What Does the Media Mean by ‘Sustainability’ or ‘Sustainable Development’? an Empirical Analysis of Sustainability Terminology in German Newspapers Over Two Decades

Abstract

There is broad agreement that the regulative idea of sustainability needs to be specified in public deliberation so that it can contribute to sustainable development policies and practices. The media plays a critical role in this endeavor. However, journalists commonly criticize the terminology of 'sustainability' and 'sustainable development' as blurred, fuzzy and ambiguous. The vibrant controversy over how journalists should engage with the sustainability terminology is however facing an apparent lack of research on how sustainability terminology actually has been embraced and used in the media.This study aims to close the aforementioned research gaps in providing a twofold account of the field in Germany. First, in a trend analysis, it sketches the usage of sustainability terminology in six major German newspapers from 1995 to 2015. Second, in an in-depth analysis for the three years 2001, 2007 and 2013, more than 16 000 usages of sustainability terminology have been coded according to their underpinning meaning. The findings show that sustainability terminology in major German newspapers is used in about twice as many articles in 2015 compared with 1995. What changes is not only the frequency, but also the meanings, with which sustainability terminology is used. There is an apparent tendency towards a 'semantic consolidation' of sustainability terminology in the post-2000 years. The meaning thereby moves away from a non-specific and replaceable fashion word towards a more sophisticated and elaborated reflection of the concept of sustainable development. Data analysis finds that political alignment of the newspaper plays a critical role in this.

How Does Sustainability Become Professionally Relevant? Exploring the Role of Sustainability Conceptions in First Year Students

“…Lack of sophisticated sustainability conceptions in media-induced learning: Recent findings show that while German newspapers have increasingly used sustainability terminology, they still refer to it mostly in an everyday language meaning of something being long-lasting or very intense [79]. The exposure to mass media may have contributed to an overall high familiarity with the term on the one hand but could have also given rise unspecific and unsophisticated understandings of it that may impede the perception of the concept as being relevant on the other hand.…”

A Chinese route to sustainability: Postsocialist transitions and the construction of ecological civilization

“…As Morse (2013) indicated, the term "sustainability" is explained as more commercially biased in right-of-center reports and more socially oriented in left-of-center newspapers in Britain. Similarly, in other studies in Western contexts the concepts behind "sustainability" in media are multiple, reflecting various major political views and the different political attitudes of newspaper readers (Diprose et al, 2017;Fischer et al, 2017). Rather than the multiple meanings of sustainability interpreted in the West, the official discourse of "sustainability" represented in People's Daily is defined and explained unilaterally by the central government led by the CCP.…”

“…As a consequence, the discourses evident in the People's Daily primarily represent national policies and dominant political ideologies. Thus, rather than multiple meanings of sustainability constructed based on diverse actors' political interests in the West (e.g., Christen & Schmidt, 2012;Fischer, Haucke, & Sundermann, 2017;Morse, 2013;Schultz, Brand, Kopfmuller, & Ott, 2008), the discursive construction of sustainability in this article represents only a government-led effort to propagandize the notion of sustainability in the public sphere in China.…”

Sustainability as Cognitive “Friction”: A Narrative Approach to Understand the Moral Dissonance of Sustainability and Harmonization Strategies

“…A debate about the narratives and meaning of sustainability and their origin has been raised in the academic outlets, professional media, and public debates lately. Here, sustainability is described as a highly contested term and often labeled as an "empty" word (King, 2013) or a concept where discourses on different levels have managed to overextend its meaning "to the point of trivialization" (Ott et al, 2011, p. 13), mainly because the terms are blurry, fuzzy and ambiguous (Krainer and Weder, 2011;Fischer et al, 2017). In the public sphere, the concept of sustainability is often associated with environmental issues such as climate change and global warming; with social issues such as poverty, water scarcity and social inequalities; and with business economic issues such as resource insufficiency and sustainable agriculture.…”