MSc Communication Science
Corporate Communication
Master Thesis
The power of environmental documentaries in the Animal
Agriculture and Ocean Plastic sub-issue arena
Two case studies on inter-media agenda setting and frame alignment
by
Ramona Aurora Iris Bettler (11592737)
29/06/2018
Supervisor/Examiner:
dhr. dr. Joost W.M. Verhoeven
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Abstract
This Master thesis seeks to understand the influence of environmental documentaries on the newspaper/reporting within the Animal Agriculture and Ocean Plastic environmental sub-issue arenas. Two case studies surrounding the environmental documentaries COWSPIRACY and APLASTIC OCEAN were conducted in an attempt to analyse the effect of documentaries on the agenda setting or framing of the newspaper/magazine reporting within the Animal Agriculture and Ocean Plastic sub-issue arena. The findings show that there were no agenda setting effects for both documentaries. However, there was frame alignment between the documentaries and the newspaper/magazine reporting, especially within the Ocean Plastic issue arena. The COWSPIRACY frames displayed lower frame alignment, which may be due to the controversial content of the frames.
Introduction
Since the European Union decided to ban free straws and plastic cutlery, the media has focused their attention on plastic waste (e.g. Batchelor, 2018; Reuters, 2018; Hein, Kafsack & Krohn, 2018). In recent years, media coverage of environmental issues has increased (Schmidt, Ivanova, & Schäfer, 2013). Environmental issues are talked about in many
different ways; through newspaper/magazine articles, TV news, organizational sustainability reports, PR messages and social media posts. Extensive research has been conducted on these actors and media outlets and their agenda setting power. However, art and cultural products, such as documentaries, are often neglected in academic studies on frame
alignment, agenda building and setting (Vasi, Walker, Johnson, & Tan, 2015). The power of documentaries should not be neglected, as movies such as AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (2006) by Al Gore have shown. AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH achieved what environmental organizations had tried to achieve for years. Namely, it increased public awareness about global warming and climate change around the world. Research has shown that AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH increased the general population’s knowledge about the causes of global warming, their concern for the environment and their willingness to reduce greenhouse gases (Nolan,
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2010). Documentaries outside of the environmental issue arena, such as FAHRENHEIT 9/11 (2004), have demonstrated that documentaries can change the political discourse and reset the media agenda about existing issues (Karlin & Johnson, 2018). For example, Morgan Spurlocks documentary, SUPER SIZE ME (2004), garnered immense media attention. This media attention pressured McDonald’s into changing their organizational policy and influenced the decision to stop serving Super Size menu items (Holdguin, 2004). These documentaries are part of the third wave of activist documentaries, which take the centre stage of popular culture and no longer operate at the margins of counter-culture (Aguayo, 2005). Recent technological developments have facilitated the production and distribution of modern documentaries. The early documentaries of the third wave still had to get past gatekeepers in order to be shown in traditional cinemas. More recent documentaries can get distributed through websites or streaming platforms, such as YouTube and Netflix, which allow them to reach a global audience (Böttger, Cuadrado, Tyson, Castro, & Uhlig, 2016). All of these developments strengthen the position of documentaries in the environmental issue arena.
Over the years, inter-media agenda building and setting has been researched between various traditional news media and across different issues (e.g. Jarren & Vogel, 2011; Lim, 2006; Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). This research has shown that different interest groups, such as policymakers or journalists, can impact both the volume and character of news messages about a particular issue (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2006). But thus far, there has been no research conducted to see if (environmental) documentaries can also have the same effect on the salience and framing of an issue. The present study attempts to fill this research gap by researching possible frame alignment between environmental
documentaries and environmental newspaper/magazine reporting. It will be analysed whether the environmental documentaries act as agenda setting key events in their environmental sub-issue arenas.
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The research will be conducted through two separate cases studies. The first case study explores the Ocean Plastic issue arena. In particular, it will focus on the environmental documentary APLASTIC OCEAN (2016) by Craig Leeson and the newspaper/magazine reporting surrounding the issue. The second case study focuses on the Animal Agriculture issue arena with COWSPIRACY (2014) by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn and related newspaper/magazine reporting. Both case studies are guided by the following research question:
RQ1: To what extent are there inter-media agenda setting and frame alignment effects between newspaper/magazine reporting and environmental documentaries in the Ocean Plastic sub-issue arena?
RQ2: To what extent are there inter-media agenda setting and frame alignment effects between newspaper/magazine reporting and environmental documentaries in the Animal Agriculture sub-issue arena?
It is of great importance to close this research gap and gain insights over the effects of documentaries on other media, especially in light of the recent research that has revealed the marked effects documentaries can have on public awareness and knowledge, social media activity, and environmental behaviour and concern. This is especially important given the rising number of both documentaries and their viewers around the world (van Munster & Sylvest, 2015; Pierce, 2017). Given the growing number and relevance of documentaries, it is of great importance to understand the phenomenon and how it may impact the news discourse, various issue arenas, and the opinions and behaviours of audiences which may result in social change.
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Theoretical background
The following chapter will focus on theoretical concepts and research findings relevant for the present master thesis. First, an introduction to the concept of issue arenas and inter-media effects will be given. Afterwards, the role of the different players in the environmental issue arena will be discussed.
Issue Arena
The issue arena is an abstract concept where all different places used to exchange views about a certain issue come together (Vos, Schoemaker, & Luoma-aho, 2014). The issue arena puts the issue and discussion at the centre of the communication model (Luoma-aho & Vos, 2009). This means that the issue arena is not owned by any one organization or
individual. Organizations are merely actors which hold a stake in the issue (Vos et al., 2014). In the issue arena, different actors give their input and compete for the support of their arguments (Luoma-aho & Vos, 2009). This theoretical model from Luoma-aho and Vos (2009) combines established communication approaches such as the stakeholder theory, the network theory, issue management and agenda setting (Vos et al., 2014). The following paragraphs will examine the environmental issue arena and the role of different actors in it.
