In this article we set out to bridge a surprising methodological gap between two time-honored research traditions – news media content analysis and the policy sciences analytic framework. Lasswell, a recognized pioneer of both the method and the framework, discussed the mutual benefits of each decades ago. But few researchers, if any, have formally linked the two. To that end, in this article we (1) make the case for using news media content analysis to inform research studies using the policy sciences analytic framework; (2) introduce an original content analysis categorical system for that purpose; (3) demonstrate that system with a study of 90 national news articles about the stratospheric ozone hole; and (4) compare our system to others used to examine news content. We report that our system, used by human coders, is well geared to describing and mapping trends in the social process surrounding the development of the Montreal Protocol ozone treaty during the intelligence gathering and promotion phases encompassed by our data sample. We argue that other content analysis systems fall short – in structure and purpose – of meeting the promise ours holds to the policy scientist. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006News media, Montreal Protocol, Policy sciences, Content analysis, Environmental policy, Ozone hole,

access to the knowledge and resources that will ultimately influence the decision to burn or not, and eventually affect social meaning of burning. The book's theoretical contributions should not overshadow the book's strong qualitative and ethnographic contributions. Jansen's long-term fieldwork in El Zapote and his use of different field methods provide a rich and informative account of human side of agriculture and environment in El Zapote. His historical work is particularly insightful and adds a much needed time depth to the book. Ethnographically, the book is important because of its concern with social life in the hinterlands and the role of coffee and cattle, particularly for mountain areas. The book highlights that we need to know more about the local dynamics of coffee production, particularly how environmental and socioeconomic factors articulate. In this book, Jansen has successfully integrated complex theory with complex ethnographic processes. His focus has been to understand both local farming practices and environmental transformations, while providing a "grounded" alternative to a number of macro-level theories that posit the primacy of dominant, single explanatory factors to account for environmental degradation. While one can disagree with the importance given particular socio-political processes or histories, in terms of affecting individual agriculture and environmental behavior, depending the ethnographic specifics, one cannot dismiss the importance of social relations, structures and histories, constructed and reconstructed at the local level. Also, it may be the case that local knowledge may have more of a shared pattern, and that more extensive quantitative data might provide insights on patterns of production linked to producers' models of agricultural and environmental processes. Still, the book provides a well-articulated argument for grounding our theories of environmental degradation in the local particulars, and it does so without losing sight of the theoretical parameters. Jansen makes this especially clear in the book's final section, where he offers well-reasoned and thoughtful suggestions for moving "post political ecologies" beyond overly relativistic and discursive analyses. As he argues, a "realist political ecology" must incorporate the material realities that confront farmers in El Zapote. Although multiple meanings and interpretations arise out of discourse and socio-political processes, these interpretations are also affected by "real-world" material/environmental processes that are of concern to El Zapote farmers, environmentalists and conservationists alike. Recognition of this has less to do with modernity and post-modernity, or structural versus post-structural, and more to do with an acknowledgment that real-world ecological processes are generative of meaning along with our socio-cultural processes, and that a political ecology capable of bridging the divide between social and natural sciences in the study of environmental degradation must include the material and a ...

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