Hand-in date: 05.08.2017
MA Media Studies 2016-2017
MA Student: Tatiana Coba Fernández (S2905523)
Supervisor: Dr. Tamara Witschge
Second reader: Dr. Scott A. Eldridge II
ABSTRACT
This research analyses how the media represented the Indigenous tribes living in voluntary isolation (ITIVI) inside Yasuní National Park, when the Ecuadorian government purposed to keep its oil underground if the international community contributed with half of the cost of its exploitation. Over 200 articles between 2007 and 2013 were analyzed with tools provided by Content Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, in order to understand how did relevant Western and Ecuadorian media report on the ITIVI in relation to the exploitation of the park. The findings revealed that the media did a poor job in representing the ITIVI. In the media studied, the language used reflects a biased conception of the ITIVI as outsiders of the Ecuadorian society or humanity. In fact they othered them by: ignoring their existence; naming them as mere natural attributes of the park; describing them as unreal, or even animal-like; among others. Usually, this othering was reflected on how the speaker took ownership of their principal characteristic: their desire to be isolated and live without any contact with the civilized world. Most of the few articles that mention the ITIVI, locate them in second or third place after nature, biodiversity, oil and others. The ITIVI are
“interesting” as a fact, but the real reason they are named is because they happen to live in the world’s most bio-diverse place. This kind of media representation impacted the way the world perceived the ITIVI and furthermore the government policies that choose to exploit their home, as it repeatedly refers to the benefits of the oil extraction over the harm inflicted on the ITIVI to justify this “sacrificial place”. Further research with a broader focus around the other indigenous tribes in the Amazon could shed some light on whether the othering towards the ITIVI is unique, or if the other tribes are also subjected to othering from the way they are represented in the media.
Keywords: Media representation, Content Analysis (CA), Critical Discourse Analysis
Content
ABSTRACT 2
CONTENT 3
INTRODUCTION 5
OUTLINE 9
CHAPTER 1. LITERATURE REVIEW 10
1.1. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE HUAORANIS AND THE SELF-ISOLATED TRIBES IN YASUNÍ 11
1.2. MEDIA DISCOURSE 14 1.3. MEDIA REPRESENTATION 16 1.4. OTHERING 22 1.4.1. SACRIFICIAL PLACES 26 CHAPTER 2. METHODOLOGY 28 2.1. RESEARCH DESIGN 29 2.2. CONTENT ANALYSIS 30
2.3. CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (CDA) 30
2.4. SAMPLE 32
2.4.1. DATA GATHERING 34
2.5. CODING 35
2.6. LIMITATIONS 41
CHAPTER 3. ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 43
3.1. CONTENT ANALYSIS 43
3.1.1. NUMBER OF PUBLICATIONS 43
3.1.3. NUMBER OF ARTICLES THAT REFER THE ITIVI IN THEIR STORYLINES 47
3.1.4. THE LACK OF ARTICLES IN THE MEDIA OUTLETS ABOUT THE ITIVI 50
3.1.5. QUOTATIONS 51
3.2. CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 54
3.2.1. THE LANGUAGE USED TO DESCRIBE THEIR STATUS 55
3.2.2. THE REPRESENTATION OF THE ITIVI FROM OTHER INDIGENOUS GROUPS 60
3.2.3. THE ITIVI PORTRAYED BY THE GOVERNMENT 63
3.2.4. THE REPRESENTATION OF THE ITIVI FROM THE SOCIETY’S PERSPECTIVE 69
3.2.5. THE REPRESENTATION OF THE ITIVI FROM THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY 73
CONCLUSION 75
3.3. DISCUSSION 76
3.4. FUTURE RESEARCH 77
REFERENCES 79
APPENDIXES 90
APPENDIX A:DETAILS OF THE STUDIED ARTICLES (DATE, TITLE, NEWSPAPER SECTION, AND MAIN
TOPIC). BY:TATIANA COBA 90
APPENDIX B:DETAILED LIST OF THE QUOTATION STUDY.BY TATIANA COBA. 98
APPENDIX C:DISCOURSE ANALYSIS TABLE OF THE ARTICLES NAMING THE ITIVI.BY TATIANA
COBA. 116
APPENDIX D:LANGUAGE USED TO NAME THE ITIVI IN THE ARTICLES THAT NAME THEM.BY
TATIANA COBA. 128
Introduction
In 1989 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization declared the Yasuní National Park in Ecuador, as now being one of the planet’s biosphere reserves, of which there are 669, due to its abundant biodiversity (UNESCO 1989). In only 9,823 km², a space a little bit bigger than that of the New York metropolitan area, lives around 500 species of fish, 600 species of birds, 120 species of mammals and more than 4 000 species of plants (Smith 1993). To further put this in perspective, in all of the United Kingdom there are around 50 native tree species compared to the 2,200 native tree species in Yasuní (Watts 2012).
Moreover, this reserve is home to a variety of Indigenous communities, such as the Huaorani1, the Shuar, the Kichwa2 and two self-isolated Indigenous tribes, the Tagaeri and
the Taromenane (Internationalist 2016), and holds more than twenty percent of Ecuador's oil reserves, a natural resource which represents one third of the country’s annual income (Ministry Coordinator of Strategic Sectors 2014). This latter statistic, in our capitalist economies, has not surprisingly caused controversy between the government,
environmentalists and many Ecuadorian people (specially indigenous tribes), the content of which shall be discussed below.
In 2007, the oil under Yasuní represented, at the time, a possible income of
approximately 18 292 million USD (Alberto Araujo 2015). In an attempt to reduce its carbon footprint and promote the Amazon rainforest conservation, the Ecuadorian government, led by president Correa, launched a campaign called the “Yasuní-ITT Initiative”, which was a proposal to avoid oil drilling in this protected area. Its goal was to keep approximately a billion barrels of petroleum perpetually underground. However, this was under the proviso that, “the international community contributed with at least half of the opportunity cost of exploiting the petroleum” (Larrea & Warnars, 2009).
1 In the literature, the indigenous groups’ names are written in different ways (spelling), as they are phonetic
representations of the sounds they represent in the native’s tongue. In this case, the Huaorani tribe could also be called Waorani, Wuaorani, or simply Waos. In this study we will refer only to one of these spellings (Huaorani) to avoid possible confusion with other tribes. The plural form of the word is referred as Huaoranies.
2 The Kichwas are also an indigenous tribe that is named in several ways, similarly to the Huaoranies. In the
The proposal was hailed as a “revolutionary” and “innovative” step toward the conservation of the area (The Guardian 2012; BBC Mundo 2007), but after six years of global lobbying, President Correa, on August 15th of 2013, televised the cancelation of this
progressive initiative and instead announced his decision to ultimately commence the future exploitation of the Yasuní National Park (El Telégrafo, 2013). The Ecuadorian government blamed this move on nation-states more powerful and wealthy than they, stating that these countries “failed” Ecuador through their “hypocrisy”, in that they emit some of the highest greenhouse gases in the world, yet expect smaller nations to sacrifice their economic progress for the environment (Correa 2013).
