engleski

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

Lex LNG (LNG Terminal Act) was adopted on 14 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 authors of the Lex and warned that a floating LNG terminal on the Croatian island Krk is not mapped in the spatial plan of the county. Croatian journalists were pointing to disputed property and legal relations and emphasized an extremely long maritime concession period for low concession fees, as well as a series of open environmental questions and the questionable public interest of this project. Given the fact that the media in environmental communication according to Cox (2010) have a pragmatic (informative and educational) and constitutive role (construction and representation of environmental attitudes as subjects of knowledge), this paper analyses media representations of the Lex LNG and explores the pragmatic and constitutive role of the media in environmental communication. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of the content of the articles from VeËernji, Jutarnji and Novi list as well as Slobodna Dalmacija was conducted from mid-January to mid-July 2018 on the topic of the LNG terminal on Krk. In total, 58 articles were analysed. Particular emphasis was on the setting of the media’s agenda, the ability or power of the media to focus the public’s interest towards certain political, economic and social problems and give them meaning. The results of the research showed that Croatian 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.

Lex LNG ; environmental communication ; media ; agenda setting

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