Environmental Issue Arena
For a long time, environmental issues centred around tangible environmental issues: floods, storms, heat waves, etc. In recent years, a new class of environmental issues has emerged. Many of the current environmental issues such as climate change, ozone depletion, micro plastic and the loss of biodiversity are intangible for the common person. These are problems that are practically invisible but nevertheless need to be acted upon to avoid future global consequences (Trumbo, 1996). The present environmental issue arena is very broad as it includes a great variety of different sub-issues which each have their own sub-issue arena. For example, in the Animal Agriculture sub-issue arena, the effects of animal agriculture on climate are at the centre. In the Animal Agriculture sub-issue arena, all actors with a stake in the issue can voice their arguments and try to gain support for them. The same applies for the Ocean Plastic sub-issue arena, where the communication surrounding Ocean Plastic is
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exchanged. Just as there are different sub-issue arenas, there are different actors which have a stake in the environmental issues. One such actor is the news media (i.e.
newspapers, magazines). Newspapers however, mainly focus on climate change and give less attention to other environmental issues (Boykoff, 2007; Ivanova, Schmidt, & Schäfer, 2014; Takahashi, 2011). Newspaper reporting on climate change tends to be dramatic and ambiguous with little information that would help the public understand the risks that exist in their communities (Antilla, 2005; Griffin & Dunwoody, 1997; Major & Atwood, 2004). In newspaper research, there is a strong focus on the framing of environmental issues (to be further discussed in the section about environmental framing). In addition to news media, cultural products from the arts, such as environmental documentaries, are also actors in the environmental issue arena.
Documentaries are defined as non-fiction films which are produced with the intention to influence or persuade the audience through its opinion or a specific message (Barsam, 1992; Karlin & Johnson, 2018). Research has shown that documentaries can be a powerful actor in the environmental issue arena. Documentaries can shift and reframe the discourse
surrounding an issue and therefore influence mobilization and political outcomes (Aguayo, 2005; Vasi et al., 2015). Environmental documentaries have been shown to increase issue sensitivity and environmental knowledge and have the ability to change attitudes and believes (Barbas, Paraskevopoulos, & Stamou, 2009). Furthermore, these documentaries have increased donation behaviour in support of animal and environmental protection organizations (Arendt & Matthes, 2016). These aspects show that documentaries are
inherently activistic, especially more recent documentaries which are part of the third wave of activist documentaries. These documentaries try not only to entertain and inform, but also to activate and create social change (Aguayo, 2005). In an effort to affect social change, most third wave documentaries include a supplementary social action campaign (Karlin &
Johnson, 2018). Having a social action plan gives viewers a way to work on or solve the issues discussed in the documentaries. Applying the fear appeal theory from health communication, it can be said that having an social action plan in place can help to create
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the feeling of self-/collective efficacy instead of feeling of being overwhelmed, which can induce defence mechanisms (Chen, 2015; Witte & Allen, 2000).
After having discussed the environmental issue arena and its players, the following section will discuss the theoretical background information regarding the framing of issue within the environmental issue arena.
Environmental Framing
The previous section focused on the importance of the different actors in the environmental issue arena; not only is the presence of stakeholders vital but also how they present and frame their arguments in the issue arena. Framing is defined as the act of selecting some aspects of reality and highlighting them to promote a certain interpretation of an issue, while neglecting other aspects of reality (Entman, 1993). The stakeholders use different culturally embedded frames to present their arguments, hoping that these frames will be adopted by the public and the other players (van Gorp & van der Goot, 2012). Framing has a
demonstrable effect on the way people make sense of different issues; the stakeholders hope that their frames will be adapted so that the issue is seen in a way which best serves their interests (de Vreese, Boomgaarden, & Semetko, 2011; M. Nisbet, 2009; van Gorp & van der Goot, 2012). Furthermore, the way that an issue is framed in the environmental issue arena is of great importance as it can influence public engagement by increasing a person’s intention to take pro-environmental actions and increases pro-environmental behaviour (Lindenberg & Steg, 2007; Morton, Rabinovich, Marshall, & Bretschneider, 2011; M. Nisbet, 2009).
The study of van Gorp and van der Goot (2012) found the six most common frames for environmental issues in sustainability communication (Appendix A). One of the frames is the Responsibility frame, which emphasizes that we as humanity have been given shared stewardship over the earth and that it is our responsibility to take care of the environment for future generations. An additional finding of van Gorp and van der Goot (2012) was that none of the six most common frames belonged to any one stakeholder. Each frame was used by
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multiple stakeholders in a different manner. This could be an indication of frame alignment across stakeholders. The following section will focus possible frame alignment and agenda setting effects across media, so called inter-media effects.
Inter-media effects
Today’s society is inherently cross-medial, which means that people inform themselves not through one but through multiple forms of media (Schrøder, 2011). This is a great opportunity for organizations, as the same message shown on different channels can create synergy effects (Schrøder, 2011; Voorveld, Neijens, & Smit, 2011). Synergy effects are the
phenomenon when the combined effects of cross-media campaigns exceed the sum of their individual effects (Voorveld et al., 2011). This theoretical approach could also be applied to the environmental issue arena; when an issue, argument or frame gets supported on different media channels, it can be expected that it will have a stronger media effect.
But how does an issue or frame get to be featured in different media? To certain extend issue and frame alignment can be explained through media effects. For example, inter-media agenda setting theory argues that the newsworthiness of international news coverage is strongly influenced by the news agenda of other media (Golan, 2006). Further research showed that media also influence each other’s agenda building and framing processes, which can in line lead to frame alignment (Song, 2007). Another theory which partly explains frame alignment and inter-media effects is the key event theory.