Consequently, Correa was accused by many environmentalists and ONG directors of using the Yasuní-ITT initiative as a publicity stunt, to appear as if he deeply cared about the park and the people who lived there while, as many environmentalists purported, never intending to protect it in the first place (Kozloff 2009). As western media reported, these accusations were fuelled mainly by two government’s actions that seemed to contradict the initiative directly:
First, the negotiation of loans with foreign governments to finance the oil exploration in the area: The Guardian (D. Hill 2014) suggested that while the Ecuadorian government was raising funds for the Yasuní-ITT initiative, it was concurrently negotiating a billion dollar deal for the rights of a Chinese bank to start drilling activities in the park.
Second, the construction of access roads from nearby oil wells to the boundaries of the Yasuní national park: Also The Guardian (Goodey 2011) have reported that the Ecuadorian government authorized Occidental Petroleum to construct, in secret, a road from the
neighbouring Eden Yuturi field, to the border of the Yasuní’s national park. That road was not supposed to exist, as it does not have any reasonable purpose but to allow future oil exploration in the Yasuní.
Not surprisingly, the Ecuadorian Indigenous communities were outraged with the initiative’s annulment. For instance, Romulo Akachu, vice-president of Ecuador’s National Indigenous Federation, in reference to the tribes living within the Yasuní area, stated that, “where the environment is destroyed, our identity is destroyed as this interrupts the relationship between nature and our people” (Hennessy 2016). Nonetheless, the
the Yasuní. It would also greatly affect the indigenous people as they depend on the
ecosystem’s balance to subsist, specially the indigenous tribes in voluntary isolation that live in the area, as they depend solely on the forest’s resources.
As per the Indigenous tribes living in voluntary isolation, very little is known, because they hide themselves within the dense forest, away from the oil companies, rubber industry, miners and loggers that have caused irreparable damage to their ecosystem (United Nations 2004). According to the latest reports, the Tagaeri-Taromenane, have been decimated due to foreign diseases and dozens of people have died in violent territorial fights with the
Huaoranis- a group now considered “civilized” (Confederación Nacional de Indígenas del Ecuador 2014). As such, it is difficult to say whether they have felt an impact stemming from the reversal of the Yasuní-ITT initiative and instead we are left to make our own judgments based on their etic representation through mediating sources.
In this study I focus on how the media represented the Indigenous tribes living in voluntary isolation (from now on denominated ITIVI) in the Yasuní. This is to understand how people from a certain geographical area are portrayed across comparative media. This is necessary as the media, “plays a significant role in shaping debate and influencing outcomes. It is here that representations are determined, images softened or distorted, and power granted or denied” (Hutchins 2006, 438). Due to the unequal distribution of power and therefore access to global representation, the Ecuadorian and Western media held the monopoly on informing the “rest of the world” about the events in Yasuní and the condition of the minorities living within its borders. Hence, this study asks:
1. How did relevant Western and Ecuadorian media report about the local Indigenous tribes living in Voluntary Isolation (ITIVI) in relation to the exploitation of Yasuní Park?
a distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’” (Zajc and Erjavec 2014, 679) (see a more exhaustive definition of othering in Section 1.4: Othering). b. What are the consequences of the way the ITIVI were represented
throughout the articles? Representation always has the potential to impact outsiders perception and, in this instance, the way the world perceived the park and more pertinently, the people living there. The way the ITIVI were represented had an impact on the policies of Yasuní. The journalist Naomi Klein believes that social problems are an underlying cause of the ecological crisis that we currently face (Naomi Klein 2016). Therefore, under this paper’s position, the study of how the media frames a group of people within an environmental framework may cast some light upon the connection between these two problems. Klein purports:
“Fossil fuels require sacrifice zones: they always have. And you can’t have a system built on sacrificial places and sacrificial people unless intellectual theories that justify their sacrifice exist and persist: from Manifest Destiny to Terra Nullius to Orientalism, from backward hillbillies to backward Indians. We often hear climate change blamed on ‘human nature’, on the inherent greed and short-sightedness of our species” (Naomi Klein 2016).
Many people contest that it is absurd for environmentalists to fight for the rights of animals or plants, when there are so many people in need around the world. For instance, Pope Francis, who is known for putting an eco-friendly face to the Catholic Church with his encyclical “Laudato si” (on care for our common home), has expressed his disapproval towards people who love and help animals more than people (CNA 2016). Likewise, Edward Said, one of the founders of post-colonial studies, once referred to environmentalism as, “the indulgence of spoiled tree-huggers who lack a proper cause” (Naomi Klein 2016).
Environmental and social tribulations however, are not mutually exclusive in their plight and in the instance of Yasuní; there are tangible losses for both the natural and human world, which ultimately are synonymous. Therefore, in light of these negative perceptions, social and environmental causes should not oppose each other.
the Yasuní National Park but also the thousands of people that depend on it. This is the inherent relevance of this study, which has importance for wider research and policymaking where vital landscapes and vulnerable people are concerned.
Outline
This study begins with a Literature Review to contextualize the paper’s major query within existing knowledge of the topics and then follows with an outline of the Research Methodology to explain and justify the steps taken. Consequently, the Analysis and
Chapter 1. Literature Review
In this chapter I contextualize the paper’s main research question - How did relevant Western and Ecuadorian media report about the local Indigenous tribes living in Voluntary Isolation (ITIVI) in relation to the exploitation of the park? – By: 1) reviewing some history of the subjects of this study, the ITIVI; 2) discussing the theories of media discourse and representation, in order to relate the already existing knowledge about the topics and the previous studies made to the analysis and findings of this paper; and 3) introducing the theory of Othering, and its usefulness in answering the research question.
In the first section of the chapter I made a brief, but complete, chronological review of the history of the ITIVI, in which it is described: the beginning of its known existence, the first documented contacts made with the ‘civilized’ society, the decision to separate themselves from the contacted Huaorani, the current relation with the Huaorani and other tribes in the Yasuní, their conflicts with missionaries, loggers and oil companies, and their current status. In this section the objective is to give enough background information to the readers, so they can relate to the ITIVI, and to understand the conflicts and dangers they face due to the oil exploitation in the Yasuní National Park.
In the second section the theoretical framework of the study is reviewed. The theories of Media Discourse and Representation are analyzed considering that the main input of this study is newspapers texts that reported about the oil exploration and exploitation inside the Yasuní area. Due to their voluntary isolated status, the ITIVI do not have a voice over important government decisions that could affect them greatly, and therefore, their defense rely completely on the outer society. Consequently, their effective defense will depend on the perception this society has of the ITIVI, a perception that is shaped and reinforced by the media. Hence, the study of the media is germane for the analysis of this topic.
