Environment, Communication and Democracy: Framing Alberta’s Bitumen Extraction Onscreen
Date
2013-09-25
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Abstract
This study in environmental communication addresses links among land, natural resources and people in a world shaped increasingly by global economic forces and pervaded by the power of pictures. Hosting what has been called the world’s largest industrial project, the bituminous (‘tar’/‘oil’) sands, Alberta has become an epicentre of the clash between economic growth mandated by extractive capitalism and its unsustainable ecological costs. A high-stakes, international public-relations battle has emerged, with independent filmmakers producing documentary films challenging Albertans’ environmental stewardship, and government and industry producing advocacy videos defending it. Situating this negotiation of Alberta’s place-identity in a discourse beginning in 2004—the year the US deemed the extraction of the sands to be economically viable—this study is inspired theoretically by the Canadian critical tradition, notably extensions of Innis’ ideas on communications into environmental studies, and methodologically by arts-based research (re)presenting diversities and complexities of voice, nuances of character and potential affect on audiences that would be diminished in conventional scholarly prose. Thus, this study proceeds in three phases: interviews with commissioning and creative principals of the films/videos; a critical visual framing analysis of that work, focusing on its creators’ positioning of Alberta and broader cultural, political and economic forces at work; and a synthesis and (re)presentation of my findings in a script for a hybridized documentary film. Five conclusions emerging from this study are: (1) place in a globally-recognized, resource-based economy is positioned and contested largely in response to events and to representations of that place originating beyond its borders; (2) in representing resource extraction and its effects, visual strategies focus on both the macro and the micro; (3) visual omissions or denials can be as significant in environmental discourse as explicit representations; (4) producers of films/videos use a wide spectrum of frames ranging from anthropocentric (e.g. denial, progress, money) to ecocentric (e.g. eco-justice, present-minded, ecocide); and (5) the significant costs, production time and distribution challenges of producing and exhibiting documentary films professionally favour presenting generalizations and drama over nuanced details in addressing complex issues like environmental concerns about resource extraction.
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Cinema, Mass Communications
Citation
Takach, G. (2013). Environment, Communication and Democracy: Framing Alberta’s Bitumen Extraction Onscreen (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25922