engleski

Role of Media in Environmental Communication: Representation of the Lex LNG in Croatian Daily Newspapers

Lex LNG (LNG Terminal Act) was adopted on 14th June 2018 despite the fact that it has caused a whole series of controversies. Croatian media has intensively written about the conflict of interest of the author of the Lex and that floating LNG on Croatin island Krk is not mapped in the spatial plan of the county. Croatian journalists were pointing to disputed property and legal relations, emphasized an extremely long maritime concession period for low concession fees, as well as series of open environmental questions and questionable public interest of this project. Given the fact that the media in environmental communication according to Cox (2013) have a pragmatic (informative and educational) and constitutive role (construction and representation of environmental attitudes as subjects of knowledge), this paper analysis media representations of the Lex LNG and explores the pragmatic and constitutive role of media in environmental communication. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of the content of the papers from the Vecernji, Jutarnji and Novi list, as well as from Slobodna Dalmacija was conducted from mid-January to mid-July 2018 on the topic of LNG terminal on Krk. Particular emphasis was on a media agenda setting, the ability or power of the media to focus certain political, economic and social problems on the public interest and give it meaning. A preliminary conclusion is that analysed dailies did not seize the opportunity for constitutive coverage of this topic, which may indicate the general orientation of these newspapers towards pragmatic functions in the field of environmental communication.

LNG, Lex LNG, environmental communication, media, agenda setting

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