal is realized by a strict market orientation which keeps business out of politics (which has a bad image). Being in the media as private collective actor and keeping low profile on political aspects of green images resolves the paradox. Italy thus presents a variant of the extreme described above as the French case: avoiding too much involvement in public discourse the solution is not - as in France - the close ties with politics, but the negation of politics. Hierarchy and market are two alternative options at the non-dialogical extreme. Thus the cases differ with respect to the relationship with the public. In the French/Italian case the public is outside politics, to be looked at primarily as consumers. In the German/British case, this consumer-orientation is mitigated by a strong political component which forces the basing of green image construction on closer links with the public, a deeper involvement with media discourse and a more reflexive stance on business culture. This difference also shapes the relationship with protest actors. Protest is regarded in the French/Italian case as a possible disturbance in the smooth functioning of hierarchies and markets. Therefore the strategies are oriented towards controlling possible disturbances by regarding certain protests as normal. The police (in France) or the staging of political crises (Italy) are the means to overcome such periods. On the other hand, cooperative and competitive relationships with environmentalist groups dominate in Germany and Britain.100 The Irish and the Basque case are again mainly determined by their peripheral status in the world economy. Being dominated by transnational corporations the options of firms do not show a clear pattern. Depending on short- or long-term market calculations business interests are less constrained by institutional considerations. The context of a developing country remains a rather general context which constrains in the sense of contributing to the development of the nation. Thus the nationalist framework is much less about politicizing business than the cooperative-competitive games which 100 It is important that the cooperation is competitive with a political meaning which excludes hierarchical ideas. The market orientation (such as the Italian business' one) is competitive in a non-political sense. 306 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * characterize the German and British case. This, however, is an unstable situation which will change in the course of the internationalization of environmental politics. 10.4 VARIATION FINDING COMPARISON: ACCOUNTING FOR THE DIVERSITY OF ENVIRONMENTAL REGIMES EUROPEAN 10.4.1 Identifying the rules of the game: environmental regimes in Europe The analysis of the institutional field in which the environment is an issue requires an idea of the specific logic of this field. The first characteristic is the limited plurality of collective actors having different interests in this issue. The issue of the environment bundles different interests such as the private interest of the firm, the legitimation interest of politicians and the public interest of citizen groups in a way that makes them dependent on each other. The diversity of interests is transformed into a general interest which goes beyond the specific interest for the environment: not losing a voice in the ongoing debate on the environment. The commonality of these interests can not be simply kicked out of the game. This is the reason for the high politicization of the environmental issue in Western European countries. The analysis of the strategies of communication of consequential collective actors shows that the field of political struggle about the environment has been enlarged beyond the traditional institutional boundaries of politics. Each actor has a stake in the communicative space by investing in communicative practices. We called this the emerging postcorporatist order.101 The inclusion of movement actors into the institutional framework is the first indicator of a changing institutional order. The experience that corporate actors have of a risky environment which needs the investment of resources in non-economic institutions, i.e., in trust, is a second indicator. Both factors change in turn the environment of policy actors which adapt to it through institutional change. The emerging postcorporatist order is internally differentiated. This differentiation can be analysed with our data taking a comparative perspective. This national variance of institutional performance will be summarized in the following using - in a first step - a "stereotype" for naming the typological particularities of each case. Such stereotypes of 101 This concept has been developed in Eder (1995). It has been taken up in Myles & Simmons & Szerszinski (1995) and O'Mahony & Mullally (1995) with the aim of defining the specific novelty of the environmental regime in contrast to traditional social policy regimes. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 307 institutional performance capture some element by minimizing what makes them similar to other cases. Therefore such a "stereotypological" approach will normally end up with as many types as there are cases. This, however, is an excellent heuristic way of developing a social-scientific typology which is able to provide ideal types of environmentalism in Europe.102 A first stereotype is "German avantgardism". German avantgardism has been claimed by German collective actors and often is even accepted by others as an adequate selfdescriptions (except by the English who are the closest in terms of the type of institutional order dealing with the environment). This avantgardism is often regarded as being linked to the German past and the resulting quest for a new basis of national identity construction. The environment as a substitute for traditional collective identity has been a widespread topos in political debate. What is true about it is that institutional innovations in the field of the environment are characteristic of Germany. Experimenting with diverse forms of creating networks of decision-making is a German specialty. 102 The ideal types will be described below as "Worlds of Environmentalism" in which institutional rules and cultural references are combined. For more detail on the methodological strategy see below. 308 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Another stereotype refers to the British case: "English pragmatism" as a way of solving problems while calculating the gains and costs of decisions. This stereotype has been fostered by the pragmatic orientation of British protest groups and movements (they are - characteristically - called "non-governmental organisations"; see also the report above chapter 6.6). Business and political actors have increasingly engaged in what can be called pragmatic cooperation and dialogues, trying to maximize the interests of all. Conflictual styles of dealing with environmental issues are consequently rare.103 A third well-established stereotype refers to France which is "French modernism". The elitist culture of French political institutions together with the image of a technologically advancing power has led to the image of an institutional order in which expert culture is far ahead of popular culture on any complex issue of regulating modern societies. The environment is a field in which this institutional order has produced the most impressive symbolic expressions, such as the French nuclear industry. However, this modernism rests on a tiny cultural basis - shown in the report above (chapter 7.4) - which erupts periodically into French institutional life. A fourth stereotype refers to what can be called "Italian exceptionalism". Italy is considered and describes itself as different, as exceptional to the pattern other European countries follow because of the specific mode of functioning of its institutions. The permanent discourse on institutional reforms (which rarely happen) and the cumulative production of institutional rules without assimilating the new to the old ones, creates a byzantine culture of public administration which can only be managed through the ingenious and playful competence of collective actors (which are consequently regarded more as players than as institutionally committed actors. The last two stereotypes refer to Ireland and the Basque country which has to do with their position at the margin of Europe: "Irish peripheralism" and "Basque localism" are two ways of describing the institutional order of these countries as being caught in their national self-assurance. These stereotypes of institutional orders indicate self- and other-descriptions of the field in which collective actors act. Such images when defined as real are real in their consequences. They are part of the rules of the game which are imposed on collective actors. Therefore they can be used for constructing types of "institutional regimes" in the field of environment which vary according to the mode and degree of constraints which they impose on collective actors. One dimension of variance is the degree of openness/closedness of the institutional field of environmental politics. Another is the reliance on elite groups, that is, the class structure underlying the field of environmental 103 Sellafield is probably the exception of the rule. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 309 politics. A third is the existence of what has been called a civil society, a society in which people are capable and motivated to organize themselves in associations, groups etc. A fourth one is the degree of independence of the different collective actors from each other, the degree of functional differentiation of state, market and associations. When combining such factors the following series of regimes can be constructed from our data: The institutional regime of environmentalism characterizing the German case can be called a dialogical regime. It moves problems and their solutions from one body to the next, thus trying to accumulate democratic legitimacy for whatever decision finally is taken. Dialogues bind the actors into the game of environmental politics. The regime characterizing the French case is a technological regime. Hierarchically organized, using careerism as a mechanism of binding the diverse collective actors into the game, keeping real power on top of the system, this regime leaves little space for collective action from below. High thresholds of collective mobilization are thus established, and any mobilization therefore when it happens will be simultaneously an attack on this institutional regime. Reference to technology as an elite knowledge guarantees the stability of its selective mechanisms. The regime characterizing the Italian case is a "Popperian" regime (Popperian is a metaphor for following Popper's precept that complex societies cannot be planned and therefore there is no other way than "muddling through"). However, the transactions costs of this type of regime are extremely high, and generate its characteristic cyclical convulsions (the last one being the mani pulite phase of Italian institutional life). Muddling through is what characterizes Italian environmental policy where policies can change from one day to next without much attempt to follow a coherent set of rules and prescriptions. The final institutional regime is given by the Irish and Basque cases which are strongly embedded in the logic of family and religious ties, clientelistic systems in which environmental politics remains a means for stabilizing the regime as such. This construction of environmental regimes serves as a starting point for reducing the complexity of institutional arrangements found in our case studies. The next step would be to reduce this complexity further and arrive at a parsimonious description of the variation found in Europe. We will do this by developing the theory of the "Three Worlds of Environmentalism" in Europe.104 104 This idea borrows from the theory of "Three Worlds of Welfare" (Esping-Andersen 1993) which characterizes the types of political regulation of the economy which have developed in the postwar period in Europe. 310 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 10.4.2 Variation and direction of environmentalism in Europe There is a series of reasons which will foster the continuing diversity of these environmental regimes in Europe. Environmental regimes are generated by the causes rooted in cultural differences and are constrained by the effects of these cultural differences on the behaviour of consequential collective actors. The first constraint has been analysed as the set of causes which shape the structure of the field of environmental debate and practices.105 The second constraint has to do with the dynamics that result from the structure of the field; this refers to the practices of consequential collective actors.106 The main variables that explain the structure of the socio-cultural field of environmental politics are institutional constraints and media biases which indicate cultural biases of the specific countries. The variables that explain the dynamics of the socio-cultural field of environmental politics are the legitimatory practices of collective actors and the decisions taken by them. Showing the strong dependence of the framing of environmental issues on cultural representations, a typology of environmental cultures can be constructed. This typology is central for the political communication model because it defines the symbolic boundaries as well as the symbolic means of the field of public discourse in which consequential collective actors construct environmental problems. This is the central factor we claim to shape the political dynamism of environmentalism in European societies. This allows a first general statement: we have a convergence between the countries compared in terms of their structural and institutional logics, i.e. the mobilization of public discourse for the political regulation of the environment. This relates to the symbolic boundaries of the field of environmental debate and politics. Within this field, 105 Practices refers here to all types of action, ranging from policy making through public relations activities of firms to staging protest events by movement actors. It is these practices that shape the dynamics of the field. 106 In methodological terms, this means now combining the media-discourse and the actor-interview analysis. In theoretical terms, we will use the neo-institutionalist framework (see also below chapter 11.1) for explaining this link. