Journal articles on the topic 'Global environmental change – Press coverage – Ethiopia'

This study seeks to address the need for diversity in covering environmental issues given that they are multi-dimensional. Journalists have the responsibility of determining what contents are hyped in the media, by so doing they influence audiences’ reaction to issues. Thus the agenda setting theory of the media was used as the framework for this study as it helped explain why the press emphasizes certain environmental issues over others. Content analysis was employed to analyze four leading Nigerian newspapers to determine their priorities in covering environmental issues. It was found that despite the much pressing local problems like waste disposal/management, pollution, deforestation, open defecation, poor urban planning, nature conservation, loss of biodiversity, over logging etc, the Nigerian press devotes much attention to climate change/global warming coverage. This seems to be a misplaced priority as Nigeria is said to contribute less than one percent of carbon emission that causes global warming. This study argues that while it is necessary to report climate change, it should not be at the expense of more pressing local issues that the citizens have to contend with in their daily living. There is therefore need to devote ample spaces and time to these local issues otherwise the coverage of environmental issues in Nigeria will be akin to the concept of “Afghanistanism” where the local media approach issues from the international perspective while dealing with such issues myopically from the local angle.

Media plays a crucial role in the global fight against climate change, acting as a tool for awareness, advocacy and policy change. For Fiji, this role becomes even more essential with the country’s vulnerable island system facing the direct impact of current and future climate change threats. The primary aim of this study was to analyse climate change coverage in the Fiji press. The Fiji Times, Fiji’s national newspaper, was examined to identify trends in climate change coverage between January 2004 and December 2010. A quantitative analysis was initially carried out to see the volume of reports, followed by a qualitative look into the context and thematic values of the news reports. Empirical findings showed an increase in coverage over time, although there was a transiency in the high levels of coverage when looked at on a monthly basis. Published reports also show a trend of event-based reporting with more than 80 percent of articles being generated out of or following up on a climate change convention, meeting or report launch. An overall consensus on the scientific realities of climate change in the newspaper coverage, and relatively high coverage of impacts and threats of climate change highlighted the plight of the islands. Reporting of climate change issues needs to be prioritised if the press is to fulfill its role in providing timely information on climate change. Journalists training and collaboration with national stakeholders would assist in more effective climate change coverage instead of the great reliance on one-off events to spark recognition of the major environmental problem. Developments in the discourse since this research was conducted will be worth noting as climate change has continued to rise as one of the most salient global environmental issues of our time.

As economies in Southeast Asia develop, there is renewed interest in the impact such growth has on nature. This study seeks to investigate how environmental issues have been covered in the English-language press of the region. Are some countries providing greater print news coverage versus others? Are there detectable patterns or noticeable biases in the coverage? What sources are relied upon in the print media stories? And what frames do we see in the coverage? This study identified general coverage patterns of the environment over a 10-year period (2002-2012), in several of the region’s English-language newspapers. News stories were analyzed to discern the nature of the coverage, coding for several variables as indicated by previous literature. Results indicate that use of the term climate change became preferred over that of global warming. In addition, coverage increased greatly starting in 2006. Government officials were most often the sources quoted within stories (Claims). Articles contained more “judgments” about the issue than “solutions” (Frames). Finally, though most articles eschewed mentioning a specific actor as causing climate change, “man” was implicated in a number of stories more often than simply “nature” (Blame).

Ocean acidification (OA) is caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, which dissolves in seawater to produce carbonic acid. This carbonic acid reduces the availability of dissolved aragonite needed for production of some invertebrate exoskeletons with potentially severe consequences for marine calcifier populations. There is a lack of public information on OA with less than 1% of press coverage on OA compared with climate change; OA is not included in UK GCSE and A Level specifications and textbooks; environmental campaigners are much less active in campaigning about OA compared with climate change. As a result of the lack of public awareness OA is rarely discussed in the UK Parliament. Much more public education about OA is needed so that people can respond to the urgent need for technological and lifestyle changes needed to massively reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Rapid urbanization rates impact significantly on the nature of Land Cover patterns of the environment, which has been evident in the depletion of vegetal reserves and in general modifying the human climatic systems (Henderson, et al., 2017; Kumar, Masago, Mishra, & Fukushi, 2018; Luo and Lau, 2017). This study explores remote sensing classification technique and other auxiliary data to determine LULCC for a period of 50 years (1967-2016). The LULCC types identified were quantitatively evaluated using the change detection approach from results of maximum likelihood classification algorithm in GIS. Accuracy assessment results were evaluated and found to be between 56 to 98 percent of the LULC classification. The change detection analysis revealed change in the LULC types in Minna from 1976 to 2016. Built-up area increases from 74.82ha in 1976 to 116.58ha in 2016. Farmlands increased from 2.23 ha to 46.45ha and bared surface increases from 120.00ha to 161.31ha between 1976 to 2016 resulting to decline in vegetation, water body, and wetlands. The Decade of rapid urbanization was found to coincide with the period of increased Public Private Partnership Agreement (PPPA). Increase in farmlands was due to the adoption of urban agriculture which has influence on food security and the environmental sustainability. The observed increase in built up areas, farmlands and bare surfaces has substantially led to reduction in vegetation and water bodies. The oscillatory nature of water bodies LULCC which was not particularly consistent with the rates of urbanization also suggests that beyond the urbanization process, other factors may influence the LULCC of water bodies in urban settlements.
 Keywords: Minna, Niger State, Remote Sensing, Land Surface Characteristics
 
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Balance – as a journalistic norm in the domain of climate change reporting – is measured by analyzing both coverage of the debate over anthropogenic contributions to global warming (i.e., the existence of anthropogenic global warming) and coverage of decisions regarding action on global warming (i.e., actions regarding global warming) (Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004). Field of application/theoretical foundation: Balance is a commonly investigated and internationally agreed-upon journalistic norm that ensures that journalists portray different sides of a story in a neutral and objective way (Westerståhl, 1983). In science reporting, more specifically in reporting on climate change, this journalistic norm can lead to biased reporting in that sense that journalistic coverage does not mirror the scientific understanding (i.e., climate change does exist and action is needed) (Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004). References/combination with other methods of data collection: There are experimental studies that test the effects of differentially balanced news stories (e.g., Clarke et al., 2014; Dixon & Clarke, 2012), largely confirming that balanced coverage reduces confidence in a scientific consensus and heightens uncertainty of science, risks, etc. Example studies: Boykoff & Boykoff (2004); Boykoff (2007); Clarke (2008); Clarke et al. (2014); Dixon & Clarke (2012) Information on Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004 Authors: Maxwell T. Boykoff & Jules M. Boykoff Research question: The prevalence of the norm of balance in reporting on climate change and the degree to what this coverage’s adherence to balance led to biased coverage of both anthropogenic contributions to global warming (i.e., its existence) and resultant action. Object of analysis: A sample (636 articles) of the US prestige-press coverage of global warming, i.e., New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal Time frame of analysis: between 1988 and 2002 Info about variables Variables: Two measures of balance: (a) Coverage of the debate over anthropogenic contributions to global warming (i.e., existence) (b) Coverage of decisions regarding action on global warming (i.e., action) Level of analysis: Newspaper article Variables and values: (a) First measure: Coverage of the debate over anthropogenic contributions to global warming (i.e., existence) Article only presents argument that anthropogenic global warming exists, clearly distinct from natural variations Article presents both sides, but emphasizes that anthropogenic global warming exists, still distinct from natural variation Article presents a balanced account of debates surrounding existence of anthropogenic global warming Article presents both sides, but emphasizes dubious nature of the claim that anthropogenic global warming exists (b) Second measure: Coverage of decisions regarding action on global warming (i.e., action) Dominant coverage of decisions/assertions regarding immediate/mandatory action to deal with global warming Balanced accounts of various decisions regarding action Dominant coverage of decisions/assertions regarding cautious/voluntary approaches to deal with global warming Reliability: Intercoder reliability rate of 93% Codebook: Table 1 in Boykoff & Boykoff (2004, p. 128) References Boykoff, M. T., & Boykoff, J. M. (2004). Balance as bias: Global warming and the US prestige press. Global Environmental change 14, 125-136. doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2003.10.001 Boykoff, M. T. (2007). Flogging a dead norm? Newspaper coverage of anthropogenic climate change in the United States and United Kingdom from 2003 to 2006. Area 39(2), 470-481. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2007.00769.x Clarke, C. E. (2008). A question of balance. The autism-vaccine controversy in the British and American elite press. Science Communication 30(1), 77-107. doi: 10.1177/1075547008320262 Clarke, C. E., Dixon, G. N., Holton, A., Weberling McKeever, B. (2014). Including “evidentiary balance” in news media coverage of vaccine risk. Health Communication 30(5), 461-472. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2013.867006 Dixon, G. N., & Clarke, C. E. (2012). Heightening uncertainty around certain science: Media coverage, false balance, and the autism-vaccine controversy. Science Communication, 35(3) 358-382. doi: 10.1177/1075547012458290 Westerståhl, J. (1983). Objective News Reporting General Premises. Communication Research, 10(3), 403-424. doi: 10.1177/009365083010003007

Climate change is a global environmental issue and its outcome will affect societies around the world. In recent years, we have seen a growing literature on media coverage of climate change, but, to date, no study has assessed the situation in Cameroon, although it is considered to be one of the world’s most affected and vulnerable regions. This study attempted to address this deficit by analysing how climate change is represented in the Cameroonian media. A similarity analysis was performed on three newspapers published in 2013–2016. Results showed that climate coverage focused on politics and international involvement. It seems disconnected from local realities, potentially opening up a spatial and social psychological distance. The relationship between the representation of climate change and that of poverty is an area for further exploration.

As climate policy focusing events, wildfires are distinct from hurricanes, floods, and tornados because they also result in the release of massive smoke plumes that contribute to the concentration of atmospheric carbon. However, unlike melting glaciers, wildfires may be easier to dismiss as individual acts of human error, spontaneous acts of mother nature, and/or necessary ecological processes of agricultural renewal. This paper presents a mixed-methods analysis of 150 international and domestic English language newspaper articles related to wildfire events occurring in Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States during the year 2020. The analysis examines how news coverage of wildfire events might focus or diffuse attention to international climate policy and anthropogenic global warming. The quantitative findings provide evidence to suggest that 30% of wildfire coverage is attributed to climate change. However, qualitative analysis suggests that climate change is acknowledged as a blame frame that is often only inferentially attributed to anthropogenic origins. The mixed-methods analysis finds that only 6% of news coverage related wildfire events to emission contributions. The analysis of these exemplar articles suggests that the international travel of wildfire smoke may serve as a focusing event from which to emphasize wildfires as both a consequence of and contributor to, global warming. Findings indicate that environmental coalitions and scientific experts’ engagement with the press are integral to creating frames that link the increasing frequency, duration, and range of wildfire events to climate policy needs.

Issue attention – or media attention – refers to the number of pages or airtime minutes devoted to a given issue, in this chase, climate change. Research has shown that there are different actors and events that are substantial divers of issue attention to climate change, such as international events (e.g., the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)), scientific reports, extreme weather events, but also movies (e.g., An Inconvenient Truth) and concerts (e.g., Anderson, 2009; Brossard, Shanahan, & McComas, 2004; Djerf-Pierre, 2012; Liu, Lindquist, & Vedlitz, 2011; Schäfer, Ivanova, & Schmidt, 2014). Field of application/theoretical foundation: Drivers of issue attention are a fundamental part of climate change-related media coverage. Content analyses identify what triggers media coverage about climate change by examining important drivers (e.g., Brossard et al., 2004; Liu et al., 2011; Schäfer et al., 2014). The variable “drivers of issue attention” is often applied in agenda-setting studies and is used to determine factors, such as actors or events, that place certain topics, and in this case, climate change-related issues, prominently on the media and/or audience agenda (e.g., Anderson, 2009; Djerf-Pierre, 2012). References/combination with other methods of data collection: Using time series regression analysis, studies investigate the influence of various factors on media attention for climate change and global warming (e.g., Liu et al., 2011; Schäfer et al., 2014). Example studies: Anderson (2011); Brossard et al. (2004); Djerf-Pierre (2012); Liu et al. (2011); Schäfer et al. (2014) Information on Schäfer et al., 2014 Authors: Mike S. Schäfer, Ana Ivanova & Andreas Schmidt Research question: Which factors influence media attention for climate change between 1996 and 2010? Object of analysis: The study calculates the monthly amount of climate change-related coverage in two leading newspapers for Australia, Germany and India: Sydney Morning Herald (N = 9,543 articles), The Australian (N = 13,892 articles), Süddeutsche Zeitung (N = 6,889 articles), Frankfurter Allgemeine (N = 5,861 articles), The Hindu (N = 5,710 articles) and Times of India (N = 2,553 articles) Time frame of analysis: 1996 to 2010 Info about variable Variables: Drivers of issue attention Factual indicators or problem indicators: Factual and baseline information indicators such as greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the earth’s atmosphere or average temperatures including long-term developments as well as short-term extreme weather conditions Focusing events: High-profile international events that push concern above the noise threshold of other issues such as the United Nations Conferences of the Parties (COP) or G8 summits Social feedback: Communication of stakeholders and pressure groups on societal matters, such as citizen complaints, interest group pressures or opinion polls Level of analysis: Monthly mean issue attention: The number of articles mentioning climate change as a proportion of the absolute number of articles published in a given newspaper by month Variables and values: Factual indicators or problem indicators International extreme weather events: Heat waves, wildfires, droughts, storms, storm surges and floods with the indicators death toll, number of people affected, estimated damage (US$ million). Each indicator of all event types was standardized separately; afterwards a monthly index summarizing the three indicators for events of all types and in all countries was constructed. Source: EM-DAT, The International Disaster Database (emdat.be/) Domestic extreme weather events: Same variable as international extreme weather events, but restricted to domestic disasters. Domestic temperature: Mean value of the monthly average temperature at the two places of publication. Source: NCEP/NCAR reanalysis Focusing events International political events: UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties (share of conference days in a month), United Nations Conferences on Environment and Development (1 = event, 0 = no event), EU summits (1 = event, 0 = no event), Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate summits (1 = event, 0 = no event), G8 summits (1 = event, 0 = no event), Ministerial meetings of the Gleneagles dialogue (1 = event, 0 = no event) International scientific/political events: Publication of IPCC assessment reports (1 = event, 0 = no event) Cultural events: International and national premiere of selected movies (An Inconvenient Truth, The Day after Tomorrow, The Great Climate Swindle) on climate change and the Live Earth concert (1 = event, 0 = no event) Social feedback Domestic political activity: Composite index of number of parliamentary papers and parliamentary debates on climate change (India: only parliamentary debates; Germany: parliamentary debates only from November 2005 onwards) International ENGO activity: Mean value index of number of press releases issued by Greenpeace International and WWF International Domestic ENGO activity: Mean value index of number of press releases issued by national Greenpeace branch and a second ENGO (Australia: Australian Conservation Fund; Germany: BUND; India: Center for Science and Environment) International scientific publication activity: Mean value index of number of research articles on climate change in Science and Nature Domestic scientific publication activity: Number of research articles published by domestic scientists and refereed in ISI Web of Knowledge Domestic business activity: Mean value index of number of press releases issued by big, carbon-intensive national companies from the energy, automotive and resource sectors (Australia: AGL Energy, Origin Energy, True Energy, BHP Billiton; Germany: e.on Energie, RWE, EnBW, Vattenfall, BEE, VDA; India: Tata Power, Reliance Infrastructure, Hindalco, Indian Oil) Reliability: - Codebook: Table 2 in Schäfer et al. (2014) References Anderson, A. (2011). Sources, media, and modes of climate change communication: the role of celebrities. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2(4), 535–546. DOI: 10.1002/wcc.119. Brossard, D., Shanahan, J., & McComas, K. (2004). Are issue-cycles culturally constructed? A comparison of French and American coverage of global climate change. Mass Communication & Society 7(3), 359-377. DOI: 10.1207/ s15327825mcs0703_6. Djerf-Pierre, M. (2012). When attention drives attention: Issue dynamics in environmental news reporting over five decades. European Journal of Communication 27(3), 291-304. DOI: 10.1177/0267323112450820. Liu, X., Lindquist, E., & Vedlitz, A. (2011). Explaining media and congressional attention to global climate change, 1969-2005: An empirical test of agenda-setting theory. Political Research Quarterly, 64(2), 405–419. DOI: 10.1177/1065912909346744. Schäfer, M. S., Ivanova, A., & Schmidt, A. (2014). What drives media attention for climate change? Explaining issue attention in Australian, German and Indian print media from 1996 to 2010. The International Communication Gazette 76(2), 152-176. DOI: 10.1177/1748048513504169.

Abstract Introduction The Nile monitor (Varanus niloticus) is the largest lizard native to Sub-Saharan Africa along the Nile River. The species inhabits a wide variety of habitats including woodlands, grasslands, mangroves, and swamps. Although the practice is not common in the Lake Tana Biosphere Reserve, the species is being hunted in Sahelian Africa for its leather, food, and pet trade. Consequently, the species is listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Methodology Data collection was based on onsite GIS aided presence recording. Each record of the species was first vetted for data quality. A multicollinearity analysis was conducted before fitting the MaxEnt model to the 19 bioclimatic variables. Since it provides good coverage for Africa, the Hadley Global Environment Model 2-Atmosphere Ocean (HadGEM2-AO) model was used for extracting future climate scenarios. The implementation of change factor was to correct the modeled mean climate from the climate models. The jackknife test was selected to measure the contribution of each environmental predictor variable. Area under the curve of the receiver operating characteristic was used to evaluate the performance of MaxEnt model. Results On average 2750 individuals of Nile monitor were recorded within the Lake Tana Biosphere Reserve. Mean annual temperature, precipitation and temperature were the most important predictors that limit the potential distribution of Nile monitor in the area. Most of the suitable habitats of Nile monitor were mainly predicted in the northern parts of Lake Tana. The ecological niche model produced an average AUC of 0.85. Notable records of the species were found in the vicinity of the lake and the nearby wetlands. Future projection of potential suitable areas revealed that the currently available suitable area to Nile monitor will decline in both 2050 and 2070 under both RCP 6.5 and RCP 8.5, of which the decline in suitable area under the business as usual scenario is the greatest. Conclusion The potential distribution map for Nile monitor in the Lake Tana Biosphere Reserve can help in planning land use management around its existing habitat range, discover new populations or set priorities to restore its natural habitat for more effective conservation. Extensive reductions in the amount of suitable areas under future climate scenarios suggest that the species may become threatened in future if effective conservation measures are not implemented.

