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Vaia Doudaki Sample Image & Nico Carpentier Sample Image

Abstract

In this article, we study two Facebook groups in Sweden that address environmental issues, which adopt opposingly radical positions as it regards sustainability: one Facebook group supports climate change denialism, aligning with anthropocentrism, and one promotes the rights of nature movement and its ideas, embedded in ecocentrism. Employing discourse analysis, we exemplify how the radical positions that the two Facebook groups adopt demarcate the margins and the breadth of the spectrum of discourses around sustainability, but also how these positions signify the ideological struggle between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism, which lies behind the narratives of climate change denial or rights of nature, and structures their claims and radicality.

Doudaki, V., & Carpentier, N. (2023). Behind the narratives of climate change denial and rights of nature: sustainability and the ideological struggle between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism in two radical Facebook groups in Sweden. Journal of Political Ideologies, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2023.2196506

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Vaia Doudaki Sample Image & Nico Carpentier Sample Image

Abstract

This article examines how Facebook groups in Sweden, that focus on the environment, address issues of sustainability. The research, conducted over a one-year period (May 2019–April 2020) combines mapping analysis, which identified a population of 152 environment-focused Facebook groups, and quantitative content analysis, which gives the overview of how these groups represent sustainability and human-nature relations. The analysis pointed to an overwhelming support for counterhegemonic, ecocentric positions, coupled with a strong critique against the hegemony of anthropocentrism. These findings relate to the general discussion concerning the potential of social media to function as spaces where hegemonies are contested and the vision of social change, in this case about the environment, takes shape, but also to the limitations of such possibilities.

Keywords
Facebook groups, sustainability, ecocentrism, anthropocentrism, hegemony

Doudaki, V., & Carpentier, N. (2022). Facebook Groups in Sweden Constructing Sustainability: Resisting Hegemonic Anthropocentrism. Central European Journal of Communication15(1(30), 52-71. https://doi.org/10.51480/1899-5101.15.1(30).3

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Kirill Filimonov Sample Image & Nico Carpentier Sample Image

Abstract

In this article, we analyse mediated representations of elite and non-elite voices about climate change, by juxtaposing two Swedish non-fiction television series: one narrates the work of environmental scientists, the other discusses climate change with diverse citizens in a vox pop format. We argue that the discursive practices of these programmes reproduce the antagonistic subject positions of experts and ordinary people, allocating them radically different positions of power in relation to climate change. Whereas the experts are presented as actors of change with the knowledge to solve the crisis, ordinary people are shown as passive recipients of advice and moral judgment, in need of change. In addition, we highlight the role of media professionals in these articulations. The article shows how these subject positions support persuasionist strategies, but also how the elite/non-elite juxtaposition tends to exclude the latter from a meaningful engagement on equal terms.

Keywords
elite, ordinary people, climate change, persuasionism, discourse theory

Filimonov, K., & Carpentier, N. (2022). “How is he entitled to say this?” Constructing the identities of experts, ordinary people, and presenters in Swedish television series on climate change. Nordicom Review, 43(1), 111–128. https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2022-0007

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Gerardo Costabile Nicoletta Sample Image & Nico Carpentier Sample Image

Abstract

This article analyses the Swedish TV series Hållbart näringsliv (HN) to study hegemonic discursive formations over the meaning of the climate crisis. Combining new materialist approaches in discourse studies with a political ecology understanding of the socio-ecological entanglement, we propose the concept of technocratic solutionism to understand how the neo-liberal green economy secures instrumentalist discourses on nature in the Swedish context. The discourse-theoretical analysis of nine HN episodes identifies four nodal points which articulate the technocratic solutionist discourse: capital’s leading role, Nordic exceptionalism, substitutionalism and long-termism. We argue that the climate crisis can be understood as a materiality that dislocates capitalist assemblages, which then, in response, deploy a techno-solutionism discourse to protect the core principles of economic growth and profitability while marginalizing potential radical alternatives.

