Framing Disaster: News Media Coverage of Environmental Justice
Abstract
This research assesses news media coverage of two environmental justice cases involving Native American groups in Washington State. Through inductive framing analysis, this work evaluates the way in which commercial news media covered centuries-old environmental inequality faced by the Quileute Tribe and the Lower Elwha Klallam people. Both of these groups were thrust into fame for different reasons: The Quileute were identified in the Twilight film franchise, while the Lower Elwha Klallam people were associated with the largest dam removal project in the world. This research reveals that, while some progress has been made in the quality of news coverage of Indigenous environmental justice issues, absence of coverage remains an issue that continuously needs to be challenged.