Photograph by Gonzalo Echeverria (2010)We need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination … so we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts … each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest (Hulme 347). Acclaimed climate scientist, the late Stephen Schneider, made this comment in 1988. Later he regretted it and said that there are ways of using metaphors that can “convey both urgency and uncertainty” (Hulme 347). What Schneider encapsulates here is the great conundrum for those attempting to communicate climate change to the everyday public. How do scientists capture the public’s imagination and convey the desperation they feel about climate change, but do it ethically? If scientific findings are presented carefully, in boring technical jargon that few can understand, then they are unlikely to attract audiences or provide an impetus for behavioural change. “What can move someone to act?” asks communication theorists Susan Moser and Lisa Dilling (37). “If a red light blinks on in a cockpit” asks Donella Meadows, “should the pilot ignore it until in speaks in an unexcited tone? … Is there any way to say [it] sweetly? Patiently? If one did, would anyone pay attention?” (Moser and Dilling 37). In 2010 Tim Flannery was appointed Panasonic Chair in Environmental Sustainability at Macquarie University. His main teaching role remains within the new science communication programme. One of the first things Flannery was emphatic about was acquainting students with Karl Popper and the origin of the scientific method. “There is no truth in science”, he proclaimed in his first lecture to students “only theories, hypotheses and falsifiabilities”. In other words, science’s epistemological limits are framed such that, as Michael Lemonick argues, “a statement that cannot be proven false is generally not considered to be scientific” (n.p., my emphasis). The impetus for the following paper emanates precisely from this issue of scientific uncertainty — more specifically from teaching a course with Tim Flannery called Communicating climate change to a highly motivated group of undergraduate science communication students. I attempt to illuminate how uncertainty is constructed differently by different groups and that the “public” does not necessarily interpret uncertainty in the same way the sciences do. This paper also analyses how doubt has been politicised and operates polemically in media coverage of climate change. As Andrew Gorman-Murray and Gordon Waitt highlight in an earlier issue of M/C Journal that focused on the climate-culture nexus, an understanding of the science alone is not adequate to deal with the cultural change necessary to address the challenges climate change brings (n.p). Far from being redundant in debates around climate change, the humanities have much to offer. Erosion of Trust in Science The objectives of Macquarie’s science communication program are far more ambitious than it can ever hope to achieve. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. The initiative is a response to declining student numbers in maths and science programmes around the country and is designed to address the perceived lack of communication skills in science graduates that the Australian Council of Deans of Science identified in their 2001 report. According to Macquarie Vice Chancellor Steven Schwartz’s blog, a broader, and much more ambitious aim of the program is to “restore public trust in science and scientists in the face of widespread cynicism” (n.p.). In recent times the erosion of public trust in science was exacerbated through the theft of e-mails from East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit and the so-called “climategate scandal” which ensued. With the illegal publication of the e-mails came claims against the Research Unit that climate experts had been manipulating scientific data to suit a pro-global warming agenda. Three inquiries later, all the scientists involved were cleared of any wrongdoing, however the damage had already been done. To the public, what this scandal revealed was a certain level of scientific hubris around the uncertainties of the science and an unwillingness to explain the nature of these uncertainties. The prevailing notion remained that the experts were keeping information from public scrutiny and not being totally honest with them, which at least in the short term, damaged the scientists’s credibility. Many argued that this signalled a shift in public opinion and media portrayal on the issue of climate change in late 2009. University of Sydney academic, Rod Tiffen, claimed in the Sydney Morning Herald that the climategate scandal was “one of the pivotal moments in changing the politics of climate change” (n.p). In Australia this had profound implications and meant that the bipartisan agreement on an emissions trading scheme (ETS) that had almost been reached, subsequently collapsed with (climate sceptic) Tony Abbott's defeat of (ETS advocate) Malcolm Turnbull to become opposition leader (Tiffen). Not long after the reputation of science received this almighty blow, albeit unfairly, the federal government released a report in February 2010, Inspiring Australia – A national strategy for engagement with the sciences as part of the country’s innovation agenda. The report outlines a commitment from the Australian government and universities around the country to address the challenges of not only communicating science to the broader community but, in the process, renewing public trust and engagement in science. The report states that: in order to achieve a scientifically engaged Australia, it will be necessary to develop a culture where the sciences are recognized as relevant to everyday life … Our science institutions will be expected to share their knowledge and to help realize full social, economic, health and environmental benefits of scientific research and in return win ongoing public support. (xiv-xv) After launching the report, Innovation Minister Kim Carr went so far as to conflate “hope” with “science” and in the process elevate a discourse of technological determinism: “it’s time for all true friends of science to step up and defend its values and achievements” adding that, "when you denigrate science, you destroy hope” (n.p.). Forever gone is our naïve post-war world when scientists were held in such high esteem that they could virtually use humans as guinea pigs to test out new wonder chemicals; such as organochlorines, of which DDT is the most widely known (Carson). Thanks to government-sponsored nuclear testing programs, if you were born in the 1950s, 1960s or early 1970s, your brain carries a permanent nuclear legacy (Flannery, Here On Earth 158). So surely, for the most part, questioning the authority and hubristic tendencies of science is a good thing. And I might add, it’s not just scientists who bear this critical burden, the same scepticism is directed towards journalists, politicians and academics alike – something that many cultural theorists have noted is characteristic of our contemporary postmodern world (Lyotard). So far from destroying hope, as the former Innovation Minister Kim Carr (now Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) suggests, surely we need to use the criticisms of science as a vehicle upon which to initiate hope and humility. Different Ways of Knowing: Bayesian Beliefs and Matters of Concern At best, [science] produces a robust consensus based on a process of inquiry that allows for continued scrutiny, re-examination, and revision. (Oreskes 370) In an attempt to capitalise on the Macquarie Science Faculty’s expertise in climate science, I convened a course in second semester 2010 called SCOM201 Science, Media, Community: Communicating Climate Change, with invaluable assistance from Penny Wilson, Elaine Kelly and Liz Morgan. Mike Hulme’s provocative text, Why we disagree about climate change: Understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity provided an invaluable framework for the course. Hulme’s book brings other types of knowledge, beyond the scientific, to bear on our attitudes towards climate change. Climate change, he claims, has moved from being just a physical, scientific, and measurable phenomenon to becoming a social and cultural phenomenon. In order to understand the contested nature of climate change we need to acknowledge the dynamic and varied meanings climate has played in different cultures throughout history as well as the role that our own subjective attitudes and judgements play. Climate change has become a battleground between different ways of knowing, alternative visions of the future, competing ideas about what’s ethical and what’s not. Hulme makes the point that one of the reasons that we disagree about climate change is because we disagree about the role of science in today’s society. He encourages readers to use climate change as a tool to rigorously question the basis of our beliefs, assumptions and prejudices. Since uncertainty was the course’s raison d’etre, I was fortunate to have an extraordinary cohort of students who readily engaged with a course that forced them to confront their own epistemological limits — both personally and in a disciplinary sense. (See their blog: https://scom201.wordpress.com/). Science is often associated with objective realities. It thus tends to distinguish itself from the post-structuralist vein of critique that dominates much of the contemporary humanities. At the core of post-structuralism is scepticism about everyday, commonly accepted “truths” or what some call “meta-narratives” as well as an acknowledgement of the role that subjectivity plays in the pursuit of knowledge (Lyotard). However if we can’t rely on objective truths or impartial facts then where does this leave us when it comes to generating policy or encouraging behavioural change around the issue of climate change? Controversial philosophy of science scholar Bruno Latour sits squarely in the post-structuralist camp. In his 2004 article, “Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern”, he laments the way the right wing has managed to gain ground in the climate change debate through arguing that uncertainty and lack of proof is reason enough to deny demands for action. Or to use his turn-of-phrase, “dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives” (Latour n.p). Through co-opting (the Left’s dearly held notion of) scepticism and even calling themselves “climate sceptics”, they exploited doubt as a rationale for why we should do nothing about climate change. Uncertainty is not only an important part of science, but also of the human condition. However, as sociologist Sheila Jasanoff explains in her Nature article, “Technologies of Humility”, uncertainty has become like a disease: Uncertainty has become a threat to collective action, the disease that knowledge must cure. It is the condition that poses cruel dilemmas for decision makers; that must be reduced at all costs; that is tamed with scenarios and assessments; and that feeds the frenzy for new knowledge, much of it scientific. (Jasanoff 33) If we move from talking about climate change as “a matter of fact” to “a matter of concern”, argues Bruno Latour, then we can start talking about useful ways to combat it, rather than talking about whether the science is “in” or not. Facts certainly matter, claims Latour, but they can’t give us the whole story, rather “they assemble with other ingredients to produce a matter of concern” (Potter and Oster 123). Emily Potter and Candice Oster suggest that climate change can’t be understood through either natural or cultural frames alone and, “unlike a matter of fact, matters of concern cannot be explained through a single point of view or discursive frame” (123). This makes a lot of what Hulme argues far more useful because it enables the debate to be taken to another level. Those of us with non-scientific expertise can centre debates around the kinds of societies we want, rather than being caught up in the scientific (un)certainties. If we translate Latour’s concept of climate change being “a matter of concern” into the discourse of environmental management then what we come up with, I think, is the “precautionary principle”. In the YouTube clip, “Stephen Schneider vs Skeptics”, Schneider argues that when in doubt about the potential environmental impacts of climate change, we should always apply the precautionary principle. This principle emerged from the UN conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and concerns the management of scientific risk. However its origins are evident much earlier in documents such as the “Use of Pesticides” from US President’s Science Advisory Committee in 1962. Unlike in criminal and other types of law where the burden of proof is on the prosecutor to show that the person charged is guilty of a particular offence, in environmental law the onus of proof is on the manufacturers to demonstrate the safety of their product. For instance, a pesticide should be restricted or disproved for use if there is “reasonable doubt” about its safety (Oreskes 374). Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in 1992 has its foundations in the precautionary principle: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation” (n.p). According to Environmental Law Online, the Rio declaration suggests that, “The precautionary principle applies where there is a ‘lack of full scientific certainty’ – that is, when science cannot say what consequences to expect, how grave they are, or how likely they are to occur” (n.p.). In order to make predictions about the likelihood of an event occurring, scientists employ a level of subjectivity, or need to “reveal their degree of belief that a prediction will turn out to be correct … [S]omething has to substitute for this lack of certainty” otherwise “the only alternative is to admit that absolutely nothing is known” (Hulme 85). These statements of “subjective probabilities or beliefs” are called Bayesian, after eighteenth century English mathematician Sir Thomas Bayes who developed the theory of evidential probability. These “probabilities” are estimates, or in other words, subjective, informed judgements that draw upon evidence and experience about the likelihood of event occurring. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses Bayesian beliefs to determine the risk or likelihood of an event occurring. The IPCC provides the largest international scientific assessment of climate change and often adopts a consensus model where viewpoint reached by the majority of scientists is used to establish knowledge amongst an interdisciplinary community of scientists and then communicate it to the public (Hulme 88). According to the IPCC, this consensus is reached amongst more than more than 450 lead authors, more than 800 contributing authors, and 2500 scientific reviewers. While it is an advisory body and is not policy-prescriptive, the IPCC adopts particular linguistic conventions to indicate the probability of a statement being correct. Stephen Schneider convinced the IPCC to use this approach to systemise uncertainty (Lemonick). So for instance, in the IPCC reports, the term “likely” denotes a chance of 66%-90% of the statement being correct, while “very likely” denotes more than a 90% chance. Note the change from the Third Assessment Report (2001), indicating that “most of the observed warming in over the last fifty years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions” to the Fourth Assessment (February 2007) which more strongly states: “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations” (Hulme 51, my italics). A fiery attack on Tim Flannery by Andrew Bolt on Steve Price’s talkback radio show in June 2010 illustrates just how misunderstood scientific uncertainty is in the broader community. When Price introduces Flannery as former Australian of the Year, Bolt intercedes, claiming Flannery is “Alarmist of the Year”, then goes on to chastise Flannery for making various forecasts which didn’t eventuate, such as that Perth and Brisbane might run out of water by 2009. “How much are you to blame for the swing in sentiment, the retreat from global warming policy and rise of scepticism?” demands Bolt. In the context of the events of late 2009 and early 2010, the fact that these events didn’t materialise made Flannery, and others, seem unreliable. And what Bolt had to say on talkback radio, I suspect, resonated with a good proportion of its audience. What Bolt was trying to do was discredit Flannery’s scientific credentials and in the process erode trust in the expert. Flannery’s response was to claim that, what he said was that these events might eventuate. In much the same way that the climate sceptics have managed to co-opt scepticism and use it as a rationale for inaction on climate change, Andrew Bolt here either misunderstands basic scientific method or quite consciously misleads and manipulates the public. As Naomi Oreskes argues, “proof does not play the role in science that most people think it does (or should), and therefore it cannot play the role in policy that skeptics demand it should” (Oreskes 370). Doubt and ‘Situated’ Hope Uncertainty and ambiguity then emerge here as resources because they force us to confront those things we really want–not safety in some distant, contested future but justice and self-understanding now. (Sheila Jasanoff, cited in Hulme, back cover) In his last published book before his death in mid-2010, Science as a contact sport, Stephen Schneider’s advice to aspiring science communicators is that they should engage with the media “not at all, or a lot”. Climate scientist Ann Henderson-Sellers adds that there are very few scientists “who have the natural ability, and learn or cultivate the talents, of effective communication with and through the media” (430). In order to attract the public’s attention, it was once commonplace for scientists to write editorials and exploit fear-provoking measures by including a “useful catastrophe or two” (Moser and Dilling 37). But are these tactics effective? Susanne Moser thinks not. She argues that “numerous studies show that … fear may change attitudes … but not necessarily increase active engagement or behaviour change” (Moser 70). Furthermore, risk psychologists argue that danger is always context specific (Hulme 196). If the risk or danger is “situated” and “tangible” (such as lead toxicity levels in children in Mt Isa from the Xstrata mine) then the public will engage with it. However if it is “un-situated” (distant, intangible and diffuse) like climate change, the audience is less likely to. In my SCOM201 class we examined the impact of two climate change-related campaigns. The first one was a short film used to promote the 2010 Copenhagen Climate Change Summit (“Scary”) and the second was the State Government of Victoria’s “You have the power: Save Energy” public awareness campaign (“You”). Using Moser’s article to guide them, students evaluated each campaign’s effectiveness. Their conclusions were that the “You have the power” campaign had far more impact because it a) had very clear objectives (to cut domestic power consumption) b) provided a very clear visualisation of carbon dioxide through the metaphor of black balloons wafting up into the atmosphere, c) gave viewers a sense of empowerment and hope through describing simple measures to cut power consumption and, d) used simple but effective metaphors to convey a world progressed beyond human control, such as household appliances robotically operating themselves in the absence of humans. Despite its high production values, in comparison, the Copenhagen Summit promotion was more than ineffective and bordered on propaganda. It actually turned viewers off with its whining, righteous appeal of, “please help the world”. Its message and objectives were ambiguous, it conveyed environmental catastrophe through hackneyed images, exploited children through a narrative based on fear and gave no real sense of hope or empowerment. In contrast the Victorian Government’s campaign focused on just one aspect of climate change that was made both tangible and situated. Doubt and uncertainty are productive tools in the pursuit of knowledge. Whether it is scientific or otherwise, uncertainty will always be the motivation that “feeds the frenzy for new knowledge” (Jasanoff 33). Articulating the importance of Hulme’s book, Sheila Jasanoff indicates we should make doubt our friend, “Without downplaying its seriousness, Hulme demotes climate change from ultimate threat to constant companion, whose murmurs unlock in us the instinct for justice and equality” (Hulme back cover). The “murmurs” that Jasanoff gestures to here, I think, can also be articulated as hope. And it is in this discussion of climate change that doubt and hope sit side-by-side as bedfellows, mutually entangled. Since the “failed” Copenhagen Summit, there has been a distinct shift in climate change discourse from “experts”. We have moved away from doom and gloom discourses and into the realm of what I shall call “situated” hope. “Situated” hope is not based on blind faith alone, but rather hope grounded in evidence, informed judgements and experience. For instance, in distinct contrast to his cautionary tale The Weather Makers: The History & Future Impact of Climate Change, Tim Flannery’s latest book, Here on Earth is a biography of our Earth; a planet that throughout its history has oscillated between Gaian and Medean impulses. However Flannery’s wonder about the natural world and our potential to mitigate the impacts of climate change is not founded on empty rhetoric but rather tempered by evidence; he presents a series of case studies where humanity has managed to come together for a global good. Whether it’s the 1987 Montreal ban on CFCs (chlorinated fluorocarbons) or the lesser-known 2001 Stockholm Convention on POP (Persistent Organic Pollutants), what Flannery envisions is an emerging global civilisation, a giant, intelligent super-organism glued together through social bonds. He says: If that is ever achieved, the greatest transformation in the history of our planet would have occurred, for Earth would then be able to act as if it were as Francis Bacon put it all those centuries ago, ‘one entire, perfect living creature’. (Here on Earth, 279) While science might give us “our most reliable understanding of the natural world” (Oreskes 370), “situated” hope is the only productive and ethical currency we have. ReferencesAustralian Council of Deans of Science. What Did You Do with Your Science Degree? A National Study of Employment Outcomes for Science Degree Holders 1990-2000. Melbourne: Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne, 2001. Australian Government Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Inspiring Australia – A National Strategy for Engagement with the Sciences. Executive summary. Canberra: DIISR, 2010. 24 May 2010 ‹http://www.innovation.gov.au/SCIENCE/INSPIRINGAUSTRALIA/Documents/InspiringAustraliaSummary.pdf›. “Andrew Bolt with Tim Flannery.” Steve Price. Hosted by Steve Price. Melbourne: Melbourne Talkback Radio, 2010. 9 June 2010 ‹http://www.mtr1377.com.au/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=6209›. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. London: Penguin, 1962 (2000). Carr, Kim. “Celebrating Nobel Laureate Professor Elizabeth Blackburn.” Canberra: DIISR, 2010. 19 Feb. 2010 ‹http://minister.innovation.gov.au/Carr/Pages/CELEBRATINGNOBELLAUREATEPROFESSORELIZABETHBLACKBURN.aspx›. Environmental Law Online. “The Precautionary Principle.” N.d. 19 Jan 2011 ‹http://www.envirolaw.org.au/articles/precautionary_principle›. Flannery, Tim. The Weather Makers: The History & Future Impact of Climate Change. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2005. ———. Here on Earth: An Argument for Hope. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2010. Gorman-Murray, Andrew, and Gordon Waitt. “Climate and Culture.” M/C Journal 12.4 (2009). 9 Mar 2011 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/184/0›. Harrison, Karey. “How ‘Inconvenient’ Is Al Gore’s Climate Change Message?” M/C Journal 12.4 (2009). 9 Mar 2011 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/175›. Henderson-Sellers, Ann. “Climate Whispers: Media Communication about Climate Change.” Climatic Change 40 (1998): 421–456. Hulme, Mike. Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding, Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A Picture of Climate Change: The Current State of Understanding. 2007. 11 Jan 2011 ‹http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/press-ar4/ipcc-flyer-low.pdf›. Jasanoff, Sheila. “Technologies of Humility.” Nature 450 (2007): 33. Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30.2 (2004). 19 Jan 2011 ‹http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html›. Lemonick, Michael D. “Climate Heretic: Judith Curry Turns on Her Colleagues.” Nature News 1 Nov. 2010. 9 Mar 2011 ‹http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101101/full/news.2010.577.html›. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984. Moser, Susanne, and Lisa Dilling. “Making Climate Hot: Communicating the Urgency and Challenge of Global Climate Change.” Environment 46.10 (2004): 32-46. Moser, Susie. “More Bad News: The Risk of Neglecting Emotional Responses to Climate Change Information.” In Susanne Moser and Lisa Dilling (eds.), Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 64-81. Oreskes, Naomi. “Science and Public Policy: What’s Proof Got to Do with It?” Environmental Science and Policy 7 (2004): 369-383. Potter, Emily, and Candice Oster. “Communicating Climate Change: Public Responsiveness and Matters of Concern.” Media International Australia 127 (2008): 116-126. President’s Science Advisory Committee. “Use of Pesticides”. Washington, D.C.: The White House, 1963. United Nations Declaration on Environment and Development. Rio de Janeiro, 1992. 19 Jan 2011 ‹http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=78&ArticleID=1163›. “Scary Global Warming Propaganda Video Shown at the Copenhagen Climate Meeting – 7 Dec. 2009.” YouTube. 21 Mar. 2011‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzSuP_TMFtk&feature=related›. Schneider, Stephen. Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth’s Climate. National Geographic Society, 2010. ———. “Stephen Schneider vs. the Sceptics”. YouTube. 21 Mar. 2011 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rj1QcdEqU0›. Schwartz, Steven. “Science in Search of a New Formula.” 2010. 20 May 2010 ‹http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/2010/03/11/science-in-search-of-a-new-formula/›. Tiffen, Rodney. "You Wouldn't Read about It: Climate Scientists Right." Sydney Morning Herald 26 July 2010. 19 Jan 2011 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/you-wouldnt-read-about-it-climate-scientists-right-20100727-10t5i.html›. “You Have the Power: Save Energy.” YouTube. 21 Mar. 2011 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCiS5k_uPbQ›.

