The green battle in the media: A framing analysis of environmental press coverage

Abstract

The analysis of environmental media coverage using framing theory allows us to study and compare its evolution over time and establish a typology to discuss how the media echoes environmental issues and controversies. In this article, we propose a framing typology for environmental discourses, based on previous typologies and expanded with the different interpretive frames we have identified in environment-related opinion texts published in two historical periods: the 1980s and the year 2018. This frame typology can be used in the analysis of reporting about environmental movements and conflicts, and to other practical cases of environmental hot topics like climate change. The analysis of the environmental discourse in the press can be very useful to establish the evolution of this type of discourse in our society and the predominant concept of nature at a particular time.