Coal Region as a Discursive Construct: Meanings of Coal in the Kuzbass Media Routine

Abstract

In the Kemerovo Region, coal is a local socio-cultural construct that receives its substantive content through the local mass media discourse. Social studies of extractivism reveal the deep-rooted and significant impact of resource extraction on the modern society. This research relied on a discourse analysis of media routine and the meanings of coal it specifies. The method of discourse analysis is a phenomenological strategy of socio-cultural description; it clarifies the conceptual content of local media communities and registers the current state of the discursive environment. In the Kuzbass media, coal is an important resource that provides well-being, while coal mining is an extractive practice based on an unfair distribution of benefits and costs. This discourse objectifies the acts of collective signification of regional coal development activities. The economic discourse cultivates the idea of sustainable economic development of Kuzbass, while the ecological discourse defines the understanding of the specific coal-mining ecology. Media routine forms a social field of presence, where the regional community reproduces its collective identity and develops a language to describe the reality in which coal is the intersection point of economics, politics, ecology, and culture.