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 311 different symbolic means or resources for communicating environmental concerns can be deliniated. This is what the following typology seeks to grasp. The tentative proposal is to talk about Three Worlds of Environmentalism. The three worlds of environmentalism are ways of dealing politically with environmental issues determined by preexisting institutional and cultural conditions. They differ from welfare regimes by their focus: the common good problem of the "environment". Whereas social policy regimes are regimes to redistribute the wealth of a nation, environmental policy regimes are regimes to create a better collective state of affairs. This means that environmental politics is a politics in which actors participate not in view of winning or losing material assets because of the criteria of distributive justice and collective power resources, but in view of establishing a better world for themselves and others. The basic problem of environmental politics is that here the free rider problem poses itself even stronger than in any policy field: any betterment of the environment simultaneously betters the conditions for those striving and struggling for it as for those who do nothing. Worlds of environmentalism provide different structures and resources to overcome this problem of environmental politics. The incentives to do something about the environment have to be built into constraints exerted by the institutional structure of a society, supported by a cultural orientation which legitimates this institutional framework. We hypothesize that environmental regimes are based on highly demanding structural constellations which themselves do not develop without strong pressure from the outside world. On the basis of our data we suggest that the following three Worlds of Environmentalism in Europe can be distinguished: (1) THE PROTESTANT WORLD (Germany, UK), (2) THE REPUBLICAN WORLD (France, Italy) and (3) THE CATHOLIC WORLD (Basque country, Ireland).107 The characteristics of the "Protestant World" are: - stable green associations - importance of deliberative bodies, councils etc. - greening business - important the idea of nature as a metaphor of good life The characteristics of the "Republican World" are: 107 It is obvious that each country contains elements of the others, especially in those cases where the country itself is divided. This holds especially for Italy which contains in itself a republican and a catholicauthoritarian tradition which is a constitutive part of the North-South divide (Putnam et al. 1992). However, the dominant pattern of Italian political culture is shaped by the republican tradition which favours a strong state (in the Italian case we have the strong state weakened by the second element of Italian political culture). Similar things have to be said about the North-South divide in Germany. It is important that we claim a dominant political culture shapes each nation's way of reacting to the general problem of providing collective goods such as a clean environment to its citizens. 312 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * - taking over corporatist arrangements in the environmental field; - state responsibility with strong temporary anti-state mobilizations; - non-discursive strategies The characteristics of the "Catholic World" are: - strong localism - scattered mobilization - traditionalist and moralistic political culture These three types have defined the opportunity structure for policy actors, protest actors and business actors in the field of the environment. They explain why environmentalism is a rather normal phenomenon in Germany and Britain; why the state is blamed for problems in France and Italy, something which leads to conflictualization only when combined with an attack on state institutions; and why the issues are highly instrumentalized in the Basque country and Ireland. These regimes solve the free rider problem in different ways and produce different outcomes: - in the Protestant World, we have a strong public debate of collective actors which does not allow environmental issues to escape public monitoring - in the Republican World, there is a strong identification of environmental politics with the nation's interest which forces collective actors to act when this interest is at stake, a highly unstable and flexible constraint - in the Catholic World, a strong idea of bad forces coming from the outside world prevails which makes collective action for the environment a fruitless endeavour, leaving the problem to idealistic protest groups These institutional biases are deeply engrained in the structure of the political culture of the countries studied. The environmental politics of collective actors is bound to these structures. They exert different pressure on the choices of collective actors. A strong public debate does not allow for exit: voice and loyalty (to take these categories from Hirschman) are intricately linked. The louder the voice of protest actors, the higher the pressure on the loyalty of other actors. This also holds the other way around. When business acts, protest actors have to counteract because they have to show that they are the better environmentalists. Political actors can side with both actors; they no longer have any stakes in the game. A strong state, emerging from the republican tradition, co-opts other collective actors into the political system. The state acts as a selective system which forces other actors to accept the rules of the game (emphasizing loyalty) or retreat into the realm of society, into the state-free sector. Protest actors deal with themselves, and engage in often futile attempts at collective mobilizations.108 Business actors restrict themselves to the market. A strong identification with the 108 When they succeed then they are especially violent. France has known the most violent mobilization in the anti-nuclear campaigns, and Italy has experienced an especially strong terrorist mobilization. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 313 morally good which is embodied in one's nation-state leads, the third regime type, leads to the fusion of protest and political actors. "Voice" is what counts. A particular type of conflictualization occurs which links conflicts over the environment to conflicts over collective identity. The ambivalence created in such situations affects protest actors who are bound to traditional identity issues, to business which has to prove its national calling, and to political actors who have to solve problems under conditions of permanent mobilization for the national cause. However, in the course of the recent changes of the field of environmental politics which have led toward a unified field of action defined by a media discourse which acts like a public monitoring system for the actors in the field - these differences become less important. They are replaced by a common field of discursive relations which force the different actors to establish a communicative link via this field to other actors. Each actor has to situate his strategic actions and the pursuit of his interests in this context, with the effect that these strategies become more and more isomorphic. Do these environmental regimes converge toward a new European model or do they develop into different worlds which point to new cleavages in Europe over such central issues as nature and environment? The argument that European society is composed of a plurality of types of societies only avoids the problem posed by such divergences. The problem is to analyse to what extent the national differences are counteracted by the homogenizing context of the European Union of which these national cases are a part. To do this, a switch in the comparative perspective is needed: form variation finding comparison to what is called here an encompassing comparison. Each case is defined not only by its internal dynamics and structures but also by the place it occupies within a transnational system. Encompassing comparison is a strategy to explain the peculiar dynamics of each case by its location and to draw conclusions from the dynamics of the overarching system about the pressure pulling towards isomorphism and the barriers toward such isomorphism that still exist. 314 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * PART IV CULTURAL BIASES, INSTITUTIONAL FORMS AND POLICY MAKING 316 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 317 11 Towards a European Environmental Regime? An Encompassing Comparison 11.1 THE EU ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY COMMUNITY The context for an encompassing comparison is the emerging European institutional system. The organizational environment of European institutions in Brussels constitutes an inter-institutional macro-organizational field that has its distinct mode of operation. It is formed through frequent information exchanges between public-bureaucratic organizations, business lobbying organizations, and social movement organizations that tend to hold different objectives, cultures, and operating procedures. The dynamics of this institutional context and its effects on environmental politics in Europe is based on the general principles guiding all organizational environments: utility maximizing considerations, an ideological organizational culture inspired by value commitments, and normative-procedural behaviour. These criteria also shape organizational behaviour in each of the three fields identified: political/administrative organizations, social movement organizations, and lobbying organizations. However, lobbyists appeared to be more influenced by the first factor, movement actors by value considerations, and regulators by legitimacy-oriented behaviour. These three types of actor constitute a macro-organizational field based on ambiguous rules, which because of their relative novelty have yet to be consolidated and formalised. These organizations exchange a variety of goods, ranging from agreement on specific regulations to legitimacy from each other and from the public at large. Concerns with such a variety of objectives constrains their action and makes difficult their calculation of costs and benefits. In addition, interaction among organizations based on different principles makes communication difficult, as it is prone to creating misunderstandings, and frequently produces shifting alliances and unexpected results. However, because a process of mutual accommodation does indeed take place, these actors are becoming increasingly alike. In the field of environmental politics this interorganizational system develops a particular dynamic. Such politics is bound to the institutional framework emerging from the coordination of these different organizations. The interorganizational field of EU institutions has become the main force institutionalizing environmental politics in Europe and transforming environmental politics into environmental policy-making. This in turn stabilizes this interorganizational field because the environment is an issue with high legitimatory potential. Environmental issues are paramount topics of concern for Western publics and are a crucial area of regulation. As with other cultural issues, they are discussed in a variety of fora in distinctive ways. A discussion takes place in policy circles that runs parallel to the process of framing environmental issues in the political and media arenas. More than with other political fields, however, environmental policymaking requires specific scientific information and is a highly politicized issue. Thus it has to rely on a variety of experts, lawyers, business consultants and other professionals, and requires awareness of events taking place in often distant geographical locations. For this reason, policy debate on environmental issues takes 318Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * shape in a complex arena, in which communication between these elements can take place. The centrality of such communication limits the separation of the regulative process from the communication dynamics of environmental issues. Debate in policy circles is often directly connected to debate in political and media arenas. In addition, in several polities environmentalism display the traits of a social-movement that further enhance its visibility. Environmental regulation remains a highly visible and politically salient issue, open to the scrutiny of the media and yet hindered by the uncertainty of the scientific evidence that underpins it. Regulative systems are more or less open, and more or less insulated from direct political pressure and from public opinion. For instance the North American bureaucratic process is relatively insulated from political intervention.109 Conversely, policy making within the institutions of the European Union is devised to maximize external consultation with a variety of actors. They range from representations of public and private interests, to institutional mechanisms aimed at channelling political pressure, and which is assumed to be more directly connected to public opinion dynamics in member states. This regulative openness is paradoxically (or possibly intentionally) complemented by a lack of direct contact with a public. European Union institutions operate in a policy space that is one step removed from direct contact with a public. However, for the reasons mentioned above, issues of communication do not disappear. They are instead exacerbated by the lack of direct access to a public that knows how the regulative process operates and approves it. Key concepts such as democratic deficit and subsidiarity have clashed with the realization that environmental issues often do not stop at political boundaries, and that supra-national regulation is imperatively required. 109 In general terms the European decision-making process has been described as very much driven by political considerations, while by contrast, the American system is more bureaucratic and largely based on technology and economics. Describing EC decision-making procedures, Pedersen, an American environmental lawyer familiar with both the European and American systems reports "instances of political retaliation against bureaucrats who got out of line". Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 319 For these reasons, the regulators operate with a complex mandate. In addition to scientific knowledge and political consultation, environmental policy makers must interrogate themselves on issues of legitimacy vis-a-vis other branches of their institution and the political process at large. In this context, Peters (1992) talks of bureaucrats "on a somewhat shorter latch".110 In such a setting one would tend to overestimate the obstacles to environmental regulation. Yet, as a policy issue environmental regulation has been remarkably successful if one considers that it was not even directly thematized in the founding treaties. In the following pages, the reasons for this success and the implications of regulating such a controversial area are analysed. Special reference is made to the intra-institutional processes of communication of environmental issues and the effects of extensive negotiations on the cultural make-up of the civil servants involved in the process. It will be argued that their success and the regulators' individual commitment cannot be explained by simple transposition of public opinion pressure within the Union. Rather, unique institutional dynamics have underscored and supported the environmental regulative effort of European institutions. The impact of processes of selection and the attrition of personnel within the Commission is analysed, as is the awareness of civil servants of their external perceptions and their motivations and values with respect to the environment. Further, the distinctive importance of the European institutional structure in the process of environmental regulation is highlighted. This analysis is relevant for the insight it provides concerning issues of environmental regulation, and, in addition, for the implications it brings to the current debate on the relations between EU institutions and European civil society. European institutions are receiving a great deal of attention in the light of the widespread perception that they have excessive power as non-elected bodies. In recent years various corrective measures have been proposed, ranging from investing more power in elected institutions such as the European Parliament to the advocation of the principle of subsidiarity in decision-making. At present the EU is often regarded as a strong, bureaucratic machine run by powerful non-elected officials. With reference to environmental issues, issues concerning the representation of political constituencies and the impact of civil society in the policy-formation process are thus discussed. There is an examination of what kind of bureaucratic machine the Community is, and which interests are represented and how. As a political body, the EU has been very active in the field of the environment; in fact it has possibly been even more active than would be expected on the basis of pressure from member states alone. Only a decade ago the environment was a severely under110 He reports that the exercise of political pressure is taken as perfectly normal in the European context. The American administrative system is more open than the European administrative system. Technical studies are made public; this reduces political influence and maximizes scientific and technical influence. In addition the large size of American bureaucracy and the availability of funds for research creates an ideal location for the formulation of proposal which are insulated from the political process and based on scientific grounds. 320Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * regulated field in all member states, and in several of the poorer EU countries it might well have remained so if it were not for the harmonizing pressure of Community legislation. This consideration points to the importance and novelty of environmental decision-making in the EC. This paper examines the interaction of the principal types of actors who shape environmental policy in the EC, namely regulators, business lobbyists and representatives of environmentalist groups. This study was conducted in Brussels. Most EC-level environmental decision-making takes place in Brussels. As a community of policy-makers, consultants, lobbyists and secretarial personnel, Brussels has grown exponentially in recent years. In relation to environmental issues, it has attracted a large number of business lobbyists as well as environmental organizations; they have permanent offices and personnel in Brussels. Since the European Community is not a nation state and in many respects departs significantly from the typical organization of modern nation states, Brussels emerges as a new political environment whose modes of operation are still rapidly evolving and partially unknown to its participants. Decision-making takes place according to new rules whose implications have yet to be fully understood and described by political scientists. The relevance of Brussels as a decision-making centre has altered the cultural character of the city, creating an environment which is unique in both sociological and political terms. High senior officials speaking different languages and representing widely different political systems meet in formal and informal settings with politicians and industrialists. Thousands of young stagiers learn the first rudiments of an administrative career, and learn to interact with one another. A mosaic-like social world is created in these encounters: a world that shapes the idea and the political substance of Europe. Over the years the fortunes of the idea of Europe have waxed and waned. But the upturns of European public opinion may have been only indirectly related to the progress of European political, social and economic institutions that are its structural backbone. Political institutions have a degree of autonomy from public opinion that varies but is often substantial. The independence of other institutions not directed by elected officials is sometimes even larger. Yet decision making in these organizational settings is crucial, and powerful political forces attempt to control it. Understanding how this process occurs is hence very relevant. In studying environmental decision making in Brussels it is important to also consider the individual cultural contributions of this special class of 'expatriate' bureaucrats. The way in which the players in the EU game form their preferences and what constraints and influences they experience in their daily lives, are crucial factors in the decision-making process and the production of regulation. As environmentalism has affected public opinion in many countries, this is bound to be reflected in multifarious ways in the culture of European bureaucracies. Environmental themes have affected Western European societies directly through changes in public opinion. They have also affected existing political and work organizations through the different organizational dynamics characteristic of different sectors. Political institutions operate according to criteria different to those of economic Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 321 institutions and social movement sectors. The interplay between different institutional spheres is complex, and the relative margins of autonomy of each sphere - the political, the activist and the lobbyist - are ever-changing. Their actors are constrained by the competing institutional logics ingrained in different organizational settings. We will examine the dynamics operating among civil servants, lobbyists and NGOs. But first a more general description of the Brussels environment-regulating macro-institutional field is necessary. 11.2 INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION IN BRUSSELS Although it is easy for new legislation to be blocked by nation states, environmental regulation has been remarkably successful. This shows the effectiveness of the environmental policy community in Brussels, but also the determination of the global EU bureaucracy to regulate the environment. Firstly, two basic principles of EU policy making should be born in mind. From its inception, the EU has pursued the strategic goal of "ever closer union" through a philosophy of thematic shifts into areas of least resistance. Secondly, within the EU the inevitable tensions cannot be effectively solved by a vote. These constraints have traditionally stimulated a climate of repressed conflict, and constant attempts to create consensus through various techniques of diffusion and the de-politicization of controversial issues. A public choice model would stress that bureaucrats, be they political appointees or not, will gain power whenever they increase their regulatory functions both in terms of budget enlargement and bureau-shaping. Hence a first reason why environmental issues could gain support is that they are sponsored by professionals with a vested interest in strengthening their role. This explanation presupposes that the environmentregulating bureaucracy is a unified actor with cohesive goals. This assumption needs to be examined more carefully. A second reason to be discussed is that northern countries, which are oriented to more environmental regulation, are more powerful and thus more able to impose their agenda on the rest of the community. But to gain a full understanding of the issue a better understanding of the emerging EU bureaucratic culture is necessary. This culture in many ways is a phenomenon universally found in Brussels, that permeates the whole policy-making community regardless of the many significant splits. For instance there is almost universal agreement that the environment needs more regulation. But there is a lively debate on the ideal regulatory framework. We will illustrate different positions through excerpts from 50 interviews conducted between 1992 and 1994 with civil servants, environmentalists and lobbyists working in environmentally related fields. The position of individual bureaucrats on environmental matters is determined by nationality even more than by other variables. In environmental matters different political and economic considerations affect the perception of the interests of the northern and the southern states. In northern states, greater environmental awareness, the means to 322Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * afford higher standards, and their technological know-how all contribute to stricter regulation. For this reason, EU regulation is accepted and even invited by industry in northern countries. For instance, a functionary noted "In Germany the industry is green because it is obliged to be so. The Germans in general come to us to ask for regulation because they know that if we do not do it, the German government will do it on its own, and therefore they will be at a disadvantage in front of competitors from other countries. So they want us to do a general European regulation." It is also on the basis of this importance of nationality, that the desires of powerful northern European interests find a voice in the Commission and other EU institutional. The fragmentation of opinions among high-level bureaucrats has also has another institutional effect. It invites the opening of the EU bureaucracy to external bodies which better represent environmentalist public opinion. For instance, Krämer notes that in the European Parliament the Environmental Committee from time to time organizes public hearings on environmental matters to which environmental organizations are regularly invited (Krämer 1992: 128). The fragmentation and complexity present, and the necessity of achieving consensus stimulates the inclusion of external consultants, representatives of other organizations, and technical experts. The Committee System has therefore become the standard way of working in most fields, even at a relatively low bureaucratic level. This also has the advantage of connecting bureaucrats and politicians on a regular basis. This fact provides environmentally motivated bureaucrats a useful connection with like-minded politicians in the European Parliament. As Sbragia notes: "The Committee structure also helps Commission bureaucrats ... work with the Parliament ... committees will probably develop some form of symbiotic relationship with the Directorates whose work they oversee, a relationship heightened by the connections of both with European and national interest groups. Policy communities are already forming ..." (Sbragia 1992: 91) The regulative effort in environmental matters also has a global institutional rationality. After the EC stalemate of the seventies, the environment was seen as a particularly appealing area in which to concentrate regulative efforts and acquire legitimacy for the entire EU project, as it was under-regulated and high on the public opinion agenda. In a hierarchical organization such as the EC, this agenda-setting task was relatively easy to accomplish. Thus, a set of institutional mechanisms have favoured the 'greening' of EU institutions. 11.3 IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTALIST CULTURE ON POLICY NETWORKS Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 323 If institutional dynamics are in favour of expanding environmental regulation, one should examine what is the impact of these systemic requisites on regulators. Our interviews demonstrate the existence of a powerful organizational culture. The directives imparted by politicians are interpreted by non elected officials within the framework of an organizational culture that, in the E.U. bureaucracy specifically dealing with the environment, has traditionally been rather sensitive to environmentalist concerns. Ideology colours one Directorate General in significant pro-environmental terms, and it characterizes those policy-makers whose specific task is to interact with issues raised by that Directorate General. Hence ideology provides the identity basis for specific policy networks. A pro-environmentalist identity emerged clearly among the vast majority of the interviewees, through repeated references to the importance of environmental degradation and the necessity of more stringent regulation. This ideology is also clearly visible in texts such as internal newsletters where, for instance, one finds reproductions of images borrowed from the environmental movement. Ideology can infuse bureaucratic work with motivation. It provides legitimacy internally as the basis for asking commitment from colleagues. Some interviewees noted that an environmentalist value commitment was very marked in the past, and that although it is still relevant it is now declining. But others noted that the shift to voluntary regulation by industry has redefined the way industry is conceived, lessening adversarial stands without necessarily lowering commitment. There is also a need not to be perceived as excessive in the pursuit of an environmentalist agenda, as this would undermine institutional legitimacy and hinder communications with other units. Communication is essential, something shown by the establishment of a "unit on environment which deals especially with communication activities" such as in Directorate General III. On this fact, a functionary noted "In 1993 Directorate General III was restructured organizationally to better respond to the new issues on the market, etc., and they created this environmental unit. The reason was that of enhancing communication in this field, but there also was the fact that some people in the various units of Directorate General III were already dealing with environmental problems but the coordination was not very good. We needed to have a correspondent of Directorate General XI in Directorate General III that would discuss all problems with them. But also, from a more proactive point of view, we needed to tackle the issue more actively. We have a sort of environmental reseau, keeping us up to date. We also had an internal newsletter, that was made by one of our stagiaires. He has left now, so we don't have the newsletter any more, but we hope to resume it as soon as we get another stagier. The newsletter was basically circulating information on every step taken during the week on the various environmental issues and regulations. So, the flow of information is a key point for us, and we try to enhance it as much as possible. As a horizontal unit, we try to coordinate all environmental aspects in the different areas, but we cannot really follow everything." In a transnational and fragmented policy space institutions "talk" to themselves through texts. There are extensive negotiations between and among sub-units in the production 324Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * of this texts. A consequence of this is that, as with other organizations, process is as important as consequences (March & Olsen 1989: 51). In EU institutions the protracted negotiations taking place in committees and inspired by norms of collegiality, are what defines the institutional setting as much as the decisions reached. On this point March and Olsen point out that "Students of politics probably have a systematic tendency to exaggerate the significance of explicit substantive results from the process and to underestimate the significance of the symbolic construction that politics make." (March & Olsen 1989: 52) In the environmental field the result of frequent meetings with a varied set of colleagues reinforces