ABSTRACT
This longitudinal study examined environmental risk1 representation among competing sources involved in complex environmental policy debates by scrutinizing how risk was framed for specific newspaper audiences during the late 20th century. This time period is especially important because it represents the final years of the millenium wherein the United States witnessed sweeping socioeconomic effects of the Industrial Revolution-including commercial land development, industrial toxic waste proliferation, and nuclear energy growth. By interpreting such consequences and providing rules of “how to select, order, and explain signals from the physical world,” the news media have come to act as “amplification stations” (Kasperson, 1992, p. 159). In order to sort through a myriad of potential news items, journalists have come to rely on framing-a convention that involves “selecting and highlighting some features of reality while omitting others” (Entman, 1993, p. 53). Thus, this content analysis linked the arenas of mass communication, risk, cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology to identify sourcing practices and to discover patterns among environmental risk frames used to appeal to particular social blocs.
