ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the notions of scripts, cultural packages, interpretive packages and cultural resonance, and explores their significance for understanding the nature and potential 'power' of popular media representations of nature and the environment. It provides the particular interpretive packages which have been – and continue to be – prominent in media and popular culture constructions of the environment, drawing particularly on research on representations of nuclear power, biotechnology and climate change. The chapter explores some of the core frames and cultural assumptions which are in play in media and public sphere discussions about the environment, nature and environmental issues. It also explores the historical changes in narrative and stylistic formats, and the relationship between socio-historical circumstances and media constructions of nature and the environment. It reviews the significance of lexis or word choice in media constructions of environmental issues, and the similarly significant contribution of narrative analysis to uncovering the deeper ideological values communicated through wildlife film.