the value commitment which in turn provides an identity to policy networks. Subscribing to environmentalist concerns is at least in part what decides alliances and at the individual level constitutes a conceptualization of interest. It is in this context of "taken for granted" routines and identification with the recognized institutional values that personal interest comes to be interpreted. Public choice theories of the bureaucracy point out that bureaucrats, be they political appointees or not111, will gain power whenever they increase their regulatory functions. Hence a first reason why environmental issues gain support is that they are sponsored by professionals with a vested interest in strengthening their role. However, the consequence of the value commitment discussed above and the "taken for granted" aspect of organizational life, is that such a narrow conceptualization of interest is misleading. Firstly, processes of selective recruitment and attrition often screen out such reasoning. Furthermore, most bureau-shaping considerations are irrelevant at the lower levels of the hierarchy and where there is a great deal of occupational mobility, as is frequently the case. The fact that environmental policy-making is inspired by a value commitment is also a consequence of the fact that several interviewees have had extensive contacts with organizations of the environmental movement, which has therefore provided inspiration and interest. This is particularly true of civil servants coming from northern countries. For the various cultural and economic factors mentioned above, these countries have a clearer environmentalist agenda; this fact further facilitates the role of these policy makers in Brussels, and their contacts with their own country. However, one should not underestimate the difficulties in communicating environmental issues to other parts of the Commission, often with different priorities and ideologies. Moreover, these difficulties surface in the relations with other institutions, notably the Council. For instance, there are frequent discouraging remarks by strongly pro-environmental functionaries. They often face strong conflict with other parts of the institution and above 111 A distinction between politicians and bureaucrats is somewhat artificial. Top bureaucrats are appointed politically and work in close connection with national polities as well as with national bureaucracies. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 325 all with national governments. As one such bureaucrat-environmentalist noted with regards to advancing an environmentalist agenda: "What kind of obstacles do you find here in the bureaucracy? Two things, two very different kinds of obstacles. One are the purely institutional problems, having a huge bureaucracy changing influence is a very difficult problem... But when it comes to the basic principles, what we as a Commission are looking for is the kind of new thinking, and that can be done. But the other problem is that you get stiff conservative reactions from governments. If you look at how the Commission tried to change the European agricultural policy you see the same thing. The Commission tried to put forth wonderful ideas, cutting down the agricultural money, but the national governments immediately stopped everything with no discussion." There is at times a sense of dissatisfaction with the system, and a desire to improve participation in decision making. For instance, a functionary noted: "It seems to me that if we are to produce efficient environment policy there are several preconditions for that. It has to be an environment policy that can be accepted, widely accepted. The first condition is that there has to be adequate consultation procedures, so whether it is the industry itself, environmental NGO's, whether it is the man in the street he feels that he must have a chance to express his views and that they be reasonably considered. So, I would argue that new improved consultation procedures taking into account all those actors is a sine qua non for improving policy efficiency." Also policy formation is criticised. It is often seen as a process that globally the organization is not able to control, and which hinders its external image. One interviewee said: "You could also say that efficient environment policy in the community requires much more dialogue with the member states themselves and the experts of the member states prior to the commission drawing up a proposal. There is a feeling here that too many proposals jump like a rabbit out of a black hat, are put on the table and cause problems to the industry, problems to the member states, and so the whole decisionmaking process is not efficient." The problem of responsibility also emerges in the more general context of the role of the EU vis-a-vis other institutions. A high-level bureaucrat remarked: "There is a very clear need to make everybody understand who is responsible for what. From the man in the street, to local government, to regional government, to national government and to the Community. And that it's just not clear. And I don't think many people outside Brussels understand." 326Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * This quote reflects a concern frequently mentioned regarding 'external' perceptions. 11.4 EXTERNAL CONCERNS OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY-MAKING COMMUNITY 11.4.1 The "popular deficit" As a EU bureaucrat pointed out, the current debate on the scope of environmental regulation in the EU and its appropriate political locus replicates the controversial debate on the decision-making process in the EC. That is, it calls into question issues of democracy and subsidiarity. This and other concerns of European public opinion are key problems in recent reflections within the policy-making community in Brussels. The EU is attempting to address a prevalent European view that, as a study commissioned by EC president Delors reported, "The European Community is remote, elitist, out of touch with the ordinary people of Europe". Because of their international background, bureaucrats are very sensitive to the climate of opinion in several countries, and far less isolated than some of their critics would argue. They are very aware of the Weberian metaphor of the iron cage and its shortcomings, and together with a strong proEuropean ideology often display apprehension on the way the dream is actualized. In the words of a functionary: "The institutional structure in the community has got to be much more democratic. You could improve the consultation procedure without changing the current architecture. I'd argue that the current architecture has got to be changed." Aware of issues of representation, civil servants attempt to relate their environmentalist values to a wider public, focusing on 'selling the product' of EU policy-making externally. For instance a functionary noted: "European consumers are very favourable towards the community for environment policy. If you look at surveys you see that the environment comes out among the highest in terms of public acceptability in terms of community responsibility. And that is important because assuming that there is a profound reflection we should try to use that enthusiasm for building up the European Union as such. So this is a very global point, but it's an important one." And he continued by stressing the importance of publications on EU work on the environment. There is in effect a small literature of information booklets that are distributed to selected libraries in member states and national EU offices. External communications also concern actors with a specific interest in environmental issues, such as public interest groups. A civil servant commented "I think what is happening in our relations with the Environmental movement is very important, in fact it can be translated into the problem of the future of European Democracy. This issue can be linked to the problem of the future of the national Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 327 state. These problems could be approached by a common working together of policymakers and local people and movements etc. They are local...I would like to see the movement very close, to know what is happening, and improve communications with environmentalists." Whether this viewpoint is typical is not at issue here, but it expresses the concern frequently held by EU policy makers with issues of participation. For obvious reasons lobbyists and pressure groups operating in Brussels are concerned as well. All together the broader community of Brussels operating within and around European institutions faces some central choices and hard decisions concerning issues of representation and sovereignty. They are the same choices that all the European political systems have recently tackled, but are rendered even more central by the awareness of being at the centre of the storm. Posing the problem in this terms allows one to ask not only the usual question of what impact does society have on European Institutions, but the equally relevant question of what impact European political institutions have on society. This is indeed the relevant advantage of an institutionalist approach. In this sense, industry is an especially important target of EU communication. A civil servant noted "Our ultimate aim is that of understanding what we can do in order to change the attitude of industry... it is mostly studies and of course communication in order to bring industry in closer contact with environmental regulation so that it is not kept away from the process of environmental policy." It is difficult to assess to what extent these attempts are successful. That is, to evaluate the original input of EU activities on attitudes towards the environment in member states and their publics at large. Certainly, a relevant impact has been achieved simply by setting stricter regulative frameworks for southern countries. The bureaucracies of these countries and their business establishment has been forced to come to terms with environmental issues in a way that would not otherwise have been possible. 11.4.2 Relations with industry External communications in Brussels mainly occur between European institutions and industry, either directly or through lobbying organizations. To a lesser extent they occur with public interest representatives. Relations are sometimes difficult, and at times industry's views are cynical of the regulative process - a cynicism that at times extends to other sectors of EU institutions. For instance a pro-industry policy-maker said: "Another ironic thing is that my friends should be called the envirocrats because although they can claim they want to protect the environment, they are interested in 328Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * their own survival and importance, and they emphasize the importance of their regulation." But these considerations do not exclude the fact that the EU bureaucratic machine is uniquely open to the representation of business interests. This is done intentionally, to the point that the European system of representation can be described as a form of meso-level neo-corporatism facilitated by the Committee System which is particularly receptive to external inputs. In the environmental field the relation between business and the regulators can at time be very strained, but can also be a symbiotic one. Multinational corporations, associations of industrialists and even smaller companies generally have the resources and technical expertise to permeate and influence all the relevant committees.112 As Michelmann noted: "Ties with interest organizations are close. The secretariat of UNICE (the federation representing community industries in their role as employers), for instance, provides staff support for the committee's subgroup of industry representatives." (Michelmann 1978: 35) Lobbying occurs on a massive scale and often in a sustained and pervasive manner. Several institutions can be lobbied at the same time. As a bureaucrat noted: "Industrialists lobby the Commission, because don't forget that the Commission has still got to write the proposals. Therefore a document can technically be withdrawn. Maybe this is something they like, maybe it is something they don't like. So we still have an immense amount of power in the decision-making process. So they lobby very hard, they lobby in the services, they lobby through organizations, they lobby through the cabinets of the Commission. If it is a very serious matter they will try to see the commissioner. And they won't be satisfied in just seeing a commissioner for the environment, but they will also see other commissioners. If it is a German company they will go and see Mr. Schmidt, an Italian will go and see Rossi." One of the main objectives of lobbies is to acquire information on policy proposals at the very early stages of their preparation. It is at that stage that influence is perceived to be more efficacious. Hence, lobbyists seek to establish personal contacts with civil servants, and no valuable occasion of contact is missed. This means frequently seeking consultations, sending memoranda, or even as a consultant admits, asking which flight an environmental regulator takes and making sure of sitting close to him or her. A civil servant answered 112 However, many industries, particularly in some countries, are still learning the know-how of lobbying. See for instance De-la-Guérivière (1992) on French lobbying which is described as rather primitive compared to Italian lobbying. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 329 "How does industry lobby the Commission? Well, the way is very varied. There are various techniques. The Commission is a pretty transparent place, so there is not very much that gets hidden in Brussels. So the industrialists will lobby at the directory general level. There are standing committees. Typically they will come to see you if they can. They will come to see you and convince you and leave you a paper, which is full of lobby positions. Sometimes they will lobby through industrialist associations. Lot of these associations are rather primitive or new ones compared with say the maturity of the US lobbying process. There is no doubt about it that lobbying is becoming a major activity increasingly so." Such a massive amount of consultation can of course significantly slow policy-making. Normally civil servant defend the system, extolling the advantages of frequent communication. But negative reactions are also common. A regulator observed "The best way we work is by closing everything, every door and window. because the more one listens to the others, the more we waste time and the more we have the impression that regulation is diluted because everybody pushes in his own direction. The reason why the Eco-Label is not working at the moment is also this. Because it is a compromise. The best way to do it would be through a jury isolated from all interests. They could hear the interests before, but then they would shut the door and decide on their own, and that would be it." In effect, industry is quite aware of these tendencies. As a lobbyist put it "I take the cynical view that they (the Commission) probably think that between them, the Parliament and the Council they will be able to solve all the problems themselves. They ask the industry, the industry gives its viewpoint and then good bye and thank you very much, now we will get on on our own. So I think that they think that there are too many organizations." But this scepticism is moderated by the awareness that institutions need industry for reliable data. "I also think that the responsible organizations, that do research and come to them with proven facts, they welcome them, because they don't always have the resources to, and they often may have an argument for example with the Parliament, and they need evidence to prove their point, and industry can often provide them with that evidence." Clearly the relation with industry is one of the most controversial issues within the EC bureaucracy. In general a certain amount of contact is accepted as necessary for efficient communication, but there are civil servants who are weary of overly close contact with industry. Yet they often defend the information-gathering value of lobbying. For instance a functionary said 330Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * "For a consultant operating in Brussels, the task is to act as intermediary to get their clients to see the civil servant who has a key influence on drafting legislation. Most people including the parliamentarians would defend lobbying as a necessary part of the information circulation." 