ABSTRACT
Introduction Scholars know a good deal about how media messages influence people, even though these influences are generally less strong than is sometimes assumed. Arguably, the media’s most-studied and best-established effect is that of “agenda setting” (McCombs and Shaw 1972). Put most simply, this means that the more attention the news media give to a particular issue, the more important media consumers think the issue might be. Conversely, if media do not cover an issue at all, many people simply would not know about it. This is especially the case for environmental issues, which can often be invisible; we cannot actually see many kinds of pollution such as heavy metals in a water supply, for example, and while the effects of climate change are all around us, we cannot directly see the climate changing or observe greenhouse gas concentrations without instrumentation. If symptoms of pollution such as brown skies or dirty water are not obvious, environmental problems can go unrecognized. Even if people are getting sick, it may be a mystery as to why. Receding ice, rising sea levels, desertification, vanishing species, and erosion of topsoil may be found in other parts of the world, but we will not necessarily be aware of it. Environmental reporting is a crucial component of society’s response to these and many other environmental problems: If we do not know that the problems exist, we cannot motivate people to act to address them. Most analysts do not attribute the recognition of problems solely to the media, however. The idea of “agenda building” (Cobb and Elder 1971; Lang and Lang 1981), as opposed to agenda setting, captures the idea that it is the collective actions of many societal institutions that together result in society’s directing its attention to particular problems at a given point in time. Environmental and consumer advocacy organizations, conservation groups, corporations whose work affects the environment (whether in positive or negative ways), government agencies, universities and other research-oriented institutions, and a host of similar institutional players all influence one another-and contribute to our collective sentiment that a particular issue constitutes a “problem” that we need to address. Just as for other social problems such as poverty, racism, or crime, both the definition of the problem and the attribution of responsibility or blame should not be taken for granted. Arriving at such conclusions is the result of complex social processes. The media agenda itself is heavily influenced by the actions of other “players.” Many times these actions take the form of what have been called “information subsidies” (Gandy 1982) that influence, in turn, the media agenda, such as a press release about an environmental issue. Information subsidies may also influence the “framing” or the definition of the problem contained in a news story or other account, not just its prominence.