When George Orwell encountered ideas of a technological utopia sixty-five years ago, he acted the grumpy middle-aged man Reading recently a batch of rather shallowly optimistic “progressive” books, I was struck by the automatic way in which people go on repeating certain phrases which were fashionable before 1914. Two great favourites are “the abolition of distance” and “the disappearance of frontiers”. I do not know how often I have met with the statements that “the aeroplane and the radio have abolished distance” and “all parts of the world are now interdependent” (1944). It is worth revisiting the old boy’s grumpiness, because the rhetoric he so niftily skewers continues in our own time. Facebook features “Peace on Facebook” and even claims that it can “decrease world conflict” through inter-cultural communication. Twitter has announced itself as “a triumph of humanity” (“A Cyber-House” 61). Queue George. In between Orwell and latter-day hoody cybertarians, a whole host of excitable public intellectuals announced the impending end of materiality through emergent media forms. Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Daniel Bell, Ithiel de Sola Pool, George Gilder, Alvin Toffler—the list of 1960s futurists goes on and on. And this wasn’t just a matter of punditry: the OECD decreed the coming of the “information society” in 1975 and the European Union (EU) followed suit in 1979, while IBM merrily declared an “information age” in 1977. Bell theorized this technological utopia as post-ideological, because class would cease to matter (Mattelart). Polluting industries seemingly no longer represented the dynamic core of industrial capitalism; instead, market dynamism radiated from a networked, intellectual core of creative and informational activities. The new information and knowledge-based economies would rescue First World hegemony from an “insurgent world” that lurked within as well as beyond itself (Schiller). Orwell’s others and the Cold-War futurists propagated one of the most destructive myths shaping both public debate and scholarly studies of the media, culture, and communication. They convinced generations of analysts, activists, and arrivistes that the promises and problems of the media could be understood via metaphors of the environment, and that the media were weightless and virtual. The famous medium they wished us to see as the message —a substance as vital to our wellbeing as air, water, and soil—turned out to be no such thing. Today’s cybertarians inherit their anti-Marxist, anti-materialist positions, as a casual glance at any new media journal, culture-industry magazine, or bourgeois press outlet discloses. The media are undoubtedly important instruments of social cohesion and fragmentation, political power and dissent, democracy and demagoguery, and other fraught extensions of human consciousness. But talk of media systems as equivalent to physical ecosystems—fashionable among marketers and media scholars alike—is predicated on the notion that they are environmentally benign technologies. This has never been true, from the beginnings of print to today’s cloud-covered computing. Our new book Greening the Media focuses on the environmental impact of the media—the myriad ways that media technology consumes, despoils, and wastes natural resources. We introduce ideas, stories, and facts that have been marginal or absent from popular, academic, and professional histories of media technology. Throughout, ecological issues have been at the core of our work and we immodestly think the same should apply to media communications, and cultural studies more generally. We recognize that those fields have contributed valuable research and teaching that address environmental questions. For instance, there is an abundant literature on representations of the environment in cinema, how to communicate environmental messages successfully, and press coverage of climate change. That’s not enough. You may already know that media technologies contain toxic substances. You may have signed an on-line petition protesting the hazardous and oppressive conditions under which workers assemble cell phones and computers. But you may be startled, as we were, by the scale and pervasiveness of these environmental risks. They are present in and around every site where electronic and electric devices are manufactured, used, and thrown away, poisoning humans, animals, vegetation, soil, air and water. We are using the term “media” as a portmanteau word to cover a multitude of cultural and communications machines and processes—print, film, radio, television, information and communications technologies (ICT), and consumer electronics (CE). This is not only for analytical convenience, but because there is increasing overlap between the sectors. CE connect to ICT and vice versa; televisions resemble computers; books are read on telephones; newspapers are written through clouds; and so on. Cultural forms and gadgets that were once separate are now linked. The currently fashionable notion of convergence doesn’t quite capture the vastness of this integration, which includes any object with a circuit board, scores of accessories that plug into it, and a global nexus of labor and environmental inputs and effects that produce and flow from it. In 2007, a combination of ICT/CE and media production accounted for between 2 and 3 percent of all greenhouse gases emitted around the world (“Gartner Estimates,”; International Telecommunication Union; Malmodin et al.). Between twenty and fifty million tonnes of electronic waste (e-waste) are generated annually, much of it via discarded cell phones and computers, which affluent populations throw out regularly in order to buy replacements. (Presumably this fits the narcissism of small differences that distinguishes them from their own past.) E-waste is historically produced in the Global North—Australasia, Western Europe, Japan, and the US—and dumped in the Global South—Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Southern and Southeast Asia, and China. It takes the form of a thousand different, often deadly, materials for each electrical and electronic gadget. This trend is changing as India and China generate their own media detritus (Robinson; Herat). Enclosed hard drives, backlit screens, cathode ray tubes, wiring, capacitors, and heavy metals pose few risks while these materials remain encased. But once discarded and dismantled, ICT/CE have the potential to expose workers and ecosystems to a morass of toxic components. Theoretically, “outmoded” parts could be reused or swapped for newer parts to refurbish devices. But items that are defined as waste undergo further destruction in order to collect remaining parts and valuable metals, such as gold, silver, copper, and rare-earth elements. This process causes serious health risks to bones, brains, stomachs, lungs, and other vital organs, in addition to birth defects and disrupted biological development in children. Medical catastrophes can result from lead, cadmium, mercury, other heavy metals, poisonous fumes emitted in search of precious metals, and such carcinogenic compounds as polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin, polyvinyl chloride, and flame retardants (Maxwell and Miller 13). The United States’ Environmental Protection Agency estimates that by 2007 US residents owned approximately three billion electronic devices, with an annual turnover rate of 400 million units, and well over half such purchases made by women. Overall CE ownership varied with age—adults under 45 typically boasted four gadgets; those over 65 made do with one. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) says US$145 billion was expended in the sector in 2006 in the US alone, up 13% on the previous year. The CEA refers joyously to a “consumer love affair with technology continuing at a healthy clip.” In the midst of a recession, 2009 saw $165 billion in sales, and households owned between fifteen and twenty-four gadgets on average. By 2010, US$233 billion was spent on electronic products, three-quarters of the population owned a computer, nearly half of all US adults owned an MP3 player, and 85% had a cell phone. By all measures, the amount of ICT/CE on the planet is staggering. As investigative science journalist, Elizabeth Grossman put it: “no industry pushes products into the global market on the scale that high-tech electronics does” (Maxwell and Miller 2). In 2007, “of the 2.25 million tons of TVs, cell phones and computer products ready for end-of-life management, 18% (414,000 tons) was collected for recycling and 82% (1.84 million tons) was disposed of, primarily in landfill” (Environmental Protection Agency 1). Twenty million computers fell obsolete across the US in 1998, and the rate was 130,000 a day by 2005. It has been estimated that the five hundred million personal computers discarded in the US between 1997 and 2007 contained 6.32 billion pounds of plastics, 1.58 billion pounds of lead, three million pounds of cadmium, 1.9 million pounds of chromium, and 632000 pounds of mercury (Environmental Protection Agency; Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition 6). The European Union is expected to generate upwards of twelve million tons annually by 2020 (Commission of the European Communities 17). While refrigerators and dangerous refrigerants account for the bulk of EU e-waste, about 44% of the most toxic e-waste measured in 2005 came from medium-to-small ICT/CE: computer monitors, TVs, printers, ink cartridges, telecommunications equipment, toys, tools, and anything with a circuit board (Commission of the European Communities 31-34). Understanding the enormity of the environmental problems caused by making, using, and disposing of media technologies should arrest our enthusiasm for them. But intellectual correctives to the “love affair” with technology, or technophilia, have come and gone without establishing much of a foothold against the breathtaking flood of gadgets and the propaganda that proclaims their awe-inspiring capabilities.[i] There is a peculiar enchantment with the seeming magic of wireless communication, touch-screen phones and tablets, flat-screen high-definition televisions, 3-D IMAX cinema, mobile computing, and so on—a totemic, quasi-sacred power that the historian of technology David Nye has named the technological sublime (Nye Technological Sublime 297).[ii] We demonstrate in our book why there is no place for the technological sublime in projects to green the media. But first we should explain why such symbolic power does not accrue to more mundane technologies; after all, for the time-strapped cook, a pressure cooker does truly magical things. Three important qualities endow ICT/CE with unique symbolic potency—virtuality, volume, and novelty. The technological sublime of media technology is reinforced by the “virtual nature of much of the industry’s content,” which “tends to obscure their responsibility for a vast proliferation of hardware, all with high levels of built-in obsolescence and decreasing levels of efficiency” (Boyce and Lewis 5). Planned obsolescence entered the lexicon as a new “ethics” for electrical engineering in the 1920s and ’30s, when marketers, eager to “habituate people to buying new products,” called for designs to become quickly obsolete “in efficiency, economy, style, or taste” (Grossman 7-8).[iii] This defines the short lifespan deliberately constructed for computer systems (drives, interfaces, operating systems, batteries, etc.) by making tiny improvements incompatible with existing hardware (Science and Technology Council of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 33-50; Boyce and Lewis). With planned obsolescence leading to “dizzying new heights” of product replacement (Rogers 202), there is an overstated sense of the novelty and preeminence of “new” media—a “cult of the present” is particularly dazzled by the spread of electronic gadgets through globalization (Mattelart and Constantinou 22). References to the symbolic power of media technology can be found in hymnals across the internet and the halls of academe: technologies change us, the media will solve social problems or create new ones, ICTs transform work, monopoly ownership no longer matters, journalism is dead, social networking enables social revolution, and the media deliver a cleaner, post-industrial, capitalism. Here is a typical example from the twilight zone of the technological sublime (actually, the OECD): A major feature of the knowledge-based economy is the impact that ICTs have had on industrial structure, with a rapid growth of services and a relative decline of manufacturing. Services are typically less energy intensive and less polluting, so among those countries with a high and increasing share of services, we often see a declining energy intensity of production … with the emergence of the Knowledge Economy ending the old linear relationship between output and energy use (i.e. partially de-coupling growth and energy use) (Houghton 1) This statement mixes half-truths and nonsense. In reality, old-time, toxic manufacturing has moved to the Global South, where it is ascendant; pollution levels are rising worldwide; and energy consumption is accelerating in residential and institutional sectors, due almost entirely to ICT/CE usage, despite advances in energy conservation technology (a neat instance of the age-old Jevons Paradox). In our book we show how these are all outcomes of growth in ICT/CE, the foundation of the so-called knowledge-based economy. ICT/CE are misleadingly presented as having little or no material ecological impact. In the realm of everyday life, the sublime experience of electronic machinery conceals the physical work and material resources that go into them, while the technological sublime makes the idea that more-is-better palatable, axiomatic; even sexy. In this sense, the technological sublime relates to what Marx called “the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour” once they are in the hands of the consumer, who lusts after them as if they were “independent beings” (77). There is a direct but unseen relationship between technology’s symbolic power and the scale of its environmental impact, which the economist Juliet Schor refers to as a “materiality paradox” —the greater the frenzy to buy goods for their transcendent or nonmaterial cultural meaning, the greater the use of material resources (40-41). We wrote Greening the Media knowing that a study of the media’s effect on the environment must work especially hard to break the enchantment that inflames popular and elite passions for media technologies. We understand that the mere mention of the political-economic arrangements that make shiny gadgets possible, or the environmental consequences of their appearance and disappearance, is bad medicine. It’s an unwelcome buzz kill—not a cool way to converse about cool stuff. But we didn’t write the book expecting to win many allies among high-tech enthusiasts and ICT/CE industry leaders. We do not dispute the importance of information and communication media in our lives and modern social systems. We are media people by profession and personal choice, and deeply immersed in the study and use of emerging media technologies. But we think it’s time for a balanced assessment with less hype and more practical understanding of the relationship of media technologies to the biosphere they inhabit. Media consumers, designers, producers, activists, researchers, and policy makers must find new and effective ways to move ICT/CE production and consumption toward ecologically sound practices. In the course of this project, we found in casual conversation, lecture halls, classroom discussions, and correspondence, consistent and increasing concern with the environmental impact of media technology, especially the deleterious effects of e-waste toxins on workers, air, water, and soil. We have learned that the grip of the technological sublime is not ironclad. Its instability provides a point of departure for investigating and criticizing the relationship between the media and the environment. The media are, and have been for a long time, intimate environmental participants. Media technologies are yesterday’s, today’s, and tomorrow’s news, but rarely in the way they should be. The prevailing myth is that the printing press, telegraph, phonograph, photograph, cinema, telephone, wireless radio, television, and internet changed the world without changing the Earth. In reality, each technology has emerged by despoiling ecosystems and exposing workers to harmful environments, a truth obscured by symbolic power and the power of moguls to set the terms by which such technologies are designed and deployed. Those who benefit from ideas of growth, progress, and convergence, who profit from high-tech innovation, monopoly, and state collusion—the military-industrial-entertainment-academic complex and multinational commandants of labor—have for too long ripped off the Earth and workers. As the current celebration of media technology inevitably winds down, perhaps it will become easier to comprehend that digital wonders come at the expense of employees and ecosystems. This will return us to Max Weber’s insistence that we understand technology in a mundane way as a “mode of processing material goods” (27). Further to understanding that ordinariness, we can turn to the pioneering conversation analyst Harvey Sacks, who noted three decades ago “the failures of technocratic dreams [:] that if only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed.” Such fantasies derived from the very banality of these introductions—that every time they took place, one more “technical apparatus” was simply “being made at home with the rest of our world’ (548). Media studies can join in this repetitive banality. Or it can withdraw the welcome mat for media technologies that despoil the Earth and wreck the lives of those who make them. In our view, it’s time to green the media by greening media studies. References “A Cyber-House Divided.” Economist 4 Sep. 2010: 61-62. “Gartner Estimates ICT Industry Accounts for 2 Percent of Global CO2 Emissions.” Gartner press release. 6 April 2007. ‹http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867›. Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia. Seattle: Basel Action Network, 25 Feb. 2002. Benjamin, Walter. “Central Park.” Trans. Lloyd Spencer with Mark Harrington. New German Critique 34 (1985): 32-58. Biagioli, Mario. “Postdisciplinary Liaisons: Science Studies and the Humanities.” Critical Inquiry 35.4 (2009): 816-33. Boyce, Tammy and Justin Lewis, eds. Climate Change and the Media. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Commission of the European Communities. “Impact Assessment.” Commission Staff Working Paper accompanying the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) (recast). COM (2008) 810 Final. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities, 3 Dec. 2008. Environmental Protection Agency. Management of Electronic Waste in the United States. Washington, DC: EPA, 2007 Environmental Protection Agency. Statistics on the Management of Used and End-of-Life Electronics. Washington, DC: EPA, 2008 Grossman, Elizabeth. Tackling High-Tech Trash: The E-Waste Explosion & What We Can Do about It. New York: Demos, 2008. ‹http://www.demos.org/pubs/e-waste_FINAL.pdf› Herat, Sunil. “Review: Sustainable Management of Electronic Waste (e-Waste).” Clean 35.4 (2007): 305-10. Houghton, J. “ICT and the Environment in Developing Countries: Opportunities and Developments.” Paper prepared for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2009. International Telecommunication Union. ICTs for Environment: Guidelines for Developing Countries, with a Focus on Climate Change. Geneva: ICT Applications and Cybersecurity Division Policies and Strategies Department ITU Telecommunication Development Sector, 2008. Malmodin, Jens, Åsa Moberg, Dag Lundén, Göran Finnveden, and Nina Lövehagen. “Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Operational Electricity Use in the ICT and Entertainment & Media Sectors.” Journal of Industrial Ecology 14.5 (2010): 770-90. Marx, Karl. Capital: Vol. 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, 3rd ed. Trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Ed. Frederick Engels. New York: International Publishers, 1987. Mattelart, Armand and Costas M. Constantinou. “Communications/Excommunications: An Interview with Armand Mattelart.” Trans. Amandine Bled, Jacques Guot, and Costas Constantinou. Review of International Studies 34.1 (2008): 21-42. Mattelart, Armand. “Cómo nació el mito de Internet.” Trans. Yanina Guthman. El mito internet. Ed. Victor Hugo de la Fuente. Santiago: Editorial aún creemos en los sueños, 2002. 25-32. Maxwell, Richard and Toby Miller. Greening the Media. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Nye, David E. American Technological Sublime. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. Nye, David E. Technology Matters: Questions to Live With. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 2007. Orwell, George. “As I Please.” Tribune. 12 May 1944. Richtel, Matt. “Consumers Hold on to Products Longer.” New York Times: B1, 26 Feb. 2011. Robinson, Brett H. “E-Waste: An Assessment of Global Production and Environmental Impacts.” Science of the Total Environment 408.2 (2009): 183-91. Rogers, Heather. Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage. New York: New Press, 2005. Sacks, Harvey. Lectures on Conversation. Vols. I and II. Ed. Gail Jefferson. Malden: Blackwell, 1995. Schiller, Herbert I. Information and the Crisis Economy. Norwood: Ablex Publishing, 1984. Schor, Juliet B. Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. New York: Penguin, 2010. Science and Technology Council of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Digital Dilemma: Strategic Issues in Archiving and Accessing Digital Motion Picture Materials. Los Angeles: Academy Imprints, 2007. Weber, Max. “Remarks on Technology and Culture.” Trans. Beatrix Zumsteg and Thomas M. Kemple. Ed. Thomas M. Kemple. Theory, Culture [i] The global recession that began in 2007 has been the main reason for some declines in Global North energy consumption, slower turnover in gadget upgrades, and longer periods of consumer maintenance of electronic goods (Richtel). [ii] The emergence of the technological sublime has been attributed to the Western triumphs in the post-Second World War period, when technological power supposedly supplanted the power of nature to inspire fear and astonishment (Nye Technology Matters 28). Historian Mario Biagioli explains how the sublime permeates everyday life through technoscience: "If around 1950 the popular imaginary placed science close to the military and away from the home, today’s technoscience frames our everyday life at all levels, down to our notion of the self" (818). [iii] This compulsory repetition is seemingly undertaken each time as a novelty, governed by what German cultural critic Walter Benjamin called, in his awkward but occasionally illuminating prose, "the ever-always-the-same" of "mass-production" cloaked in "a hitherto unheard-of significance" (48).