11.4.3 Relations with non-governmental organizations The story of environmental activism has been one of remarkable success in the influencing of public opinion. This success as well as the cyclical nature of social movements have promoted a process of institutionalization of the environmental movement. Whilst environmental movement leaders are more present in the European institutions, they are also aware of their limits and of the fact that at present the system does not work in their favour. For instance Andrew Lees of Friends of the Earth, argues that "The Commission must be made far more open and directly accountable to the European Parliament. The present arrangements facilitate informal horse-trading between the Member States' national civil servants and give their ministers too many opportunities to strike political deals at the expense of environmental protection (Lees 1992: 17)." This scepticism is justified both by the awareness that the regular political environment is a very powerful actor in setting the terms of the game, and by the awareness of the relative weakness of environmental activists at playing that game. This weakness is nowhere more evident than in Brussels. As Krämer (1992) notes: "It is startling to see the extremely small number of environmental groups which take part in day to day discussions of forming and shaping, refining, amending, promoting environmental measures at Community level. The European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the umbrella organization of some 1200 national environmental organizations, has a permanent staff of three persons in Brussels. Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the World Wildlife Fund each have an office in Brussels, though these offices are often manned only by one or two persons... Overall there are less than 15 people in Brussels who specifically follow and monitor Community activities from the point of view of environmental nongovernmental organizations." (Krämer 1992: 124) The very limited number of representatives of environmental groups corresponds to their effective lack of formal power. Unlike with other kinds of experts, Krämer noted that in recent years "There does not seem to be any representative of any national European or international environmental organization in any advisory committee existing with the Commission. Several scientific committees have been set up to advise the Commission in specific areas. Members of these committees are appointed by the Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 331 Commission on proposals from governments of Member States. They are well known scientific specialists in this sector and are usually selected from universities." (Krämer 1992: 126) This creates a substantial imbalance between the representation of private interests and that of public interests. Several interviewees noted that this problem is rooted in the lack of a formalization of hearings and access to the bureaucracy. Similarly, Krämer notes: "The Commission does not either have generalized institutional relations with any other specialized institutional association or organisation which groups environmental interests. In the annual budget of the Commission a sum of 500,000 ECU (1990) is earmarked for representative environmental organizations in order to enable them to better fulfil their tasks. The money is given in a lump sum and limited to those nongovernmental environmental organizations which have the statutory task to protect the environment..." (Krämer 1992: 128) Often regulators express doubts on the possibility of the environmental movement to achieving better representation. For instance an interviewee said that he would have welcomed a formalization of consultation procedures with NGO's, but did not expect to see that happening soon. Krämer emphasizes that at the root of the issue there is also a fundamental problem of resources. "The Commission does not organize hearings or formal consultations with environmental groups in a regular way, neither on general questions nor on specific drafts for Community legislation. The Commission does from time to time invite environmental organizations to comment on drafts and of course also accepts comments from environmental organizations which are unsolicited...Thus, most of the contact between the Commission and its services and environmental organizations takes place on an ad hoc informal basis. In view of this, lack of personal and financial resources of environmental organizations which impede internal concertations as well as external representation, shows all its relevance." (Krämer 1992: 128) This view is supported by a pro-environmental movement bureaucrat. He however adds as a problem the fact that the movement is excessively institutionalized. He says: "My problem is that I am not waiting for lobbies, I am waiting for movements. What I hope is to have some kind of, let's say, democratic input in my thinking. I know people in the movement and they are brilliant, but they are academic, not a movement. My point is that I have simply not been approached by these people, although I am actually looking forward to it, and I have tried to be in contact. What I get as contact it's only from international meetings where I see them in the same light, with the same cloths I wear, business cards etc., but they don't bring me very much new. I know what they do, what they think, and I cannot use it." 332Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Among environmentalists, this state of affairs is commented on in two opposite ways. Either activists advocate more formalization, or they propose a return to extrainstitutional strategies such as more disruptive forms of action and the pursuit of broader cultural goals to influence public opinion. Occasionally the two approaches are combined, as is typically the case with Greenpeace. In general, in recent years environmentalists have taken a more mediating position and much of the early tension between environmentalists and industry has been reduced. As a lobbyist noted "When the environmentalist issue broke out in the beginning, industry was very much resisting. But now (Nov. 1994), in the last six seven years, the attitudes of industry have changed, and industry is now doing much more on a voluntary basis towards the conservation and protection of the environment." Another lobbyist noted "The chemical industry has been under attack from the Greens for a long time. So we have a long experience of Green pressure. Honestly, we have to recognise that in the first years these pressures were considered a burden rather than something that we had to respond to. But very soon there has been some advanced leaders of industry who recognised that we were indeed in danger and that if we wanted to stay in business we had to take a proactive response to proactive action." and he continued by explaining that over time some parts of industry learned to profit from environmentalism "and now we begin to see some members of companies who are greener than the greenest, because they know that they could make business with that". At times environmentalists are directly invited by lobbying organizations and become part of the consultive process. For instance in one year a packaging industry lobbying organization invited both the Green Party of the European Parliament and Greenpeace to a meeting with their members, and subsequently informal contacts were maintained. The institutionalization of social movements is an important dimension of most new movements of the eighties and of the environmental movement in particular. One of its consequences is an amplification of its values throughout society, but also an accommodation to existing practices. In this sense environmentalism is gradually ceasing to be a social movement and beginning to be an ideal that the environmentregulating policy community upholds as an identity marker, but that different actors reinterpret in their own terms. 11.5 CONCLUSION This examination of policy making in Brussels shows the variety of sources that steer policy formation in the environmental field in Brussels. Through an extensive system of communications and negotiations between different actors, the weight of influences and the merit of ideas is assessed. Problems and solutions are matched (March & Olsen Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 333 1989) and the outcome is exported as a regulatory framework that inspires environmental policies in member states. In this complex situation, a paradoxical dynamic is emerging. The impact of the environmental movement in Brussels is weak because of its lack of resources. But its culture is taken up by different actors and utilized institutionally. Thus, for instance, the EU bureaucracy contributes to the advancement of global EU integration, and budgetmaximizing considerations by regulating the environment, and does so inspired by a particular reading of the values of environmentalism. Similarly, the values of environmentalism are at the basis of a project of legitimacy acquisition and promotion of business in certain sectors of industry. Even those who resist regulation accept the legitimacy of environmental considerations, limiting their disputes to controversies on scientific issues, timing issues, and cost-benefit issues. It is precisely because of these varied institutional goals in whose service environmentalist principles can be employed, that they have a significant impact on policy making. And this impact, in turn, is further magnified by the cultural influence that institutions have in shaping society. They affect culture by defining appropriate standards of conduct for their members, routines of action and legitimate values. Thus, for instance, professing environmental concerns is becoming appropriate for business actors who not long ago despised environmentalism as a fringe ideological concern. Once they have penetrated parts of the institutional realm, isomorphic processes (Powell & DiMaggio 1991) promote the diffusion of environmentalism in other institutions. Some institutional actors have a dominant role in shaping these processes. Notably, the state (Skocpol 1979) is able to exert agenda-setting functions on other institutions. And, in this sense, the supra-national level can exert even more leverage. Thus, paradoxically, it is the institutionalization of a social movement ideal and its utilization in distinct institutional games, that help translate that ideal into social and cultural change. That ideal also comes to be presented as the raison d'être of a policy network spanning different types of organizations. It is a network that branches out in member states and thereby activates similar processes of institutional isomorphism on a panEuropean scale. They further diffuse the impact of environmental regulation in a field whose intrinsic characteristics allow for an expression of an idea that is not a mere aggregation of existing interests (Majone 1993). Crucial implications derive from the development of this macro-organizational field. This involves not only intra-institutional processes, but also processes in which policy making affects broader political developments. Institutions shape cultural change; they do not simply reflect it. Thus the collegial policy making style that has emerged as the rule in environmental regulation affects concepts of political representation and issues of participation in the Union. Particularly affected are rules of citizens' participation in collective decisions. 334Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Supra-national environmental regulation also involves issues of sovereignty. As several observers have pointed out, the process of unification of the European Community is in itself only the most visible dimension of a process which is draining the nation-state of its classical functions, such as the establishment of economic policies: in this case environmentally relevant ones. The environmentally regulating network is increasingly composed of supra-national bureaucracies, multinational firms and trans-national social movement organizations working in a field where the relevance of national geographic boundaries is progressively eroded. In this context, given that the expression and negotiation of interests is a driving force in policy formation, the new transnational centre, Brussels, and the EU institutions especially, acquire growing relevance. Their importance comes from the necessity to address conflicts, negotiate solutions or desensitize issues, which can no longer be achieved at the national level. The political nature of EU institutions is itself an affirmation of the crucial role of Brussels and the unique nature of its administrative units. As the process of decision making in Brussels is accelerated by EU harmonization, Brussels is ceasing to be the inconsequential stage of battles waged elsewhere. It is more and more the theatre of negotiations orchestrated from elsewhere but conducted and finalized in situ by a new political class operating in new political institutions. This process is increasingly important as the newly emphasized principle of subsidiarity takes hold, another factor which stresses the diplomatic role of Brussels' bureaucrats acting as a link between the different member states and also, increasingly, other levels of governance such as macro regions. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 335 12 An Encompassing Comparison 12.1 THE EU AS A HOMOGENIZING CONTEXT: SITUATING THE CASES IN AN ENCOMPASSING STRUCTURE An encompassing comparison situates the differences between national environmental cultures in the context of an encompassing system, which in our case is the European Union. The national cases are shaped by this overarching context which defines their location in the system, the role they play in this system, and the transformative and problem-solving capacities of the cases and of the system as a whole. Thus we extend the range of factors which constrain the actions of the collective actors in the environmental field. The guiding idea of the following encompassing comparison is that the European Union is a socially structured transnational system in which the relations of the parts to the center are of decisive importance. To clarify this perspective we will use the model developed by Wallerstein which locates nations in a "world system" as being part of the center, the periphery, or the semi-periphery. In the case of Europe the periphery is defined as countries and regions such as Ireland and the Basque country. The center, when defined in political economy terms (concentration of financial capital, information flow control etc.) would thus be the French-German couple plus the UK, Brussels representing the spatial metaphor (and administrative reality!) for this center.113 On this basis, the semiperiphery would be defined as those countries tied to the center by a relative degree of dependency which in our case is Italy.114 113 The center is characterized by having a greater number of options concerning cooperation with others. The more a nation is in the center the more it can play the card of non-cooperation in order to stabilize its central location in the system. This is what happens in the English case. In the German case, the structural ground for its position in the center lies in a combination of real power and moral obligation regarding the past. 114 This model is a simplification and is in need of further empirical proof. However, as a model and as a hypothesis it can serve as a starting point for a more refined comparison. 336Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * The location of a country in the encompassing system partially explains the different behaviour found in the different cases. This is obvious for countries such as the Basque country and Ireland. Dependency is the most important factor determining their environmental cultures. This is the result of the media discourse analysis which found that the basic resonating theme for environmental problems is the national narrative and the unresolved problems of incorporating a national identity in a political form. In the center, new techniques of creating consensual social orders have developed, without being hampered by traditional considerations. These two countries have - for different reasons - experienced sharp discontinuities in their political culture.115 On such historically cleared ground new experiments with creating and stabilizing legitimate social orders took place, which serve for many other countries as points of reference: such as the German model of industrial relations or the new English free market liberalism. We have seen that dialogical forms have advanced in these countries, which indicates a political culture experimenting with new ideas and forms. Environmental politics is contingent upon these structural and institutional innovations in two ways: it is generated by these innovations and it fosters them when under way. The role of the semiperiphery is of utmost importance. The semiperiphery has an ambivalent stake in the system: it tries to exploit the system wherever possible. The center needs them, and the periphery is dependent upon them too. Environmental politics in the semiperiphery is determined by the calculation of costs and benefits in a situation of semidependence and semipower.116 Cases located in the semiperiphery develop specific strategies of institutional performance. They combine the type of relationship they have with dependent others with the relationship they have toward the center: authoritarian modes with modes of equal treatment. This combination favours an institutional style of administrative authoritarianism in the name of the people, or what could be called "administrative republicanism".117 In the field of environmental politics such an institutional logic favours administrative over negotiated solutions. Given an encompassing framework such as this, which determines behavior through the position of each country in it its institutional logic, we should expect an increasing differentiation of masterframes and institutional styles between these three categories of 115 In the case of Britain, the decisive discontinuity was the Thatcher era. In Germany, it was obviously its Nazi past. This does not imply that we are drawing any similarities between these cases in terms of the substance of their respective political cultures: the two cases are too different. However, in formal respects, both display the shared experience of rupture which has opened up a different future. 116 Models of such situations still have to be developed. So far there is mainly historically oriented material on such international social systems. See as a prime example Mann (1986, 1992). 117 That this model works differently in Italy and France is again obvious; however, these different institutional performances are secondary to the logic of institutional performance which in both cases is isomorphic. Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 337 national societies within the European system. Environmental politics is - as any other politics - part of this system which provides a specific opportunity structure to the actors involved in the system. Media discourses tend to rationalize these positions and provide the legitimating support for these differences. The effect of European environmental policy regulation therefore faces particular implementation problems which have to do with the different nature of the various national contexts determined by the structure of the system. This poses the question whether such a self-stabilizing system is capable of self-transformation toward a European type of environmental culture. 12.2 POLICY IMPLICATIONS Three conclusion can be drawn about the factors determining the dynamics of environmental politics in Europe. Very much depends upon the successful installation of a basic master frame which is able to identify the core of a European environmental policy. The success of the sustainability frame within European policy circles is a step in this direction. The attempt to create an new development model for the community which links the problem of the environment with the problem of employment could be another in this direction.118 The implementation problem is linked to the fact that there is no single European public that listens to such a frame. The public is nationally differentiated, and already the translation of the term creates a first barrier for stabilizing a masterframe of European environmental policy. This masterframe of environmental politics is assimilated to the national structures which frame the debate and reproduced differently through the institutional logics of each country. Thus the homogenizing effect is counteracted and eventually neutralized. The implementation problem of decisions taken on a transnational level run into the same problem. Establishing an EU environmental policy community with its specific logics has to reckon with the problem of leaving the implementation of rules to national institutional structures. However, institutional rules not only have a technical function which might lead simply to implementation gaps (which could be solved by time) but also redefine the meaning of the rules according to the institutional culture embedded in 118 This idea has also been characterised as "ecological modernization", thus indicating some kind of complementarity between what has been traditionally called modernization and the problem of the environment which was not foreseen in the classic model of modernization. The internal difficulties of such a model are obvious because it combines two completely different types of problems: a redistributive problem (employment policies are basically mechanisms of redistributing work and income) and a collective good problem (providing air to breathe and unpolluted food to eat). However, there are increasingly discussions about the distributive aspects of environmental costs and of common good aspects of distributing work and income. This is an open and potentially important masterframe which might enter the complex transnational arena and its national subunits of European environmental politics. 338Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * these rules. Transnational decisions therefore might even strengthen the heterogeneity of environmental policy cultures, because of the the distinct cultural logics of national institutional systems. The structure of the transnational system, which assigns different options and constraints to national actors according to their location in the system, is a further reason for the paradox of homogenizing action on the one hand and heterogenizing effects on the other. Since this structure is historically shaped and economically fixed there is no change to be expected in the short run. Environmental politics in Europe will thus be forced to live with this contextual condition in the short run. Long-term changes are of a historical nature for which environmental politics can contribute only a small share. Nevertheless, there are some options for institutionalizing environmental politics in general, with environmental policy as the action of political actors in the game in Europe. They can be summarized in the following three points: The way out of the problem of there being distinct national publics which follow their own particular national structures when monitoring environmental politics, is to create special publics for communicating environmental issues. This is the process already under way in some countries where publics are created between consequential collective actors (discursive institutions such as fora). Such publics could be called "representative publics" because they represent the public as whole while specializing on specific issues. This guarantees a sufficient level of expertise and professionalization; it guarantees above all a distance with regard to everyday culture, with all its fears and emotions, without losing the legitimation inherent in public debate. This institutional innovation, which forces collective actors to participate in debates which are then taken up from time to time by the general public - i.e. by media discourse - provides a context in which cultural differences can be neutralized. The mechanism of media monitoring these representative publics follows the logic of elections: every once in a while (guaranteed and stabilized by procedural rules) there is a check on such representative publics. Since media discourses have an inherent cyclical character because of the logic of the rise and decline of attention to issues, the social logic for such institutional control is given. Additional formalized rules might be added. The question of the substance of environmental politics in Europe is, as has been shown throughout this report, shaped by cultural ideas, by frames and metaphors, by resonating themes in national cultures. However, the more collective actors interact in competitive situations of defining issues, and the more traditional protest actors enter this game as organized public interest groups, the more plurality will shape the cultural context, thus undermining historically shaped and fixed cultural orientations. The increasing transnational organization of the different actors adds to this cultural openness and plurality. A network of free-floating frames and symbols on the level of representative publics will certainly soften the conservatism of national cultures. Thus Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 339 the development of fora and other types of discursive institutions (dialogical institutions) of transnationally engaged collective actors might contribute to a more liberal political culture in Europe, in which national themes increasingly are exposed to cultural competition with other national themes. This finally might even undermine the cultural basis of the structure of the European system, which so far has strengthened the conservatism of national political cultures. It might be more effective politics than the one based on redistributive measures which try (with debatable success) to homogenize nations on the economic level. Environmental politics in this sense involves more than solving environmental problems. It is a politics which helps transform the political culture of the European system into a more open and liberal political culture, thus perhaps providing a new model of how to democratize complex social systems that run into the most complex of technical problems such as those involved in the management of the environment. 340Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Appendix I: Coding Indicators for Articles on Environment (english version!) A. Objective Newspaper Indicators ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ 1. Type of newspaper (1 col.) - [JOURNTYPE] 1 Daily 2 Weekly 3 Two-weekly 4 Monthly 2. Newspaper: (2 col.) - [NAME] 01 The Independent 02 The Guardian 03 The Daily Mail 04 Daily Mirror 05 The Daily Telegraph 06 Today Newspaper 3. Date: (8 col.) - [DATE] 4. Page: (3 col.) - [PAGE] 5. Number of Paragraphs: (2 col.) - [NUMOFPARA] 6. Section: (2 col.) - [SECTION] 01 News/Home/Front page 02 Politics 03 Foreign/Europe/International 04 Public Information/Announcements 05 Editorial 06 Feature 13 Advertising 14 Other 15 Health 7. Type of Article (1 col.) - [ARTITYPE] 1 news report 2 essay (development of themes) 3 commentary/editorial/leader 4 interview 5 letter 6 other 8. Headline (MEMO variable) - [TITLE] 9. Subtitle/Keywords in 1st paragraph (MEMO variable) - [SUBTITLE] 10 Graphics (1col.) - [PICTURE] 1 photograph(s) 2 design/cartoon/caricature(s) 3 chart/graphics 4 combination of 1-3 Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 341 B. Environmental Issue Indicators ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ B.1. Generic environmental issues: concerning "problems": ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ 1 General environmental "problems" (issues) (1 col.) - [PROBGEN] 1 air pollution 2 water pollution 3 soil pollution 4 depletion of resources/degradation 5 pollution (general or unspecified) 2 Global "problems" climate/natural (1 col.) - [PROBSP1] 1 global warming/climatic change/ozone gas (low level) 2 hole in the ozone layer/CO2/greenhouse effect/CFCs 3 deforestation/rainforest 4 acid rain/radioactive rainclouds 5 radon/natural radioactive gas 6 composition of above (1-5) 7 natural disaster/hurricane storm etc. 8 algae 3 Chemical/physical "problems" (1 col.) - [PROBSP2] 1 nuclear radiation/atomic waste 2 toxic waste/chemical/lead/radiation pollution or contamination 3 soil or beach erosion/contamination 4 Flora/fauna "problems" (1 col.) - [PROBSP3] 1 destruction of landscape/sea/beaches 2 harm to animals 3 both 5 Public life "problems" (1 col.) - [PROBSP4] 1 contamination of water (domestic supply/rivers)/drought 2 food contamination/"mad cow disease" 3 domestic waste/litter/sewage 4 health hazards 5 urban planning/redevelopment/parks 6 noise 6 Other "problems" (1 col.) - [PROBSP5] B.2. Contested environmental issues: concerning consequences/risks ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ 1 Energy production/use of resources (1 col.) - [ASP1] 1 nuclear/atomic energy 2 fossil fuels - coal/oil/gas 3 physical/raw materials/excavation/natural resources 2 Vehicle (1 col.) - [ASP2] 1 transport/traffic/cars 3 Chemical (1 col.) - [ASP3] 1 chemical 4 Use of non-energy resources (1 col.) - [ASP4] 1 genetic engineering 342Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 2 animal use 5 Other harmful technologies - (1 col.) - [ASP5] 1 other 2 irradiation 3 hunting 6 Human behaviour as an issue/responsibility - (1 col.) - [ASPBEHV] 1 intentional exploitation of nature/wasteful behaviour 2 unintentional wasteful behaviour B.3. Solutions to issues / green responses & propositions ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ 1 Nature conservation/preservation (1 col.) - [PROP1] 1 landscape/coastal/countryside protection/Greenbelt 2 animal/plants protection 3 heritage (protection of monuments/cities/artifacts) 4 all above 2 Green behaviour/activities (1 col.) - [PROP2] 1 green consumerism 2 alternative life style (health behaviour)/countryside activities 3 Alternative technologies/practices (1 col.) - [PROP3] 1 saving energy/regenerating resources 2 regenerative energy/"soft" power: wind/solar etc/renewable energy. 