Framing Native Forests: A Victorian case study

Abstract

Australia’s native forests have been a topic of contention between forestry and environmental groups for over half a century. Despite political interventions aimed at reconciling disagreement, conflict between interest groups continue. The news media is a key public forum where these forest topics are debated and characterised. Curious to better understand the nature of Australia’s ongoing forest conflicts, I have used framing analysis to explore the coverage of native forest management issues in the mainstream news media, using Victoria as a case study. I examined how events, issues, actors, and practices are framed in the news coverage, as represented by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The Age, The Australian and The Guardian in 2019-2020. A total of 66 news articles about Victorian native forest issues were published during this period; the monthly frequency varied considerably and was related to both natural (e.g. bushfire) and political (e.g. Victorian Government decision to end native forest logging) events. I identified three frames: 1) Save nature, stop logging (SNSL), 2) Forestry, the ultimate renewable (FTUR), and 3) The political balancing act (PBA). The first of these was dominant and proactive; the second largely reactive; and the third relatively minor. I also explored below surface level disagreements to see how each frame perceives ‘nature’, ‘knowledge’, and the ‘other’ groups. The SNSL frame represents nature as ‘pristine’, and of great intrinsic value; in contrast, the FTUR frame represents nature and people in a more interdependent relationship, with both benefiting from sustainable management. The PBA frame holds both of these perspectives. In all frames, ‘science’ is represented as the basis of knowledge, but that science is contradictory, as each frame has its own preferred science. The SNSL strongly frames the ‘other’ in negative, diminishing terms; this is evident to a much lesser extent in the FTUR frame; the PBA frame represents the other in essentially political terms. The visual images used to communicate the SNSL frame, and its consistent coherent advocacy of a simple message, compared to a more reactive and more complex FTUR frame, help explain the impact of the SNSL frame in the media representation and discourse about the future management of Victoria’s native forests