Introduction Since December 2010 the dramatic spectacle of the spread of mass uprisings, civil unrest, and protest across North Africa and the Middle East have been chronicled daily on mainstream media and new media. Broadly speaking, the Arab Spring—as it came to be known—is challenging repressive, corrupt governments and calling for democracy and human rights. The convulsive events linked with these debates have been striking not only because of the rapid spread of historically momentous mass protests but also because of the ways in which the media “have become inextricably infused inside them” enabling the global media ecology to perform “an integral part in building and mobilizing support, co-ordinating and defining the protests within different Arab societies as well as trans-nationalizing them” (Cottle 295). Images of mass protests have been juxtaposed against those of individuals prepared to self-destruct for political ends. Video clips and photographs of the individual suffering of Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation and the Bahraini Abdulhad al-Khawaja’s emaciated body foreground, in very graphic ways, political struggles that larger events would mask or render invisible. Highlighting broad commonalties does not assume uniformity in patterns of protest and media coverage across the region. There has been considerable variation in the global media coverage and nature of the protests in North Africa and the Middle East (Cottle). In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen uprisings overthrew regimes and leaders. In Syria it has led the country to the brink of civil war. In Bahrain, the regime and its militia violently suppressed peaceful protests. As a wave of protests spread across the Middle East and one government after another toppled in front of 24/7 global media coverage, Bahrain became the “Arab revolution that was abandoned by the Arabs, forsaken by the West … forgotten by the world,” and largely ignored by the global media (Al-Jazeera English). Per capita the protests have been among the largest of the Arab Spring (Human Rights First) and the crackdown as brutal as elsewhere. International organizations have condemned the use of military courts to trial protestors, the detaining of medical staff who had treated the injured, and the use of torture, including the torture of children (Fisher). Bahraini and international human rights organizations have been systematically chronicling these violations of human rights, and posting on Websites distressing images of tortured bodies often with warnings about the graphic depictions viewers are about to see. It was in this context of brutal suppression, global media silence, and the reluctance of the international community to intervene, that the Bahraini-Danish human rights activist Abdulhad al-Khawaja launched his “death or freedom” hunger strike. Even this radical action initially failed to interest international editors who were more focused on Egypt, Libya, and Syria, but media attention rose in response to the Bahrain Formula 1 race in April 2012. Pro-democracy activists pledged “days of rage” to coincide with the race in order to highlight continuing human rights abuses in the kingdom (Turner). As Al Khawaja’s health deteriorated the Bahraini government resisted calls for his release (Article 19) from the Danish government who requested that Al Khawaja be extradited there on “humanitarian grounds” for hospital treatment (Fisk). This article does not explore the geo-politics of the Bahraini struggle or the possible reasons why the international community—in contrast to Syria and Egypt—has been largely silent and reluctant to debate the issues. Important as they are, those remain questions for Middle Eastern specialists to address. In this article I am concerned with the overlapping and interpenetration of two ecologies. The first ecology is the ethical framing of a prison hunger strike as a corporeal-environmental act of (self) destruction intended to achieve political ends. The second ecology is the operation of global media where international inaction inadvertently foregrounds the political struggles that larger events and discourses surrounding Egypt, Libya, and Syria overshadow. What connects these two ecologies is the body of the hunger striker, turned into a spectacle and mediated via a politics of affect that invites a global public to empathise and so enter into his suffering. The connection between the two lies in the emaciated body of the hunger striker. An Ecological Humanities Approach This exploration of two ecologies draws on the ecological humanities and its central premise of connectivity. The ecological humanities critique the traditional binaries in Western thinking between nature and culture; the political and social; them and us; the collective and the individual; mind, body and emotion (Rose & Robin, Rieber). Such binaries create artificial hierarchies, divisions, and conflicts that ultimately impede the ability to respond to crises. Crises are major changes that are “out of control” driven—primarily but not exclusively—by social, political, and cultural forces that unleash “runaway systems with their own dynamics” (Rose & Robin 1). The ecological humanities response to crises is premised on the recognition of the all-inclusive connectivity of organisms, systems, and environments and an ethical commitment to action from within this entanglement. A founding premise of connectivity, first articulated by anthropologist and philosopher Gregory Bateson, is that the “unit of survival is not the individual or the species, but the organism-and-its-environment” (Rose & Robin 2). This highlights a dialectic in which an organism is shaped by and shapes the context in which it finds itself. Or, as Harries-Jones puts it, relations are recursive as “events continually enter into, become entangled with, and then re-enter the universe they describe” (3). This ensures constantly evolving ecosystems but it also means any organism that “deteriorates its environment commits suicide” (Rose & Robin 2) with implications for the others in the eco-system. Bateson’s central premise is that organisms are simultaneously independent, as separate beings, but also interdependent. Interactions are not seen purely as exchanges but as dynamic, dialectical, dialogical, and mutually constitutive. Thus, it is presumed that the destruction or protection of others has consequences for oneself. Another dimension of interactions is multi-modality, which implies that human communication cannot be reduced to a single mode such as words, actions, or images but needs to be understood in the complexity of inter-relations between these (see Rieber 16). Nor can dissemination be reduced to a single technological platform whether this is print, television, Internet, or other media (see Cottle). The final point is that interactions are “biologically grounded but not determined” in that the “cognitive, emotional and volitional processes” underpinning face-to-face or mediated communication are “essentially indivisible” and any attempt to separate them by privileging emotion at the expense of thought, or vice versa, is likely to be unhealthy (Rieber 17). This is most graphically demonstrated in a politically-motivated hunger strike where emotion and volition over-rides the survivalist instinct. The Ecology of a Prison Hunger Strike The radical nature of a hunger strike inevitably gives rise to medico-ethical debates. Hunger strikes entail the voluntary refusal of sustenance by an individual and, when prolonged, such deprivation sets off a chain reaction as the less important components in the internal body systems shut down to protect the brain until even that can no longer be protected (see Basoglu et al). This extreme form of protest—essentially an act of self-destruction—raises ethical issues over whether or not doctors or the state should intervene to save a life for humanitarian or political reasons. In 1975 and 1991, the World Medical Association (WMA) sought to negotiate this by distinguishing between, on the one hand, the mentally/psychological impaired individual who chooses a “voluntary fast” and, on the other hand, the hunger striker who chooses a form of protest action to secure an explicit political goal fully aware of fatal consequences of prolonged action (see Annas, Reyes). This binary enables the WMA to label the action of the mentally impaired suicide while claiming that to do so for political protesters would be a “misconception” because the “striker … does not want to die” but to “live better” by obtaining certain political goals for himself, his group or his country. “If necessary he is willing to sacrifice his life for his case, but the aim is certainly not suicide” (Reyes 11). In practice, the boundaries between suicide and political protest are likely to be much more blurred than this but the medico-ethical binary is important because it informs discourses about what form of intervention is ethically appropriate. In the case of the “suicidal” the WMA legitimises force-feeding by a doctor as a life-saving act. In the case of the political protestor, it is de-legitimised in discourses of an infringement of freedom of expression and an act of torture because of the pain involved (see Annas, Reyes). Philosopher Michel Foucault argued that prison is a key site where the embodied subject is explicitly governed and where the exercising of state power in the act of incarceration means the body of the imprisoned no longer solely belongs to the individual. It is also where the “body’s range of significations” is curtailed, “shaped and invested by the very forces that detain and imprison it” (Pugliese 2). Thus, prison creates the circumstances in which the incarcerated is denied the “usual forms of protest and judicial safeguards” available outside its confines. The consequence is that when presented with conditions that violate core beliefs he/she may view acts of self-destruction—such as hunger strikes or lip sewing—as one of the few “means of protesting against, or demanding attention” or achieving political ends still available to them (Reyes 11; Pugliese). The hunger strike implicates the state, which, in the act of imprisoning, has assumed a measure of power and responsibility for the body of the individual. If a protest action is labelled suicidal by medical professionals—for instance at Guantanamo—then the force-feeding of prisoners can be legitimised within the WMA guidelines (Annas). There is considerable political temptation to do so particularly when the hunger striker has become an icon of resistance to the state, the knowledge of his/her action has transcended prison confines, and the alienating conditions that prompted the action are being widely debated in the media. This poses a two-fold danger for the state. On the one hand, there is the possibility that the slow emaciation and death while imprisoned, if covered by the media, may become a spectacle able to mobilise further resistance that can destabilise the polity. On the other hand, there is the fear that in the act of dying, and the spectacle surrounding death, the hunger striker would have secured the public attention to the very cause they are championing. Central to this is whether or not the act of self-destruction is mediated. It is far from inevitable that the media will cover a hunger strike or do so in ways that enable the hunger striker’s appeal to the emotions of others. However, when it does, the international scrutiny and condemnation that follows may undermine the credibility of the state—as happened with the death of the IRA member Bobby Sands in Northern Ireland (Russell). The Media Ecology and the Bahrain Arab Spring The IRA’s use of an “ancient tactic ... to make a blunt appeal to sympathy and emotion” in the form of the Sands hunger strike was seen as “spectacularly successful in gaining worldwide publicity” (Willis 1). Media ecology has evolved dramatically since then. Over the past 20 years communication flows between the local and the global, traditional media formations (broadcast and print), and new communication media (Internet and mobile phones) have escalated. The interactions of the traditional media have historically shaped and been shaped by more “top-down” “politics of representation” in which the primary relationship is between journalists and competing public relations professionals servicing rival politicians, business or NGOs desire for media attention and framing issues in a way that is favourable or sympathetic to their cause. However, rapidly evolving new media platforms offer bottom up, user-generated content, a politics of connectivity, and mobilization of ordinary people (Cottle 31). However, this distinction has increasingly been seen as offering too rigid a binary to capture the complexity of the interactions between traditional and new media as well as the events they capture. The evolution of both meant their content increasingly overlaps and interpenetrates (see Bennett). New media technologies “add new communicative ingredients into the media ecology mix” (Cottle 31) as well as new forms of political protests and new ways of mobilizing dispersed networks of activists (Juris). Despite their pervasiveness, new media technologies are “unlikely to displace the necessity for coverage in mainstream media”; a feature noted by activist groups who have evolved their own “carnivalesque” tactics (Cottle 32) capable of creating the spectacle that meets television demands for action-driven visuals (Juris). New media provide these groups with the tools to publicise their actions pre- and post-event thereby increasing the possibility that mainstream media might cover their protests. However there is no guarantee that traditional and new media content will overlap and interpenetrate as initial coverage of the Bahrain Arab Spring highlights. Peaceful protests began in February 2011 but were violently quelled often by Saudi, Qatari and UAE militia on behalf of the Bahraini government. Mass arrests were made including that of children and medical personnel who had treated those wounded during the suppression of the protests. What followed were a long series of detentions without trial, military court rulings on civilians, and frequent use of torture in prisons (Human Rights Watch 2012). By the end of 2011, the country had the highest number of political prisoners per capita of any country in the world (Amiri) but received little coverage in the US. The Libyan uprising was afforded the most broadcast time (700 minutes) followed by Egypt (500 minutes), Syria (143), and Bahrain (34) (Lobe). Year-end round-ups of the Arab Spring on the American Broadcasting Corporation ignored Bahrain altogether or mentioned it once in a 21-page feature (Cavell). This was not due to a lack of information because a steady stream has flowed from mobile phones, Internet sites and Twitter as NGOs—Bahraini and international—chronicled in images and first-hand accounts the abuses. However, little of this coverage was picked up by the US-dominated global media. It was in this context that the Bahraini-Danish human rights activist Abdulhad Al Khawaja launched his “freedom or death” hunger strike in protest against the violent suppression of peaceful demonstrations, the treatment of prisoners, and the conduct of the trials. Even this radical action failed to persuade international editors to cover the Bahrain Arab Spring or Al Khawaja’s deteriorating health despite being “one of the most important stories to emerge over the Arab Spring” (Nallu). This began to change in April 2012 as a number of things converged. Formula 1 pressed ahead with the Bahrain Grand Prix, and pro-democracy activists pledged “days of rage” over human rights abuses. As these were violently suppressed, editors on global news desks increasingly questioned the government and Formula 1 “spin” that all was well in the kingdom (see BBC; Turner). Claims by the drivers—many of who were sponsored by the Bahraini government—that this was a sports event, not a political one, were met with derision and journalists more familiar with interviewing superstars were diverted into covering protests because their political counterparts had been denied entry to the country (Fisk). This combination of media events and responses created the attention, interest, and space in which Al Khawaja’s deteriorating condition could become a media spectacle. The Mediated Spectacle of Al Khawaja’s Hunger Strike Journalists who had previously struggled to interest editors in Bahrain and Al Khawaja’s plight found that in the weeks leading up to the Grand Prix and since “his condition rapidly deteriorated”’ and there were “daily updates with stories from CNN to the Hindustan Times” (Nulla). Much of this mainstream news was derived from interviews and tweets from Al Khawaja’s family after each visit or phone call. What emerged was an unprecedented composite—a diary of witnesses to a hunger strike interspersed with the family’s struggles with the authorities to get access to him and their almost tangible fear that the Bahraini government would not relent and he would die. As these fears intensified 48 human rights NGOs called for his release from prison (Article 19) and the Danish government formally requested his extradition for hospital treatment on “humanitarian grounds”. Both were rejected. As if to provide evidence of Al Khawaja’s tenuous hold on life, his family released an image of his emaciated body onto Twitter. This graphic depiction of the corporeal-environmental act of (self) destruction was re-tweeted and posted on countless NGO and news Websites (see Al-Jazeera). It was also juxtaposed against images of multi-million dollar cars circling a race-track, funded by similarly large advertising deals and watched by millions of people around the world on satellite channels. Spectator sport had become a grotesque parody of one man’s struggle to speak of what was going on in Bahrain. In an attempt to silence the criticism the Bahraini government imposed a de facto news blackout denying all access to Al Khawaja in hospital where he had been sent after collapsing. The family’s tweets while he was held incommunicado speak of their raw pain, their desperation to find out if he was still alive, and their grief. They also provided a new source of information, and the refrain “where is alkhawaja,” reverberated on Twitter and in global news outlets (see for instance Der Spiegel, Al-Jazeera). In the days immediately after the race the Danish prime minister called for the release of Al Khawaja, saying he is in a “very critical condition” (Guardian), as did the UN’s Ban-Ki Moon (UN News and Media). The silencing of Al Khawaja had become a discourse of callousness and as global media pressure built Bahraini ministers felt compelled to challenge this on non-Arabic media, claiming Al Khawaja was “eating” and “well”. The Bahraini Prime Minister gave one of his first interviews to the Western media in years in which he denied “AlKhawaja’s health is ‘as bad’ as you say. According to the doctors attending to him on a daily basis, he takes liquids” (Der Spiegel Online). Then, after six days of silence, the family was allowed to visit. They tweeted that while incommunicado he had been restrained and force-fed against his will (Almousawi), a statement almost immediately denied by the military hospital (Lebanon Now). The discourses of silence and callousness were replaced with discourses of “torture” through force-feeding. A month later Al Khawaja’s wife announced he was ending his hunger strike because he was being force-fed by two doctors at the prison, family and friends had urged him to eat again, and he felt the strike had achieved its goal of drawing the world’s attention to Bahrain government’s response to pro-democracy protests (Ahlul Bayt News Agency). Conclusion This article has sought to explore two ecologies. The first is of medico-ethical discourses which construct a prison hunger strike as a corporeal-environmental act of (self) destruction to achieve particular political ends. The second is of shifting engagement within media ecology and the struggle to facilitate interpenetration of content and discourses between mainstream news formations and new media flows of information. I have argued that what connects the two is the body of the hunger striker turned into a spectacle, mediated via a politics of affect which invites empathy and anger to mobilise behind the cause of the hunger striker. The body of the hunger striker is thereby (re)produced as a feature of the twin ecologies of the media environment and the self-environment relationship. References Ahlul Bayt News Agency. “Bahrain: Abdulhadi Alkhawaja’s Statement about Ending his Hunger Strike.” (29 May 2012). 1 June 2012 ‹http://abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&id=318439›. Al-Akhbar. “Family Concerned Al-Khawaja May Be Being Force Fed.” Al-Akhbar English. (27 April 2012). 1 June 2012 ‹http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/family-concerned-al-khawaja-may-be-being-force-fed›. 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I called your producer on the way here in the car because I was very excited. I found out … I did one of those genetic testing things and I found out that I'm 63 percent Irish … I had no idea. I had no idea! I thought I was Scottish and Welsh. It turns out my parents are just full of shit, I guess. But now I’m Irish and it just makes so much sense! I'm a really good drinker. I love St. Patrick's Day. Potatoes are delicious. I'm looking forward to meeting all my cousins … [to Conan O’Brien] You and I are probably related! … Now I get to say things like, “It’s in me genes! I love that Conan O’Brien; he’s such a nice fella.” You’re kinda like a giant leprechaun. (Reese Witherspoon, Tuesday 21 March 2017)IntroductionAs an Irishman and a football fan, I watched the unfolding 2016 UEFA European Championship in France (hereafter ‘Euro 2016’) with a mixture of trepidation and delight. Although the Republic of Ireland team was eventually knocked out of the competition in defeat to the host nation, the players performed extremely well – most notably in defeating Italy 1:0. It is not the on-field performance of the Irish team that interests me in this short article, however, but rather how Irish fans travelling to the competition were depicted in the surrounding international news coverage. In particular, I focus on the centrality of fan footage – shot on smart phones and uploaded to YouTube (in most cases by fans themselves) – in this news coverage. In doing so, I reflect on how sports fans contribute to wider understandings of nationness in the global imagination and how their behaviour is often interpreted (as in the case here) through long-established tropes about people and places. The Media ManifoldTo “depict” something is to represent it in words and pictures. As the contemporary world is largely shaped by and dependent on mass media – and different forms of media have merged (or “converged”) through digital media platforms – mediated forms of depiction have become increasingly important in our lives. On one hand, the constant connectivity made possible in the digital age has made the representation of people and places less controllable, insofar as the information and knowledge about our world circulating through media devices are partly created by ordinary people. On the other hand, traditional broadcast media arguably remain the dominant narrators of people and places worldwide, and their stories, Gerbner reminds us, are largely formula-driven and dramatically charged, and work to “retribalize” modern society. However, a more important point, I suggest, is that so-called new and old media can no longer be thought of as separate and discrete; rather, our attention should focus on the complex interrelations made possible by deep mediatisation (Couldry and Hepp).As an example, consider that the Youtube video of Reese Witherspoon’s recent appearance on the Conan O’Brien chat show – from which the passage at the start of this article is taken – had already been viewed 54,669 times when I first viewed it, a mere 16 hours after it was originally posted. At that point, the televised interview had already been reported on in a variety of international digital news outlets, including rte.ie, independent.ie., nydailynews.com, msn.com, huffingtonpost.com, cote-ivoire.com – and myriad entertainment news sites. In other words, this short interview was consumed synchronously and asynchronously, over a number of different media platforms; it was viewed and reviewed, and critiqued and commented upon, and in turn found itself the subject of news commentary, which fed the ongoing cycle. And yet, it is important to also note that a multiplicity of media interactions does not automatically give rise to oppositional discourse and ideological contestation, as is sometimes assumed. In fact, how ostensibly ‘different’ kinds of media can work to produce a broadly shared construction of a people and place is particularly relevant here. Just as Reese Witherspoon’s interview on the Conan O’Brien show perpetuates a highly stereotypical version of Irishness across a number of platforms, news coverage of Irish fans at Euro 2016 largely conformed to established tropes about Irish people, but this was also fed – to some extent – by Irish fans themselves.Irish Identity, Sport, and the Global ImaginationThere is insufficient space here to describe in any detail the evolving representation of Irish identity, about which a vast literature has developed (nationally and internationally) over the past several decades. As with other varieties of nationness, Irishness has been constructed across a variety of cultural forms, including advertising, art, film, novels, travel brochures, plays and documentaries. Importantly, Irishness has also to a great extent been constructed outside of Ireland (Arrowsmith; Negra).As is well known, the Irish were historically constructed by their colonial masters as a small uncivilised race – as primitive wayward children, prone to “sentimentality, ineffectuality, nervous excitability and unworldliness” (Fanning 33). When pondering the “Celtic nature,” the renowned English poet and cultural critic Mathew Arnold concluded that “sentimental” was the best single term to use (100). This perception pervaded internationally, with early depictions of Irish-Americans in US cinema centring on varieties of negative excess, such as lawlessness, drunkenness and violence (Rains). Against this prevailing image of negative excess, the intellectuals and artists associated with what became known as the Celtic Revival began a conscious effort to “rebrand” Ireland from the nineteenth century onwards, reversing the negatives of the colonial project and celebrating Irish tradition, language and culture (Fanning).At first, only distinctly Irish sports associated with the amateur Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) were co-opted in this very particular nation-building project. Since then, however, sport more generally has acted as a site for the negotiation of a variety of overlapping Irish identities. Cronin, for example, describes how the GAA successfully repackaged itself in the 1990s to reflect the confidence of Celtic Tiger Irishness while also remaining rooted in the counties and parishes across Ireland. Studies of Irish football and rugby have similarly examined how these sports have functioned as representatives of changed or evolving Irish identities (Arrowsmith; Free). And yet, throughout Ireland’s changing economic fortunes – from boom to bust, to the gradual renewal of late – a touristic image of Irishness has remained hegemonic in the global imagination. In popular culture, and especially American popular culture, Ireland is often depicted as a kind of pre-industrial theme park – a place where the effects of modernity are felt less, or are erased altogether (Negra). The Irish are known for their charm and sociability; in Clancy’s words, they are seen internationally as “simple, clever and friendly folk” (98). We can identify a number of representational tropes within this dominant image, but two in particular are apposite here: ‘smallness’ and ‘happy-go-luckiness’.Sporting NewsBefore we consider Euro 2016, it is worth briefly considering how the news industry approaches such events. “News”, Dahlgren reminds us, is not so much “information” as it is a specific kind of cultural discourse. News, in other words, is a particular kind of discursive composition that constructs and narrates stories in particular ways. Approaching sports coverage from this vantage point, Poulton and Roderick (xviii) suggest that “sport offers everything a good story should have: heroes and villains, triumph and disaster, achievement and despair, tension and drama.” Similarly, Jason Tuck observes that the media have long had a tendency to employ the “vocabulary of war” to “hype up sporting events,” a discursive tactic which, he argues, links “the two areas of life where the nation is a primary signifier” (190-191).In short, sport is abundant in news values, and media professionals strive to produce coverage that is attractive, interesting and exciting for audiences. Stead (340) suggests that there are three key characteristics governing the production of “media sports packages”: spectacularisation, dramatisation, and personalisation. These production characteristics ensure that sports coverage is exciting and interesting for viewers, but that it also in some respects conforms to their expectations. “This ‘emergent’ quality of sport in the media helps meet the perpetual audience need for something new and different alongside what is familiar and known” (Rowe 32). The disproportionate attention to Irish fans at Euro 2016 was perhaps new, but the overall depiction of the Irish was rather old, I would argue. The news discourse surrounding Euro 2016 worked to suggest, in the Irish case at least, that the nation was embodied not only in its on-field athletic representatives but more so, perhaps, in its travelling fans.Euro 2016In June 2016 the Euros kicked off in France, with the home team beating Romania 2-1. Despite widespread fears of potential terrorist attacks and disruption, the event passed successfully, with Portugal eventually lifting the Henri Delaunay Trophy. As the competition progressed, the behaviour of Irish fans quickly became a central news story, fuelled in large part by smart phone footage uploaded to the internet by Irish fans themselves. Amongst the many videos uploaded to the internet, several became the focus of news reports, especially those in which the goodwill and childlike playfulness of the Irish were on show. In one such video, Irish fans are seen singing lullabies to a baby on a Bordeaux train. In another video, Irish fans appear to help a French couple change a flat tire. In yet another video, Irish fans sing cheerfully as they clean up beer cans and bottles. (It is noteworthy that as of July 2017, some of these videos have been viewed several million times.)News providers quickly turned their attention to Irish fans, sometimes using these to draw stark contrasts with the behaviour of other fans, notably English and Russian fans. Buzzfeed, followed by ESPN, followed by Sky News, Le Monde, Fox News, the Washington Post and numerous other providers celebrated the exploits of Irish fans, with some such as Sky News and Aljazeera going so far as to produce video montages of the most “memorable moments” involving “the boys in green.” In an article titled ‘Irish fans win admirers at Euro 2016,’ Fox News reported that “social media is full of examples of Irish kindness” and that “that Irish wit has been a fixture at the tournament.” Aljazeera’s AJ+ news channel produced a video montage titled ‘Are Irish fans the champions of Euro 2016?’ which included spliced footage from some of the aforementioned videos. The Daily Mirror (UK edition) praised their “fun loving approach to watching football.” Similarly, a headline for NPR declared, “And as if they could not be adorable enough, in a quiet moment, Irish fans sang on a French train to help lull a baby to sleep.” It is important to note that viewer comments under many of these articles and videos were also generally effusive in their praise. For example, under the video ‘Irish Fans help French couple change flat tire,’ one viewer (Amsterdam 410) commented, ‘Irish people nicest people in world by far. they always happy just amazing people.’ Another (Juan Ardilla) commented, ‘Irish fans restored my faith in humanity.’As the final stages of the tournament approached, the Mayor of Paris announced that she was awarding the Medal of the City of Paris to Irish fans for their sporting goodwill. Back home in Ireland, the behaviour of Irish fans in France was also celebrated, with President Michael D. Higgins commenting that “Ireland could not wish for better ambassadors abroad.” In all of this news coverage, the humble kindness, helpfulness and friendliness of the Irish are depicted as native qualities and crystallise as a kind of ideal national character. Though laudatory, the tropes of smallness and happy-go-luckiness are again evident here, as is the recurrent depiction of Irishness as an ‘innocent identity’ (Negra). The “boys” in green are spirited in a non-threatening way, as children generally are. Notably, Stephan Reich, journalist with German sports magazine 11Freunde wrote: “the qualification of the Irish is a godsend. The Boys in Green can celebrate like no other nation, always peaceful, always sympathetic and emphatic, with an infectious, childlike joy.” Irishness as Antidote? The centrality of the Irish fan footage in the international news coverage of Euro 2016 is significant, I suggest, but interpreting its meaning is not a simple or straightforward task. Fans (like everyone) make choices about how to present themselves, and these choices are partly conscious and partly unconscious, partly spontaneous and partly conditioned. Pope (2008), for example, draws on Emile Durkheim to explain the behaviour of sports fans sociologically. “Sporting events,” Pope tells us, “exemplify the conditions of religious ritual: high rates of group interaction, focus on sacred symbols, and collective ritual behaviour symbolising group membership and strengthening shared beliefs, values, aspirations and emotions” (Pope 85). Pope reminds us, in other words, that what fans do and say, and wear and sing – in short, how they perform – is partly spontaneous and situated, and partly governed by a long-established fandom pedagogy that implies familiarity with a whole range of international football fan styles and embodied performances (Rowe). To this, we must add that fans of a national sports team generally uphold shared understandings of what constitutes desirable and appropriate patriotic behaviour. Finally, in the case reported here, we must also consider that the behaviour of Irish fans was also partly shaped by their awareness of participating in the developing media sport spectacle and, indeed, of their own position as ‘suppliers’ of news content. In effect, Irish fans at Euro 2016 occupied an interesting hybrid position between passive consumption and active production – ‘produser’ fans, as it were.On one hand, therefore, we can consider fan footage as evidence of spontaneous displays of affective unity, captured by fellow participants. The realism or ‘authenticity’ of these supposedly natural and unscripted performances is conveyed by the grainy images, and amateur, shaky camerawork, which ironically work to create an impression of unmediated reality (see Goldman and Papson). On the other hand, Mike Cronin considers them contrived, staged, and knowingly performative, and suggestive of “hyper-aware” Irish fans playing up to the camera.However, regardless of how we might explain or interpret these fan performances, it is the fact that they play a role in making Irishness public that most interests me here. For my purposes, the most important consideration is how the patriotic performances of Irish fans both fed and harmonized with the developing news coverage; the resulting depiction of the Irish was partly an outcome of journalistic conventions and partly a consequence of the self-essentialising performances of Irish fans. In a sense, these fan-centred videos were ready-made or ‘packaged’ for an international news audience: they are short, dramatic and entertaining, and their ideological content is in keeping with established tropes about Irishness. As a consequence, the media-sport discourse surrounding Euro 2016 – itself a mixture of international news values and home-grown essentialism – valorised a largely touristic understanding of Irishness, albeit one that many Irish people wilfully celebrate.Why such a construction of Irishness is internationally appealing is unclear, but it is certainly not new. John Fanning (26) cites a number of writers in highlighting that Ireland has long nurtured a romantic self-image that presents the country as a kind of balm for the complexities of the modern world. For example, he cites New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who observed in 2001 that “people all over the world are looking to Ireland for its reservoir of spirituality hoping to siphon off what they can feed to their souls which have become hungry for something other than consumption and computers.” Similarly, Diane Negra writes that “virtually every form of popular culture has in one way or another, presented Irishness as a moral antidote to contemporary ills ranging from globalisation to post-modern alienation, from crises over the meaning and practice of family values to environmental destruction” (3). Earlier, I described the Arnoldian image of the Irish as a race governed by ‘negative excess’. Arguably, in a time of profound ideological division and resurgent cultural nationalism – a time of polarisation and populism, of Trumpism and Euroscepticism – this ‘excess’ has once again been positively recoded, and now it is the ‘sentimental excess’ of the Irish that is imagined as a salve for the cultural schisms of our time.ConclusionMuch has been made of new media powers to contest official discourses. Sports fans, too, are now considered much less ‘controllable’ on account of their ability to disrupt official messages online (as well as offline). The case of Irish fans at Euro 2016, however, offers a reminder that we must avoid routine assumptions that the “uses” made of “new” and “old” media are necessarily divergent (Rowe, Ruddock and Hutchins). My interest here was less in what any single news item or fan-produced video tells us, but rather in the aggregate construction of Irishness that emerges in the media-sport discourse surrounding this event. Relatedly, in writing about the London Olympics, Wardle observed that most of what appeared on social media concerning the Games did not depart significantly from the celebratory tone of mainstream news media organisations. “In fact the absence of any story that threatened the hegemonic vision of the Games as nation-builder, shows that while social media provided an additional and new form of newsgathering, it had to fit within the traditional news structures, routines and agenda” (Wardle 12).Obviously, it is important to acknowledge the contestability of all media texts, including the news items and fan footage mentioned here, and to recognise that such texts are open to multiple interpretations based on diverse reading positions. And yet, here I have suggested that there is something of a ‘preferred’ reading in the depiction of Irish fans at Euro 2016. The news coverage, and the footage on which it draws, are important because of what they collectively suggest about Irish national identity: here we witness a shift from identity performance to identity writ large, and one means of analysing their international (and intertextual significance), I have suggested, is to view them through the prism of established tropes about Irishness.Travelling sports fans – for better or worse – are ‘carriers’ of places and cultures, and they remind us that “there is also a cultural economy of sport, where information, images, ideas and rhetorics are exchanged, where symbolic value is added, where metaphorical (and sometimes literal, in the case of publicly listed sports clubs) stocks rise and fall” (Rowe 24). There is no question, to borrow Rowe’s term, that Ireland’s ‘stocks’ rose considerably on account of Euro 2016. In news terms, Irish fans provided entertainment value; they were the ‘human interest’ story of the tournament; they were the ‘feel-good’ factor of the event – and importantly, they were the suppliers of much of this content (albeit unofficially). Ultimately, I suggest that we think of the overall depiction of the Irish at Euro 2016 as a co-construction of international news media practices and the self-presentational practices of Irish fans themselves. The result was not simply a depiction of idealised fandom, but more importantly, an idealisation of a people and a place, in which the plucky little people on tour became the global standard bearers of Irish identity.ReferencesArnold, Mathew. Celtic Literature. 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Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007.Rowe, David, Andy Ruddock, and Brett Hutchins. “Cultures of Complaint: Online Fan Message Boards and Networked Digital Media Sport Communities.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technology 16.3 (2010). 25 Mar. 2017 <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354856510367622>.Rowe, David. Sport, Culture and the Media: The Unruly Trinity. 2nd ed. Berkshire: Open University Press, 2004.Stead, David. “Sport and the Media.” Sport and Society: A Student Introduction. 2nd ed. Ed. Barrie Houlihan. London: Sage, 2008. 328-347.Wardle, Claire. “Social Media, Newsgathering and the Olympics.” Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies 2 (2012). 25 Mar. 2017 <https://publications.cardiffuniversitypress.org/index.php/JOMEC/article/view/304>.