Finally, the last section of this chapter focuses on the introduction and description of the Othering theory that is paramount to this study because it provides the required
1.1. A brief history of the Huaoranis and the self-isolated tribes in Yasuní
Ecuador has a rich Indigenous heritage. According to the government, around 7% of the country’s population belong to fourteen different native peoples that still have their own language and culture, one of those tribes is the Huaorani (Correa Delgado et al. 2006).
For centuries, the Huaoranies lived as nomads in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where they were known for being merciless warriors who fiercely defended their territory- especially from “civilized” or “Western” people. The first documented cases of conflicts between the so-called “civilized society” and the Huaoranies started more than 60 years ago, when the international oil company, Shell, started to explore for oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest. As engineers and technicians entered their territories, they were met with fierce resistance so brutal, that in many cases the Huaoranis killed those who ventured in their land (Waddington 2003).
One of the most internationally known cases transpired some years after the first
encounters. Five Christian missionaries (most of them US-citizens) approached the Huaoranis in an attempt to evangelize them. It is important to say that these missionaries had the
government’s permission to contact the indigenous tribes in that area with the mission to educate them. Shortly after a few successful interactions with some of the group, all of the missionaries were violently killed. Despite this tragic outcome, a sister of one of the deceased persevered in her mission and with the aid of a Huaorani woman, Dayuma, managed to eventually convert the remaining majority (Elliot 1957). This behaved as a catalyst for a
portion of the Huaoranies to allow oil explorations and adopt certain “civilized” practices (Rival 2002).
According to some anthropologists, the introduction of Christianity could have led to the reduction in violence between Huaoranies factions and enabled the group to better understand their rights, within a Western framework, contra the interests of oil and logging companies seeking the resources within their territories (Boster, Yost, and Peeke 2003; Brysk 2004). Nowadays, most of the group have established houses, wear clothes, speak Spanish and cut deals with petroleum and logging companies for the use of their land (The Peoples of the World Foundation 2003). As of the 1990s, the Huaoranies have even politically mobilized with the creation of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (COFENAIE) and the Organization of Huaorani Nationality of the Ecuadorian Amazon (ONHAE), allowing the group to navigate the policies which dictate their lives within the bureaucratic requirements of Western style administration (Gálvez 2002).
Conversely, some Huaorani family’s (the Tagaeri clan) distrusted foreigners and, thus, the subsequent deals made with them. In consequence, they decided to emancipate
themselves from the other clans and retreat deep into the forest. Their existence was doubted and discussed for several years because of the lack of physical evidence of their presence. This changed after two events: 1) The attack, in the late 70’s, to workers of an oil company that were travelling through the river and left few people dead and a couple injured; and 2) The killing, in 1987, of the capuchin monsignor Labaca and the nun Sor Ines Arango by Tagaeri in a similar fashion that their Huaorani ancestors did with the Evangelic missionaries in the 60’s (El Universo 2012b). However, their existence is questioned again, specially by stories told by the Huaoranies that describe the disappearance of the Tagaeri by hands of the Taromenane (Olmos 2003).
About them, nowadays it is known that the Taromenane are a completely different tribe that also lives in the area. They were confused with the Tagaeri until the Huaoranies made contact with one their clans and kidnaped a woman from them (which led to the first
documented attack between each other in 1993) (Galvez 2003). They are described as fiercer warriors than the Tagaeri, tall, with white skin and with blue or green eyes. The
Taromenane (Galvez 2003). Despite of that, the Tagaeri are still being considered inside the two groups of ITIVI living in the Ecuadorian territory (Salcedo 2013) mainly because of the lack of data. Therefore, both of them are recognized internationally as part of the
approximate 64 Indigenous groups that choose to live in voluntary isolation within the Amazon rainforest (United Nations 2004).
Both of them are protected by the Ecuadorean constitution. In the article 57 of the chapter 4 of the 2008 Constitution it reads:
The territories of the peoples living in voluntary isolation are an irreducible and intangible ancestral possession and all forms of extractive activities shall be forbidden there. The State shall adopt measures to guarantee their lives, enforce respect for self-determination and the will to remain in isolation and to ensure observance of their rights. The violation of these rights shall constitute a crime of ethnocide, which shall be classified as such by law.
The State shall guarantee the enforcement of these collective rights without any discrimination, in conditions of equality and equity between men and women.
(National Assembly of Ecuador 2008)
The Tagaeri and Taromenane, as any other isolated groups in the region, face profound problems. On one hand, they are (and have been) nomads, gatherers and hunters for
centuries, so their subsistence depends on the balance of the ecosystem where they live, and the possibility of moving through great extensions of land to find the required amount of resources that they need. Thus, any disturbing activity to the ecosystem, or reduction of their territory could translate in a significant stress to their existence. On the other hand, they live in constant vulnerability as they are not properly represented or protected by the local or regional government due to their status of isolation. Their rights, way of life and culture have therefore been threatened and violated invariably throughout the past decades, mainly due to the commercial interest companies have taken in their resources (País 2013).
and have killed many of their women and children (Diario La Hora 2008). An example of vulnerability can be seen through the documented events of May 26, 2003, where according to an official statement, a group of illegal Colombian loggers induced a faction of the
Huaoranies to attack a Taromenane settlement. The objective behind this act was to create an environment of intimidation in order to push the Taromenane and the Tagaeri out of their territory. In the attack, eight women, five children and an unknown number of men were speared to death (Rival 2002). Since then, there have been several violent events between the Huaoranies and the Tagaeris and the Taromenanes: The Taromenanes attacked to two
Huaorani elders on 5 March 2013; The Huaoranies attack to the Taromenane in retaliation 30 March, 2013 (Olmos 2013); The attack to a Huaorani couple traveling through the Shiripuno river from an ITIVI group (El Comercio 2016).
These groups live in a very special state of vulnerability, as their isolated status hinders them to advocate for their own human rights, leaving that responsibility to third parties such as states, international organizations, other members of the civil society and even the media (IACHR 2013). Considering the way in which media represents these tribes could, or could not lead to more overt and tangible repercussions concerning the Yasuní and future policies for similar cases. It is therefore important to understand what media discourse is and how it functions.
1.2. Media Discourse
It is now known that media has a paramount role in society as it can limit and “shape the behaviours of individuals” (Happer and Philo 2013, 333). It does not solely provide the subjects of discussion -through selectivity- but it establishes their importance -through agenda setting-, it defines what part of those subjects are worthwhile discussing -through framing- among other things. In this context, the analysis of discourse of the media is relevant for social studies as “the review of theoretical and empirical research… leaves no doubt about the prominent role of the news media in the (re)production of ideologies in society” (Van Dijk 2009, 202).