There is no one specific definition for what a key event is. Key events are commonly defined as media reports which give a new, similar event more coverage. Therefore, key events can trigger waves of reporting on similar events (Kepplinger & Habermeiner, 1995). Other research has shown that the framing of the “new” events tend to be framed similarly to the key event (Boesman, Berbers, D’Haenens, & van Gorp, 2017). Through key events, news value is added to the issue and the applied frames. This means that the way of reporting and the use of specific frames also influences the newsworthiness of an issue (Boesman et al., 2017). Therefore, key events are crucial influencers on the frame building process. The
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frame building process encompasses the way in which journalists frame events and issues, not only according to news value but also keeping in mind cultural themes (Boesman et al., 2017). Key events in the environmental issue arena could be of many different natures; it could be a natural disaster, a governmental decision or a cultural event such as the release of a documentary. As long as the event increases salience/newsworthiness and influences the frame building process, it can be called a key event.
Based on theoretical background presented in the previous paragraphs the following research questions and hypothesis were formulated;
RQ1: To what extent are there inter-media agenda setting and frame alignment effects between newspaper/magazine reporting and environmental documentaries in the Ocean Plastic sub-issue arena?
H1: The release of A PLASTIC OCEAN increased the salience/frequency of newspaper/magazine reporting in the Ocean Plastic sub-issue arena.
H2: The release of A PLASTIC OCEAN increased the inter-media frame alignment between APLASTIC OCEAN and the newspaper/magazine reporting.
RQ2: To what extent are there inter-media agenda setting and frame alignment effects between newspaper/magazine reporting and environmental documentaries in the Animal Agriculture sub-issue arena?
H3: The release of COWSPIRACY increased the salience/frequency of newspaper/magazine reporting in the Animal Agriculture sub-issue arena.
H4: the release of COWSPIRACY increased the inter-media frame alignment between COWSPIRACY and the newspaper/magazine reporting.
After discussing the theoretical concepts surrounding the environmental issue arena, newspaper/magazine reporting and documentaries, the following section will present the methods used to answer the set research questions.
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Methods
In the present study, the communication of documentaries and newspapers/magazines in the environmental issue arena was researched, with a focus on the Animal Agriculture and Ocean Plastic sub-issue arenas. In each sub-issue arena the newspaper/magazine reporting and one documentary was coded; in the Animal Agriculture sub-issue area, the documentary COWSPIRACY was analyzed and in the Ocean Plastic sub-issue arena APLASTIC OCEAN was analyzed.
Release COWSPIRACY (qualitative content analysis)
June 2014 June 2015 June 2013
Newspaper reporting Animal Agriculture
(quantitative content analysis)
Release A PLASTIC OCEAN (qualitative content analysis)
September
2016 September 2017 September
2015
Newspaper reporting Ocean Plastic
(quantitative content analysis) Figure 1
Animal Agriculture Case Study: Content Analysis
Figure 2
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The first step was the inductive frame analysis of the COWSPIRACY and APLASTIC OCEAN documentaries. The second step was a quantitative content analysis of the
newspaper/magazine reporting within each sub-issue arena. Newspapers/Magazines were chosen for the quantitative content analysis due to the textual nature of their reporting which facilitates coding and access. Regardless of the current print media recession,
newspapers/magazines are still one of the main sources of public information (Antilla, 2005).
Sample
Each case study consisted of two samples; the environmental documentaries COWSPIRACY and APLASTIC OCEAN, and the newspaper/magazine reporting of the Animal Agriculture and Ocean Plastic sub-issue arenas.
Sample Documentaries
COWSPIRACY and APLASTIC OCEAN were chosen because both approach different
environmental sub-issues in a similar way. They first focus on the reason for the problem, then the consequences and finally the possible solutions. Both documentaries have been released within the past five years and are considered to be part of the third wave of activist documentaries. Besides the documentary itself, both include an additional social action plan. Moreover, COWSPIRACY and APLASTIC OCEAN were first independently distributed and mostly shown at film festivals. Later, both documentaries entered the global stage through Netflix. Both documentaries had a rather big audience and good ratings on IMDb;
COWSPIRACY received an average of 8.3 points out of 10 by 15’781 users and APLASTIC OCEAN had an average of 7.9 given by 991 users (IMDb, 2018).
Sample Newspaper/Magazine articles
For the quantitative content analysis consisted of newspaper articles from The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Economist. These three newspapers/magazines were chosen due to their profiles as opinion leaders and their long history of investigative journalism and science reporting.
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The New York Times was chosen as it is the most widely distrusted US seven-day newspaper (New York Times, 2018). The Guardian was chosen because it is the number one quality newspaper in the UK and therefore takes a similar opinion-leader position in the UK as the New York Times does in the USA (Statista, 2018). The Economist, unlike the other two daily newspapers is a magazine which gets published once a week. The in-depth
investigative articles, global emphasis and scope make the Economist a valuable addition to the present study.
The articles from The Guardian and The New York Times were accessed through the
LexisNexis database. The Economist was accessed through the Westlaw database. For both case studies a set of key words and a date restriction were used to search for the samples. For the Animal Agriculture sample the keywords used were; Animal AND Agriculture OR climate AND change OR global AND warming. During the timeframe from 1.June 2013 to 1.June 2015, one year before and after the release of COWSPIRACY, there were n=46 The Guardian articles, n=13 The New York articles and n=6 The Economists articles. For the Ocean Plastic sample, the key words; Ocean AND Plastic OR Waste OR Micro OR
Microplastic were used. The articles were collected from one year before until one year after the release OF APLASTIC OCEAN, which is from 1.September 2015 to 1.September 2017. There were n=59 The Guardian articles, n=10 The New York Times articles and n=12 The Economist Articles. After excluding duplicate and unrelated articles, the final
newspaper/magazine article sample contained N=98. The Animal Agriculture Sample N=49, The Guardian n=31, The New York Times n=13, The Economist n=5. The Ocean Plastic Sample was N=49, The Guardian n=36, The New York Times n=7, The Economist n=6.
