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Geoethics: A Reality Check from Media Coverage of the Anthropocene

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Geo-societal Narratives

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Abstract

The concept ‘Anthropocene’ embodies some of the aspirations of geoethics as a conceptual framework for contemporary existential issues. The Anthropocene Media Project is a research project to discover how mass media worldwide are reporting the Anthropocene. The database covers about 2000 media sources of which about 40% produced at least one mention of the Anthropocene. The term ‘mass media’ is used in its broadest sense to mean any source of news that is generally available, freely accessible to communities at various scales (online, on the streets, at newsagents, kiosks, transport hubs, airports, and supermarkets in cities, towns, and villages). This simple methodology has theoretical significance. It does offer a way of discovering how likely it is that casual browsers of the daily news would come across the Anthropocene. Around 4000 media items were found with the term Anthropocene and this chapter analyses a sample of those items directly relevant to the emerging field of geoethics. Currently, a ‘direct intersection’ is feeble. Nevertheless, scholars in the field of geoethics might find an engagement with the literature on the Anthropocene by Earth system scientists, social scientists, and environmental humanities scholars rewarding.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, for example, Bohle and Bilham [2], Peppoloni et al. [3], and De Pascale et al. [4].

  2. 2.

    Media items quoted below have been lightly edited for clarity.

  3. 3.

    Boykoff [10], from the perspective of a media researcher, asks, “Who speaks for the climate?”

  4. 4.

    Yusoff [12] provides a thorough introductory analysis of the complexities of ethical thinking in this context. See also, on Geoethics in the sphere of university education, Almeida and Vasconcelos [13].

  5. 5.

    For the views of the main participants, see Moore [19] and for a thorough critique from an eco-socialist perspective, see Angus [20]. Also of interest here is the distinctive approach of Haraway [21].

  6. 6.

    In a display of moral outrage unusual in scientific publications, Cafaro and Primak [23] assert that “Species extinction is a great moral wrong”. This provoked heated follow-up responses.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. London School of Economics, London, UK

    Leslie Sklair

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  1. Leslie Sklair
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Correspondence to Leslie Sklair .

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  1. Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship, Montclair, NJ, USA

    Martin Bohle

  2. International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG), Rome, Italy

    Eduardo Marone

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Sklair, L. (2021). Geoethics: A Reality Check from Media Coverage of the Anthropocene. In: Bohle, M., Marone, E. (eds) Geo-societal Narratives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79028-8_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79028-8_9

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-79027-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-79028-8

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