Framing environmental degradation: The modern American environmental movement and consumption

Abstract

Scope and Method of Study: An online content analysis of modern American environmental movement websites' treatment of the three core framing tasks on individual and household consumption. A mixture of both quantitative and qualitative methods was used to test four hypotheses.

Findings and Conclusions: A total of 525 documents were found on the 28 environmental movement organizations' websites in the sample. These documents had over 28,000 sentences and close to 16,000 of these contained framing. The framing analysis uncovered that consumption is problematic because it has negative health effects, due to materialistic lifestyles, changed consumer behavior, legal problems, as well as consumer awareness. The solutions and calls to action were larged framed in positive and optimistic language such as calling to support a store, product, ingredient, movement, law, politician, policy et cetera. Counter to Benford (2007) who argued that movements spend more attention on describing the problem (diagnostic framing) rather than the other core framing tasks this study reveals that the environmental movement spends a lot more attention on calling people to do something about the problem. The different organizations belonging to the different discursive communities offer a variety of frames. The problems associated with our lifestyles are addressed by both large, more mainstream organizations as well as the smaller more radical organizations.