Operationalization
The inductive frame analysis of COWSPIRACY and APLASTIC OCEAN followed the three main steps described by van Gorp and van der Goot (2012) as closely as possible in an effort to avoid discrepancies between the deductive and documentary frames. The first step was the analytical procedure, which involved building an inventory of the reasoning devices used in
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each documentary. The inventory contained quotes, paraphrases, descriptions, and visual and suggested definitions of the issues (van Gorp & van der Goot, 2012). The second step was the axial coding; which was used to identify patterns and potential framing devices in the inventory. The third step was to fill in the frame matrix with the problem definition, causal responsibility, solution/perspective for action, responsibility for solution, moral basis, emotional basis, key concept, visual device, verbal device and an example. The defined frames had to fulfill three criteria. Firstly, the frame description needed to be complete and congruent. Secondly, the frames needed to show a certain degree of abstraction and thirdly it needed to be possible to define other issues with the aid of this frame (van Gorp & van der Goot, 2012). The full frame matrix can be found in Appendix A.
After the inductive frame analysis of the documentaries, a longitudinal quantitative content analysis of the newspaper/magazine reporting in each sub-issue arenas was conducted. The quantitative content analysis measured the presence and strength of the environmental documentary frames as well as the deductive frames from van Gorp and van der Goot (2012). The questions of the codebook were based upon the reasoning devices of the frame matrix. For each frame, one question per reasoning device was formed. The reasoning devices of the frame matrix are; problem definition, causal responsibility, solution/perspective for action, responsibility for solution, moral basis and emotional basis. Each question was formulated in a way that it could be measured as a dichotomous variable. The finished codebook can be found in Appendix B.
Inter-coder Reliability
As all the articles were coded by only one coder, 14 articles were recoded. The inter-coder reliability was tested using Krippendorff’s alpha (KALPHA). The kalpha results were good to excellent for all the 84 variables in the codebook (see Appendix C). The minimum
requirement for kalpha was set at .6 and all results above .8 were considered to have excellent inter-coder reliability. The full inter-coder reliability table can be found in Appendix C.
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Scale reliability
To allow more than descriptive statistics, the 7 variables measuring each frame were
computed into a scale. To see if these scales were reliable, Cronbach alpha was used to test scale reliability. The Cronbach alpha results ranged from good to excellent for all the
computed scales apart from the Good Mother frame (see Table 1). The reason why
Cronbach alpha could not be calculated for the deductive Good Mother frame was, because it was not present in any of the coded articles. Due to the missing values, the Good Mother frame will be excluded from all further calculations.
The minimum requirement for Cronbach alpha was .7 and all results above .9 were considered to be excellent. It was also tested if the exclusion of certain variables would increase Cronbach alpha. But as Cronbach alpha already indicated sufficient reliability without the exclusion of any variables all variables were retained. This reliability testing demonstrated that all the items measuring one frame, measure the same concept.
Table 1
Reliability Statistics
Frame Cronbach Alpha N of items
Plastic kills beauty α= .894 49
Inescapable Plastic Virus α= .892 49
Silent Killer α= .844 49
Cover-up α= .919 49
Addicted to meat (dairy/animal products) α= .948 49
Sick Agriculture α= .905 49 Responsibility α= .889 98 Undermining of foundation α= .943 98 Frankenstein α= .93 98 Natural Goodness α= .958 98 Progress α= .91 98 Good Mother 99 98
After explaining the methodical approach, the results of the inductive frame analysis and quantitative content analysis will be presented.
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Results
Environmental documentaries: Inductive Frame Analysis
The following section will focus on the results from the qualitative inductive frame analysis of the two environmental documentaries, COWSPIRACY and APLASTIC OCEAN. As a result of the inductive frame analysis the three main frames of each documentary were deducted and put into the frame (see Appendix A).
Case Study: Animal Agriculture
In the documentary COWSPIRACY, the three main frames were the Cover-up, Addicted to meat and the Sick Agriculture frame. The frames focus on very different concepts. The Cover-up frame focuses on the cover-up of the negative effects of Animal Agriculture on the environment by environmental organizations and the meat/dairy industry: “The environmental community is failing us and they're failing ecosystems”. This includes all negative effects of Animal Agriculture, which are covered up to hide the extent of damage that Animal
Agriculture inflicts on the environment. One such negative effect is the deforestation caused by Animal Agriculture: “Palm oil plantations are causing tremendous deforestation in the Indonesian rainforest. It is estimated that palm oil is responsible for 26 million acres being cleared. Though, compared to livestock and their feed crops, they were responsible for 136 million acres of rainforest lost to date. But on their website, I was shocked to find, cattle was not included as one of their four main key issues”. Another negative effect identified by COWSPIRACY as having been covered up is the greenhouse gas emission produced by Animal Agriculture. Although the amount greenhouse gas emission produced by Animal Agriculture exceeds the amount of greenhouse gas emission produced by the entire
transportation industry, the main environmental organizations do not talk about it: “A couple of the UN reports say livestock accounts for more than all transportation put together”. The solution proposed by the documentary is to stand up, reveal the cover-up and inform people about the negative effects and to not be afraid to do so: “I couldn't be like these
environmental organizations and sit silently while the planet was being eaten alive right in front of our eyes. I had to stand up and continue on”.
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The Addicted to Meat (dairy/animal products) frame focuses on the fact that the current meat consumption is not sustainable, especially considering population growth rates and trend of newly industrialized countries, such as China and India. These newly industrialized countries adapting a more western eating culture which includes more meat and other animal
products: “The average American eats 209 pounds of meat per year.[…]. That equates to 11.7 acres per person times 314 million Americans which equals 3.7 billion acres of grazing land. Unfortunately, there are only 1.9 billion acres in the US's lower 48 states”. With the growing population, we cannot feed the world with our current diet. The solution proposed by the documentary focuses on a dietary change which reduces or even excludes meat and other Animal Agriculture products, which only harm the environment and peoples’ health.
