To spray or not to spray: The discursive construction of contested environmental issues in the news media

• Spraying is discursively legitimized in one case and de-legitimized in the other.
• The scientific experts involved in the controversies became “primary definers”.
• The routines of journalism impact the production of hegemonic meaning.
• The discursive logics of media and science are to a large extent incompatible.

This paper focuses on the role of the news media in the (re)definition of contested environmental issues. It analyzes how the media, by means of various discursive strategies, legitimize or delegitimize different stakeholder claims about how to handle environmental issues, i.e. how certain definitions of how to understand and manage them achieve hegemonic positions. Guided by critical discourse analysis, the paper analyzes local and national newspapers' reporting on two insect outbreaks in Sweden: one which resulted in spraying and one which did not. The analysis focuses on the constructions of causes and solutions to the problems and of the consequences of spraying. The paper concludes that the news media's contribution to the production of hegemonic meaning on contested environmental issues is heavily colored by the routines of journalism, as well as by media logic in general and the media's difficulties handling scientific uncertainty in particular.