2009), and in 1998, Van Dijk proposed a multidisciplinary approach to study the news that classified it as its own genre and also as a social practice. In order to study the news some categories were introduced: Summary (Headline, Lead), New Events, Previous Events, Context, Commentary, and similar “categories that organize the macro-level topics of news reports in the press” (Van Dijk 2009). Also, Bell (1991) further added to these categories “attribution” and “follow-up”. The former involves the consideration of the writer, day and place, while the latter refers to the organization of information after a major news event. Bell emphasized that news studies, “should go beyond earlier content analyses, critical linguistics and semiotic analyses by developing more explicit linguistic discourse analysis” (Bell quoted in (Van Dijk 2009, 195). This was in the endeavor to more easily highlight the linguistic conventions used within discourses which manipulate representations into fitting a particular narrative, whether discriminatory or not.
Media texts can be discriminatory because they are not only a reflection of “reality” but also a version of reality and they depend on the interests of those who make them, According to Fairclough (1995, 103). Media have their own discourses, which are a shared way of comprehending the world and are embedded in language to construct meaning and
relationships (Dryzek 2013). To establish the relevance of these media studies Fairclough stated that:
Media discourse may shape socially adjacent orders of discourse as well as being shaped by them […] it also influences private domain discourses practices, providing models of conversational interaction in private life which are originally simulations of the latter but which can come to reshape it (1995, 64).
Supporting this, Harley-Major and Coleman (2008), in their study, “The Intersection of Race and Gender in Election Coverage: What happens when the candidates don’t fit the stereotypes?”, revealed that although there is a small decrease in stereotyping when covering elections, the media still relies heavily on gender and race typecasts to cover political
All this is relevant for my research because, although ideologies can change, media discourse dynamics are ultimately all about power and identity, as aforementioned. As described by Van Dijk:
The evidence shows that on the whole… these dominant ideologies are associated with the very position and power of white, male, middle class journalists working within a corporate environment. Women, poor people, workers, black people, immigrants, and all those who have no access to, and control over public discourse are thus largely ignored, or represented negatively when seen as a problem or a threat to the social mainstream (2009, 202).
Consequently, it is very likely that the discourse behind the media ignores the indigenous groups in Ecuador, and even portrays them in a negatively way taking into consideration that the indigenous people in general do not have any control over public discourse and have been widely excluded from the journalism activity in the country. This is especially important for the ITIVI as they are more vulnerable tan other indigenous tribes, and considering that their subsistence is in mere contradiction with the monetary desire of the rest of the society. The specific area that analyzes how the discourse in the media represents certain topics of people is called Media Representation and it is going to be reviewed in the following section.
1.3. Media Representation
Media representation refers to how the media portrays certain topics, groups or ideas within a particular discourse. This theory, within the framework of media studies, therefore, analyzes how a particular topic is represented before the audience, and this is important because it is clear from the previous section that media representation can not only impact public opinion, but also policy making.
Representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures (Chandler 2014).
audience needs to identify the role of the characters: the evil, the good and the victim, etc. (Kidd 2016, 26). Even though these archetypes are necessary for storytelling, they represent a challenge for an inclusive media, as archetypes often lead to the stereotypes, which feed misrepresentations. Cooke-Jackson and Hansen (2008, 194) support this notion:
“Creators of both fiction and nonfiction works have an ethical duty to the individuals they portray, the larger subculture they represent, and the consumers who view their work. This responsibility is not mitigated by the usefulness of stereotypes”.
According to Hall (1997), there are three main theories of how representation through language works: the reflective, the intentional and constructivist theories. In the reflective theory, the meaning is itself in the object, idea, person or event while the language is a mirror, “to reflect the true meaning as it already exists in the world”(Hall 1997, 24), like a painting imitating a landscape. The intentional approach acts in opposition to the reflective theory, as it is not the object which contains meaning, but rather the speaker who dictates the essence of the object, as “words mean what the author intends should mean” (Hall 1997,
25), for instance if I give the word ‘blue’ my personal intended meaning of a ‘mood’ instead
of a ‘primary color’ . Despite being logic, Hall (1997, 25) argues that this theory is flawed as one “cannot be the sole or unique source of meanings of language” and that we depend on “communication and that, in turn, depends on shared linguistics conventions or shared codes”. This is why in the third theory, the constructivist approach, the object, the speaker and the public are incorporated. This theory states that we are the ones that construct meaning using concepts and signs as, “it is social actors who use the conceptual systems of their culture and the linguistic and other representational systems to construct meaning, to make the world meaningful and to communicate about that world meaningfully to others” (Hall 1997, 25). The constructivist approach is the one that is considered in this study, as it integrates the actors willing to communicate meaningfully to each other with the use of language. In this case, the media use these “concepts” and “signs” to construct meaning, and therefore, representation.
found that environmental reporters were concerned, as they could not adequately define what exactly the environment was and this, in fact, could be said to have caused a confused
understanding of this concept within the public as well.
Since the 80’s, many scholars conducted content based studies about “how much scientific knowledge was reported in the media and how accurately” (Carvalho 2007, 224), in relation to the environment, and these studies were coupled with research about the media’s influence on environmental perception, knowledge and/or behavior, especially concerning television news (Atwater, Tony; Salwen, Michael B; Anderson 1985; Brothers, Fortner, and Mayer 2010; McLeod, Glynn, and Griffin 2010). James Shanahan and his colleagues have conducted some of the most salient of these studies. They have studied how television portrays the environment and the effects of this portrayal in society by arguing the theory of cultivation,which studies the connection between a person’s television exposure and their beliefs about the world (Shanahan and Morgan 1999).
According to (Morgan and Shanahan 2010) the cultivation theory indicates the ways the media could seed, nourish and cultivate certain ideas into the public with the
reinforcement of concepts: “The mass-produced symbolic environment creates publics and reveals social and institutional dynamics; because it expresses social and cultural patterns, it also cultivates them”(pg. 339). This again, further reinforces the correlation between media discourse and societal behavior, practice and expectation. However, as described by
(Shanahan, Morgan, and Stenbjerre 1997) in the case of the relation between environmental knowledge and behavior, the media itself does not have a complete control over the issues regarding complex phenomena, like the case of environmentalism.
(Peeples 2015) suggested that researchers ought to pay more attention on specific environmental problems by taking into account their cultural context. Because
communication “constructs and influences people’s awareness, orientation to, and sense- making of the environment” (Peeples 2015, 39), she states in combatting the potentially disadvantageous effects of the cultivation theory, a theory that says that high frequency audiences are more susceptible to believe media discourses and behave accordingly (Davie 2010).
and race became more relevant during the ‘90s, many social studies scholars sought to examine the way minorities, such as Latinos or Black groups, were portrayed in the news (Rosich 2007). The main result of the studies expressed that there is a misrepresentation of minorities in comparison to White majorities in the media (Dixon and Linz in 2000). Dixon and Linz found that Black and Latino groups were more often represented as perpetrators, while White people were more likely to appear as officers. Furthermore, when they compared Blacks and Latinos, they discovered that the former were overrepresented as perpetrators, while Latinos and even more so, White people, were significantly underrepresented. Blacks were neither over-nor underrepresented as officers, but Latinos were underrepresented and Whites were palpably overrepresented in this law defender role (Dixon and Linz 2000).
