The Role Of Media In The Environment Movement: Sino-Australian Comparative Studies

The human cognition to environment goes through a process from conquest to protection. From 1920s, natural resource protection campaigns rose in the western world. After the Stockholm United Nations Conference held in 1972, environment was put on the agenda by governments, environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs) were greatly encouraged, from then on, environment movement developed fast. By international comparison, Australia's environment movement has been enormously successful. The campaign to save the Franklin River (1976-1983) which was a great success in influencing government's environment policy by ENGOs, is a milestone in the history of Australian environment movement even in the world's. It is worth noting that China's environment movement started and from the middle of 1990s. The Nu River Protection Campaign 2003 which is attempt that Chinese ENGOs participate in and influence the government's policy with the public,is of significance to Chinese environment movement.Media, as the fourth powerful agency, have played a crucial role in the history of human environment movement. Regarding to the media role in the environment movement, it has been discussed by domestic scholars. However, the research is mainly on the domestic issues, lacking the comparison between China and the west. What's more, the research is devoid of demonstration, which is a bit simple.The dissertation aims to break through this investigation state to some extent. By comparing the different situations of China and Australia, the dissertation makes further discussion with the problem. Specially, based on two points of view, which are the media role in the history of environment movement and the relationship between ENGOs and the media, the dissertation discovers how the media influence environment movement. Methodologically the dissertation strongly advocates quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, with which the paper will process those representative articles selected from six typical newspapers of two countries by using textual analysis, while making a case for qualitative analysis as the key to uncover the media role in environment movement.In the first part of the dissertation, the different characteristics at every historical stage of environment movement are analyzed by background and movement elements. In the succeeding part, the relationship between the media and ENGOs, which are two main bodies of environment movement, is discussed. The conclusion how the media play their role in the environment movement is educed by the analysis of ENGOs' features, status and their media strategies. In the following part, the dissertation selects two crucial issues in the history of environment movement of two countries as case study. Distinct patterns of media participation in the environment movement are discovered by comparing the coverage in the two campaigns. In the last section, discussions focus on how ENGOs in different political systems to cooperate with media, how to act their role, hoping the experience and profession of Australian media and ENGOs will shed a new light on the changing role of Chinese media.