Introduction Documentary film has grown significantly in the past decade, with high profile films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Supersize Me, and An Inconvenient Truth garnering increased attention both at the box office and in the news media. In addition, the rising prominence of web-based media has provided new opportunities for documentary to create social impact. Films are now typically released with websites, Facebook pages, twitter feeds, and web videos to increase both reach and impact. This combination of technology and broader audience appeal has given rise to a current landscape in which documentary films are imbedded within coordinated multi-media campaigns. New media have not only opened up new avenues for communicating with audiences, they have also created new opportunities for data collection and analysis of film impacts. A recent report by McKinsey and Company highlighted this potential, introducing and discussing the implications of increasing consumer information being recorded on the Internet as well as through networked sensors in the physical world. As they found: "Big data—large pools of data that can be captured, communicated, aggregated, stored, and analyzed—is now part of every sector and function of the global economy" (Manyika et al. iv). This data can be mined to learn a great deal about both individual and cultural response to documentary films and the issues they represent. Although film has a rich history in humanities research, this new set of tools enables an empirical approach grounded in the social sciences. However, several researchers across disciplines have noted that limited investigation has been conducted in this area. Although there has always been an emphasis on social impact in film and many filmmakers and scholars have made legitimate (and possibly illegitimate) claims of impact, few have attempted to empirically justify these claims. Over fifteen years ago, noted film scholar Brian Winston commented that "the underlying assumption of most social documentaries—that they shall act as agents of reform and change—is almost never demonstrated" (236). A decade later, Political Scientist David Whiteman repeated this sentiment, arguing that, "despite widespread speculation about the impact of documentaries, the topic has received relatively little systematic attention" ("Evolving"). And earlier this year, the introduction to a special issue of Mass Communication and Society on documentary film stated, "documentary film, despite its growing influence and many impacts, has mostly been overlooked by social scientists studying the media and communication" (Nisbet and Aufderheide 451). Film has been studied extensively as entertainment, as narrative, and as cultural event, but the study of film as an agent of social change is still in its infancy. This paper introduces a systematic approach to measuring the social impact of documentary film aiming to: (1) discuss the context of documentary film and its potential impact; and (2) argue for a social science approach, discussing key issues about conducting such research. Changes in Documentary Practice Documentary film has been used as a tool for promoting social change throughout its history. John Grierson, who coined the term "documentary" in 1926, believed it could be used to influence the ideas and actions of people in ways once reserved for church and school. He presented his thoughts on this emerging genre in his 1932 essay, First Principles of Documentary, saying, "We believe that the cinema's capacity for getting around, for observing and selecting from life itself, can be exploited in a new and vital art form" (97). Richard Barsam further specified the definition of documentary, distinguishing it from non-fiction film, such that all documentaries are non-fiction films but not all non-fiction films are documentaries. He distinguishes documentary from other forms of non-fiction film (i.e. travel films, educational films, newsreels) by its purpose; it is a film with an opinion and a specific message that aims to persuade or influence the audience. And Bill Nichols writes that the definition of documentary may even expand beyond the film itself, defining it as a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception" (12). Documentary film has undergone many significant changes since its inception, from the heavily staged romanticism movement of the 1920s to the propagandist tradition of governments using film to persuade individuals to support national agendas to the introduction of cinéma vérité in the 1960s and historical documentary in the 1980s (cf. Barnouw). However, the recent upsurge in popularity of documentary media, combined with technological advances of internet and computers have opened up a whole new set of opportunities for film to serve as both art and agent for social change. One such opportunity is in the creation of film-based social action campaigns. Over the past decade, filmmakers have taken a more active role in promoting social change by coordinating film releases with action campaigns. Companies such as Participant Media (An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc., etc.) now create "specific social action campaigns for each film and documentary designed to give a voice to issues that resonate in the films" (Participant Media). In addition, a new sector of "social media" consultants are now offering services, including "consultation, strategic planning for alternative distribution, website and social media development, and complete campaign management services to filmmakers to ensure the content of nonfiction media truly meets the intention for change" (Working Films). The emergence of new forms of media and technology are changing our conceptions of both documentary film and social action. Technologies such as podcasts, video blogs, internet radio, social media and network applications, and collaborative web editing "both unsettle and extend concepts and assumptions at the heart of 'documentary' as a practice and as an idea" (Ellsworth). In the past decade, we have seen new forms of documentary creation, distribution, marketing, and engagement. Likewise, film campaigns are utilizing a broad array of strategies to engage audience members, including "action kits, screening programs, educational curriculums and classes, house parties, seminars, panels" that often turn into "ongoing 'legacy' programs that are updated and revised to continue beyond the film's domestic and international theatrical, DVD and television windows" (Participant Media). This move towards multi-media documentary film is becoming not only commonplace, but expected as a part of filmmaking. NYU film professor and documentary film pioneer George Stoney recently noted, "50 percent of the documentary filmmaker's job is making the movie, and 50 percent is figuring out what its impact can be and how it can move audiences to action" (qtd. in Nisbet, "Gasland"). In his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins, coined the term "transmedia storytelling", which he later defined as "a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience" ("Transmedia"). When applied to documentary film, it is the elements of the "issue" raised by the film that get dispersed across these channels, coordinating, not just an entertainment experience, but a social action campaign. Dimensions of Evaluation It is not unreasonable to assume that such film campaigns, just like any policy or program, have the possibility to influence viewers' knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Measuring this impact has become increasingly important, as funders of documentary and issue-based films want look to understand the "return on investment" of films in terms of social impact so that they can compare them with other projects, including non-media, direct service projects. Although we "feel" like films make a difference to the individuals who also see them in the broader cultures in which they are embedded, measurement and empirical analysis of this impact are vitally important for both providing feedback to filmmakers and funders as well as informing future efforts attempting to leverage film for social change. This type of systematic assessment, or program evaluation, is often discussed in terms of two primary goals—formative (or process) and summative (or impact) evaluation (cf. Muraskin; Trochim and Donnelly). Formative evaluation studies program materials and activities to strengthen a program, and summative evaluation examines program outcomes. In terms of documentary film, these two goals can be described as follows: Formative Evaluation: Informing the Process As programs (broadly defined as an intentional set of activities with the aim of having some specific impact), the people who interact with them, and the cultures they are situated in are constantly changing, program development and evaluation is an ongoing learning cycle. Film campaigns, which are an intentional set of activities with the aim of impacting individual viewers and broader cultures, fit squarely within this purview. Without formulating hypotheses about the relationships between program activities and goals and then collecting and analyzing data during implementation to test them, it is difficult to learn ways to improve programs (or continue doing what works best in the most efficient manner). Attention to this process enables those involved to learn more about, not only what works, but how and why it works and even gain insights about how program outcomes may be affected by changes to resource availability, potential audiences, or infrastructure. Filmmakers are constantly learning and honing their craft and realizing the impact of their practice can help the artistic process. Often faced with tight budgets and timelines, they are forced to confront tradeoffs all the time, in the writing, production and post-production process. Understanding where they are having impact can improve their decision-making, which can help both the individual project and the overall field. Summative Evaluation: Quantifying Impacts Evaluation is used in many different fields to determine whether programs are achieving their intended goals and objectives. It became popular in the 1960s as a way of understanding the impact of the Great Society programs and has continued to grow since that time (Madaus and Stufflebeam). A recent White House memo stated that "rigorous, independent program evaluations can be a key resource in determining whether government programs are achieving their intended outcomes as well as possible and at the lowest possible cost" and the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) launched an initiative to increase the practice of "impact evaluations, or evaluations aimed at determining the causal effects of programs" (Orszag 1). Documentary films, like government programs, generally target a national audience, aim to serve a social purpose, and often do not provide a return on their investment. Participant Media, the most visible and arguably most successful documentary production company in the film industry, made recent headlines for its difficulty in making a profit during its seven-year history (Cieply). Owner and founder Jeff Skoll reported investing hundreds of millions of dollars into the company and CEO James Berk added that the company sometimes measures success, not by profit, but by "whether Mr. Skoll could have exerted more impact simply by spending his money philanthropically" (Cieply). Because of this, documentary projects often rely on grant funding, and are starting to approach funders beyond traditional arts and media sources. "Filmmakers are finding new fiscal and non-fiscal partners, in constituencies that would not traditionally be considered—or consider themselves—media funders or partners" (BRITDOC 6). And funders increasingly expect tangible data about their return on investment. Says Luis Ubiñas, president of Ford Foundation, which recently launched the Just Films Initiative: In these times of global economic uncertainty, with increasing demand for limited philanthropic dollars, assessing our effectiveness is more important than ever. Today, staying on the frontlines of social change means gauging, with thoughtfulness and rigor, the immediate and distant outcomes of our funding. Establishing the need for evaluation is not enough—attention to methodology is also critical. Valid research methodology is a critical component of understanding around the role entertainment can play in impacting social and environmental issues. The following issues are vital to measuring impact. Defining the Project Though this may seem like an obvious step, it is essential to determine the nature of the project so one can create research questions and hypotheses based on a complete understanding of the "treatment". One organization that provides a great example of the integration of documentary film imbedded into a larger campaign or movement is Invisible Children. Founded in 2005, Invisible Children is both a media-based organization as well as an economic development NGO with the goal of raising awareness and meeting the needs of child soldiers and other youth suffering as a result of the ongoing war in northern Uganda. Although Invisible Children began as a documentary film, it has grown into a large non-profit organization with an operating budget of over $8 million and a staff of over a hundred employees and interns throughout the year as well as volunteers in all 50 states and several countries. Invisible Children programming includes films, events, fundraising campaigns, contests, social media platforms, blogs, videos, two national "tours" per year, merchandise, and even a 650-person three-day youth summit in August 2011 called The Fourth Estate. Individually, each of these components might lead to specific outcomes; collectively, they might lead to others. In order to properly assess impacts of the film "project", it is important to take all of these components into consideration and think about who they may impact and how. This informs the research questions, hypotheses, and methods used in evaluation. Film campaigns may even include partnerships with existing social movements and non-profit organizations targeting social change. The American University Center for Social Media concluded in a case study of three issue-based documentary film campaigns: Digital technologies do not replace, but are closely entwined with, longstanding on-the-ground activities of stakeholders and citizens working for social change. Projects like these forge new tools, pipelines, and circuits of circulation in a multiplatform media environment. They help to create sustainable network infrastructures for participatory public media that extend from local communities to transnational circuits and from grassroots communities to policy makers. (Abrash) Expanding the Focus of Impact beyond the Individual A recent focus has shifted the dialogue on film impact. Whiteman ("Theaters") argues that traditional metrics of film "success" tend to focus on studio economic indicators that are far more relevant to large budget films. Current efforts focused on box office receipts and audience size, the author claims, are really measures of successful film marketing or promotion, missing the mark when it comes to understanding social impact. He instead stresses the importance of developing a more comprehensive model. His "coalition model" broadens the range and types of impact of film beyond traditional metrics to include the entire filmmaking process, from production to distribution. Whiteman (“Theaters”) argues that a narrow focus on the size of the audience for a film, its box office receipts, and viewers' attitudes does not incorporate the potential reach of a documentary film. Impacts within the coalition model include both individual and policy levels. Individual impacts (with an emphasis on activist groups) include educating members, mobilizing for action, and raising group status; policy includes altering both agenda for and the substance of policy deliberations. The Fledgling Fund (Barrett and Leddy) expanded on this concept and identified five distinct impacts of documentary film campaigns. These potential impacts expand from individual viewers to groups, movements, and eventually to what they call the "ultimate goal" of social change. Each is introduced briefly below. Quality Film. The film itself can be presented as a quality film or media project, creating enjoyment or evoking emotion in the part of audiences. "By this we mean a film that has a compelling narrative that draws viewers in and can engage them in the issue and illustrate complex problems in ways that statistics cannot" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Awareness. Film can increase public awareness by bringing light to issues and stories that may have otherwise been unknown or not often thought about. This is the level of impact that has received the most attention, as films are often discussed in terms of their "educational" value. "A project's ability to raise awareness around a particular issue, since awareness is a critical building block for both individual change and broader social change" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Engagement. Impact, however, need not stop at simply raising public awareness. Engagement "indicates a shift from simply being aware of an issue to acting on this awareness. Were a film and its outreach campaign able to provide an answer to the question 'What can I do?' and more importantly mobilize that individual to act?" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This is where an associated film campaign becomes increasingly important, as transmedia outlets such as Facebook, websites, blogs, etc. can build off the interest and awareness developed through watching a film and provide outlets for viewers channel their constructive efforts. Social Movement. In addition to impacts on individuals, films can also serve to mobilize groups focused on a particular problem. The filmmaker can create a campaign around the film to promote its goals and/or work with existing groups focused on a particular issue, so that the film can be used as a tool for mobilization and collaboration. "Moving beyond measures of impact as they relate to individual awareness and engagement, we look at the project's impact as it relates to the broader social movement … if a project can strengthen the work of key advocacy organizations that have strong commitment to the issues raised in the film" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). Social Change. The final level of impact and "ultimate goal" of an issue-based film is long-term and systemic social change. "While we understand that realizing social change is often a long and complex process, we do believe it is possible and that for some projects and issues there are key indicators of success" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This can take the form of policy or legislative change, passed through film-based lobbying efforts, or shifts in public dialogue and behavior. Legislative change typically takes place beyond the social movement stage, when there is enough support to pressure legislators to change or create policy. Film-inspired activism has been seen in issues ranging from environmental causes such as agriculture (Food Inc.) and toxic products (Blue Vinyl) to social causes such as foreign conflict (Invisible Children) and education (Waiting for Superman). Documentary films can also have a strong influence as media agenda-setters, as films provide dramatic "news pegs" for journalists seeking to either sustain or generation new coverage of an issue (Nisbet "Introduction" 5), such as the media coverage of climate change in conjunction with An Inconvenient Truth. Barrett and Leddy, however, note that not all films target all five impacts and that different films may lead to different impacts. "In some cases we could look to key legislative or policy changes that were driven by, or at least supported by the project... In other cases, we can point to shifts in public dialogue and how issues are framed and discussed" (7). It is possible that specific film and/or campaign characteristics may lead to different impacts; this is a nascent area for research and one with great promise for both practical and theoretical utility. Innovations in Tools and Methods Finally, the selection of tools is a vital component for assessing impact and the new media landscape is enabling innovations in the methods and strategies for program evaluation. Whereas the traditional domain of film impact measurement included box office statistics, focus groups, and exit surveys, innovations in data collection and analysis have expanded the reach of what questions we can ask and how we are able to answer them. For example, press coverage can assist in understanding and measuring the increase in awareness about an issue post-release. Looking directly at web-traffic changes "enables the creation of an information-seeking curve that can define the parameters of a teachable moment" (Hart and Leiserowitz 360). Audience reception can be measured, not only via interviews and focus groups, but also through content and sentiment analysis of web content and online analytics. "Sophisticated analytics can substantially improve decision making, minimize risks, and unearth valuable insights that would otherwise remain hidden" (Manyika et al. 5). These new tools are significantly changing evaluation, expanding what we can learn about the social impacts of film through triangulation of self-report data with measurement of actual behavior in virtual environments. Conclusion The changing media landscape both allows and impels evaluation of film impacts on individual viewers and the broader culture in which they are imbedded. Although such analysis may have previously been limited to box office numbers, critics' reviews, and theater exit surveys, the rise of new media provides both the ability to connect filmmakers, activists, and viewers in new ways and the data in which to study the process. This capability, combined with significant growth in the documentary landscape, suggests a great potential for documentary film to contribute to some of our most pressing social and environmental needs. A social scientific approach, that combines empirical analysis with theory applied from basic science, ensures that impact can be measured and leveraged in a way that is useful for both filmmakers as well as funders. In the end, this attention to impact ensures a continued thriving marketplace for issue-based documentary films in our social landscape. References Abrash, Barbara. "Social Issue Documentary: The Evolution of Public Engagement." American University Center for Social Media 21 Apr. 2010. 26 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/›. Aufderheide, Patricia. "The Changing Documentary Marketplace." Cineaste 30.3 (2005): 24-28. Barnouw, Eric. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Barrett, Diana and Sheila Leddy. "Assessing Creative Media's Social Impact." The Fledgling Fund, Dec. 2008. 15 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.thefledglingfund.org/media/research.html›. Barsam, Richard M. Nonfiction Film: A Critical History. Bloomington: Indiana UP. 1992. BRITDOC Foundation. The End of the Line: A Social Impact Evaluation. London: Channel 4, 2011. 12 Oct. 2011 ‹http://britdoc.org/news_details/the_social_impact_of_the_end_of_the_line/›. Cieply, Michael. "Uneven Growth for Film Studio with a Message." New York Times 5 Jun. 2011: B1. Ellsworth, Elizabeth. "Emerging Media and Documentary Practice." The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs. Aug. 2008. 22 Sep. 2011. ‹http://www.gpia.info/node/911›. Grierson, John. "First Principles of Documentary (1932)." Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary. Eds. Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. 97-102. Hart, Philip Solomon and Anthony Leiserowitz. "Finding the Teachable Moment: An Analysis of Information-Seeking Behavior on Global Warming Related Websites during the Release of The Day After Tomorrow." Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture 3.3 (2009): 355-66. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. ———. "Transmedia Storytelling 101." Confessions of an Aca-Fan. The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins. 22 Mar. 2007. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html›. Madaus, George, and Daniel Stufflebeam. "Program Evaluation: A Historical Overview." Evaluation in Education and Human Services 49.1 (2002): 3-18. Manyika, James, Michael Chui, Jacques Bughin, Brad Brown, Richard Dobbs, Charles Roxburgh, and Angela Hung Byers. Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity. McKinsey Global Institute. May 2011 ‹http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/big_data/›. Muraskin, Lana. Understanding Evaluation: The Way to Better Prevention Programs. Washington: U.S. Department of Education, 1993. 8 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www2.ed.gov/PDFDocs/handbook.pdf›. Nichols, Bill. "Foreword." Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Eds. Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1997. 11-13. Nisbet, Matthew. "Gasland and Dirty Business: Documentary Films Shape Debate on Energy Policy." Big Think, 9 May 2011. 1 Oct. 2011 ‹http://bigthink.com/ideas/38345›. ———. "Introduction: Understanding the Social Impact of a Documentary Film." Documentaries on a Mission: How Nonprofits Are Making Movies for Public Engagement. Ed. Karen Hirsch, Center for Social Media. Mar. 2007. 10 Sep. 2011 ‹http://aladinrc.wrlc.org/bitstream/1961/4634/1/docs_on_a_mission.pdf›. Nisbet, Matthew, and Patricia Aufderheide. "Documentary Film: Towards a Research Agenda on Forms, Functions, and Impacts." Mass Communication and Society 12.4 (2011): 450-56. Orszag, Peter. Increased Emphasis on Program Evaluation. Washington: Office of Management and Budget. 7 Oct. 2009. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/memoranda_2010/m10-01.pdf›. Participant Media. "Our Mission." 2011. 2 Apr. 2011 ‹http://www.participantmedia.com/company/about_us.php.›. Plantinga, Carl. Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Trochim, William, and James Donnelly. Research Methods Knowledge Base. 3rd ed. Mason: Atomic Dogs, 2007. Ubiñas, Luis. "President's Message." 2009 Annual Report. Ford Foundation, Sep. 2010. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.fordfoundation.org/about-us/2009-annual-report/presidents-message›. Vladica, Florin, and Charles Davis. "Business Innovation and New Media Practices in Documentary Film Production and Distribution: Conceptual Framework and Review of Evidence." The Media as a Driver of the Information Society. Eds. Ed Albarran, Paulo Faustino, and R. Santos. Lisbon, Portugal: Media XXI / Formal, 2009. 299-319. Whiteman, David. "Out of the Theaters and into the Streets: A Coalition Model of the Political Impact of Documentary Film and Video." Political Communication 21.1 (2004): 51-69. ———. "The Evolving Impact of Documentary Film: Sacrifice and the Rise of Issue-Centered Outreach." Post Script 22 Jun. 2007. 10 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.allbusiness.com/media-telecommunications/movies-sound-recording/5517496-1.html›. Winston, Brian. Claiming the Real: The Documentary Film Revisited. London: British Film Institute, 1995. Working Films. "Nonprofits: Working Films." Foundation Source Access 31 May 2011. 5 Oct. 2011 ‹http://access.foundationsource.com/nonprofit/working-films/›.