The third COWSPIRACY frame is the Sick Agriculture frame, which argues that the present way of agriculture is damaging for the environment, the animals, the people and the planet in general. If we continue wasting the planets resources in the way we do currently through agriculture, we will ultimately kill the planet. The proposed solution is to change agricultural practices in an attempt to solve environmental and societal problems. For example, the land used for growing animal feed could be repurposed to grow plants for human consumption, which has a much higher energy return than animal products and could significantly reduce world hunger. Furthermore, it would reduce greenhouse gas emission which is a main driver of global warming: “The fact of it is that we could feed every human being on the planet today an adequate diet if we did no more than take the feed that we're feeding to animals and actually turn it into food for humans”.
Case Study: Ocean Plastic
The second case study focuses on a different environmental sub-issue: Ocean Plastic. Again, the three main frames were extracted using an inductive frame analysis.
The first frame found in the APLASTIC OCEAN documentary was the Plastic Kills Beauty Frame. The core of this frame is that humanity is hurting the ocean and the beautiful creatures living in and off the ocean: “Plastic bags or other pieces of plastic, obviously the
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consequence can be lethal for the animals.” A prime example of this frame is that many seabirds around the world are dying from ingestion of plastic waste, as they cannot tell the difference between the plastic and actual food. Since they cannot digest the plastic, they die of starvation with a stomach full of plastic: “Absolutely no doubt that this bird died as a result of that plastic.” The proposed solution is for humanity to stop treating the ocean like a garbage bin and stop throwing plastic in it: “fact, so much plastic is in the ocean now in a form that we really can't get to it that I feel the emphasis needs to immediately shift toward "stop putting it in".
The second frame of the Ocean Plastic case study is the Inescapable Plastic Virus frame. The focus lies on the fact that plastic is not degradable; all the plastic that has ever been produced is still on the planet and a lot of it has found its way into the ocean: “You go down, you know, 350, 375 meters, hit bottom, start moving around, and immediately start seeing trash. - Plastic?- Plastic. Where in the world can you go anymore and not find plastic?”. The plastic in the ocean eventually breaks up into tiny pieces (micro plastics), which can be found in the ocean far away from all civilization. Plastic is akin to an inescapable virus infecting the ocean and its inhabitants. The solution proposed by the documentary is for humanity to assume responsibility and reduce plastic at all levels of society (individual, governmental and global). In addition, it proposes to use technology to improve recycling processes.
The third frame in APLASTIC OCEAN is the Silent Killer frame, which focuses on the less obvious negative effects of ocean plastic. Due to the chemical structure of plastic, the surface attracts and carries toxins. The micro plastics with attached toxins get eaten by plankton or other sea creatures. The toxins eventually work their way into the fatty tissue of the animals. The cycle continues when smaller fish get eaten, then the toxins work their way up the food chain. This also affects fish used for human consumption: “So when the fish eat the plastics, those toxins then migrate from the plastic into the muscles or the fats, […] that's the part we like to eat, and that's where these chemicals migrate to”. Not only are the fish themselves subject to the negative effects of toxins and micro plastic themselves, but also
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the humans that consume tainted fish. One possible negative effect of micro plastic is the affect they have on changing hormonal properties in humans and fish. The proposed solution for this issue, is for governments to inform people about the negative effects of plastic and start banning plastics: “Plastic bags and water bottles are the worst single-use offenders. What if we ban them outright to stop that vicious cycle?” A more in depth explanation and categorization of the frames found in APLASTIC OCEAN and COWSPIRACY can be found in the frame matrix in Appendix A.
Discourse in General in Newspaper/Magazine reporting
The following section will focus on general observations regarding the newspaper/magazine reporting of Animal Agriculture and Ocean Plastic.
Frequencies: Newspaper/Magazine articles over time
The analysis of the Animal Agriculture sample found that the amount of articles published about Animal Agriculture was almost the same both before (n=24) and after (n=25) the release of COWSPIRACY. The same analysis was conducted for the Ocean Plastic sample. This analysis found that more Ocean Plastic articles were released before (n=29) the release of APLASTIC OCEAN than after (n=20).
Frequencies and means of frames
After having discussed the distribution of the units of analysis (newspaper/magazine articles) over time, the next section will focus on the distribution and strength of the frames across time. Table 2 shows the number of times a certain frame has been used and the average score it had on a scale from 0 to 7. The most frequent frame in the Ocean Plastic Sample was the Plastic Kills Beauty frame (n=41); the most common frame in the Animal Agriculture Sample was the Sick Agriculture (n=20) frame. The most frequently used deductive frame wasthe Responsibility frame (n=70), which also proved to be the most frequent frame across both documentaries. The mean can be seen as an indicator of the strength of a certain frame. The three strongest frames across both films were Plastic Kills Beauty (M = 4.69, SD = 2.54), Responsibility (M=3.60, SD=2.58) and Silent Killer (M=2.39, SD=2.26) (see Table 2).
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Frequencies and Means
Frequency Mean (SD) N Ocean Plastic Frames Plastic Kills Beauty 41 4.69 2.54 49
Silent Killer 28 2.39 2.26 49
Inescapable Plastic Virus 20 1.76 2.34 49 Animal Agriculture Frames Sick Agriculture 20 1.88 2.39 49
Addicted to meat 12 1.31 2.39 49
Cover-up 4 .45 1.42 49
Deductive Frames Responsibility 70 3.60 2.58 98
Undermining of foundations 29 1.53 2.48 98
Progress 16 .65 1.62 98
Frankenstein 15 .74 1.81 98
Natural Goodness 6 .32 1.31 98
Good Mother 0 .00 .00 98
Frames use across time
The following analysis explored the development of frame strength over time. To see if there was a significant difference between the frame strengths before and after the release of the documentaries, multiple independent t-tests were conducted. The results of the t-tests need to be interpreted with caution as the sample size requirements were not met.
Table 3 shows the strength of the Plastic Ocean and Deductive frames before and after the release of APLASTIC OCEAN. The results of the independent t-test show that only the
Progress frame significantly changed t=-2.23 p=.017. The Progress frame decreased from a low use (M=.66) before the APLASTIC OCEAN release to no usage after. All other independent t-tests of the Ocean Plastic sample proved to be insignificant, which means that none of the other frames significantly increased or decreased after the release of APLASTIC OCEAN.
