ABSTRACT
In Chapter 6, challenges to Tasmania’s place-branding were mediated through travel journalism largely as a result of journalistic agency, media power, media branding and the close proximity of the environmental threat to travel journalism sources who did not rely exclusively on the tourism industry for their income. In the case of the last of these factors, the success of sources in gaining access to travel journalism demonstrated that brand extensions intended to bolster place-branding can, in times of conflict, help expose it to scrutiny. Place-branding proved incapable of “simultaneously mediat[ing] subjective qualities, tastes, and norms; and… objective financial worth” (Aronczyk and Powers 2010, p. 7) when the threat was perceived by travel journalism sources to have a direct impact on their incomes, leading these sources to risk deploying a damaged brand in travel journalism. In this chapter I consider Tasmania’s place-branding specifically as it encounters
challenges to its credibility mounted by travel journalists ideologically and strategically committed to environmentalism. The chapter draws attention to strategies and tactics of environment movements, the scope for journalistic agency, and the role of rationality and affect – particularly the strategic effectiveness of deploying celebrity and the voices of passionate locals as part of “brand-sensitive cosmopolitan concern”.
