Media Reform as Transformation Tool: A Hegemonic Gap in Environmental Research and Policy

Abstract

Sustainability researchers are writing much about levers for transformations towards sustainability but too little about the most powerful means available for obstructing and activating them: mass-reaching media systems. How media systems are structured and governed form a profoundly important meta-level layer of decision-making that ought to be central in the study of environmental politics and in environmental policymaking. A politics- and media-focused account of the rise of Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency of Brazil illustrates the essential role of media systems and the need for new principles, structures, and policies for their governance if the interlinked goals of democracy, equity, and environmental protection are to be achieved. The pervasive inattention to this in environmental research reinforces hegemonic forces and needs to be widely discussed, understood, and overcome to achieve much needed just transformations towards sustainability.

Steering signification for sustainability

“…While difficult to establish, the consequences include widespread right-wing victories in national election outcomes around the world (Cadwalladr, 2020;Ituassu, 2019;Ott & Mack, 2020;Watts, 2018;Zuboff, 2019). These outcomes, in turn, have profound consequences for the environment at local, national, and global levels, as illustrated by the election of Jair Bolsonaro to the federal presidency in Brazil in 2018 (Lahsen, 2024b).…”