IntroductionCatastrophe surrounds us perpetually: from the Queensland floods, Christchurch earthquake, global warming, and Global Financial Crisis to social conflicts, psychological breaking points, relationship failures, and crises of understanding. As a consequence of the pervasiveness of catastrophe, its representation saturates our everyday awareness. On a daily basis we encounter stories of people impacted by and coping with natural, economic, ecological, and emotional disasters of all kinds.But what is the relationship between culture, catastrophe, and creativity? Can catastrophe be an impetus for the creative transformation of societies and individuals? Conversely, how can culture moderate, transform, and re-imagine catastrophe? And in the final analysis, how should we conceive of catastrophe; does catastrophe have a bad name? These questions and others have guided us in editing the “catastrophe” issue of M/C Journal. The word catastrophe has been associated with extreme disaster only since the 1700s. In an earlier etymological sense, catastrophe simply connoted “a reversal of what is expected” or, in Western literary history, a defining turn in a drama (Harper). Catastrophe derives from the Greek katastrophe for “an overturning; a sudden end.” As this issue clearly demonstrates, whilst catastrophes vary in scale, context, and meaning, their outcomes are life-changing inversions of the interpersonal, social, or environmental norm. In The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization, political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon echoes this definition and argues that catastrophe “can be a source of immense creativity—a shock that opens up political, social, and psychological space for fresh ideas, actions, institutions, and technologies that weren't possible before” (23). According to Homer-Dixon and on a hopeful note, “in any complex adaptive system, breakdown, if limited, can be a key part of that system's long-term resilience and renewal” (308). Indeed, many of the articles in this issue sound a note of hope. Catastrophe and Creativity The impetus for this issue comes from the Catastrophe and Creativity symposium convened at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia, in 2012. The symposium brought together artists and researchers from around Australia to engage with the theme “catastrophe.” The organisers encouraged participants to conceptualise catastrophe broadly and creatively: from natural disasters to personal turning points, and from debilitating meltdowns to regenerative solutions. As a result, the topics explored in this issue stretch deeply and widely, and demonstrate the different forms and scales of catastrophe. Many of the 24 articles submitted for possible inclusion in this issue emerged as responses to the symposium theme. Distinct moods and meanings of catastrophe reverberate in the final selection of 12. The articles that shape the issue are intimate, collective, and geographical engagements with and reflections upon cataclysm that move from the highly personal to the global and speak of countries, communities, networks, friends, families, and colleagues. As a collection, the articles re-envision catastrophe as a pathway for creative interventions, artistic responses, community solidarities, social innovations, individual modes of survival and resilience, and environmental justices. In thinking through the relationship between catastrophe and culture, the authors challenge existing discourses and ways of knowing trauma, and offer fresh interpretations and hope. Catastrophe leads to metanoia: a change of perception after a significant crisis. The editors appreciate that there are no hierarchies between interpretations of catastrophe. Instead, the articles represent a dialogue between diverse experiences of pain, disaster, and abuse, as well as different theories about the nature of catastrophe—from the catastrophic loss of millions through genocide to the impact of trauma on an individual’s body and psyche. Part of the challenge of crafting this issue of M/C Journal has been in delineating what constitutes catastrophe. Admittedly we end up with more questions than we started with. Is catastrophe the same as trauma? Is it disaster? When is it apocalypse? Can catastrophe entail all these things? Who is silenced, and who can tell the narratives of catastrophe? How? Despite these unanswerable questions, we can be certain that catastrophe, as described by the authors, foundationally changes the fabric of human and non-human being in the world. The authors leave us with the lingering reverberations and resonances of catastrophe, revealing at the same time how catastrophic events can “reverse the expected” in the true sense of the word. The transformative potential of catastrophe is prominent in the issue. Some authors call for justice, support, inspiration, and resilience—on personal and community levels. The contributions remind us that, after catastrophe, the person, society, or planet will never be the same. Responses to Catastrophe The issue opens with the intimate nature of catastrophes. A feature article by esteemed Canadian academic and poet Lorri Neilsen Glenn takes the form of a lyric essay originally presented as the keynote address at the symposium. Composed of extracts from her book Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry (published here with kind permission of the author and Hagios Press) and reflective interludes, Neilsen combines her acute academic insights with personal experiences of loss to create evocative prose and poetry that, as she says, “grounds our grief in form […] connects us to one another and the worlds.” Her work opens for the reader “complex and nuanced understandings of our human capacities for grief.” In this piece, Neilsen speaks of personal catastrophe through lyric inquiry, a method she has described eloquently in the Sage Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research. The second feature article is a commentary on Neilsen’s work by the equally esteemed feminist scholar Lekkie Hopkins. In her article, Hopkins explains Neilsen’s journey from literacy researcher to arts-based social science researcher to poet and lyric inquirer. Hopkins uses her reflections on the work of Neilsen in order to draw attention, not only to Neilsen’s “ground-breaking uses of lyric inquiry,” but also to another kind of communal catastrophe which Hopkins calls “the catastrophe of the methodological divide between humanities and the social sciences that runs the risk of creating, for the social sciences, a limiting and limited approach to research.” In her article “Casualties on the Road to Ethical Authenticity,” Kate Rice applies a powerful narrative inquiry to the relationship between catastrophe and ethics. As a playwright experienced in projects dealing with personal catastrophe, Rice nevertheless finds her usual research and writing practice challenged by the specific content of her current project—a play about the murder of innocents—and its focus on the real-life perpetrator. Ambivalent regarding the fascinated human response such catastrophe draws, Rice suggests that spectacle creates “comfort” associated with “processing sympathy into a feeling of self-importance at having felt pain that isn’t yours.” She also argues against a hierarchy of grief, noting that, “when you strip away the circumstances, the essence of loss is the same, whether your loved one dies of cancer, in a car accident, or a natural disaster.” In an article tracing the reverberation of catastrophe over the course of 100 years, Marcella Polain explores the impact of the Armenian Genocide’s 1.5 million deaths. Through a purposefully fragmented, non-linear narrative, Polain evokes with exquisite sensitivity the utter devastation the Genocide wreaked upon one family—her own: “When springs run red, when the dead are stacked tree-high, when ‘everything that could happen has already happened,’ then time is nothing: ‘there is no future [and] the language of civilised humanity is not our language’” (Nichanian 142).The potentiality that can be generated in the aftermath of catastrophe also resonates in an article co-authored by Brenda Downing and Alice Cummins. (A photograph of Downing’s performance aperture is the issue’s cover image.) In their visceral evocation, the catastrophe of childhood rape is explored and enfleshed with a deft and generous touch. Downing, embodying for the reader her experience as researcher, writer, and performer, and Cummins, as Body-Mind Centering® practitioner and artistic director, explore the reciprocity of their collaboration and the performance aperture that they created together. Their collaboration made possible the realisation that “a performance […] could act as a physical, emotional, and intellectual bridge of communication between those who have experienced sexual violence and those who have not.” Maggie Phillips evokes the authoritative yet approachable voice of her 2012 symposium presentation in “Diminutive Catastrophe: Clown’s Play;” her meditation on clowns and clowning as not only a discipline and practice, but also “a state of being.” In response to large-scale catastrophe, and the catastrophic awareness of “the utter meaninglessness of human existence,” the clown offers “a tiny gesture.” As Phillips argues, however, “those fingers brushing dust off a threadbare jacket may speak volumes.” By inducing “miniscule shifts of consciousness” as they “wander across territories designated as sacred and profane with a certain insouciance and privilege,” clowns offer “glimpses of the ineffable.” In “Creativity in an Online Community as a Response to the Chaos of a Breast Cancer Diagnosis,” Cynthia Witney, Lelia Green, Leesa Costello, and Vanessa Bradshaw explore the role of online communities, such as the “Click” website, in providing support and information for women with breast cancer. Importantly, the authors show how these communities can provide a forum for the expression of creativity. Through Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “flow” (53), the authors suggest that “becoming totally involved in the creative moment, so as to lose all track of time” allows women temporary space to “forget the trials and worries of breast cancer.” By providing a forum for women and their supporters to reach out to others in similar situations, online communities, inspired by notions of creativity and flow, can offer “some remedy for catastrophe.” A different impulse pervades Ella Mudie’s insightful examination of the Surrealist city novel. Mudie argues against the elision of historical catastrophe through contemporary practices; specifically, the current reading in the field of psychogeography of Surrealist city dérives (drifts) as playful city walks, or “an intriguing yet ultimately benign method of urban research.” Mudie revisits the Surrealist city novel, evoking the original “praxis of shock” deployed through innovative experiments in novelistic form and content. Binding the theory and practice of Surrealism to the catastrophic event from which it sprang—the Great War—Mudie argues against “domesticating movements” which “dull the awakening power” of such imaginative and desperate revolts against an increasingly mechanised society. Through discussions of natural disasters, the next three articles bring a distinctive architectural, geographical, and ecological stream to the issue. Michael Levine and William Taylor invoke Susan Sontag’s essay “The Imagination of Disaster” in conceptualising approaches to urban recovery and renewal after catastrophic events, as exemplified by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The authors are interested explicitly in the “imagination of disaster” and the “psychology, politics, and morality of rebuilding,” which they find absent in Sontag’s account of the representation of urban cataclysms in 1950s and 60s science fiction films. Levine and Taylor’s article points to community ethics and social justice issues that—as they outline through different examples from film—should be at the centre of urban reconstruction initiatives. Interpretations of what is meant by reconstruction will vary substantially and, hence, so should community responses be wide-ranging. Extending the geo-spatial emphasis of Levine and Taylor’s article, Rod Giblett theorises the historical and environmental context of Hurricane Katrina using Walter Benjamin’s productive notion of the “Angel of History.” However, Giblett offers the analogous metaphor of the “Angel of Geography” as a useful way to locate catastrophe in both time (history) and space (geography). In particular, Giblett’s reading of the New Orleans disaster addresses the disruption of the city’s ecologically vital habitats over time. As such, according to Giblett, Katrina was the culmination of a series of smaller environmental catastrophes throughout the history of the city, namely the obliteration of its wetlands. Benjamin’s “Angel of History,” thereby, recognises the unity of temporal events and “sees a single, catastrophic history, not just of New Orleans but preceding and post-dating it.” Giblett’s archaeology of the Hurricane Katrina disaster provides a novel framework for reconceptualising the origins of catastrophes. Continuing the sub-theme of natural disasters, Dale Dominey-Howes returns our attention to Australia, arguing that the tsunami is poised to become the “new Australian catastrophe.” Through an analysis of Australian media coverage of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, Dominey-Howes asks provocatively: “Has extensive media coverage resulted in an improved awareness of the catastrophic potential of tsunami for Australians?” After speaking with more than 800 Australians in order to understand popular attitudes towards tsunami, the author responds with a definitive “no.” In his view, Australians are “avoiding or disallowing the reality; they normalise and dramaticise the event. Thus in Australia, to date, a cultural transformation about the catastrophic nature of tsunami has not occurred for reasons that are not entirely clear.” As the final article in the issue, “FireWatch: Creative Responses to Bushfire Catastrophe” gives insights into the real-world experience of managing catastrophes as they occur, in this case, bushfires in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia. Donell Holloway, Lelia Green, and Danielle Brady detail an Australian Research Council funded project that creatively engages with Kimberley residents who “improvise in a creative and intuitive manner” when responding to catastrophe. The authors capture responses from residents in order to redesign an interface that will provide real-time, highly useable information for the management of bushfires in Western Australia. Conclusion This “catastophe” issue of M/C Journal explores, by way of the broad reach of the articles, the relationship between culture, creativity, and catastrophe. Readers will have encountered collective creative responses to bushfire or breast cancer, individual responses to catastrophe, such as childhood rape or genocide, and cultural conceptualisations of catastrophe, for example, in relation to New Orlean’s Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The editors hope that, just like the metanoia that catastrophe can bring about (demonstrated so articulately by Downing and Cummins), readers too will experience a change of their perception of catastrophe, and will come to see catastrophe in its many fascinating iterations. References Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row, 1990. Harper, Douglas. “catastrophe.” Online Etymology Dictionary. 22 Mar. 2013 . Homer-Dixon, Thomas. The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization. Melbourne : Text Publishing, 2007. Kazanjian, David, and Marc Nichanian. “Between Genocide and Catastrophe.” Loss. Eds. David Eng and David Kazanjian. Los Angeles: U of California P, 2003. 125–47. Neilsen Glenn, Lorri. Threading Light. Explorations in Loss and Poetry. Regina, SK: Hagios Press, 2011. Neilsen, Lorri. “Lyric Inquiry.” Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research. Eds. J. Gary Knowles and Ardra Cole. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2008. 88–98.