The representation of Black minorities in the media has been one of the ethnic groups most studied by scholars. The following examples demonstrate both the social ramifications of media representation and also the politicization of the news. Hurley et al. (2015) began their research from the documented cases of content analyses that indicate the portrayal of Black people as criminals in the news and from there, he studied how the media had shaped the minds of TV viewers. From a number of participants, he discovered that the viewers were inclined to think Black criminals as being personally culpable (unable to rehabilitate),
something that did not happen for other groups. Moreover, Stevens and Hornik (2014) assessed the relationship between newspaper coverage of HIV/AIDS and the HIV testing behaviors of different groups. They found that the testing behavior of African Americans changed after the media portrayed the disease with a negative effect, making Black people less interested in testing for HIV. Finally, Ware, Zeldes and Hoewe (2015) made a
quantitative analysis of the way media covered the milestone case of Loving v. Virginia in 1967, in which the law that prohibited interracial marriages was overturned. Their results showed how the Black media mostly agreed with the idea of supporting Loving, while just a few outlets aimed to stay objective.
The way the media has represented other minorities, like Latinos, Muslims or
Indigenous communities, has also been studied in the past, but to a lesser extent. Regarding the latter group and the focus of this study, there have been some articles published about the way Indigenous communities were represented by news articles, especially in Canada and Australia. For instance, Scott (2006) analyzed the fairness, accuracy and relevancy of media exposure concerning the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), which is the Australian government body through which Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders can formally engage with government processes. He found that 82% of the 527 articles he analyzed were mainly about corruption within the ATSIC, but they “failed to include voices of these people directly affected by its operations – Indigenous Australians.” (p. 86). A similar conclusion was reached by Meadows, Hippocrates, and Van Vuuren (1997) who, through discourse analysis, found that out of 28 stories analyzed, only 9 quoted
Indigenous sources directly and when they were quoted it was done in a highly superficial manner.
Additionally, Thompson et al. (2007, 15) studied how the media covered sexually transmitted infections (STI) within Australian Indigenous communities. They found that very few articles focused on the health of the communities, although there were “substantial disparities in rates of STI between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians”. Similar research studies revealed the significant influence of media framing, regarding Australian Indigenous issues, since very little people have a direct involvement with these communities (Bastian A. 2011; McCallum and Holland 2010; McCallum K. 2011; Budarick and King 2008; Hollinsworth 2005). Similar to White Americans’ understanding of Black
communities, in Australia, the majority relies on mediated experiences to inform themselves about the Aboriginal identity. Like McCallum K. (2011) states in his study, media
representation of Australian Indigenous have an important impact on their lives and their relationship with the rest of the country.
“Canada's Aboriginal peoples are, in general, badly served by national and local media (…) The country's large newspapers, TV and radio news shows often contain misinformation, sweeping generalizations and galling stereotypes about Natives and Native affairs (…) The result is that most Canadians have little real knowledge of the country's Native peoples, or of the issues which affect them” (Canada 1996).
In the previous section I discussed how media discourse could shape and (re)produce ideologies. In this section it has come to the table the idea that media can also ‘cultivate’ ideas and concepts in order to motivate social attitudes. In this sense, media becomes crucial for the perception of reality that the public has, and therefore, social problems and solutions that derive into policies. If the media is serving Indigenous peoples poorly, the perception held by the rest of the world will be a “blown up snapshot”, which according to Bruno (2016, 47) is “an exaggeration, a change in the shapes and dimensions of a representation to
highlight it and to emphasize [only] an aspect of it”.
A big challenge for multi-cultural societies, such as Ecuador, is the ability to promote positive intercultural relations between many diverse groups. This task is exacerbated by the isolated nature many groups endure or perhaps, enjoy, as for outsiders; it then becomes necessary for mediated information to act as the gateway to intercultural association. This highlights the importance of examining the way minority groups are portrayed by the media. As Kidd (2016) define it,
“In these situations, the only ‘interaction’ they may have is with a media depiction of the co-cultural groups. Thus, media producers and media educators share a
responsibility to teach future writers, directors and producers how to create stories which promote Inclusion and understanding.”(p. 25)
whether there is identification with or a differentiation from and is known as othering. The following section expands on this concept.
1.4. Othering
The dual identification-differentiation between human groups is the center of a theory known as Othering (Zajc and Erjavec 2014, 679), which Mountz (2016, 329) defines as “the process of creating the ‘other’ wherein persons or groups are labeled as deviant or non-normative happens through the constant repetition of characteristics about a group of people who are distinguished from the norm in some way”. In words of (Grove and Zwi 2006),
‘Othering’ defines and secures one’s own identity by distancing and stigmatising an(other). Its purpose is to reinforce notions of our own ‘normality’, and to set up the difference of others as a point of deviance. The person or group being ‘othered’ experiences this as a process of marginalisation, disempowerment and social exclusion. This effectively creates a separation between ‘us’ and ‘them’.
This has been evident throughout time with the Israelites using the word “gentiles”, the Greeks using “barbarians” and today, Europe using “migrants”. This is typical of how
cultures “other” some groups of people that they consider inferior or merely different. The mere identity of society is based on the differentiation of groups. For instance as defined by (Cahoone 2003, 11):
The apparent identity of... cultural units – human beings, words, meanings, ideas, philosophical systems, social organizations – are maintained only through
constitutive repression, an active process of exclusion, opposition, and
hierarchization. [They maintain their] identity… only if other units are represented as foreign or ‘other’ through a hierarchical dualism in which the first is ‘privileged’ or favored while the other is deprivileged or devalued in some way
Inside the possible use of language, the othering could be portrayed as mere words inside the discourse used to refer or to describe a certain group of people. According to (Mountz 2016) the term “other” can be used as:
1. A noun: It constitutes a person or group of people that are different from oneself, that is outside of one’s own group.
2. A verb: It distinguishes, labels, categorizes, identifies, places and therefore excludes those who do not fit in the “normal” group.
