ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the media politics of environmental reporting within the wider context of the study of new social movements. Over recent decades the environmental lobby in western Europe has witnessed some profound developments. A few powerful environmental organisations have become significant players in the global policy-making arena and have become highly attuned to the demands of the news media. At the same time a proliferation of locally-based grassroots networks have emerged, often pursuing their own distinct agendas and holding a somewhat ambivalent relationship with the mainstream news media. The symbolic content of environmental actions involving, for example, protesters burrowing underground tunnels or chaining themselves to trees has acquired a new significance in a society increasingly dominated by the circulation of images and signs. A number of social theorists, such as Melucci (1994, 1996), suggest that these developments may be conceptualised as forms of a new culture.
