In an era of rapidly increasing human population and global travel, ‘lastchancetourism’ is attrac... more In an era of rapidly increasing human population and global travel, ‘lastchancetourism’ is attracting considerable media attention (Dawson, Lemelin,Stewart, & Taillon, 2015). This phenomenon is defined by scholars ascommercial tourism that exploits ‘vanishing landscapes or icescapes, and/or disappearing natural and/or social heritage’ (Lemlin, Dawson, Stewart,Maher, & Lueck, 2010, p. 478). Many last-chance destinations and experiencesare ones at risk from climate change—polar bear viewing in Canada,the ice-capped peak of Mount Kiliminjaro in Tanzania, the glaciers ofGreenland, and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (e.g. Frew, 2008, 2012;Lemelin, Dawson, Stewart, Maher, & Lueck, 2010; Piggott-McKellar &McNamara, 2016)
McGaurr, Lyn (2012), ‘The Devil May Care: Travel Journalism, Cosmopolitan Concern, Politics and t... more McGaurr, Lyn (2012), ‘The Devil May Care: Travel Journalism, Cosmopolitan Concern, Politics and the Brand’, Journalism Practice, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 42-58. As journalism scholars’ interest in the impact of public relations on hard news has grown in recent years, little attention has been paid to attempts by elite sources to influence soft journalism. In an effort to better understand what can, in fact, be complex interactions between travel journalists and public relations practitioners, this paper tracks one destination’s brand over an extended period of cosmopolitan concern. It finds that in times of conflict, government tourism public relations may become politically instrumental, as public relations practitioners seek simultaneously to promote the destination and shield it from media scrutiny. At such times, travel journalists may subvert traditional expectations of their genre by exposing contradictions in the brand. The paper concludes that the power of travel journalism derives not only from its authors’ capacity to communicate through their texts but also from their tendency to be enmeshed in the interactivity of the brand.
In an era of rapidly increasing human population and global travel, ‘lastchancetourism’ is attrac... more In an era of rapidly increasing human population and global travel, ‘lastchancetourism’ is attracting considerable media attention (Dawson, Lemelin,Stewart, & Taillon, 2015). This phenomenon is defined by scholars ascommercial tourism that exploits ‘vanishing landscapes or icescapes, and/or disappearing natural and/or social heritage’ (Lemlin, Dawson, Stewart,Maher, & Lueck, 2010, p. 478). Many last-chance destinations and experiencesare ones at risk from climate change—polar bear viewing in Canada,the ice-capped peak of Mount Kiliminjaro in Tanzania, the glaciers ofGreenland, and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (e.g. Frew, 2008, 2012;Lemelin, Dawson, Stewart, Maher, & Lueck, 2010; Piggott-McKellar &McNamara, 2016).
In 2019 COTA Tasmania talked to older people about their preferences for the years ahead. We aske... more In 2019 COTA Tasmania talked to older people about their preferences for the years ahead. We asked them what they thought would be most important to them as they aged and whether they had shared this with the people closest to them. The project brought photographs and interview extracts together in ways we hope will inspire conversations that respect older people’s autonomy and choices.
In this chapter we move out of Australia’s capital cities to the nation’s rural towns and farms t... more In this chapter we move out of Australia’s capital cities to the nation’s rural towns and farms to examine a surprising alliance formed in 2010, evocatively called Lock the Gate. Similar to its environmental predecessors, Lock the Gate is grass-roots-based. Yet, unlike earlier elements of the movement, almost 100,000 environmental activists, farmers, Indigenous people and, as contemporary politicians refer to them, ‘mum and dad Australians’, are united in their stance against ‘unsafe coal and gas mining’ (http://www.lockthegate.org.au/about_us). We examine the way the leaders of Lock the Gate constructed environmental issues to attract rural landholders to the alliance in its early years. Although the alliance attempts to prevent the expansion of key causes of anthropogenic climate change, our research findings raise questions about its willingness to publicise global warming as a key environmental issue.