Nonetheless, the othering could also be encounter in more in-depth structures of language. (Zuckermann 2006) argues that when looking at the lexical engineering of some words used by certain groups of people, it is possible to understand their intention to differentiate, or to show similarities within themselves and other groups. According to him, these constructions could not only be used to show contempt (negative or rejective lexical engineering), but also to show a ‘cultural flirting’ towards the other (adoptive or receptive lexical engineering). Therefore, he argues that the differentiation of groups through language is not bad in itself, as their identity depends largely in contrasting them with other groups, so the their strong-points can be highlighted. However, “this desire to distinguish ‘us’ from ‘them’ often leads to words for the ‘other’ acquiring explicitly negative connotations” (Hadley 2013). Connotations that are not easy to get rid off, especially in the media.
In the previous sections, I discussed the importance of media in the production and reproduction of ideologies inside the society. In this particular case, the media has a preponderant role in the as news outlets reinforce the differentiation of groups in order “to sustain existing powers [by including] polarized (Us vs. Them) ideologies [that] are
necessarily aligned along fundamental dimensions of society, such as those of class, gender, and race” (Van Dijk 2009, 202). The study of these ideologies and their effects has been assessed in the past, and these studies are going to serve as base to this study.
focus. At the core of her study, she instrumented two projects requiring immigrants to
respond to common media discourses and also native Mississippians, in an attempt to contest racial standards and claim legitimate spaces of belonging.
Another example is found in Yeh et al. (2014), who used several consensual qualitative research methods, to explore the discrimination of “othered” Samoan youth communities within the American school system. According to the study, for this community, “Other” is part of their everyday experience, a box to check on a form, and a representation of
institutionalized invisibility” (Yeh et al. 2014, 147). Their results indicate that the othering process distances Samoan youth from the education system, as it creates an environment in which the students feel segregated from “academic citizenship”, which later contributes to a poor performance. Their findings have significant importance for educational policy making for the future, as they pinpoint the key aspects to evade in avoiding the othering of minority communities within schools and potentially institutions at large.
A further study by Colic-Peisker, Mikola, and Dekker (2016), examined the media coverage and othering experienced by the Muslim community in Australia after the “Sydney siege”, which was an incident involving an Islamic man and 18 hostages inside a city café. Despite Australia’s boasted multicultural identity, the event coupled with the media
discourse, which followed, incited a nationalistic response from the hegemony that sought to reduce the Muslim community into binary categorization. On the one hand, there were “good” Muslims who ultimately hid their cultural identity behind closed doors and therefore had the right to be accepted, and then there were “bad” Muslims who displayed their faith in public and therefore were not consistent with the perceived identity of an Australian
majority- this calling for exclusion.
Finally, another insightful example of othering in the media is the case analyzed by Teo (2000). In this study, he assessed how two major influential Australian newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph, represented a Vietnamese gang. In
conjuncture to the aforementioned findings of Dixon and Linz (2000), Teo (2000) found that the white majority predominantly shaped newspaper discourse to stereotype ethnic
Beyond the above examples, another way to discriminate different groups is to ignore their rights, by denying them a voice and assigning them qualities that make them look less human vis-à-vis the self (Said 1991). Said (1991), argued that the Western identity is based on an othering system and with respect to the Middle East this was considered “orientalism”, which he defined as a:
“Corporate institution for dealing with the Orient- dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism is a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Said 1991, 3).
According to Said’s work (1991), it is ironic how a globalizing world is still
propagating and relying on the “otherness” of certain cultures, encouraged by the dominant ones, to manifest social narratives that benefit certain groups in power. Zayani (2011) explains, that globalization seeks to boost a few dominant identities, but also marginalize many others, those typically being non-Western and on the peripheries of modern society.
Claude Levi-Strauss, an ethnographer, proposed that humans have used two main strategies to deal with the “other”. The first is to incorporate them, by eliminating the existing boundaries, and the second is to isolate them, by strengthening the existing boundaries
(Gabriel 2012). Hence, (Shaw 2012) states that communicating with a culture in a globalized world can either manifest, reinforce or deconstruct boundaries. Shaw furthers this by
suggesting that these boundaries are constructive when sharing a mutual confirmation of identity and are empathetic to cultural differences, but are destructive when these differences are mutually rejected. “Boundary lines in communication can be likened to stereotypes and cliché’s which can be used in both negative and positive senses” (Shaw 2012, 513). This is why, although globalization is mostly seen as a positive process for the integration of cultures, it can also marginalize certain groups while reinforcing the ideologies of the dominant globalized cultures which are most likely to have more access to instruments of media and thus, control of representations (Zayani 2011).
continued with the rubber and oil companies which entered indigenous people’s territories to profit of the natural resources and was further reinforced by drug traffickers and other
exploitative groups over time (Macqueen 2016). This abuse in turn, made these territories “sacrificial places”, as according to Naomi Klein (2016), fossil fuels require both sacrificial areas and sacrificial people.
1.4.1. Sacrificial Places
This notion of “sacrifice”, refers to “people whose lungs and bodies can be sacrificed to work in the coal mines, people whose lands and water can be sacrificed to open-pit mining and oil spills” (Naomi Klein 2016). This term dates back to the 1970s when scientists,
advising the US government, openly called certain parts of the country “national sacrifice areas”. These were places that the state chose to exploit, usually in spite of the severe environmental and social impacts produced by that choice. In order to sacrifice people,
othering must at first transpire, so as to validate the unraveling of human life.
“There must be theories of Othering to justify sacrificing an entire geography – theories about the people who lived there being so poor and backward that their lives and culture don’t deserve protection” (Naomi Klein 2016).
In the case of Yasuní, not only is the mega-diversity of the park under threat, but also the people who live there- especially the self-isolated tribes who have no global voice. The role of the media in this problem is critically important, as they hold the responsibility for representing those who cannot otherwise represent themselves within a globalized context. The manner in which the media covered the Yasuní scandal, triggered some cultural
narratives within the Ecuadorian society, which this paper suggests, may have influenced the public discourse and even the policies concerning it.
Environmental discourse, and that concerning sacrificial places and its people, is spread through a variety of vehicles, which can support interests or challenge others. For instance, in Bolivia, Sergio Huarcaya (2011) suggests that Indigenous activists use segmentary grammar to claim equality between White people and Indians. Huaracaya states that the segmentary grammar works in this case, because “belonging and exclusion are not absolute but
in Ecuador, and the cultivation theory, can be used to effectively benefit those who are underrepresented and does not need to necessarily portray them in an othered sense.
Chapter 2. Methodology
In this chapter I made a summary of the methods and procedure steps that I used in order to compile the studied sample (gather the information), analyze the data gathered (with the aim of explaining how and why I used such methods), code the articles, and define the limitations of the study.
In short, this study is a cross-sectional comparative assessment (as defined in (Bryman 2004)) between regional and national newspapers. It has the aim of analyzing the media representation of the ITIVI, in the context of the Yasuní-ITT initiative, in six of the most influential newspapers (globally and locally). Three international outlets: The Guardian, The
New York Times and The Washington Post, and three local printed media: El Comercio, El Telégrafo and El Universo. In them, the use of language is assessed to unravel part of the
discourse behind the text to understand how the ITIVI are portrayed in these news outlets. In order to do so, I chose to use a qualitative and quantitative approach together.
