ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book represents research from a range of disciplines from the social sciences and humanities, six nationalities, divergent theoretical and methodological approaches and numerous spoken languages. It presents the collaborative output of experts from a range of disciplines to provide new insight into media roles in the communication of environmental harms and politics. The book focuses on discourses of risk and responsibility about atmospheric pollution within the Asia-Pacific region, concentrating on Australia, China and Japan. It examines the media and political communication of the risks posed by pollution and climate change. The book highlights multisectoral interaction, an analytical instrument for elucidating how different societal sectors or stakeholders align with or diverge from each other on environmental issues. It proposes a pragmatic and versatile research attitude and philosophy when selecting and using the corpus data-based or the corpus data-driven approach in environmental media analysis.