Until recently, elder abuse was largely hidden from the public gaze, just as child abuse, domesti... more Until recently, elder abuse was largely hidden from the public gaze, just as child abuse, domestic violence and depression were in past decades. But this may be changing: in 2017, revelations of elder abuse at the Oakden older persons’ mental health facility made headlines around the country, appearing in more than 670 Australian press stories in the course of the year; in the month that the Australian Law Reform Commission released its 400-page report into elder abuse, the term itself appeared in 160 press reports; and in the days of the Fifth National Elder Abuse Conference in Sydney earlier this year, the topic generated nearly 40 media items, ranging across local, state, national, commercial, public, generalist and special-interest media. Often news reports about these kinds of incidents, events or developments are accompanied by the stories of people who have experienced elder abuse. As governments and NGOs work to increase public awareness of the problem, it is important for j...
In this chapter we examine the relationship between environmental leaders and Indigenous Australi... more In this chapter we examine the relationship between environmental leaders and Indigenous Australians. The World Heritage Convention protects sites of universal natural and cultural values, sometimes in combination. In 2015, it was amended to incorporate references to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). International conventions are always in danger of becoming the handmaidens of their signatory states. When evidence emerges that they have succumbed, it fuels criticism of cosmopolitanism. At the same time, environmental leaders sometimes clash with Indigenous people over efforts to conserve the natural values of traditional lands for the ‘global good’. We ask how international instruments with cosmopolitan ambitions have influenced the discourse and practice of Australian environmentalists attempting to find common ground with Indigenous groups. Drawing on interviews with 25 members of our sample who mentioned Indigenous issues in their interv...
Photography has long been a powerful tool of environmental communication and debate. In their eff... more Photography has long been a powerful tool of environmental communication and debate. In their efforts to promote environmental issues, landscape and wildlife photographers committed to conservation may provide images to established environmental non-government organisations (ENGOs), appear in activist documentaries, found their own ENGOs, curate websites and social media pages, run galleries or publish books. Yet the same photographs and photography events that feature in activist media may also appear in the editorial sections of commercial newspapers and magazines, and in public relations and advertising for consumer goods. This paper draws on interviews with photographers and ENGO spokespeople in North America to consider the implications for the public sphere of image events that combine activist media and mainstream media to promote environmental concern.
This paper considers the implications of climate-change scientists’ participation in the public s... more This paper considers the implications of climate-change scientists’ participation in the public sphere for Habermas’s argument that the mass media is degrading democracy (Habermas, 1989). Academic research at the end of the 20th century documented many pitfalls encountered by climate-change scientists in their efforts to publicize their concerns about the planet in the 1980s and 1990s. By the time the Fourth IPCC Report was released in 2007, however, such scientists were already more sophisticated in their engagement with the mass media and were using the Internet to improve their ability to contribute to debate beyond their own intellectual community. By considering the way climate-change scientists engaged with journalists and the public in the years leading up to 2007, this paper argues that the actions and experiences of climate-change scientists this decade have contributed to our understanding of how journalism is increasingly “embedded in and largely contextualized by the oth...
In an era of rapidly increasing human population and global travel, ‘lastchancetourism’ is attrac... more In an era of rapidly increasing human population and global travel, ‘lastchancetourism’ is attracting considerable media attention (Dawson, Lemelin,Stewart, & Taillon, 2015). This phenomenon is defined by scholars ascommercial tourism that exploits ‘vanishing landscapes or icescapes, and/or disappearing natural and/or social heritage’ (Lemlin, Dawson, Stewart,Maher, & Lueck, 2010, p. 478). Many last-chance destinations and experiencesare ones at risk from climate change—polar bear viewing in Canada,the ice-capped peak of Mount Kiliminjaro in Tanzania, the glaciers ofGreenland, and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (e.g. Frew, 2008, 2012;Lemelin, Dawson, Stewart, Maher, & Lueck, 2010; Piggott-McKellar &McNamara, 2016)
McGaurr, Lyn (2012), ‘The Devil May Care: Travel Journalism, Cosmopolitan Concern, Politics and t... more McGaurr, Lyn (2012), ‘The Devil May Care: Travel Journalism, Cosmopolitan Concern, Politics and the Brand’, Journalism Practice, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 42-58. As journalism scholars’ interest in the impact of public relations on hard news has grown in recent years, little attention has been paid to attempts by elite sources to influence soft journalism. In an effort to better understand what can, in fact, be complex interactions between travel journalists and public relations practitioners, this paper tracks one destination’s brand over an extended period of cosmopolitan concern. It finds that in times of conflict, government tourism public relations may become politically instrumental, as public relations practitioners seek simultaneously to promote the destination and shield it from media scrutiny. At such times, travel journalists may subvert traditional expectations of their genre by exposing contradictions in the brand. The paper concludes that the power of travel journalism derives not only from its authors’ capacity to communicate through their texts but also from their tendency to be enmeshed in the interactivity of the brand.