This study works with two well-developed and tried methods in an attempt to understand how the ITIVI were portrayed in the national and international media: Content Analysis (CA) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Each one of them was defined to analyze texts with a variety of extensions and in different depth. However, their
methodologies do not contradict each other, but rather complement each other. Together, they create this ‘perfect’ combination of quantitative and qualitative assessments to analyze the
othering towards certain subject. First, the Content Analysis provides hard numbers to the
analysis (quantitative results), while the Critical Discourse Analysis give insights on the continuously evolving social reality (Bryman 2004). An example of this joined approach in order to analyze the othering theory could be observed in the work done by (Zajc and Erjavec 2014). They used both methods to conclude that the journalists in Slovenia othered
biotechnology and biotechnologists.
Therefore, in this study, both methodologies together will serve to answer how the ITIVI were portrayed in the media around the Yasuní-ITT initiative, whether or not were they
2.1. Research Design
This research is based on the analysis of the use of language, especially the way the newspaper’s writers described the ITIVI in the Yasuní-ITT initiative context. Intentionally or unintentionally, these writers chose to use certain language and tone to refer to the ITIVI in the Yasuní national park. It is part from my hypothesis, that these choices in the media reflect the society’s discourse about the ITIVI. Thus, if the media is analyzed, the society is also analyzed (mostly).
Language is a representation of intangible ideas in each person’s mind, and so it contains biases, schemas and discourses behind it. In specific, written language is also very subjective as the same words could have different meanings depending on the background, the context and the tone they have. Therefore, this makes very difficult to understand
completely the intentionality behind any type of written language (if not impossible), in most of the cases it is true that the only person that knows exactly what the text meant and who was intended for is the person who wrote it. Since there is the need of tools and a great amount of background knowledge of the subject in order to make an assessment of the texts. I explored the following methodologies created to facilitate this analysis in the most un-biased way possible:
1) A Content or text analysis (CA) that has the objective of showing trends and relations of and between newspapers about the subject. This approach is an extensive analysis that is often used for big chunks of data. It involves the sorting of the words used in the text into groups that could later be quantified by the use of simple mathematical statistics.
In this case, CA is going to be applied to answer the main question and two sub questions, and to filter the studied sample. In consequence, one of the outcomes of this approach will be the reduced sample that includes the ITIVI in their narrations. 2) Based on the outcome of the first part of this study (the content analysis), the second
2.2. Content Analysis
Despite having a great variety of frameworks, methods and techniques labeled as content analysis (Duriau, Reger, and Pfarrer 2007), the content analysis used in this thesis could be defined as “any methodological measurement applied to text… for social science purposes” (Shapiro and Markoff 1997). It allows me to have a replicable tool to understand structures and find the underlying cognitions and intentions of the people (Huff 1990).
Furthermore, the content analysis could be considered as “objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication” (Berelson 1952, 18), that is used to summarize and compare texts (Holsti 1969). In this case, the data is quantified and analyzed in a properly manner to obtain reliable results about the use of language in the studied media.
In definitive, the content analysis is the tool used to reveal underlying schemas, discourses, pre-concepts and themes by the interpretation of co-occurrences of keywords (Huff 1990) as the language has an important role in human cognition (Sapir 1944).
In words of (Duriau, Reger, and Pfarrer 2007),
Another key strength [of Content Analysis] is the analytical flexibility allowed. For instance, analysis of content can be conducted at two levels… At one level, the manifest content of the text can be captured and revealed in an number of [simple] text statistics. At a second level… the latent content and deeper meaning embodied in text [could be performed].
Despite being a quantitative method, the words assessed by CA require a qualitative insight to give some sort of reason to the results at the end of the analysis, as any text contains a cultural context. In this study, this qualitative insight is performed partly by the Critical Discourse Analysis that is described in detail below.
2.3. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is the analysis of “what people do with talk and
text” (Richardson 2006, 26). The meaning of a text is hence constructed through the
for the deeper connotative level of meaning, beyond countable measurement of words, in an attempt to analyze how individuals (in this case writers) interpret their social world.
Therefore, CDA is a powerful tool to study the social construction of reality; in this particular case to study the media’s discourses and the way minority groups are represented.
In order to use CDA, it is important to understand the linkage of meaning and context. According to Richardson (2006), in written journalism, the former is linked to latter in two ways:
1. In the assigning of sense: The meanings of the words themselves need to be fixed because a single word may mean different things. The meaning of the word is usually implied by the way it is used, its surroundings, or by its grammar (Richardson 2006). 2. In the assigning of reference: Any utterance refers to something; they are embedded in a context. Words like “here, there, me, them and us” are only meaningful when the reader knows to what they refer (Richardson 2006).
Any mistaken words in one of the two processes may cause confusion or
misunderstandings. CDA assumes that journalism is connected to social practices and social practices are connected to journalism.
“Readers decode the meanings of texts using knowledge and beliefs of the world, and these texts go on to shape (through either transformation or reproduction) these same readers’ knowledge and beliefs”. (Richardson 2006)
CDA, which according to Wodak quoted by Richardson (2006), “can only understand discourses in relation to their context; it is interpretative, explanatory and it is concerned with social problems, and it studies the power relations by assuming language can be ideological”.
(Peeples 2015) analyzed the possible approaches to analyze a subject inside the media considering that language is largely influenced by socio-political, cultural and economic systems. According to her, the CDA is more than suitable for the analysis of complex relationships between a subject and its media representation, as it helps to unravel the intricate relationships between the symbolic (language) and material (subject) environment.
study of media discourse has therefore, been relevant in revealing implicit ideologies
invented, reproduced or challenged within media texts. This is why critical discourse analysis of the media can reveal the implicit views held by newspapers regarding Yasuní and its people. Through such analysis, the intention is to find whether the Indigenous tribes of the park could have been classified as the other and consequently incur the repercussions enforced by this label.
It is important to clarify that despite the use of the two instruments, the primary tool of investigation for this study will be the CDA of media covering the events within the Yasuní national park. As explained in the previous section, CDA illuminates the representations predominating the social world, the types of interactions the media sets up between the powerful and the rest, and it studies how meaning is constructed differently across various texts and, thus, highlights the diverse discourses which can be found (Matheson 2005).
This approach was chosen, beyond its explanatory value, due to the possibility of
revealing mediated representations to the public across two dimensions. The first dimension, relates to the national and internal perspective, in which media representation influences the central government’s policies. In this case, it is very likely that the way the Indigenous tribes from Yasuní were represented in the media had influenced the environmental policies that the Ecuadorian government implemented in the place they lived. The second dimension, relates to a worldwide perception, viewing the manner in which the media portrays the relationship between policymaking, vulnerable groups of people and the natural environment. This study therefore belongs to a wider research canon regarding environmental policymaking and is relevant to those investigating this field.