By most accounts, “resilience” is a pretty resilient concept. Or policy instrument. Or heuristic tool. It’s this last that really concerns us here: resilience not as a politics, but rather as a descriptive device for attempts in the humanities—particularly in rhetoric and cultural studies—to adequately describe a discursive event. Or rather, to adequately describe a class of discursive events: those that involve rhetorical resistance by victimised subjects. I’ve argued elsewhere (Munro, Descriptive; Reading) that Peircean semiosis, inflected by a rhetorical postulate of genre, equips us well to closely describe a discursive event. Here, I want briefly to suggest that resilience—“discursive” resilience, to coin a term—might usefully supplement these hypotheses, at least from time to time. To support this suggestion, I’ll signal some uses of resilience before turning briefly to a case study: a sensational Argentine homicide case, which occurred in October 2002, and came to be known as the caso Belsunce. At the time, Argentina was wracked by economic crises and political instability. The imposition of severe restrictions on cash withdrawals from bank deposits had provoked major civil unrest. Between 21 December 2001 and 2 January 2002, Argentines witnessed a succession of five presidents. “Resilient” is a term that readily comes to mind to describe many of those who endured this catastrophic period. To describe the caso Belsunce, however—to describe its constitution and import as a discursive event—we might appeal to some more disciplinary-specific understandings of resilience. Glossing Peircean semiosis as a teleological process, Short notes that “one and the same thing […] may be many different signs at once” (106). Any given sign, in other words, admits of multiple interpretants or uptakes. And so it is with resilience, which is both a keyword in academic disciplines ranging from psychology to ecology and political science, and a buzzword in several corporate domains and spheres of governmental activity. It’s particularly prevalent in the discourses of highly networked post-9/11 Anglophone societies. So what, pray tell, is resilience? To the American Psychological Association, resilience comprises “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity.” To the Resilience Solutions Group at Arizona State University, resilience is “the capacity to recover fully from acute stressors, to carry on in the face of chronic difficulties: to regain one’s balance after losing it.” To the Stockholm Resilience Centre, resilience amounts to the “capacity of a system to continually change and adapt yet remain within critical thresholds,” while to the Resilience Alliance, resilience is similarly “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure” (Walker and Salt xiii). The adjective “resilient” is thus predicated of those entities, individuals or collectivities, which exhibit “resilience”. A “resilient Australia,” for example, is one “where all Australians are better able to adapt to change, where we have reduced exposure to risks, and where we are all better able to bounce back from disaster” (Australian Government). It’s tempting here to synthesise these statements with a sense of “ordinary language” usage to derive a definitional distillate: “resilience” is a capacity attributed to an entity which recovers intact from major injury. This capacity is evidenced in a reaction or uptake: a “resilient” entity is one which suffers some insult or disturbance, but whose integrity is held to have been maintained, or even enhanced, by its resistive or adaptive response. A conjecturally “resilient” entity is thus one which would presumably evince resilience if faced with an unrealised aversive event. However, such abstractions ignore how definitional claims do rhetorical work. On any given occasion, how “resilience” and its cognates are construed and what they connote are a function, at least in part, of the purposes of rhetorical agents and the protocols and objects of the disciplines or genres in which these agents put these terms to work. In disciplines operating within the same form of life or sphere of activity—disciplines sharing general conventions and broad objects of inquiry, such as the capacious ecological sciences or the contiguous fields of study within the ambit of applied psychology—resilience acts, at least at times, as a something of a “boundary object” (Star and Griesemer). Correlatively, across more diverse and distant fields of inquiry, resilience can work in more seemingly exclusive or contradictory ways (see Handmer and Dovers). Rhetorical aims and disciplinary objects similarly determine the originary tales we are inclined to tell. In the social sciences, the advent of resilience is often attributed to applied psychology, indebted, in turn, to epidemiology (see Seery, Holman and Cohen Silver). In environmental science, by contrast, resilience is typically taken to be a theory born in ecology (indebted to engineering and to the physical sciences, in particular to complex systems theory [see Janssen, Schoon, Ke and Börner]). Having no foundational claim to stake and, moreover, having different purposes and taking different objects, some more recent uptakes of resilience, in, for instance, securitisation studies, allow for its multidisciplinary roots (see Bourbeau; Kaufmann). But if resilience is many things to many people, a couple of commonalities in its range of translations should be drawn out. First, irrespective of its discipline or sphere of activity, talk of resilience typically entails construing an object of inquiry qua system, be that system an individual, a community of circumstance, a state, a socio-ecological unit or some differently delimited entity. This bounded system suffers some insult with no resulting loss of structural, relational, functional or other integrity. Second, resilience is usually marshalled to promote a politics. Resilience talk often consorts with discourses of meliorative action and of readily quantifiable practical effects. When the environmental sciences take the “Earth system” and the dynamics of global change as their objects of inquiry, a postulate of resilience is key to the elaboration and implementation of natural resource management policy. Proponents of socio-ecological resilience see the resilience hypothesis as enabling a demonstrably more enlightened stewardship of the biosphere (see Folke et al.; Holling; Walker and Salt). When applied psychology takes the anomalous situation of disadvantaged, at-risk individuals triumphing over trauma as its declared object of inquiry, a postulate of resilience is key to the positing and identification of personal and environmental resources or protective factors which would enable the overcoming of adversity. Proponents of psychosocial resilience see this concept as enabling the elaboration and implementation of interventions to foster individual and collective wellbeing (see Goldstein and Brooks; Ungar). Similarly, when policy think-tanks and government departments and agencies take the apprehension of particular threats to the social fabric as their object of inquiry, a postulate of resilience—or of a lack thereof—is critical to the elaboration and implementation of urban infrastructure, emergency planning and disaster management policies (see Drury et al.; Handmer and Dovers). However, despite its often positive connotations, resilience is well understood as a “normatively open” (Bourbeau 11) concept. This openness is apparent in some theories and practices of resilience. In limnological modelling, for example, eutrophication can result in a lake’s being in an undesirable, albeit resilient, turbid-water state (see Carpenter et al.; Walker and Meyers). But perhaps the negative connotations or indeed perverse effects of resilience are most apparent in some of its political uptakes. Certainly, governmental operationalisations of resilience are coming under increased scrutiny. Chief among the criticisms levelled at the “muddled politics” (Grove 147) of and around resilience is that its mobilisation works to constitute a particular neoliberal subjectivity (see Joseph; Neocleous). By enabling a conservative focus on individual responsibility, preparedness and adaptability, the topos of resilience contributes critically to the development of neoliberal governmentality (Joseph). In a practical sense, this deployment of resilience silences resistance: “building resilient subjects,” observe Evans and Reid (85), “involves the deliberate disabling of political habits. […] Resilient subjects are subjects that have accepted the imperative not to resist or secure themselves from the difficulties they are faced with but instead adapt to their enabling conditions.” It’s this prospect of practical acquiescence that sees resistance at times opposed to resilience (Neocleous). “Good intentions not withstanding,” notes Grove (146), “the effect of resilience initiatives is often to defend and strengthen the political economic status quo.” There’s much to commend in these analyses of how neoliberal uses of resilience constitute citizens as highly accommodating of capital and the state. But such critiques pertain to the governmental mobilisation of resilience in the contemporary “advanced liberal” settings of “various Anglo-Saxon countries” (Joseph 47). There are, of course, other instances—other events in other times and places—in which resilience indisputably sorts with resistance. Such an event is the caso Belsunce, in which a rhetorically resilient journalistic community pushed back, resisting some of the excesses of a corrupt neoliberal Argentine regime. I’ll turn briefly to this infamous case to suggest that a notion of “discursive resilience” might afford us some purchase when it comes to describing discursive events. To be clear: we’re considering resilience here not as an anticipatory politics, but rather as an analytic device to supplement the descriptive tools of Peircean semiosis and a rhetorical postulate of genre. As such, it’s more an instrument than an answer: a program, perhaps, for ongoing work. Although drawing on different disciplinary construals of the term, this use of resilience would be particularly indebted to the resilience thinking developed in ecology (see Carpenter el al.; Folke et al.; Holling; Walker et al.; Walker and Salt). Things would, of course, be lost in translation (see Adger; Gallopín): in taking a discursive event, rather than the dynamics of a socio-ecological system, as our object of inquiry, we’d retain some topological analogies while dispensing with, for example, Holling’s four-phase adaptive cycle (see Carpenter et al.; Folke; Gunderson; Gunderson and Holling; Walker et al.). For our purposes, it’s unlikely that descriptions of ecosystem succession need to be carried across. However, the general postulates of ecological resilience thinking—that a system is a complex series of dynamic relations and functions located at any given time within a basin of attraction (or stability domain or system regime) delimited by thresholds; that it is subject to multiple attractors and follows trajectories describable over varying scales of time and space; that these trajectories are inflected by exogenous and endogenous perturbations to which the system is subject; that the system either proves itself resilient to these perturbations in its adaptive or resistive response, or transforms, flipping from one domain (or basin) to another may well prove useful to some descriptive projects in the humanities. Resilience is fundamentally a question of uptake or response. Hence, when examining resilience in socio-ecological systems, Gallopín notes that it’s useful to consider “not only the resilience of the system (maintenance within a basin) but also coping with impacts produced and taking advantage of opportunities” (300). Argentine society in the early-to-mid 2000s was one such socio-political system, and the caso Belsunce was both one such impact and one such opportunity. Well-connected in the world of finance, 57-year-old former stockbroker Carlos Alberto Carrascosa lived with his 50-year-old sociologist turned charity worker wife, María Marta García Belsunce, close to their relatives in the exclusive gated community of Carmel Country Club, Pilar, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina. At 7:07 pm on Sunday 27 October 2002, Carrascosa called ambulance emergencies, claiming that his wife had slipped and knocked her head while drawing a bath alone that rainy Sunday afternoon. At the time of his call, it transpired, Carrascosa was at home in the presence of intimates. Blood was pooled on the bathroom floor and smeared and spattered on its walls and adjoining areas. María Marta lay lifeless, brain matter oozing from several holes in her left parietal and temporal lobes. This was the moment when Carrascosa, calm and coherent, called emergency services, but didn’t advert the police. Someone, he told the operator, had slipped in the bath and bumped her head. Carrascosa described María Marta as breathing, with a faint pulse, but somehow failed to mention the holes in her head. “A knock with a tap,” a police source told journalist Horacio Cecchi, “really doesn’t compare with the five shots to the head, the spillage of brain matter and the loss of about half a litre of blood suffered by the victim” (Cecchi and Kollmann). Rather than a bathroom tap, María Marta’s head had met with five bullets discharged from a .32-calibre revolver. In effect, reported Cecchi, María Marta had died twice. “While perhaps a common conceit in fiction,” notes Cecchi, “in reality, dying twice is, by definition, impossible. María Marta’s two obscure endings seem to unsettle this certainty.” Her cadaver was eventually subjected to an autopsy, and what had been a tale of clumsiness and happenstance was rewritten, reinscribed under the Argentine Penal Code. The autopsy was conducted 36 days after the burial of María Marta; nine days later, she was mentioned for the second time in the mainstream Argentine press. Her reappearance, however, was marked by a shift in rubrics: from a short death notice in La Nación, María Marta was translated to the crime section of Argentina’s dailies. Until his wife’s mediatic reapparition, Carroscosa and other relatives had persisted with their “accident” hypothesis. Indeed, they’d taken a range of measures to preclude the sorts of uptakes that might ordinarily be expected to flow, under functioning liberal democratic regimes, from the discovery of a corpse with five projectiles lodged in its head. Subsequently recited as part of Carrascosa’s indictment, these measures were extensively reiterated in media coverage of the case. One of the more notorious actions involved the disposal of the sixth bullet, which was found lying under María Marta. In the course of moving the body of his half-sister, John Hurtig retrieved a small metallic object. This discovery was discussed by a number of family members, including Carrascosa, who had received ballistics training during his four years of naval instruction at the Escuela Nacional de Náutica de la Armada. They determined that the object was a lug or connector rod (“pituto”) used in library shelving: nothing, in any case, to indicate a homicide. With this determination made, the “pituto” was duly wrapped in lavatory paper and flushed down the toilet. This episode occasioned a range of outraged articles in Argentine dailies examining the topoi of privilege, power, corruption and impunity. “Distinguished persons,” notes Viau pointedly, “are so disposed […] that in the midst of all that chaos, they can locate a small, hard, steely object, wrap it in lavatory paper and flush it down the toilet, for that must be how they usually dispose of […] all that rubbish that no longer fits under the carpet.” Most often, though, critical comment was conducted by translating the reporting of the case to the genres of crime fiction. In an article entitled Someone Call Agatha Christie, Quick!, H.A.T. writes that “[s]omething smells rotten in the Carmel Country; a whole pile of rubbish seems to have been swept under its plush carpets.” An exemplary intervention in this vein was the work of journalist and novelist Vicente Battista, for whom the case (María Marta) “synthesizes the best of both traditions of crime fiction: the murder mystery and the hard-boiled novels.” “The crime,” Battista (¿Hubo Otra Mujer?) has Rodolfo observe in the first of his speculative dialogues on the case, “seems to be lifted from an Agatha Christie novel, but the criminal turns out to be a copy of the savage killers that Jim Thompson usually depicts.” Later, in an interview in which he correctly predicted the verdict, Battista expanded on these remarks: This familiar plot brings together the English murder mystery and the American hard-boiled novels. The murder mystery because it has all the elements: the crime takes place in a sealed room. In this instance, sealed not only because it occurred in a house, but also in a country, a sealed place of privilege. The victim was a society lady. Burglary is not the motive. In classic murder mystery novels, it was a bit unseemly that one should kill in order to rob. One killed either for a juicy sum of money, or for revenge, or out of passion. In those novels there were neither corrupt judges nor fugitive lawyers. Once Sherlock Holmes […] or Hercule Poirot […] said ‘this is the murderer’, that was that. That’s to say, once fingered in the climactic living room scene, with everyone gathered around the hearth, the perpetrator wouldn’t resist at all. And everyone would be happy because the judges were thought to be upright persons, at least in fiction. […] The violence of the crime of María Marta is part of the hard-boiled novel, and the sealed location in which it takes place, part of the murder mystery (Alarcón). I’ve argued elsewhere (Munro, Belsunce) that the translation of the case to the genres of crime fiction and their metaanalysis was a means by which a victimised Argentine public, represented by a disempowered and marginalised fourth estate, sought some rhetorical recompense. The postulate of resilience, however, might help further to describe and contextualise this notorious discursive event. A disaffected Argentine press finds itself in a stability domain with multiple attractors: on the one hand, an acquiescence to ever-increasing politico-juridical corruption, malfeasance and elitist impunity; on the other, an attractor of increasing contestation, democratisation, accountability and transparency. A discursive event like the caso Belsunce further perturbs Argentine society, threatening to displace it from its democratising trajectory. Unable to enforce due process, Argentina’s fourth estate adapts, doing what, in the circumstances, amounts to the next best thing: it denounces the proceedings by translating the case to the genres of crime fiction. In so doing, it engages a venerable reception history in which the co-constitution of true crime fiction and investigative journalism is exemplified by the figure of Rodolfo Walsh, whose denunciatory works mark a “politicisation of crime” (see Amar Sánchez Juegos; El sueño). Put otherwise, a section of Argentina’s fourth estate bounced back: by making poetics do rhetorical work, it resisted the pull towards what ecology calls an undesirable basin of attraction. Through a show of discursive resilience, these journalists worked to keep Argentine society on a democratising track. 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IntroductionIt has been nearly half a century since the appearance of Susan Sontag’s landmark essay “The Imagination of Disaster.” The critic wrote of the public fascination with science fiction disaster films, claiming that, on the one hand “from a psychological point of view, the imagination of disaster does not greatly differ from one period in history to another [but, on the other hand] from a political and moral point of view, it does” (224). Even if Sontag is right about aspects of the imagination of disaster not changing, the types, frequency, and magnitude of disasters and their representation in media and popular culture suggest that dynamic conditions prevail on both counts. Disaster has become a significantly urban phenomenon, and highly publicised “worst case” scenarios such as Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti earthquake highlight multiple demographic, cultural, and environmental contexts for visualising cataclysm. The 1950s and 60s science fiction films that Sontag wrote about were filled with marauding aliens and freaks of disabused science. Since then, their visual and dramatic effects have been much enlarged by all kinds of disaster scenarios. Partly imagined, these scenarios have real-life counterparts with threats from terrorism and the war on terror, pan-epidemics, and global climate change. Sontag’s essay—like most, if not all of the films she mentions—overlooked the aftermath; that is, the rebuilding, following extra-terrestrial invasion. It ignored what was likely to happen when the monsters were gone. In contrast, the psychological as well as the practical, social, and economic aspects of reconstruction are integral to disaster discourse today. Writing about how architecture might creatively contribute to post-conflict (including war) and disaster recovery, for instance, Boano elaborates the psychological background for rebuilding, where the material destruction of dwellings and cities “carries a powerful symbolic erosion of security, social wellbeing and place attachment” (38); these are depicted as attributes of selfhood and identity that must be restored. Similarly, Hutchison and Bleiker (385) adopt a view evident in disaster studies, that disaster-struck communities experience “trauma” and require inspired responses that facilitate “healing and reconciliation” as well as material aid such as food, housing, and renewed infrastructure. This paper revisits Sontag’s “The Imagination of Disaster,” fifty years on in view of the changing face of disasters and their representation in film media, including more recent films. The paper then considers disaster recovery and outlines the difficult path that “creative industries” like architecture and urban planning must tread when promising a vision of rebuilding that provides for such intangible outcomes as “healing and reconciliation.” We find that hopes for the seemingly positive psychologically- and socially-recuperative outcomes accompanying the prospect of rebuilding risk a variety of generalisation akin to wish-fulfilment that Sontag finds in disaster films. The Psychology of Science Fiction and Disaster FilmsIn “The Imagination of Disaster,” written at or close to the height of the Cold War, Sontag ruminates on what America’s interest in, if not preoccupation with, science fiction films tell us about ourselves. Their popularity cannot be explained in terms of their entertainment value alone; or if it can, then why audiences found (and still find) such films entertaining is something that itself needs explanation.Depicted in media like photography and film, utopian and dystopian thought have at least one thing in common. Their visions of either perfected or socially alienated worlds are commonly prompted by criticism of the social/political status quo and point to its reform. For Sontag, science fiction films portrayed both people’s worst nightmares concerning disaster and catastrophe (e.g. the end of the world; chaos; enslavement; mutation), as well as their facile victories over the kinds of moral, political, and social dissolution the films imaginatively depicted. Sontag does not explicitly attribute such “happy endings” to wish-fulfilling phantasy and ego-protection. (“Phantasy” is to be distinguished from fantasy. It is a psychoanalytic term for states of mind, often symbolic in form, resulting from infantile wish-fulfilment, desires and instincts.) She does, however, describe the kinds of fears, existential concerns (like annihilation), and crises of meaning they are designed (purpose built) to allay. The fears are a product of the time—the down and dark side of technology (e.g. depersonalisation; ambivalence towards science, scientists, and technology) and changes wrought in our working and personal lives by urbanisation. In short, then as now, science fictions films were both expressions of deep and genuine worries and of the pressing need to inventively set them to rest.When Sontag claims that “the imagination of disaster does not greatly differ” (224) from one period to another, this is because, psychologically speaking, neither the precipitating concerns and fears (death, loss of love, meaninglessness, etc.), nor the ways in which people’s minds endeavour to assuage them, substantively differ. What is different is the way they are depicted. This is unsurprisingly a function of the political, social, and moral situations and milieus that provide the context in which the imagination of disaster unfolds. In contemporary society, the extent to which the media informs and constructs the context in which the imagination operates is unprecedented.Sontag claims that there is little if any criticism of the real social and political conditions that bring about the fears the films depict (223). Instead, fantasy operates so as to displace and project the actual causes away from their all too human origins into outer space and onto aliens. In a sense, this is the core and raison d’etre for such films. By their very nature, science fiction films of the kind Sontag is discussing cannot concern themselves with genuine social or political criticism (even though the films are necessarily expressive of such criticism). Any serious questioning of the moral and political status quo—conditions that are responsible for the disasters befalling people—would hamper the operation of fantasy and its production of temporarily satisfying “solutions” to whatever catastrophe is being depicted.Sontag goes on to discuss various strategies science fiction employs to deal with such fears. For example, through positing a bifurcation between good and evil, and grossly oversimplifying the moral complexity of situations, it allows one to “give outlet to cruel or at least amoral feelings” (215) and to exercise feelings of superiority—moral and otherwise. Ambiguous feelings towards science and technology are repressed. Quick and psychologically satisfying fixes are sought for these by means of phantasy and the imaginative construction of invulnerable heroes. Much of what Sontag says can straightforwardly be applied to catastrophe in general. “Alongside the hopeful fantasy of moral simplification and international unity embodied in the science fiction films lurk the deepest anxieties about contemporary existence” (220). Sontag writes:In the films it is by means of images and sounds […] that one can participate in the fantasy of living through one’s own death and more, the death of cities, the destruction of humanity itself. Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects in art. In science fiction films disaster is rarely viewed intensively; it is always extensive. It is a matter of quality and ingenuity […] the science fiction film […] is concerned with the aesthetics of disaster […] and it is in the imagery of destruction that the core of a good science fiction film lies. (212–13)In science fiction films, disaster, though widespread, is viewed intensively as well as extensively. The disturbances constitutive of the disaster are moral and emotional as well as material. People are left without the mental or physical abilities they need to cope. Government is absent or useless. We find ourselves in what amounts to what Naomi Zack (“Philosophy and Disaster”; Ethics for Disaster) describes as a Hobbesian second state of nature—where government is inoperative and chaos (moral, social, political, personal) reigns. Science fiction’s way out is to imaginatively construct scenarios emotionally satisfying enough to temporarily assuage the distress (anomie or chaos) experienced in the film.There is, however, a tremendous difference in the way in which people who face catastrophic occurrences in their lives, as opposed to science fiction, address the problems. For one thing, they must be far closer to complex and quickly changing realities and uncertain truths than are the phantastic, temporarily gratifying, and morally unproblematic resolutions to the catastrophic scenarios that science fiction envisions. Genuine catastrophe, for example war, undermines and dismantles the structures—material structures to be sure but also those of justice, human kindness, and affectivity—that give us the wherewithal to function and that are shown to be inimical to catastrophe as such. Disaster dispenses with civilization while catastrophe displaces it.Special Effects and Changing StorylinesScience fiction and disaster film genres have been shaped by developments in visual simulation technologies providing opportunities for imaginatively mixing fact and fiction. Developments in filmmaking include computer or digital techniques for reproducing on the screen what can otherwise only be imagined as causal sequences of events and spectacles accompanying the wholesale destruction of buildings and cities—even entire planets. Indeed films are routinely promoted on the basis of how cinematographers and technicians have advanced the state of the art. The revival of 3-D movies with films such as Avatar (2009) and Prometheus (2012) is one of a number of developments augmenting the panoramas of 1950s classics featuring “melting tanks, flying bodies, crashing walls, awesome craters and fissures in the earth, plummeting spacecraft [and] colourful deadly rays” (Sontag 213). An emphasis on the scale of destruction and the wholesale obliteration of recognisable sites emblematic of “the city” (mega-structures like the industrial plant in Aliens (1986) and vast space ships like the “Death Star” in two Star Wars sequels) connect older films with new ones and impress the viewer with ever more extraordinary spectacle.Films that have been remade make for useful comparison. On the whole, these reinforce the continuation and predictability of some storylines (for instance, threats of extra-terrestrial invasion), but also the attenuation or disappearance of other narrative elements such as the monsters and anxieties released by mid-twentieth century atomic tests (Broderick). Remakes also highlight emerging themes requiring novel or updated critical frameworks. For example, environmental anxieties, largely absent in 1950s science fiction films (except for narratives involving colliding worlds or alien contacts) have appeared en masse in recent years, providing an updated view on the ethical issues posed by the fall of cities and communities (Taylor, “Urban”).In The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and its remakes (1956, 1978, 1993), for example, the organic and vegetal nature of the aliens draws the viewer’s attention to an environment formed by combative species, allowing for threats of infestation, growth and decay of the self and individuality—a longstanding theme. In the most recent version, The Invasion (2007), special effects and directorial spirit render the orifice-seeking tendrils of the pod creatures threateningly vigorous and disturbing (Lim). More sanctimonious than physically invasive, the aliens in the 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still are fed up with humankind’s fixation with atomic self-destruction, and threaten global obliteration on the earth (Cox). In the 2008 remake, the suave alien ambassador, Keanu Reeves, targets the environmental negligence of humanity.Science, including science as fiction, enters into disaster narratives in a variety of ways. Some are less obvious but provocative nonetheless; for example, movies dramatising the arrival of aliens such as War of the Worlds (1953 and 2005) or Alien (1979). These more subtle approaches can be personally confronting even without the mutation of victims into vegetables or zombies. Special effects technologies have made it possible to illustrate the course of catastrophic floods and earthquakes in considerable scientific and visual detail and to represent the interaction of natural disasters, the built environment, and people, from the scale of buildings, homes, and domestic lives to entire cities and urban populations.For instance, the blockbuster film The Day After Tomorrow (2004) runs 118 minutes, but has an uncertain fictional time frame of either a few weeks or 72 hours (if the film’s title is to taken literally). The movie shows the world as we know it being mostly destroyed. Tokyo is shattered by hailstones and Los Angeles is twisted by cyclones the likes of which Dorothy would never have seen. New York disappears beneath a mountainous tsunami. All of these events result from global climate change, though whether this is due to human (in) action or other causes is uncertain. Like their predecessors, the new wave of disaster movies like The Day After Tomorrow makes for questionable “art” (Annan). Nevertheless, their reception opens a window onto broader political and moral contexts for present anxieties. Some critics have condemned The Day After Tomorrow for its scientific inaccuracies—questioning the scale or pace of climate change. Others acknowledge errors while commending efforts to raise environmental awareness (Monbiot). Coincident with the film and criticisms in both the scientific and political arena is a new class of environmental heretic—the climate change denier. This is a shadowy character commonly associated with the presidency of George W. Bush and the oil lobby that uses minor inconsistencies of science to claim that climate change does not exist. One thing underlying both twisting facts for the purposes of making science fiction films and ignoring evidence of climate change is an infantile orientation towards the unknown. In this regard, recent films do what science fiction disaster films have always done. While freely mixing truths and half-truths for the purpose of heightened dramatic effect, they fulfil psychological tasks such as orchestrating nightmare scenarios and all too easy victories on the screen. Uncertainty regarding the precise cause, scale, or duration of cataclysmic natural phenomena is mirrored by suspension of disbelief in the viability of some human responses to portrayals of urban disaster. Science fiction, in other words, invites us to accept as possible the flight of Americans and their values to Mexico (The Day After Tomorrow), the voyage into earth’s molten core (The Core 2003), or the disposal of lava in LA’s drainage system (Volcano 1997). Reinforcing Sontag’s point, here too there is a lack of criticism of the real social and political conditions that bring about the fears depicted in the films (223). Moreover, much like news coverage, images in recent natural disaster films (like their predecessors) typically finish at the point where survivors are obliged to pick up the pieces and start all over again—the latter is not regarded as newsworthy. Allowing for developments in science fiction films and the disaster genre, Sontag’s observation remains accurate. The films are primarily concerned “with the aesthetics of destruction, with the peculiar beauties to be found in wreaking havoc, in making a mess” (213) rather than rebuilding. The Imagination of Disaster RecoverySontag’s essay contributes to an important critical perspective on science fiction film. Variations on her “psychological point of view” have been explored. (The two discourses—psychology and cinema—have parallel and in some cases intertwined histories). Moreover, in the intervening years, psychological or psychoanalytical terms and narratives have themselves become even more a part of popular culture. They feature in recent disaster films and disaster recovery discourse in the “real” world.Today, with greater frequency than in the 1950s and 60s films arguably, representations of alien invasion or catastrophic global warming serve to background conflict resolutions of a more quotidian and personal nature. Hence, viewers are led to suspect that Tom Cruise will be more likely to survive the rapacious monsters in the latest The War of the Worlds if he can become less narcissistic and a better father. Similarly, Dennis Quaid’s character will be much better prepared to serve a newly glaciated America for having rescued his son (and marriage) from the watery deep-freezer that New York City becomes in The Day After Tomorrow. In these films the domestic and familial comprise a domain of inter-personal and communal relations from which victims and heroes appear. Currents of thought from the broad literature of disaster studies and Western media also call upon this domain. The imagination of disaster recovery has come to partly resemble a set of problems organised around the needs of traumatised communities. These serve as an object of urban governance, planning, and design conceived in different ways, but largely envisioned as an organic unity that connects urban populations, their pasts, and settings in a meaningful, psychologically significant manner (Furedi; Hutchison and Bleiker; Boano). Terms like “place” or concepts like Boano’s “place-attachment" (38) feature in this discourse to describe this unity and its subjective dimensions. Consider one example. In August 2006, one year after Katrina, the highly respected Journal of Architectural Education dedicated a special issue to New Orleans and its reconstruction. Opening comments by editorialist Barbara Allen include claims presupposing enduring links between the New Orleans community conceived as an organic whole, its architectural heritage imagined as a mnemonic vehicle, and the city’s unique setting. Though largely unsupported (and arguably unsupportable) the following proposition would find agreement across a number of disaster studies and resonates in commonplace reasoning:The culture of New Orleans is unique. It is a mix of ancient heritage with layers and adaptations added by successive generations, resulting in a singularly beautiful cultural mosaic of elements. Hurricane Katrina destroyed buildings—though not in the city’s historic core—and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, but it cannot wipe out the memories and spirit of the citizens. (4) What is intriguing about the claim is an underlying intellectual project that subsumes psychological and sociological domains of reasoning within a distinctive experience of community, place, and memory. In other words, the common belief that memory is an intrinsic part of the human condition of shock and loss gives form to a theory of how urban communities experience disaster and how they might re-build—and justify rebuilding—themselves. This is problematic and invites anachronistic thinking. While communities are believed to be formed partly by memories of a place, “memory” is neither a collective faculty nor is it geographically bounded. Whose memories are included and which ones are not? Are these truly memories of one place or do they also draw on other real or imagined places? Moreover—and this is where additional circumspection is inspired by our reading of Sontag’s essay—does Allen’s editorial contribute to an aestheticised image of place, rather than criticism of the social and political conditions required for reconstruction to proceed with justice, compassionately and affectively? Allowing for civil liberties to enter the picture, Allen adds “it is necessary to enable every citizen to come back to this exceptional city if they so desire” (4). However, given that memories of places and desires for their recovery are not univocal, and often contain competing visions of what was and should be, it is not surprising they should result in competing expectations for reconstruction efforts. This has clearly proven the case for New Orleans (Vederber; Taylor, “Typologies”)ConclusionThe comparison of films invites an extension of Sontag’s analysis of the imagination of disaster to include the psychology, politics, and morality of rebuilding. Can a “psychological point of view” help us to understand not only the motives behind capturing so many scenes of destruction on screen and television, but also something of the creative impulses driving reconstruction? This invites a second question. How do some impulses, particularly those caricatured as the essence of an “enterprise culture” (Heap and Ross) associated with America’s “can-do” or others valorised as positive outcomes of catastrophe in The Upside of Down (Homer-Dixon), highlight or possibly obscure criticism of the conditions which made cities like New Orleans vulnerable in the first place? The broad outline of an answer to the second question begins to appear only when consideration of the ethics of disaster and rebuilding are taken on board. If “the upside” of “the down” wrought by Hurricane Katrina, for example, is rebuilding of any kind, at any price, and for any person, then the equation works (i.e., there is a silver lining for every cloud). If, however, the range of positives is broadened to include issues of social justice, then the figures require more complex arithmetic.ReferencesAllen, Barbara. “New Orleans and Katrina: One Year Later.” Journal of Architectural Education 60.1 (2006): 4.Annan, David. Catastrophe: The End of the Cinema? London: Lorrimer, 1975.Boano, Camillo. “‘Violent Space’: Production and Reproduction of Security and Vulnerabilities.” The Journal of Architecture 16 (2011): 37–55.Broderick, Mick, ed. Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film. London: Kegan Paul, 1996.Cox, David. “Get This, Aliens: We Just Don’t Care!” The Guardian 15 Dec. 2008 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2008/dec/15/the-day-the-earth-stood-still›. Furedi, Frank. “The Changing Meaning of Disaster.” Area 39.4 (2007): 482–89.Heap, Shaun H., and Angus Ross, eds. Understanding the Enterprise Culture: Themes in the Work of Mary Douglas. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992. Homer-Dixon, Thomas. The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006.Hutchison, Emma, and Roland Bleiker. “Emotional Reconciliation: Reconstituting Identity and Community after Trauma.” European Journal of Social Theory 11 (2008): 385–403.Lim, Dennis. “Same Old Aliens, But New Neuroses.” New York Times 12 Aug. 2007: A17.Monbiot, George. “A Hard Rain's A-gonna Fall.” The Guardian 14 May 2004.Sontag, Susan. “The Imagination of Disaster” (1965). Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Dell, 1979. 209–25.Taylor, William M. “Typologies of Katrina: Mnemotechnics in Post-Disaster New Orleans.” Interstices 13 (2012): 71–84.———. “Urban Disasters: Visualising the Fall of Cities and the Forming of Human Values.” Journal of Architecture 11.5 (2006): 603–12.Verderber, Stephen. “Five Years After – Three New Orleans Neighborhoods.” Journal of Architectural Education 64.1 (2010): 107–20.Zack, Naomi. Ethics for Disaster. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009.———. “Philosophy and Disaster.” Homeland Security Affairs 2, article 5 (April 2006): ‹http://www.hsaj.org/?article=2.1.5›.FilmographyAlien. Dir. Ridley Scott. Brandywine Productions, 1979.Aliens. Dir. James Cameron. Brandywine Productions, 1986.Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. Lightstorm Entertainment et al., 2009.The Core. Dir. Jon Amiel. Paramount Pictures, 2003.The Day after Tomorrow. Dir. Roland Emmerich. 20th Century Fox, 2004.The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Don Siegel. Allied Artists, 1956; also 1978 and 1993.The Invasion. Dirs. Oliver Hirschbiegel and Jame McTeigue. Village Roadshow et al, 2007.Prometheus. Dir. Ridley Scott. Scott Free and Brandywine Productions, 2012Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Dir. George Lucas. Lucasfilm, 1977.Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Dir. George Lucas. Lucasfilm, 1983.Volcano. Dir. Mick Jackson. 20th Century Fox, 1997.War of the Worlds. Dir. George Pal. Paramount, 1953; also Steven Spielberg. Paramount, 2005.Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to Oenone Rooksby and Joely-Kym Sobott for their assistance and advice when preparing this article. It was also made possible in part by a grant from the Australian Research Council.

