Strategies and Tactics to Communicate ‘Nature’: Beyond Anthropocentrism in Swedish Media

Abstract

Media play a central role in the discursive struggles over the meaning of nature, climate change and human–nature relationships through the strategic selection and salience of media content. This paper investigates the strategies and tactics mobilized by media producers in communicating environmental issues. The investigation is based on a selection of seven media productions in the Swedish context, comprising TV series and documentaries produced between 2015 and 2020. Through a discourse-theoretical analysis of these audio–visual products and interviews with their producers, we identify a five-cluster model, ranging from mainstream anthropocentric strategies to alternative ecocentric tactics. Our model aims to delineate media strategies reproducing hegemonic anthropocentrism to critically inquire about environmental ideologies in media communication and explore potential alternative tactics for more ecocentric representations of nature.