Media Framing of Unconventional Fossil Fuels: The Absence of Climate Dialogue In Canada’s Northern Gateway Project

Canada’s Northern Gateway Project is a controversial pipeline proposal that would carry unrefined bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to the coast of British Columbia for international export. The authors analyzed print media for coverage of the Northern Gateway Project in six Canadian newspapers, including 2097 articles published from 2006 to 2014, inclusively. The objectives were threefold: 1) to characterize media framing of the project using a risk/benefit framework; 2) to identify regional differences in framing between the two affected provinces; and 3) to investigate the framing of environmental risk. The authors' findings demonstrate that public discourse surrounding the project is framed as a trade-off between economic benefit and environment risk, which is fairly typical for energy projects in North America. Despite a strongly regional distribution of risks and benefits (where Alberta would experience most of the economic benefits and British Columbia would bear considerable environmental risk), the authors did not find substantial differences in framing between the two provinces. Finally the authors found that the environmental risk frame was presented predominately according to potential local impacts due to pipeline or tanker rupture. The global impacts of climate change were rarely mentioned (less than 5% of the articles), and thus climate change is largely missing from the media the authors explored.

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• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AT040 Standing Committee on Transportation of Hazardous Materials.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Dusyk, Nichole
  • Axsen, Jonn
  • Dullemond, Kia
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
• Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Benefit cost analysis; Climate change; Environmental impacts; News; Petroleum pipelines; Public opinion; Risk analysis; Tar sands
• Identifier Terms: Northern Gateway Project
• Geographic Terms: Alberta (Canada); British Columbia, Canada
• Subject Areas: Environment; Pipelines;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01632203
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 17-06347
• Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Apr 6 2017 12:28PM