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To Bag the Ban or Ban the Bag: Analysing a shifting discourse in Canadian online news during the pandemic year, 2020
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- Author(s) / Creator(s)
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Plastics pollution is an existential threat to the environment, and in particular to the world’s oceans. Pre-pandemic, a global response to this crisis was gaining traction, with news media reporting large scale policy implementation. For example, in Canada, the federal government made an announcement in 2019 that it would implement a nationwide single-use plastics ban by 2021. A disruption to this response occurred at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a shifting Canadian news media discourse reflecting recommendations to increase consumption of single-use plastic bags and to ban reusable bags from stores. In order to understand how the human health crisis may have been used to push back on reusable bag use and promote single-use plastic, and to understand subsequent implications for policy change and environmental action, I conducted a two-part longitudinal analysis consisting of a critical discourse analysis of exemplar texts and a larger framing analysis of Canadian online news articles. Ultimately, the aim of this communications study was to understand how the representation of claims-makers, journalistic norms of practice, underlying worldviews and the pandemic itself may have contributed to a shifting discourse about the single-use plastic bag issue over time.
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- Date created
- 2021-06-01
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- Type of Item
- Report