3 bio-energy (organic/bio-agriculture) 4 recycling 5 other green (?) technologies/waste disposal/lead-free petrol/catalytic converter 6 preservation 7 research 8 ethical investment/green market incentives/green tax proposals (e.g. carbon tax) 4 Economic incentives (1 col.) - [PROP4] 1 directive measures towards environmental protection (informative/motivational e.g. subsidies; consultancy) 2 forecasting sanctions/repayment of damages 5 Policy and administrative directives (1 col.) - [PROP5] 1 directive measures towards environmental protection 2 administrative regulation/prohibition 6 Regulation of "private" self-initiated measures (1 col.) - [PROP6] 1 Yes 7 Other propositions (1 col.) - [PROP] 1 Yes C. Relation of environmental discourse to other discourses ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ 1 Political and economic issues (1 col.) - [REL1] 1 economic growth/free market 2 costs of development/public expenditure 3 employment/unemployment/social policy 4 military issues/use of armaments/threat of war 5 corruption/concealing facts Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 343 2 Socio-demographic issues (1 col.) - [REL2] 1 poverty/social inequality/national growth 2 social inequality/international development/Third World 3 population growth 4 all above 3 Collective identity issues/political culture (1 col.) - [REL3] 1 ethnic/regionalist/localist movements or claims 2 cultural identities/traditions/spirituality 3 threat to democracy/technocratic control 4 decentralisation/base democracy 5 "globalisation", i.e. spreading cross-national regulation 4 "Subjective" issues (1 col.) - [REL4] 1 "post-material" issues 2 use of leisuretime/freetime 3 "(psycho)therapy"/coping with contemporary life/theological issues 5 Other issues (1 col.) - [REL5] 1 Yes D. Indicators for Issue Context: Events ═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ D.1. Indicators for "action-events" ═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ 1 Public (protest) action (1 col.) - [INDACT1] 1 demonstrations, marches (public taking action)/direct action (violence) 2 public discussions, speeches (public attending)/referendum 3 public declarations (parties, unions etc.) 4 local action (self-help, direct intervention etc.)/consumer action 5 combination of some or all above 2 Action of intermediary organizations (1 col.) - [INDACT2] (reported internal declarations/NGOs/Pol.parties/env. orgs.) 1 statements, requests of organizations 3 Legislative/administrative action (1 col.) - [INDACT3] 1 Yes 4 Knowledge production/information production/expert action (1 col.) - [INDACT4] 1 Yes 5 Judicial action (1 col.) - [INDACT5] 1 Yes 6 Other types of action (1 col.) - [INDACT6] 1 Yes D.2. Spatial and Temporal location of "event" ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ 1 (Sub-)National (1 col.) - [PLACE1] 1 home/sub-local 2 local 3 regional 4 national 344Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 2 Supra-national (1 col.) - [PLACE2] 1 european (west - EC)/Scandinavia 2 east european/(post-)USSR 3 Third World 4 USA/Canada 5 Far East/Pacific/China 6 international/global 3 Time dimension of "event" (1 col.) - [TIME] 1 event at beginning relative to date of media reporting 2 event in duration relative to date of media reporting 3 event at end relative to date of media reporting E. Environmental Agents named in text (related to "issues") ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ 1 General/non-specific actors (1 col.) - [ACTTYP1] 1 relating to people as whole 2 relating to part of people 2 Political/non-protest organizations (1 col.) - [ACTTYP2] 1 governmental/administration 2 party of government 3 opposition parties 4 parliament/MPs 5 United Nations 6 EC (Ministry; Commission; Paliament) 7 NATO 3 Environmental organisations (2 cols.) - [ACTTYP3] 1 Greenpeace 2 WWF 3 Friends of the Earth 4 Conservation Society 5 Green Alliance 6 RSPB 7 CPRE 8 Ark 9 9 onwards to be added as list during coding (by name(s) to appendix) 4 Protest/active organizations (1 col.) - [ACTTYP4] 1 green party (national/foreign) 2 citizens' initiatives/local groups/environmentalists (unspecified)/ecologists 3 informal network/single-issue "one-off" groups/anti-nuclear campaigners 4 others 5 all above (except 4) 5 Other collective organizations (1 col.) - [ACTTYP5] 1 trade unions 2 church 3 professional groups 4 other organizations 5 (green) consumers 6 health authorities 6 Business/industry organizations (1 col.) - [ACTTYP6] 1 chemical & waste industry 2 energy Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 345 3 environmental protection industry 4 construction/heavy industry/mining/re-development 5 food industry/supermarkets 6 motor industry 7 water industry 8 industrial/business associations/industry in general (non-specific) 7 Agricultural sector organizations (1 col.) - [ACTTYP7] 1 agrarian/fishing/forestry businesses 8 Service sector organizations (1 col.) - [ACTTYP8] 1 transport 2 leisure industries/tourism 3 others (financial/health) 9 Experts/scientific institutions (1 col.) - [ACTTYP9] 1 yes 10 Public figures/celebrities/artists (1 col.) - [ACTTYP10] 1 yes 11 Media/PR (1 col.) - [ACTTYP11] 1 yes 12 Legal/judicial (1 col.) - [ACTTYP12] 1 yes 13 Others (1 col.) - [ACTTYP13] 1 yes F. Type of Environmental Discourse ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ 1 Type of environmental discourse (1 col.) - [MODDISC] 1 technological-industrial growth critique discourse 2 regulatory environmental discourse - "policy discourse" 3 participatory discourse/conflict - "politics" 4 risk discourse 5 nature conservation discourse (countryside-, animal protection) 6 deep ecology/lifestyle/meaning of life 7 environmental damage 8 market 346Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * G. Framing Strategies of Actors ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ 1 Mobilisation/articulation of anxiety/fear (1 col.) - [FR1] 1 yes 2 Personalisation/linking of ecological themes to specific people(s) (1 col.) - [FR2] 1 yes 3 Moralisation (1 col.) - [FR3] 1 indignation/guilt 2 appeal to religious/ethnic responsibility/"the people" 3 appeal to total political and economic responsibility 4 appeal to consumer choice 4 Scientification/technologisation/use of expert knowledge (1 col.) - [FR4] 1 de-moralisation/de-politicisation by factual scientific and technical 2 politicisation/dramatisation by (critical) scientific (counter-)information argumentation 5 Aestheticisation (1 col.) - [FR5] 1 yes 6 Appeal to collective/common interest (1 col.) - [FR6] 1 local/regional/national/supranational interest 2 specific group interest 7 Appeal to populist/base-democratic opposition: politicians/technocrats/scientists [FR7] 1 yes 8 Appeal to competing economic interests: welfare/employment etc. (1 col.) - [FR8] 1 yes 9 Appeal to competing "law & order" needs (1 col.) - [FR9] 1 yes 10 Comments (MEMO variable) - [COM] (1col.)- Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 347 H. Newspaper representation of "issue" ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ 1 Mode of newspaper presentation (1 col.) - [MODE] 1 + pro-environmentalist 2 - anti-environmentalist 3 = neutral 4 ? ambiguous I. Symbolisation ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ a. Symbolisation through words 1 Verbal symbolisation: metaphor; described images; rhetoric; historical analogies (MEMO variable) - [SYMBOL] b. Symbolisation by reference to Chernobyl 1 Yes c. Symbolisation through imagery: graphics; tables; drawings; cartoons etc. 2 Title/subtitle of image (MEMO variable) - [VIS1] 3 What is represented? (MEMO variable) - [VIS2] 4 What is the message? (MEMO variable) - [VIS3] d. Symbolisation by photograph(s) 5 Title/subtitle of photo (MEMO variable) - [VIS4] 6 What is represented? (MEMO variable) - [VIS5] 7 What is the message? (MEMO variable) - [VIS6] J. Advertising/Public Relations/Listings ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ 1 Date (8 col.) - [PDATE] 2 Newspaper/journal (2 col.) - [PNAME] (coding options on first page) 3 Number of paragraphs (3 col.) - [PDIM] 4 Subject/theme (MEMO variable) - [PSUBJ] 5 Actors/commissioner of advert (MEMO variable) - [PACTOR] 6 What is represented in the text? (MEMO variable) - [PTEXT] 7 What is represented by the images? (MEMO variable) - [PPICT] 8 What is the message? (MEMO variable) - [PMESSAGE] 348Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * Appendix II: Interview Schedules INTERVIEW SCHEDULE 1 To be used for: - environmentalist groups and associations - green lists/parties - ministers/ministries for ecology/environment Begin interview by presenting oneself, research institute, purpose of research and of interview; then proceed according to schedule. 1. Organizational structure, goals and self-definitions a. Obtain some general statistics (with data for both actual condition and variations, if any, over the past 5 years): membership, number of voluntary militants, of paid functionaries, organizational presence on the national territory, total yearly budget (revenues + expenses) and a rough organizational chart of the association, indicating main functions and tasks (including at least the headquarter chapter and the main local ones: be very careful in defining how territorial and functional responsibilities relate to each other). b. Obtain a general definition of their goals and purposes. When have they been defined and by whom? c. Which environmental issues are of concern to their organization (show card 1), and which ones are not. Are they involved in all the environmental areas? Are or have they been involved in (or consider as relevant to them) issues other than the environmental ones? d. What and whom are these choices due to? Are they choices of principle, of interest, or forced ones? Do they expect these choices to change in the future? Who in the organization will have to decide this? When/how frequently are policies revised or changed? By whom? e. Are these issues all of equal relevance to them? If not, which ones are more and which less relevant? For what reasons? What does this mean in terms of organizational/financial resources devoted to each of them? f. How is their activity structured with regard to the above issues (obtain an organization chart to be added to the general one, indicating leaders, paid and voluntary staff working, and, where possible, budgets), and what kind of initiatives are carried out on each of them (show card 2)? Who decides targets and forms of action/strategies and tactics? g. Do they expect the relevance of the different issues that are of concern to them to change in the future? In which direction? Due to what? Will this lead to a change in their own priorities, strategies and forms of action? Are they already changing in this direction? 2. External factors & events (accidents, legislation, discoveries) a. Which events and/or changes (accidents, legislation, scientific discoveries, etc.) in the last 5 years have had the largest influence or impact on their own activities and goals? Why/for what reasons? b. How/in what direction, have they changed policies or strategies in order to respond to the pressures or opportunities created by these events? What implications have had these changes in terms of organizational structure, alliances with other actors (both within and outside the movement), and forms of action? c. How much and how these events/changes have modified the attitude and support to them of: 1) government and political parties; 2) general public; 3) local communities; 4) members? d. Have the same events/changes forced other movement/environmental organizations on one side and their adversaries on the other to modify their strategies and forms of action? Why? In what direction? e. Overall, which of these events they consider to have been beneficial to them and which not? Have there been events which have not had the impact they had hoped for? Why? f. What future events do they see as possible opportunities or as possibile risks/threats (to their activities and the achievement of their goals)? What do they do to maximize/minimize the posssibility of their upcoming? How do they plan to tackle/take advantage of these expected changes? Do they have specific plans? Describe if possible. 3. Info sources a. How do they keep informed/aware of possible future changes/trends in environmental issues, legislation, etc., and even of events, accidents, alarms, etc.? What sources of information do they have? (Probe for: experts/scientists/specialists, government people, politicians, journalists, environmentalist groups and networks.) Which ones they prefer to use? Why? Concerning which issues? When did they realize that these sources were important? Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 349 b. Do they have stable regular contacts with these sources? With which, if any? For what reasons? when did they start to develop these contacts? Do they have an internal office/dept./persons which specializes in maintainig contact with these sources? Do they wish they were able to be more informed? On what issues, if any? What obstacles are there? c. Will the importance of these sources increase in the future? Of which? For what reasons? Are they planning to establish/improve their organizational structures in relation with these changes (or for other reasons)? 4. Relations to other actors in the field a. As far as the above environmental issues are concerned, and for each of them, who (organizations, groups, institutions, etc.) represent their allies, competitors, and adversaries (be specific)? For what reasons? (Probe for: business corporations and enterprises, publishers and local & national TV channels, governmental regulatory agencies, local and national environmental groups, political parties and/or pressure groups, unions, industrial associations.) b. Do they expect this "structure of the game" (in terms of alliances, etc.) to change in the future? If so, on what issues, in what direction and for what reasons? c. With which of the above agencies, groups, organizations (focus on organized entitites), they have or have had, direct contacts, on which of the issues, and what for: non-aggression agreements, cooperative joint ventures, sponsorships, development of public policies, negotiations, requests, threats, other (ask specific details)? How was each of these contacts initiated, and by whom (themselves or the other actor/s)? d. How frequent and regular is at the moment each of these contacts? Do they expect them to become more or less regular/frequent? e. Do some of these contacts have a legal, organizational and/or institutional basis (a ministerial committee, a legal cooperative contract, etc.)