The results of the independent t-test of the Animal Agriculture sample can be found in Table 4. The independent t-test yielded one significant result for the Animal Agriculture Sample. The Natural goodness frame mean was found to increase significantly after (t=2.13, p=.044)
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the release of COWSPIRACY. All the other variables did not show significantly different results before and after the release of COWSPIRACY (see Table 4).
Table 3
Ocean Plastic: Independent t-test
Mean before (SD) N Mean after (SD) N t p Plastic Kills Beauty 4.41 2.83 29 5.10 2.05 20 .93 .359 Inescapable Plastic Virus 1.34 2.19 29 2.35 2.47 20 1.5 .141
Silent Killer 2.31 2.38 29 2.50 2.14 20 .29 .776 Responsibility 3.28 2.62 29 3.10 2.83 20 -.22 .824 Undermining of foundations 1.28 2.20 29 1.55 2.31 20 .42 .676 Frankenstein .31 1.17 29 .25 1.12 20 -.18 .857 Natural Goodness .24 .99 29 .00 .00 20 -1.32 .200 Progress .66 1.40 29 .00 .00 20 -2.23 .017 Table 4
Animal Agriculture: Independent sample t-test
Mean before (SD) N Mean after (SD) N t p
Cover-up .21 1.02 24 .71 1.73 25 1.22 .231 Addicted to meat .96 1.97 24 1.71 2.77 25 1.08 .286 Sick Agriculture 1.46 2.19 24 2.21 2.57 25 1.09 .282 Responsibility 3.79 2.48 24 4.38 2.30 25 .84 .403 Undermining of foundations 2.04 3.00 24 1.38 2.46 25 -.84 .405 Frankenstein .96 1.94 24 1.50 2.48 25 .84 .405 Natural Goodness .00 .00 24 1.00 2.30 25 2.13 .044 Progress 1.04 2.01 24 .83 2.01 25 -.36 .722
Following the presentation of frame strengths before and after the release of APLASTIC OCEAN andCOWSPIRACY,the use of the individual frames over time will be visualized through Graphs 1,2, and 3. Graph 1 shows the use of the Deductive frames in the Animal Agriculture and Ocean Plastic articles. Graph 2 shows the Animal Agriculture frame use and Graph 3 shows the Ocean Plastic frames use. The release of the documentaries and other events,
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which were coded through the free field in the quantitative content analysis (see codebook in Appendix B) of the newspaper/magazine articles, were added to the timelines.
In Graph 1, the Ocean Cleanup refers to the point in time when the Ocean Cleanup
Foundation officially released the first development in their newest Ocean Cleanup Project. Each time the Ocean Cleanup Foundation was mentioned in an article, it was coded. The presence of the Ocean Cleanup Foundation showed a strong correlation with the Progress frame (r=.798, p=.00, N=49). The same free field coding was applied to articles referring to the micro plastic ban in the UK and USA. Additional calculations showed that there was a correlation between the Ocean Plastic articles mentioning the plastic ban and the time frame before the release of APLASTIC OCEAN (r=.3, p=.00, N=49).
21 Graph 2
Graph 3
After having discussed the how the different frames evolved over time, the following paragraph will focus on the relationships between the individual frames.
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Correlations between the Frames
The present section focuses on the correlation between the different frames. This could provide insight into possible frame clusters which appear together. All significant correlations are presented in Table 5. The strongest significant positive correlations were found between the Responsibility and Addicted to Meat frame r=.57, p=.000 and between the Cover-up and the Addicted to Meat frame, r=.57, p=.000.
Table 3
Significant Frame correlations
Pearson’s r p N Responsibility *Plastic Kills Beauty .30 .034 49
*Addicted to Meat .57 .000 49
*Undermining of foundations .44 .000 98
*Frankenstein .24 .017 98
*Natural goodness .20 .044 98
Cover-up *Addicted to Meat .57 .000 49
*Sick Agriculture .39 .005 49
Undermining of foundations *Sick Agriculture .32 .028 49
*Natural goodness .27 .007 98
After having reported all the results, the discussion will focus on the interpretation of the results of the present study.
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Discussion
Film science has postulated that (environmental) documentaries have the power to influence the media agenda by making issues more salient (first level agenda setting) and influencing the way the issue is talked about (second level agenda setting) (Aguayo, 2005). Up until now, inter-media agenda setting and frame alignment effects, between environmental documentaries and newspaper/magazine reporting, have not been researched. The present study sheds light on inter-media agenda setting and frame alignment effects to better understand the role of environmental documentaries within the environmental sub-issue arenas of Animal Agriculture and Ocean Plastic.
During the inductive frame analysis of the two documentaries it became apparent that both A PLASTIC OCEAN and COWSPIRACY followed a similar approach. Both documentaries focus on three aspects; the reason for the problem, the effects on the environment and human health and the proposal of possible solutions for the problems. Another similarity is that the cause of both issues is excessive human consumption of animal products or plastic. And their
solutions ask for a radical change in people’s consumption behavior. APLASTIC OCEAN tried to motivate people, industries and governments to use less plastic and to prevent plastic from getting into our oceans and bodies. COWSPIRACY, on the other hand, tries to convince people to change their dietary behavior by reducing or excluding meat and other animal agriculture products from their diet, for the benefit of both the environment and their health. The activist nature of these documentaries helps to give the viewers a sense of efficacy and not helplessness which can often be the case with fear appeals that do not include a solution recommendation (Witte & Allen, 2000). This missing of solution recommendation within the newspaper/magazine reporting could be due to the different modalities of
newspapers/magazines and film. The newspapers have less time and space to fully explain the reasons and implications of the issues and to give recommendations to solve the
problem (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). Whereas giving a possible solution is a focal point for the documentaries. Furthermore, documentaries can show a frame or solution through the audio-visual route, which has shown to be better for understanding abstract concepts (Lai, 2000).
