Arctic Geopolitics, Media and Power
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Arctic Geopolitics, Media and Power Arctic Geopolitics, Media and Power provides a fresh way of looking at the potential and limitations of regional international governance in the Arctic region. Far-reaching impacts of climate change, its wealth of resources and poten- tial for new commercial activities have placed the Arctic region into the political limelight. In an era of rapid environmental change, the Arctic provides a complex and challenging case of geopolitical interplay. Based on analyses of how actors from within and outside the Arctic region assert their interests and how such dis- courses travel in the media, this book scrutinizes the social and material contexts within which new imaginaries, spatial constructs and scalar preferences emerge. It places ground-breaking attention to shifting media landscapes as a critical com- ponent of the social, environmental and technological change. It also reflects on the fundamental dilemmas inherent in democratic decision making at a time when an urgent need for addressing climate change is challenged by conflicting interests and growing geopolitical tensions. This book will be of great interest to geography academics, media and commu- nication studies and students focusing on policy, climate change and geopolitics, as well as policy-makers and NGOs working within the environmental sector or with the Arctic region. Annika E Nilsson is a researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Her work focuses on the politics of Arctic change and communication at the science– policy interface. Nilsson was previously at the Stockholm Environment Institute. Miyase Christensen is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Stockholm University and is an affiliated researcher at KTH the Royal Institute of Technology. Christensen’s research focuses on environmental communication; technology-social change; and politics of mediation. Routledge Geopolitics Series Series Editors Klaus Dodds, Professor of Geopolitics at the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham Surrey UK. [email protected] Reece Jones Professor of Geography at the Department of Geography, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, Hawai‘i, USA. [email protected] Geopolitics is a thriving area of intellectual enquiry. The Routledge Geopolitics Series invites scholars to publish their original and innovative research in geo- politics and related fields. We invite proposals that are theoretically informed and empirically rich without prescribing research designs, methods and/or theories. Geopolitics is a diverse field making its presence felt throughout the arts and humanities, social sciences and physical and environmental sciences. Formal, practical and popular geopolitical studies are welcome as are research in areas informed by borders and bordering, elemental geopolitics, feminism, identity, law, race, resources, territory and terrain, materiality and objects. The series is also global in geographical scope and interested in proposals that focus on past, present and future geopolitical imaginations, practices and representations. As the series is aimed at upper-level undergraduates, graduate students and faculty, we welcome edited book proposals as well as monographs and textbooks which speak to geopolitics and its relationship to wider human geography, poli- tics and international relations, anthropology, sociology, and the interdisciplinary fields of social sciences, arts and humanities. Popular Geopolitics Plotting an Evolving Interdiscipline Edited by Robert A. Saunders and Vlad Strukov Arctic Geopolitics, Media and Power Annika E Nilsson and Miyase Christensen For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge- Geopolitics-Series/book-series/RFGS Arctic Geopolitics, Media and Power Annika E Nilsson and Miyase Christensen First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 2019 Annika E Nilsson and Miyase Christensen The right of Annika E Nilsson and Miyase Christensen to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis. com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-18982-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-19964-6 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK To our children – Dane and Lara – and their generation Contents List of figures viii List of tables ix Preface and acknowledgements x 1 The regional? Mediation, scale and power 1 2 Media narratives–media cartographies 20 3 A circumpolar narrative takes shape 54 4 Reconstruction and consolidation 67 5 A post-petroleum region? 86 6 Arctic geopolitics in times of transformation 110 Index 120 Figures 1.1 Map of the Arctic 2 2.1 Change over time in the number of words used in articles that mention ‘Arctic’ in the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, The Guardian and the Financial Times, 2007–2015 23 2.2 Number of times specific keywords were mentioned in the Arctic coverage of the New York Times and the Globe and Mail, 2007–2015 25 2.3 Number of times specific keywords were mentioned in the Arctic coverage of The Guardian and the Financial Times, 2007–2015 26 2.4 Frequency of different framings in Rossiyskaya Gazeta and Novaya Gazeta, 2007–2016 29 Tables 2.1 Word count for selected themes in the New York Times, Globe and Mail, The Guardian and the Financial Times, 2007–2015. 27 2.2 Examples of issues discussed within different frames in the Russian newspapers Rossiyskaya Gazeta and Novaya Gazeta, 2007–2016. 32 Preface and acknowledgements This book and the research project with which it is connected have their origin in a collaboration led by the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, which resulted in the book Media and the Politics of Arctic Climate Change: When the Ice Breaks (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013). Its interdisciplinary context created momentum for think- ing further about how the Arctic is mediated through a combination of science, politics and journalistic accounts, and how this mediation in turn affects visions of and decision making about the future. As we write this preface in December 2018, that future is unfolding, most notably in the accelerated warming of the Arctic and the recurring news about record high temperatures and lack of snow and ice, paralleled by reports that global emissions of greenhouse gases are ris- ing rather than declining in line with the political promise made in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Meanwhile, the Arctic is evermore the focus of explorations for oil and gas, among other things. Like the rest of the world, the region has yet to engage seriously with the large-scale energy transformation that is necessary not only for the Arctic but also to safeguard human well-being globally. The only way to change the current deadlock is to make decisions, at all levels in society, that a different future than that of rapid global warming is more desir- able, and to act with this in mind. Regions such as the Arctic could potentially take a lead in initiatives and actions. The geopolitical interests of powerful states play a role in whether such a vision is realistic, but are not the only factors to consider. The future can also be shaped by new voices that are making themselves heard thanks to a shifting media landscape. Our interest in this interplay between decision making, visions and narratives brought us together to write this book. Inspiration has come from the many colleagues and friends with whom we have worked over the years. In addition to colleagues at KTH, this includes our respec- tive home institutions while working on this project—the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University—and the wider context of projects in which we have been engaged in the Arctic and elsewhere. We are especially grateful for the inspiration and insights shared by informants and interviewees and by the participants in two events: the work- shop ‘Global Arctic–Regional Governance: Visions and Mediations of Northern Spaces’ held in Stockholm on 6–7 December 2017, and the panel discussion Preface and acknowledgements xi ‘Arctic Journalism at the Crossroad of Technology, Economy and Politics’ held at the 2018 Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik. We also wish to thank Tom Buurman and Ekaterina Klimenko for their support with the empirical analyses of media coverage, and Andrew Mash for his support with editing. The work has been made possible by funding from the Swedish Research Council Formas under the project Arctic governance and the questions of ‘fit’ in an era of globally transformative change: A critical geopolitics of regional inter- national cooperation (contract 2011-2014-1020). Finally, we want to thank our spouses for always being there, and our children for making it necessary and urgent to think about how we work today to shape their future. Annika E Nilsson and Miyase Christensen Stockholm, December 2018 1 The regional? Mediation, scale and power We see Earth from space in a projection that highlights the northern polar region and where water rather than sea ice dominates. At times, potential or real ship- ping lanes are superimposed onto the image. At other times, the image depicts the latest claims to mineral rights under the continental shelf that might become accessible once the ice recedes even further and new offshore technologies have been developed.