? f. Who/what office in the organization/group is in charge of dealing with these contacts? g. Are any such contacts conducted not by them directly but by some association of which they are part? (Ask specific details.) h. How do they judge the results of each of these contacts? Which ones are more positively evaluated and why? Have they ever dropped some of these contacts because of unsatisfactory results? Describe story if any. Do they think/expect/hope similar contacts will be more frequent in the future? Why, with whom, on what issues, and to what end? Are they presently working towards achieving such contacts and/or agreements/cooperations? With whom and on what issues? i. What sorts of risks on the other side are entailed for their organization by such deals (and by which ones specifically)? What are the limitations of such contacts? How do they cope with them? j. In general, what is or has been the role (even if they do not have established contacts with them) of 1) public institutions or agencies, 2) TV/mass media, 3) business corporations, and 3) other environmentalist groups, parties, associations, as far as the environmental problem is concerned? What are the pros, cons, opportunities and risks each of these actors represent? What is positively evaluated in the behavior of these actors, and what could/should be improved/changed? To what end? k. What is going to change in the behavior and role of these actors in the near future? (Probe for: local, national and international as well as for subjective and objective factors.) l. More specifically, what are the comparative advantages of dealing directly with private businesses as opposed to working towards or within the political system (political pressure)? What opportunities for the solution of environmental problems are offered today, and are going to be offered in the near future, by economic actors, as opposed to political actors such as parties or governmental and administrative agencies? Do they think they are ready/willing to take on these advantages/opportunities, if any? 5. External communication activities a. On the other side, what is or has been the role of the public and public opinion in environmental issues? (Probe for differences among the diverse issues) b. What is the relationship between public opinion and the behavior/response of political institutions, in general, and on each issue? c. Is the role of public opinion important for them? In what sense? Is it more of an opportunity or a risk? When is it the case that they address the public opinion, and when they directly address the political institutions? Are these alternative strategies or not? If yes, are there differences in the outcomes? Are there differences from issue to issue? On what issues have they spent and are planning to spend the larger amounts of resources in communicationg to/reaching the public? Why? 350Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * d. What is the importance (opportunities and risks) of being "visible" to the public opinion for them? How many resources do they devote to this? Are they enough? To what extent has public opinion influenced their goals, strategies, actions? Why? On which issues more/less? Why? e. Do they generally address the public/public opinion to "inform" them or to "mobilize", to "denounce" or to "launch proposals"? When/on which issues? f. In general, do they think they "represent" the public opinion or they try to "educate" it? g. How are they organized as to the communication to the public/public opinion? How many people (paid/voluntary) work on communication campaings? Is there a specialized office/dept. or person/s in charge of PR, press relations, advertising, newsletters, etc.? Who else in their organization is in direct contact with the public (speeches, etc.) or the media (interviews, etc.)? h. If they have (or don't have) a specialized office/dept. or person for dealing with the media, when was it introduced, on what issue/s and why (or why not)? Was this a proper decision or not? What are the pro/cons? Do they think this/these role/s will further develop? i. Do they have continued relationships with advertising agencies or other specialized service agencies? Which ones? How many? On what kind of communication (TV spots, press ads, PR's, gadgets, stickers, poster design, etc.) do they collaborate, and on which issues? Are these paid or not? If yes, how many financial resources (% of budget) does the organization spend for this? When were these collaborations with external agencies introduced, and why? Are they going to increase in the near future? Why/why not? j. Do they use the mass media mainly through press releases/journalists, or they also use their own spaces (bought or freely given?) for advertisments, etc.? When, on what issues? k. Which specific channels (mass media, TV, press; own channels such as magazines, newsletters, radio stations; direct or door to door work of activists with leaflets/brochures) are, and have been, used for public communication? On which issues and with what combination? (Try to obtain a ranking in importance on the different issues.) l. Does the use of different channels make a difference? Which? Is the present balance between channels going to change in the future? Why? m. Which media are more eager to host environmental news/communication in general? And on which issues? With which ones do they have a more continued/regular contact? For what reasons? Are there channels, newspapers or magaziens that they consider to be "friendly"? Why? How do they keep in touch with these? What facilitates relationships and what makes them difficult? How do they cope with this? What specific difficulties do they have? n. When, according to their perception did the mass media start to pay attention to environmental issues? Can they define specific periods/steps in the relationships of environmental groups (themselves above all) with the media? How do they explain the variations? Is the communication and use of the mass media going to become more or less widespread in the future on environmental issues? more or less easy for them? Why? o. Are their public communicaton activities directed to specific targets or to the undifferentiated public? Are there differences on each issue? Why so? Are specific advantages and problems involved in segmenting their public? Is the trend for them going towards more or less segmentation? For what reasons? p. Does the language which has to be used change according to the public? When? How? Do symbols which are important for different publics change? Does the group have or use people/agencies/consultants who specialize in such ad hoc tuning? Can they describe how they address the different publics? How did they come to these conclusions, based on which evidences? What do they think future trends will be? q. Have these public communication activities achieved the goals which had been set for them? When/on which issues yes/not and for what reasons? Which aspects have been more and which less satisfactory? How do they evaluate the impact of their public communication activities? Are they planning to introduce changes in their communication strategies? What sort of changes? Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * 351 INTERVIEW SCHEDULE 2 To be used for: - business organizations/corporations - non-environment/ecology ministers/ministries Begin interview by presenting oneself, research institute, purpose of research and of interview; then proceed according to schedule. 1. Activity of the organization in environmental issues, past, present and future (basic info scheme) a. Which environmental issues are and have been of greatest concern to their business? Why and since when (events, accidents, decisions, release of information/reports, etc.)? (show card 1) In particular: Which past or current environmental legislation has (had) most impact on their business? b. Are these environmental aspects represented mainly by concrete liabilities that their company is facing? Which ones? Or are they (or have been) represented by indirect threats or positive opportunities and which ones? (Probe for: long/short term market advantages/disadvantages, company or product image, risks of not taking action, etc.) c. How has the company responded to these pressures/opportunities so far? How these responses have been implemented in initiatives, informational campaigns, product changes or developments, etc.? Why? (Probe for: alternative plans considered; problems foreseen in implementing each alternative plan; plans abandoned or changed; reasons for choices: financial costs/savings, competititve, tactical and strategic advantages.) d. Do they have a written environmental policy? If so, how do they check that it is implemented at all levels? How do they communicate their environmental policies and plans within the company? e. What financial (costs and gains) implications have/had these policies and the changes related to them? And what organizational implications (personnel and type, departments, restructurations, etc.), and external (consultancies, contacts; probe for: contacts, collaborations with or consultancy by 1) scientific experts, 2) business/marketing experts, 3) legal experts, 4) political experts; 5) government experts? f. How much and how do the environmental pressures and the way they respond to them influence the attitude and support of their: 1) business partners; 2) shareholders; 3) employees; 4) customers; 5) local community? g. What did/have done their competitors to address the same issues/pressures? (Probe for: differences in policies and actions, and reasons for these) h. Do they expect any future changes in these environmental issues? Of what type: legislation, political pressures, public opinion pressures, changes in the environment? Will they (which ones) represent greater burdens or even better opportunities? i. How do they plan to tackle/take advantage of these expected changes? Do they have specific plans? Describe if possible, including changes in general policy, market strategies, communication strategies, organizational (internal and external) changes. j. How do they keep informed/aware of possible future changes/trends in environmental issues or legislation? What sources of information do they have? (Probe for: experts/consultants, contacts with government people, environmentalist groups; and for presence of internal structure/offices dedicated to info collection.) 2. External communication activities a. What changes in terms of public communication activities have followed from the company's response to these environmental changes/pressures/opportuni-ties? Related to which specific environmental issues? b. Specifically, what has this changed in terms of the messages sent to their different publics? What new/different things/messages had to be communicated to these publics? (Probe for: own clients/consumers, potential consumers, general public, local community.) c. In what form are/have been these messages communicated: If any, what PR and/or what advertising campaigns? d. Which specific channels are, and have been, used? Which alternatives were considered in the beginning? Have there been changes over time in these or are changes planned? Why? e. Have they used other strategies or tools for reshaping the external/public appearance of the company, related to these? (Probe above all for: sponsoring of environmental activities, introduction of new brands, products, changes in logos or lay-outs, etc.)? Have these campaigns been modified or changed over time? For what reasons? 352Eder et al. * Research report "Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues" * f. Have these efforts also implied organizational changes: internally (Probe for: introduction of specific marketing or PR experts); and externally new/different consultants (Probe for: marketing experts, advertising/PR agencies, environmentalist groups)? Where have external consultants and collaborators been found, and how by which criteria) selected? g. Of which competing or even adversarial messages must their own messages take account? What does this imply in terms of communication tactics and strategies? (Probe for: adversarial environmentalist groups, competitors trying to appropriate market segments and/or positionings, etc.) h. Have these public communication activities achieved the goals which had been set for them? Why yes/not? Which aspects have been more and which less satisfactory? Are they planning to introduce changes in them? What sort of changes? i. How important are, among the efforts/policies of their company aimed at responding to environmental challenges, the aspects related to public communication? For which publics are they more important (try to rank the different segments) and why? j. How much of its total turnover does the company spend on these communication activities related to environmental issues? Is it considered to be enough or not? Why? k. Do they expect this importance to be growing or decreasing? Why, in relation with what factors? How are they planning to (or should they) cope with this? Will this bring their company to spend/devote more resources to public communication tasks in the future? How much more, and specifically what sort of resources and for what segments of public? 3. Relations to other actors in the field a. As far as these environmental issues are concerned, who (organizations, groups, institutions) represent their (actual and potential - contingent on what?) allies, competitors, and adversaries? For what reasons? (Probe for: competing companies, governmental regulatory agencies, local and national environmental groups, political parties and/or pressure groups, unions, industrial associations.) b. With which of the above agencies, groups, organizations, have they had, presently have, are planning or have been asked to have direct contacts, and what for: non-aggression agreements, cooperative joint ventures, sponsorships, development of public policies, negotiations, requests, threats, other? What was/is being dealt in each case (ask specific details)? How was each of these contacts initiated, and by whom (the company or the other actors)? c. How frequent and regular is at the moment each of these contacts? Do they expect them to become more or less regular/frequent? d. Do some of these contacts have a legal, organizational and/or institutional basis? e. Who/what dept. in the company is in charge of dealing with these contacts? f. Are any such contacts conducted not by them directly but by some association/group of which they are part? (Ask specific details.) g. What was or is being achieved through each of these contacts (probe both for cooperative contacts and for conflicts)? Are results positively evaluated? Do they think similar contacts will be more frequent in the future? Have they ever dropped some of these contacts because of unsatisfactory results? Which ones (describe story)? h. How do they judge the role of: 1) public institutions and environment-related regulatory agencies; 2) environmentalist groups, parties, associations; 3) the mass media, as far as the future of their business is concerned? What are the pros, cons, opportunities and risks each of them represent for their business? 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