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And giving a solution for environmental issues has shown to increase self- and collective efficacy (Chen, 2015; Witte & Allen, 2000). Therefore documentaries can be a powerful communication tool for organizations, NGOs or governments which want to activate people for behavioral or social change.
Each documentary used a specific set of culturally embedded frames to talk about their core issue. The three main frames in each film were deducted through an inductive frame
analysis. The quantitative content analysis showed that some documentary frames were also found in the newspaper/magazine reporting surrounding the issues.
From APLASTIC OCEAN, the three frames, Plastic Kills Beauty, Inescapable Plastic Virus and Silent Killer, were deducted, which proved to be incredibly relevant in the
newspaper/magazine reporting about Ocean Plastic. The Plastic Kills Beauty frame in particular was present in nearly all the articles and the frame strength in the
newspaper/magazine reporting was the highest of all the measured frames. The Inescapable Plastic Virus and Silent Killer frame were also well represented in the Ocean Plastic
newspaper/magazine reporting. Next to the APLASTIC OCEAN frames, the deductive
Responsibility frame was very strong in the Ocean Plastic issue arena. But the Responsibility frame correlated strongly with five other frames, which bears the question of whether the deductive Responsibility frame from van Gorp and van der Goot (2012) really is a frame of its own or if it might just be an aspect of the other frames. The frame matrix use to categorize the frames even includes two sections focusing on causal and solution responsibility.
The high frame alignment between APLASTIC OCEAN and newspaper/magazine reporting shows us that both news media and documentaries have a similar view on the issue. This is an indicator of agreement within the issue arena; it seems to be undisputed that plastic waste is killing animals, the ocean and has negative effects on the environment and human nature. This could be also due to the fact that APLASTIC OCEAN bases its arguments on similar academic findings as the newspaper/magazine reporting. During the content analyses there was also some alignment between the academic sources of the documentary and the news
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articles. Furthermore, the repeating of the same frames or fact across various media can create synergy effects and further strengthen behavioral changes (Voorveld et al., 2011). So the communication within the Ocean Plastic issue arena is characterized by a unifying goal and the media complementing each other’s communication to reach the goal of limiting the negative impacts of plastic waste. Which means that within the issue arena agreement is high and trying to introduce opposing frames, as an organization could be hard due to the general agreement within the sub-issue arena.
The presence and strength of all APLASTIC OCEAN frames was expected to increase after the release of APLASTIC OCEAN.The documentary was expected to be a relevant influence on the news media’s agenda building process (Nisbet, 2008).
However, there was no significant increase of the measured frames due to the release of the documentary. It could be that the frames did not increase after the release of APLASTIC OCEAN because the journalists did not see the documentaries or that the arguments of the A PLASTIC OCEAN frames were already established before the release of APLASTIC OCEAN. Another explanation could be that the newspaper/magazine reporting even influenced the agenda building process of the documentary and that there were two-way inter-media agenda-setting processes at play. Two-way inter-media agenda setting between visual and textual media has been proven before, for example between YouTube videos and
newspapers reporting (Sayre, Bode, Shah, Wilcox, & Shah, 2010). Events, such as the reporting of other media, investigative journalism or political decisions, could also have had an effect on the framing in the Ocean Plastic sub-issue (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2006).
During the quantitative content analysis of the newspaper/magazine reporting, events that received notable media attention were coded. The ban of micro plastics in the United Kingdom (August, 2016) and the United States of America (January, 2016) were the most frequently mentioned additional events. The presence of the ban in an article correlated significantly with the period before the release of A Plastic Ocean. This might be a possible explanation as to why the number of Ocean Plastic articles was higher before the release of
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APLASTIC OCEAN, as the political agenda is known to influence the agenda settig process of news media and vice-versa (Conway, Kenski, & Wang, 2015; Sayre et al., 2010; Thesen, 2014; Walgrave, Soroka, & Nuytemans, 2008; Wallsten, 2007). This influence of political decisions in the Ocean Plastic news reporting shows that politics also have a stake in the issue.
However, there was one deductive frame that changed significantly before and after the release of APLASTIC OCEAN. Before the release of the documentary, the Progress frame was used and science was still seen as a possible way of finding a solution. After the release of A PLASTIC OCEAN, science was no longer perceived as a solution. To find a possible
explanation for this significant change, the correlation between the Progress frame and articles with the mention of the Ocean Cleanup Foundation was tested. A strong correlation was found, which indicates that events, such as updates from the Ocean Cleanup
Foundation, can trigger a specific frame (Boesman et al., 2017). The Ocean Cleanup Foundations gives a possible solution for Ocean Plastic through the means of science and innovation. Due to this the correlation with the Progress can easily be explained, as the Progress frame is built around the idea that science can and is responsible for the issue solution. Nearly all the Ocean Cleanup articles were written before the release of APLASTIC OCEAN, which explains why the Progress frame was no longer given any attention after the release of the documentary.
Since the APLASTIC OCEAN documentary itself did not show any inter-media agenda setting effects on the newspaper/magazine reporting, it would be interesting to see if documentaries might have a stronger agenda setting effect on other actors and media in the Ocean Plastic sub-issue arena, for example social media. The inter-media agenda setting between
environmental documentaries and social media could be especially interesting, as social media has shown a similar mobilizing power (Gerbaudo, 2018; Sayre et al., 2010). In some instances social medias even affected the agenda-setting of traditional news media
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dynamics in the environmental issue arena. For example how certain frames emerge in the issue arena and what role environmental documentaries play in the emergence and
development of these frames.