2.4. Sample
The Ecuadorian newspapers chosen were three of the most influential and traditional,
El Comercio, El Universo and El Telégrafo, as they are the most respected and widely read
media in the country. The first one is the main daily newspaper from Quito, the capital of Ecuador, founded in 1906 and known for its “independent” and center-right ideology (“Nuestra Historia” 2010). The second, El Universo is the largest newspaper in the country coming from Guayaquil and has been known for its right conservative political ideology since 1924 (El Universo 2012a). The final paper, El Telégrafo, is the oldest newspaper in the country with 133 years and was founded as a liberal newspaper in Guayaquil. About the latter, it was recently seized by the government, and they re-funded it as a public newspaper (Efrén Avilés Pino 2016). Now it portrays and reflects a strong “socialism of the 21st
century” view that makes it particularly interesting to study as will contrast with the other two private national newspapers. The articles of these newspapers are going to be classified and studied in their original language (Spanish), as they do not have an English version available. However, some parts of them will be translated in order to facilitate the comparison between them and the international newspapers.
Beyond this, newspapers from the United States and the United Kingdom were also studied due to their influence and the global aspects of the issue, such as environmental co-responsibility and the universality of climate change. Furthermore, as both of these countries, emit some of the highest volumes of greenhouse gas emissions per person (ABC News 2016) they are supposed to have a discourse for policies like Yasuní-ITT. It is therefore essential to study the way influential media from powerful and polluting countries represented,
misrepresented or under represented this topic. This study hence focuses on the media discourses emanating from the richest and most influential newspapers in the English language: The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Interestingly, they also happen to be the international newspapers that have published the most about this topic according to the Lexis Nexis Database, something that makes them of particular interest when analyzing their media rhetoric in relation to the representation of Indigenous tribes from vulnerable places.
diametrically different. It is, therefore, expected to find these differences in the type of
sources quoted and the rhetoric given about Yasuní and its tribes living in voluntary isolation. Also, since many of the articles refer to the speech president Correa- the most quoted political actor on the articles (See chart 10 analysis) – gave on 2013, saying the campaign had failed so Ecuador would have to exploit the park. I decided to include a Critical Discourse Analysis of the speech in relation to the othering used in it to understand how he justifies the exploitation policy.
2.4.1. Data Gathering
Article collection sought only pieces that related directly to the topic and so press releases, profiles and other types of articles were omitted. For this, two main data mining techniques were implemented: firstly, an advanced article searches with keywords in the Lexis Nexis database; and secondly, a search into the respective newspaper databases for a time span of 25 years; the time that has passed since the beginning of the Yasuní oil exploration.
After a preliminary exploration, the Lexis Nexis database was chosen for searching English written newspapers, while publications’ internal search features were used for Ecuadorian prints. Initially, the intention was to recompile at least 50 articles to study about the subject of each newspaper.
When using the keywords “Yasuní; Ecuador; Amazon; Yasuní-ITT” in the Lexis Nexis database resulted in 46 articles from The Guardian, 10 articles from The New York
Times, and 9 articles from The Washington Post across the time-span. However, some articles
were excluded of the sample after the first sort of the articles obtained by LexisNexis as the list also included drafts of some reports, and news that were not about the subject. There is an exception of the articles that were eliminated from the list, nonetheless. Despite being mainly about the oil extraction in Peru, the seventh article of The New York Times also discussed the Yasuní case in a few paragraphs. Hence, only the section that describes the Ecuadorean case is studied. Finally, the final international sample contained 41 articles of The Guardian, 10 of
The New York Times, and 7 of The Washington Post. These is a result by itself as it
As for Ecuadorian publications, using the keyword search “Yasuní-ITT” within Ecuadorian newspapers, it was found that El Comercio had published 525 articles related to the topic (“Búsqueda Avanzada” 2017), El Universo 260 articles (Universo 2017) and El
Telégrafo 285 (El Telégrafo 2017) before January 2017. The other keywords were too
general to be considered in the national context, so they were not used in the search. Hence, considering the demands of using critical discourse analysis and the time limitations of this study, 50 of the most recent articles from each Ecuadorian newspaper were chosen.
Hence, across this 25-year time frame, commencing in 1991 and continuing until January 2017, 208 articles were sourced regarding the subject of study. Table 1 summarizes the articles gathered from the different databases.
Table 1. Sample's Composition
Newspaper # Articles Database
The Guardian 41 LexisNexis
The New York Times 10 LexisNexis
The Washington Post 7 LexisNexis
El Comercio 50 Newspaper archive
El Universo 50 Newspaper archive (powered by Google)
El Telégrafo 50 Newspaper archive
Total 208
APPENDIXES
Appendix A: Details of the studied articles (date, title, newspaper section, and main topic)Appendix A shows the studied articles and their details (date, title, newspaper section, and main topic) per newspaper.
2.5. Coding
Put simply, coding is the process in which information is grouped or clustered into domains to compare and analyze data in a more structured way (C. E. Hill, Thompson, and Williams 1997). The articles under investigation were analyzed for their useful information and the news transcripts were consequently coded into thematic blocks for further
examination.
Colic-Peisker, Mikola, and Dekker (2016). Juan Li’s (2009) “Intertexuality and national identity: discourse of national conflicts in daily newspapers in the United States and China”, was implemented as a reference point for optimal extraction techniques along with the tools demonstrated by John Dryzek (2013) in his book, “The Politics of Earth”.
In Li’s (2009) work, the general importance placed on an article’s topic was analyzed by: 1) examining front pages, as this indicates the newspaper’s focus, and 2) studying the representation of social actors by analyzing quotation patterns for it, “sheds light on a newspaper’s perspectives on the relations social actors have with the world and with other actors, and the ways in which news events and actors are interpreted and represented by the newspaper” (Li 2009, 95). Moreover, the latter is quite important as, “quotations of news actors are neither transparent nor simple citations” (Li 2009, 95), an idea which is supported by both Teo (2000) and (Van Dijk 1989). The former defined quotations as a way in which the media let people ‘reinterpret’ events, which can reveal power relations between the mediated participants, while the latter defined quotations as a tool for redefining power structures and/or creating new meanings within the world participants move.
Li’s work will serve to do the coding for the Content Analysis in order to perform a statistical analysis afterwards. In this case the objective is to hint possible discourses inside the newspapers themselves by the analysis of the elements (words) that conform those articles.
The elements that are important to understand the discourses behind the articles are: 1) Number of publications (with and without the ITIVI in the story): This will
define an inverted pyramidal structure that will hint the importance of the ITIVI in the articles, in which the outcome of the preceding step is the income of the subsequent.