Keywords
climate crisis; discourse theory; dislocation; economic discourse; green economy; materiality; media

Costabile Nicoletta, G., & Carpentier, N. (2022). Shades of technocratic solutionism: A discursive-material political ecology approach to the analysis of the Swedish TV series Hållbart näringsliv (‘Sustainable business’). Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication, 13(2), 117–134. https://doi.org/10.1386/ejpc_00045_1

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Vaia Doudaki Sample Image & Nico Carpentier Sample Image

Abstract

This article analyses, through a case study approach, the environmental documentary film Gállok, which narrates the struggles over the proposal to operate an iron ore mine in Gállok (Sámi) or Kallak (Swedish), in Northern Sweden. The analysis is transdisciplinary, anchored in the environmental studies work on anthropocentrism and ecocentrism, combined with discourse theory, geography and the scholarly work on space, place and time. These different disciplines and fields are activated to examine how space, place and time become articulated in the discursive assemblages of anthropocentrism and ecocentrism that feed the discursive – material struggles around the operation of the Gállok mine. As the analysis shows, the anthropocentric view favours an instrumentalist and geo-reductionist approach to space and the use of land that promotes presentism, space–place and space–time dualism. Ecocentrism, on the other hand, articulates holism and geo-pluralism, supporting ideas of deep time, space–place and space–time.

Keywords
capitalism; dualism; entanglementism; geo-pluralism; geo-reductionism; holism; long-termism; presentism

Doudaki, V., & Carpentier, N. (2024). Unpacking the discursive assemblages of anthropocentrism and ecocentrism: Articulations of space, place and time in the documentary film Gállok. Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, 13(1), 7–33. https://doi.org/10.1386/iscc_00050_1

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Nico Carpentier Sample Image

Abstract

This article is theoretically grounded in a reflection on the discursive-material knot, which uses a macro-(con)textual approach to discourse, but also allocates a non-hierarchical position to the material, recognizing its agency. The article uses the ontological model to further theorize the discursive-material struggles of, and over, nature, and in particular of non-human animals. These theoretical frameworks are then deployed to reflect on the “Silencing/Unsilencing Nature” project (and its diverse subprojects). This is an arts-based research project which aims to unpack the discursive-material relationship between humans and nature, and how nature often has been silenced, focusing on the position of the wolf in the zoo assemblage, and how these animals are discursively and materially entrapped. At the same time, the “Silencing/Unsilencing Nature” project investigates how this situation can be changed, and how their voices can still be made audible, gain more strength and become further unsilenced.

Keywords
Anthropocentrism, speciesism, constructionism, discursive-material knot, arts-based research, wolf, nature, photography, voice, silencing, unsilencing

Carpentier, N. (2022). Silencing/Unsilencing Nature: A ‘Lupocentric’ Remediation of Animal-Nature Relationships. Central European Journal of Communication15(1(30), 92-111. https://doi.org/10.51480/1899-5101.15.1(30).5

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Gerardo Costabile Nicoletta Sample Image & Derya Yüksek Sample Image

Abstract

Media play a central role in the discursive struggles over the meaning of nature, climate change and human–nature relationships through the strategic selection and salience of media content. This paper investigates the strategies and tactics mobilized by media producers in communicating environmental issues. The investigation is based on a selection of seven media productions in the Swedish context, comprising TV series and documentaries produced between 2015 and 2020. Through a discourse-theoretical analysis of these audio–visual products and interviews with their producers, we identify a five-cluster model, ranging from mainstream anthropocentric strategies to alternative ecocentric tactics. Our model aims to delineate media strategies reproducing hegemonic anthropocentrism to critically inquire about environmental ideologies in media communication and explore potential alternative tactics for more ecocentric representations of nature.

Keywords
environmental discourse, discourse, media studies, environment, critical communication

Nicoletta, G. C., & Yüksek, D. (2023). Strategies and Tactics to Communicate ‘Nature’: Beyond Anthropocentrism in Swedish Media. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599231215749