Furthermore, it would be interesting to see if the Ocean Plastic frames are still as relevant for the current communication in the Ocean Plastic sub-issue arena. To see if the frame
alignment between the documentary and the newspaper/magazine reporting wore off and if other frames became more relevant? As both documentaries have been later released on Netflix, it would be interesting if this simultaneous global release would impact the agenda setting in a way that the normal release did not? Other aspects which need further analysis are the effects of frame alignment between the documentary and the newspaper/magazine on the audience. The frame alignment could create cross-media and synergy effects, which have shown to strengthen media effects (Voorveld et al., 2011). For the entire environmental issue arena, the impact of synergy effects on pro-environmental behavior could be of great relevance. If environmental documentaries and newspaper/magazine reporting created synergy effects and increased pro-environmental behavior, the combination of environmental documentaries and newspaper/magazine reporting could be even more integral for social change than expected (Aguayo, 2005). Also for political actors, synergy effects could be interesting. Media coverage can affect voting turn out and documentaries have shown to affect behavior, therefore synergy effects could have the power to influence political actions such as voting (Arendt & Matthes, 2016; DellaVigna & Kaplan, 2007).
The analysis of the newspaper/magazine reporting of the Animal Agriculture sub-issue arena yielded results similar to those of the analysis of the Ocean Plastic sub-issue arena. There was some frame alignment between COWSPIRACY and the Animal Agriculture
newspaper/magazine reporting but neither the strength of the documentary frames nor the number of articles increased significantly after the release of COWSPIRACY. The strongest frame alignment was measured for the Sick Agriculture frame but, compared to the Ocean Plastic frames, the frame alignment was considerably less strong. For example, the Cover-up
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frame was only found four times, which is extremely low. Also, the Addicted to Meat frame was found less than any of the APLASTIC OCEAN frames. There are multiple factors which could explain why the frame alignment is so much lower for the COWSPIRACY frames. The frames presented in COWSPIRACY are very controversial and the news media do not often report about controversial issues, even though they would be newsworthy (Mazur, 1981). This is due to the fact that reporting about controversies is extremely difficult, also because the press often gets criticized for inaccuracies when reporting about conspiracies (Mazur, 1981). It could also be that the newspaper/magazine reporting is part of the cover-up, as journalists are afraid of the repercussions from the meat and dairy lobbies, like the NGOs are in COWSPIRACY. A third reason could be that the journalists have not seen the documentary or just took it as a source of information or inspiration and did not adapt the frames proposed by the documentary. The way journalists use documentaries would be an interesting angle for future research, especially to see if journalists recognize documentaries as a valuable source of information.
Just as in the Plastic Ocean sub-issue arena, there was one deductive frame that changed significantly before and after the release of COWSPIRACY. The Natural Goodness frame was not present before the release of COWSPIRACY but after the release, it significantly increased to an average of one, which is low but still a significant increase. It could be that COWSPIRACY increased the journalists’ affinity for the lack of respect that humanity has towards nature. The low score of the Natural Goodness frame might be explained through the news value theory (Galtung & Holmboe Ruge, 1965). One of the news values is consonance, which means that media are more likely to cover an issue if it fits the medias expectation (Galtung & Holmboe Ruge, 1965). The Natural Goodness frame might encompass too many
dissonant aspects such as; the religious connotation, nature being inherently good and therefore also everything that comes from it. The Natural Goodness frame was not the only one with a low mean; all measured means were rather low. This indicates a high frame diversity in the newspaper/magazine reporting, which means that the newspaper/magazine articles take many different angles in their reporting. Compared to the documentaries the
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newspaper/magazine articles addressed the issues in a different manner. The articles strongly focused on the status quo, the current problems and consequences, but very little attention was given to the reasons or possible solutions to the issue, which further explains the low means.
Conclusion and Limitations
In general, environmental documentary frames align to varying extents with the
newspaper/magazine reporting within their sub-issue arenas but they did not show any inter-media agenda setting or building effects. The different levels of frame alignment of the documentaries could be an indication of the goal of the documentaries, rather than towards the inter-media effects. The results insinuate that APLASTIC OCEAN wanted to create behavioral change with already established and accepted frames and scientific facts. COWSPIRACY on the other hand tried to introduce new facts and frames into the Animal Agriculture news agenda. This did not seem to work as none of the COWSPIRACY frames did increase after the release of the documentary. But as the COWSPIRACY frames are very controversial it could be that the frames were taken up by other actors in the issue arena. Even though the inter-media agenda setting effects were shown to be insignificant, all documentary frames pointed towards an increase after the release of the documentary. Hence, the insignificance of the results could be due to a power problem of the sample. In a future study this problem could be solved by applying computer learning and therefore achieving a higher newspaper sample without time intensive manual coding (Lops, De
Gemmis, & Semeraro, 2011). A bigger sample would also allow for more advanced analyses, such as factor analysis, which could be used to detect frame patterns surrounding specific key events. Another possible explanation for the insignificance of the inter-media agenda setting effects might be their distribution. Both documentaries were independently distributed, which means that they did not enter cinemas at a set point in time but were mostly shown at film festivals. Therefore, the release date might not have been the point in time where most people were exposed to the documentaries. Therefore the effects of the documentaries might spread out over a longer time frame.
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As this study was the first of its kind, it can be seen as a starting point. Many questions about the effects of documentaries in the environmental issue arena still need to be answered. Documentaries might influence the environmental issue arena in ways other than inter-media agenda setting. For example, what effects do documentaries have on other actors in their sub-issue arena, such as political players, affected organizations, NGOs or social media discussions? And how can these actors use documentaries to their advantage? There are still many unanswered questions surrounding the role of documentaries in the journalists’ agenda building and framing processes, which need to be researched.
In conclusion, the present study has demonstrated that documentaries might not affect the agenda-setting of newspaper/magazine reporting but still are a great resource to show existing and new information. Even though, the introduction of new frames such as the Cover-up frame did not succeed in the newspaper/magazine reporting, does not mean that it did not have an impact on the communication within the issue arena. Further research is needed to understand the complex connection and relationships between documentaries and other actors within the environmental issue arena, also in relation to frame emergence. To further understand how documentaries can be used to activate people for pro-environmental behavior, which is desperately needed in the current day and age.
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