In an era of rapidly increasing human population and global travel, ‘lastchancetourism’ is attrac... more In an era of rapidly increasing human population and global travel, ‘lastchancetourism’ is attracting considerable media attention (Dawson, Lemelin,Stewart, & Taillon, 2015). This phenomenon is defined by scholars ascommercial tourism that exploits ‘vanishing landscapes or icescapes, and/or disappearing natural and/or social heritage’ (Lemlin, Dawson, Stewart,Maher, & Lueck, 2010, p. 478). Many last-chance destinations and experiencesare ones at risk from climate change—polar bear viewing in Canada,the ice-capped peak of Mount Kiliminjaro in Tanzania, the glaciers ofGreenland, and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (e.g. Frew, 2008, 2012;Lemelin, Dawson, Stewart, Maher, & Lueck, 2010; Piggott-McKellar &McNamara, 2016).
In 2019 COTA Tasmania talked to older people about their preferences for the years ahead. We aske... more In 2019 COTA Tasmania talked to older people about their preferences for the years ahead. We asked them what they thought would be most important to them as they aged and whether they had shared this with the people closest to them. The project brought photographs and interview extracts together in ways we hope will inspire conversations that respect older people’s autonomy and choices.
In this chapter we move out of Australia’s capital cities to the nation’s rural towns and farms t... more In this chapter we move out of Australia’s capital cities to the nation’s rural towns and farms to examine a surprising alliance formed in 2010, evocatively called Lock the Gate. Similar to its environmental predecessors, Lock the Gate is grass-roots-based. Yet, unlike earlier elements of the movement, almost 100,000 environmental activists, farmers, Indigenous people and, as contemporary politicians refer to them, ‘mum and dad Australians’, are united in their stance against ‘unsafe coal and gas mining’ (http://www.lockthegate.org.au/about_us). We examine the way the leaders of Lock the Gate constructed environmental issues to attract rural landholders to the alliance in its early years. Although the alliance attempts to prevent the expansion of key causes of anthropogenic climate change, our research findings raise questions about its willingness to publicise global warming as a key environmental issue.
Until recently, elder abuse was largely hidden from the public gaze, just as child abuse, domesti... more Until recently, elder abuse was largely hidden from the public gaze, just as child abuse, domestic violence and depression were in past decades. But this may be changing: in 2017, revelations of elder abuse at the Oakden older persons’ mental health facility made headlines around the country, appearing in more than 670 Australian press stories in the course of the year; in the month that the Australian Law Reform Commission released its 400-page report into elder abuse, the term itself appeared in 160 press reports; and in the days of the Fifth National Elder Abuse Conference in Sydney earlier this year, the topic generated nearly 40 media items, ranging across local, state, national, commercial, public, generalist and special-interest media. Often news reports about these kinds of incidents, events or developments are accompanied by the stories of people who have experienced elder abuse. As governments and NGOs work to increase public awareness of the problem, it is important for j...
In this chapter we examine the relationship between environmental leaders and Indigenous Australi... more In this chapter we examine the relationship between environmental leaders and Indigenous Australians. The World Heritage Convention protects sites of universal natural and cultural values, sometimes in combination. In 2015, it was amended to incorporate references to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). International conventions are always in danger of becoming the handmaidens of their signatory states. When evidence emerges that they have succumbed, it fuels criticism of cosmopolitanism. At the same time, environmental leaders sometimes clash with Indigenous people over efforts to conserve the natural values of traditional lands for the ‘global good’. We ask how international instruments with cosmopolitan ambitions have influenced the discourse and practice of Australian environmentalists attempting to find common ground with Indigenous groups. Drawing on interviews with 25 members of our sample who mentioned Indigenous issues in their interv...
Photography has long been a powerful tool of environmental communication and debate. In their eff... more Photography has long been a powerful tool of environmental communication and debate. In their efforts to promote environmental issues, landscape and wildlife photographers committed to conservation may provide images to established environmental non-government organisations (ENGOs), appear in activist documentaries, found their own ENGOs, curate websites and social media pages, run galleries or publish books. Yet the same photographs and photography events that feature in activist media may also appear in the editorial sections of commercial newspapers and magazines, and in public relations and advertising for consumer goods. This paper draws on interviews with photographers and ENGO spokespeople in North America to consider the implications for the public sphere of image events that combine activist media and mainstream media to promote environmental concern.
This paper considers the implications of climate-change scientists’ participation in the public s... more This paper considers the implications of climate-change scientists’ participation in the public sphere for Habermas’s argument that the mass media is degrading democracy (Habermas, 1989). Academic research at the end of the 20th century documented many pitfalls encountered by climate-change scientists in their efforts to publicize their concerns about the planet in the 1980s and 1990s. By the time the Fourth IPCC Report was released in 2007, however, such scientists were already more sophisticated in their engagement with the mass media and were using the Internet to improve their ability to contribute to debate beyond their own intellectual community. By considering the way climate-change scientists engaged with journalists and the public in the years leading up to 2007, this paper argues that the actions and experiences of climate-change scientists this decade have contributed to our understanding of how journalism is increasingly “embedded in and largely contextualized by the oth...
Travel journalism about natural attractions is environmental communication at the cusp of consume... more Travel journalism about natural attractions is environmental communication at the cusp of consumerism and concern. Countries and regions that market forests, rivers and wildlife to international tourists drive place-of-origin brand recognition that benefits exporters in other sectors. Place-branding in such destinations is not just PR for environmentally sustainable development and consumption, but also a political enterprise. Environmental Communication and Travel Journalism considers tourism public relations as elite reputation management, and applies models of political conflict and source-media relations to the analysis of the 'soft' genre of travel journalism. The book seeks to understand how, in whose interests and against what odds discourses of cosmopolitanism and place-branding influence the way travel journalists represent vulnerable and contested environments. Informed by interviews with journalists and their sources, Environmental Communication and Travel Journalism identifies and theorises networks, cultures, discursive strategies and multiple loyalties that can assist or interrupt flows of environmental concern in the cosmopolitan public sphere. The book should be of interest to scholars of environmental communication, environmental politics, journalism, tourism, marketing and public relations.
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2020
Free open public access: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2514848620901443
Abstract... more Free open public access: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2514848620901443 Abstract: New radical environmental action movements are attracting large numbers of diverse actors who inevitably will take inspiration and learn from mistakes of those radical environmental organizations that precede them and continue today into middle age. The representational strategies of these established organizations are of specific interest as they enter a maturity phase that coincides with the planet experiencing an unprecedented anthropogenic moment of reckoning – a time when more broadly engaging and transformative activism is paramount to reconfiguring ecological, societal, and spatial orientations. We focus on Sea Shepherd, a global ocean protection organization founded in the same decade as many other formatively radical organizations, to examine its historic and current representations of its direct action stance; its multiple and at times conflicting positioning of cetaceans; its emphasis on celebrity and timely campaigns; and its longstanding military, war, and piracy framing – much of which has garnered attention based on appealing to news values of conventional media outlets. We illustrate ways direct action may be framed as in opposition to current extractive practices (against framing) or as a collaborative means to thriving futures (with framing) and consider ways activism frames might eschew violent clashes and celebrity long valued by conventional media outlets and speak more to today’s broader internet-savvy populations and to the reconfigurative potential of guardianship, interconnectedness, and nurturance."
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Papers by Dr Lyn McGaurr
Abstract: New radical environmental action movements are attracting large numbers of diverse actors who inevitably will take inspiration and learn from mistakes of those radical environmental organizations that precede them and continue today into middle age. The representational strategies of these established organizations are of specific interest as they enter a maturity phase that coincides with the planet experiencing an unprecedented anthropogenic moment of reckoning – a time when more broadly engaging and transformative activism is paramount to reconfiguring ecological, societal, and spatial orientations. We focus on Sea Shepherd, a global ocean protection organization founded in the same decade as many other formatively radical organizations, to examine its historic and current representations of its direct action stance; its multiple and at times conflicting positioning of cetaceans; its emphasis on celebrity and timely campaigns; and its longstanding military, war, and piracy framing – much of which has garnered attention based on appealing to news values of conventional media outlets. We illustrate ways direct action may be framed as in opposition to current extractive practices (against framing) or as a collaborative means to thriving futures (with framing) and consider ways activism frames might eschew violent clashes and celebrity long valued by conventional media outlets and speak more to today’s broader internet-savvy populations and to the reconfigurative potential of guardianship, interconnectedness, and nurturance."