Unconventional energy sources have become increasingly important to the global energy mix. These include coal seam gas, shale gas and shale oil. The unconventional gas industry was pioneered in the United States and embraced following the first oil shock in 1973 (Rogers). As has been the case with many global resources (Hiscock), many of the same companies that worked in the USA carried their experience in this industry to early Australian explorations. Recently the USA has secured significant energy security with the development of unconventional energy deposits such as the Marcellus shale gas and the Bakken shale oil (Dobb; McGraw). But this has not come without environmental impact, including contamination to underground water supply (Osborn, Vengosh, Warner, Jackson) and potential greenhouse gas contributions (Howarth, Santoro, Ingraffea; McKenna). The environmental impact of unconventional gas extraction has raised serious public concern about the introduction and growth of the industry in Australia. In coal rich Australia coal seam gas is currently the major source of unconventional gas. Large gas deposits have been found in prime agricultural land along eastern Australia, such as the Liverpool Plains in New South Wales and the Darling Downs in Queensland. Competing land-uses and a series of environmental incidents from the coal seam gas industry have warranted major protest from a coalition of environmentalists and farmers (Berry; McLeish). Conflict between energy companies wanting development and environmentalists warning precaution is an easy script to cast for frontline media coverage. But historical perspectives are often missing in these contemporary debates. While coal mining and natural gas have often received “boosting” historical coverage (Diamond; Wilkinson), and although historical themes of “development” and “rushes” remain predominant when observing the span of the industry (AGA; Blainey), the history of unconventional gas, particularly the history of its environmental impact, has been little studied. Few people are aware, for example, that the first shale gas exploratory well was completed in late 2010 in the Cooper Basin in Central Australia (Molan) and is considered as a “new” frontier in Australian unconventional gas. Moreover many people are unaware that the first coal seam gas wells were completed in 1976 in Queensland. The first four wells offer an important moment for reflection in light of the industry’s recent move into Central Australia. By locating and analysing the first four coal seam gas wells, this essay identifies the roots of the unconventional gas industry in Australia and explores the early environmental impact of these wells. By analysing exploration reports that have been placed online by the Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines through the lens of environmental history, the dominant developmental narrative of this industry can also be scrutinised. These narratives often place more significance on economic and national benefits while displacing the environmental and social impacts of the industry (Connor, Higginbotham, Freeman, Albrecht; Duus; McEachern; Trigger). This essay therefore seeks to bring an environmental insight into early unconventional gas mining in Australia. As the author, I am concerned that nearly four decades on and it seems that no one has heeded the warning gleaned from these early wells and early exploration reports, as gas exploration in Australia continues under little scrutiny. Arrival The first four unconventional gas wells in Australia appear at the beginning of the industry world-wide (Schraufnagel, McBane, and Kuuskraa; McClanahan). The wells were explored by Houston Oils and Minerals—a company that entered the Australian mining scene by sharing a mining prospect with International Australian Energy Company (Wiltshire). The International Australian Energy Company was owned by Black Giant Oil Company in the US, which in turn was owned by International Royalty and Oil Company also based in the US. The Texan oilman Robert Kanton held a sixteen percent share in the latter. Kanton had an idea that the Mimosa Syncline in the south-eastern Bowen Basin was a gas trap waiting to be exploited. To test the theory he needed capital. Kanton presented the idea to Houston Oil and Minerals which had the financial backing to take the risk. Shotover No. 1 was drilled by Houston Oil and Minerals thirty miles south-east of the coal mining town of Blackwater. By late August 1975 it was drilled to 2,717 metres, discovered to have little gas, spudded, and, after a spend of $610,000, abandoned. The data from the Shotover well showed that the porosity of the rocks in the area was not a trap, and the Mimosa Syncline was therefore downgraded as a possible hydrocarbon location. There was, however, a small amount of gas found in the coal seams (Benbow 16). The well had passed through the huge coal seams of both the Bowen and Surat basins—important basins for the future of both the coal and gas industries. Mining Concepts In 1975, while Houston Oil and Minerals was drilling the Shotover well, US Steel and the US Bureau of Mines used hydraulic fracture, a technique already used in the petroleum industry, to drill vertical surface wells to drain gas from a coal seam (Methane Drainage Taskforce 102). They were able to remove gas from the coal seam before it was mined and sold enough to make a profit. With the well data from the Shotover well in Australia compiled, Houston returned to the US to research the possibility of harvesting methane in Australia. As the company saw it, methane drainage was “a novel exploitation concept” and the methane in the Bowen Basin was an “enormous hydrocarbon resource” (Wiltshire 7). The Shotover well passed through a section of the German Creek Coal measures and this became their next target. In September 1976 the Shotover well was re-opened and plugged at 1499 meters to become Australia’s first exploratory unconventional gas well. By the end of the month the rig was released and gas production tested. At one point an employee on the drilling operation observed a gas flame “the size of a 44 gal drum” (HOMA, “Shotover # 1” 9). But apart from the brief show, no gas flowed. And yet, Houston Oil and Minerals was not deterred, as they had already taken out other leases for further prospecting (Wiltshire 4). Only a week after the Shotover well had failed, Houston moved the methane search south-east to an area five miles north of the Moura township. Houston Oil and Minerals had researched the coal exploration seismic surveys of the area that were conducted in 1969, 1972, and 1973 to choose the location. Over the next two months in late 1976, two new wells—Kinma No.1 and Carra No.1—were drilled within a mile from each other and completed as gas wells. Houston Oil and Minerals also purchased the old oil exploration well Moura No. 1 from the Queensland Government and completed it as a suspended gas well. The company must have mined the Department of Mines archive to find Moura No.1, as the previous exploration report from 1969 noted methane given off from the coal seams (Sell). By December 1976 Houston Oil and Minerals had three gas wells in the vicinity of each other and by early 1977 testing had occurred. The results were disappointing with minimal gas flow at Kinma and Carra, but Moura showed a little more promise. Here, the drillers were able to convert their Fairbanks-Morse engine driving the pump from an engine run on LPG to one run on methane produced from the well (Porter, “Moura # 1”). Drink This? Although there was not much gas to find in the test production phase, there was a lot of water. The exploration reports produced by the company are incomplete (indeed no report was available for the Shotover well), but the information available shows that a large amount of water was extracted before gas started to flow (Porter, “Carra # 1”; Porter, “Moura # 1”; Porter, “Kinma # 1”). As Porter’s reports outline, prior to gas flowing, the water produced at Carra, Kinma and Moura totalled 37,600 litres, 11,900 and 2,900 respectively. It should be noted that the method used to test the amount of water was not continuous and these amounts were not the full amount of water produced; also, upon gas coming to the surface some of the wells continued to produce water. In short, before any gas flowed at the first unconventional gas wells in Australia at least 50,000 litres of water were taken from underground. Results show that the water was not ready to drink (Mathers, “Moura # 1”; Mathers, “Appendix 1”; HOMA, “Miscellaneous Pages” 21-24). The water had total dissolved solids (minerals) well over the average set by the authorities (WHO; Apps Laboratories; NHMRC; QDAFF). The well at Kinma recorded the highest levels, almost two and a half times the unacceptable standard. On average the water from the Moura well was of reasonable standard, possibly because some water was extracted from the well when it was originally sunk in 1969; but the water from Kinma and Carra was very poor quality, not good enough for crops, stock or to be let run into creeks. The biggest issue was the sodium concentration; all wells had very high salt levels. Kinma and Carra were four and two times the maximum standard respectively. In short, there was a substantial amount of poor quality water produced from drilling and testing the three wells. Fracking Australia Hydraulic fracturing is an artificial process that can encourage more gas to flow to the surface (McGraw; Fischetti; Senate). Prior to the testing phase at the Moura field, well data was sent to the Chemical Research and Development Department at Halliburton in Oklahoma, to examine the ability to fracture the coal and shale in the Australian wells. Halliburton was the founding father of hydraulic fracture. In Oklahoma on 17 March 1949, operating under an exclusive license from Standard Oil, this company conducted the first ever hydraulic fracture of an oil well (Montgomery and Smith). To come up with a program of hydraulic fracturing for the Australian field, Halliburton went back to the laboratory. They bonded together small slabs of coal and shale similar to Australian samples, drilled one-inch holes into the sample, then pressurised the holes and completed a “hydro-frac” in miniature. “These samples were difficult to prepare,” they wrote in their report to Houston Oil and Minerals (HOMA, “Miscellaneous Pages” 10). Their program for fracturing was informed by a field of science that had been evolving since the first hydraulic fracture but had rapidly progressed since the first oil shock. Halliburton’s laboratory test had confirmed that the model of Perkins and Kern developed for widths of hydraulic fracture—in an article that defined the field—should also apply to Australian coals (Perkins and Kern). By late January 1977 Halliburton had issued Houston Oil and Minerals with a program of hydraulic fracture to use on the central Queensland wells. On the final page of their report they warned: “There are many unknowns in a vertical fracture design procedure” (HOMA, “Miscellaneous Pages” 17). In July 1977, Moura No. 1 became the first coal seam gas well hydraulically fractured in Australia. The exploration report states: “During July 1977 the well was killed with 1% KCL solution and the tubing and packer were pulled from the well … and pumping commenced” (Porter 2-3). The use of the word “kill” is interesting—potassium chloride (KCl) is the third and final drug administered in the lethal injection of humans on death row in the USA. Potassium chloride was used to minimise the effect on parts of the coal seam that were water-sensitive and was the recommended solution prior to adding other chemicals (Montgomery and Smith 28); but a word such as “kill” also implies that the well and the larger environment were alive before fracking commenced (Giblett; Trigger). Pumping recommenced after the fracturing fluid was unloaded. Initially gas supply was very good. It increased from an average estimate of 7,000 cubic feet per day to 30,000, but this only lasted two days before coal and sand started flowing back up to the surface. In effect, the cleats were propped open but the coal did not close and hold onto them which meant coal particles and sand flowed back up the pipe with diminishing amounts of gas (Walters 12). Although there were some interesting results, the program was considered a failure. In April 1978, Houston Oil and Minerals finally abandoned the methane concept. Following the failure, they reflected on the possibilities for a coal seam gas industry given the gas prices in Queensland: “Methane drainage wells appear to offer no economic potential” (Wooldridge 2). At the wells they let the tubing drop into the hole, put a fifteen foot cement plug at the top of the hole, covered it with a steel plate and by their own description restored the area to its “original state” (Wiltshire 8). Houston Oil and Minerals now turned to “conventional targets” which included coal exploration (Wiltshire 7). A Thousand Memories The first four wells show some of the critical environmental issues that were present from the outset of the industry in Australia. The process of hydraulic fracture was not just a failure, but conducted on a science that had never been tested in Australia, was ponderous at best, and by Halliburton’s own admission had “many unknowns”. There was also the role of large multinationals providing “experience” (Briody; Hiscock) and conducting these tests while having limited knowledge of the Australian landscape. Before any gas came to the surface, a large amount of water was produced that was loaded with a mixture of salt and other heavy minerals. The source of water for both the mud drilling of Carra and Kinma, as well as the hydraulic fracture job on Moura, was extracted from Kianga Creek three miles from the site (HOMA, “Carra # 1” 5; HOMA, “Kinma # 1” 5; Porter, “Moura # 1”). No location was listed for the disposal of the water from the wells, including the hydraulic fracture liquid. Considering the poor quality of water, if the water was disposed on site or let drain into a creek, this would have had significant environmental impact. Nobody has yet answered the question of where all this water went. The environmental issues of water extraction, saline water and hydraulic fracture were present at the first four wells. At the first four wells environmental concern was not a priority. The complexity of inter-company relations, as witnessed at the Shotover well, shows there was little time. The re-use of old wells, such as the Moura well, also shows that economic priorities were more important. Even if environmental information was considered important at the time, no one would have had access to it because, as handwritten notes on some of the reports show, many of the reports were “confidential” (Sell). Even though coal mines commenced filing Environmental Impact Statements in the early 1970s, there is no such documentation for gas exploration conducted by Houston Oil and Minerals. A lack of broader awareness for the surrounding environment, from floral and faunal health to the impact on habitat quality, can be gleaned when reading across all the exploration reports. Nearly four decades on and we now have thousands of wells throughout the world. Yet, the challenges of unconventional gas still persist. The implications of the environmental history of the first four wells in Australia for contemporary unconventional gas exploration and development in this country and beyond are significant. Many environmental issues were present from the beginning of the coal seam gas industry in Australia. Owning up to this history would place policy makers and regulators in a position to strengthen current regulation. The industry continues to face the same challenges today as it did at the start of development—including water extraction, hydraulic fracturing and problems associated with drilling through underground aquifers. Looking more broadly at the unconventional gas industry, shale gas has appeared as the next target for energy resources in Australia. Reflecting on the first exploratory shale gas wells drilled in Central Australia, the chief executive of the company responsible for the shale gas wells noted their deliberate decision to locate their activities in semi-desert country away from “an area of prime agricultural land” and conflict with environmentalists (quoted in Molan). Moreover, the journalist Paul Cleary recently complained about the coal seam gas industry polluting Australia’s food-bowl but concluded that the “next frontier” should be in “remote” Central Australia with shale gas (Cleary 195). It appears that preference is to move the industry to the arid centre of Australia, to the ecologically and culturally unique Lake Eyre Basin region (Robin and Smith). 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Brisbane: Queensland Department of Resources and Mines. 31 May 2012 ‹https://qdexguest.deedi.qld.gov.au/portal/site/qdex/search?REPORT_ID=6626&COLLECTION_ID=999›.

In July 2001, New York couple Jason Black and Francis Schroeder opened bidding on the internet for corporate sponsorship of their newborn son. Naming rights started at $US5000 000. For Black, the logic was simple: given the inescapable prevalence of commercial sponsorship in contemporary life, this was a valid way of working with corporate America. Black and Schroeder already had two daughters and lived in a small two-bedroom apartment. In exchange for their son’s financial security, they risked branding him ‘Big Mac’ or ‘Nike’ – literally. If nothing else, the case exemplified the amazing reach of brand consciousness. The couple had internalised its values and rationale with such ease and comfort, the notion of forfeiting their child’s name was not abhorrent, but a lucrative marketing opportunity. Then again, the story was not without precedent. In 2000, teenagers Chris Barrett and Luke McCabe, both from New Jersey, became ‘spokesguys’ for First USA, one of America’s top credit-card companies. By sporting the company logo on their surfboards and all their clothes, the pair receives an annual $US40 000 each in tuition, board and books for their four-year university contract. They do not just advertise the brand; they are its living embodiment. For critics of consumer culture, such stories exemplify the extent to which corporatism has become a complete and closed system, with the panoramic presence of brands and logos and the commodification of life itself. They demonstrate the alarming readiness of some people to encode and enact the consumerist impulse. At its most malignant, this impulse appears as a crass consumerism that eats up every aspect of a culture, so much so that consumerism becomes the culture – all meaning is both anchored in and governed by the capitalist creed. For many, mass-produced contemporary culture provides a seemingly empty substitute, what Fredric Jameson (1991) termed “a new kind of flatness or depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense” (9), for genuine experience and emotion. In turn, the contemporary consumer has been reduced to a mere imitation of mediated expectations, a functionary cog in the corporatist machine. As this sign system infects and invades more and more space, a certain cultural literacy is inevitably called for, an intimate knowledge of symbol and significance, logo and logic. However, like all living language, this one is open to some resistance, albeit a somewhat piecemeal one. Part appropriation, part antithesis, it is a resistance that hijacks form in order to subvert content. To explain how this type of activism might work, one could consider the highly effective activist operation, ®TMark (http://rtmark.com). ®TMark is an online centre that organizes and directs funding for the ‘information alteration’ of corporate products (otherwise known as ‘sabotage’). In 1993, ®TMark was involved in its first high-profile act of sabotage when it channelled $US 8000 to the Barbie Liberation Organization (BLO), a group that switched the voice boxes of 300 GI Joe and Barbie dolls. As befits a project affiliated with ®TMark, the critical content of BLO’s act was an alchemic stroke of humour and commentary. The protest lies within the ‘information alteration’ of commodities that usually rely on their supposed virtues. The BLO offensive drew attention to the questionable labour practices of Mattel, manufacturers of Barbie, thereby undermining the perceptions on which Barbie’s popularity rests. From the outset, ®TMark’s key feature is its corporate status. As a brokerage, ®TMark benefits from ‘limited liability’, just like any other corporation. It exploits this principle (that is, corporate protection, thereby bypassing legal responsibility) to sabotage other corporate products. Unlike other corporations, though, its bottom-line is cultural profit. As spokesperson Ray Thomas explains, the corporate model is both the object of ®TMark’s criticism, and the method by which that criticism is being facilitated: “Projects can be seen as stocks, and when you support a project you’re investing in it. When you contribute, say, $100 to a project that you would like to see accomplished, you are sort of investing in the accomplishment of the project. What you want to see out of that project is cultural dividends; you want to see a beneficial cultural event take place because of your money, as a reward. What you’re doing is investing in the improvement of the culture.” As with almost all ®TMark literature and material, the tone here is one of clipped civility, similar to the tense restraint characteristic of almost any corporation. Perhaps the closest the site gets to a ‘straightforward’ philosophy is in this piece of advice to dispirited students, fearful that, one day, they too will be sucked into the corporate void: “We believe that performing an ®TMark project can help you, psychologically at least, at such a difficult juncture; but more importantly, we urge you to at all costs remember that laws should defend human people, not corporate people like the one of which you will be a part. If you keep this in mind and work towards making it a reality, you may find your life much more bearable.” While this pseudo mission statement might be read as yet another appendage to ®TMark’s corporate veneer, it also points to some of the goals of the site. The depiction of ®TMark projects as morale boosters for disenchanted cynics goes some way in illustrating the ambitions and limits of the site. Rather than prescribe a far-reaching, holistic approach to social change (what might be termed a ‘revolutionary’ vision), ®TMark marshals ideas and initiatives a little more subtly. This is not to belittle or dispute its utility or significance; on the contrary, it is an approach that effectively (in)corporates a diverse range of people and programs. For example, rather than unifying its adherents to a common agenda, ®TMark operates as a coalition of interests. As such, the followings funds collectively serve the ®TMark project: the Labor Fund; the Frontier Fund (which challenges naïve visions of the ‘global village’); the Education Fund; the Health Fund; the Alternative Markets Fund (which considers overlooked demographics, such as poor gays); the Media Fund; the Intellectual Property Fund; the Biological Property Fund; the Corporate Law Fund; and the Environment Fund, among others. In turn, the ®TMark spectrum canvasses a plethora of pertinent, interconnected themes. This includes: the plight of workers in developing countries; censorship; institutionalised racism; the nominal triumph of consumer culture; techno-utopianism and the ‘digerati’; copyright law; and the increasing opacity of corporate activities. Underlying all these issues is ®TMark’s intention to publicise corporate abuses of democratic processes. Importantly, this multiplicity of interests is considered a suitable counterpart to the dispersed nature of corporate power. So, no one enemy is identified and targeted, since such reductionism belies the degree to which capitalism, corporatism and consumerism are irredeemably entwined in contemporary culture. In turn, these funds are often ‘managed’ by public figures whose association with certain causes lend their celebrity well to particular campaigns. For example, San Francisco band Negativeland manages the Intellectual Property Fund. This is most appropriate. Their 1991 legal battle with major label Island, on account of their ‘deceptive’ use of U2 material, cemented their place as champions of ‘creative appropriation’ and the right to create ‘with mirrors’ (as Negativeland describes it on their eponymous website). Similarly, the desire to create ‘with mirrors’ propels much of ®TMark’s work. It imbues all ®TMark projects with the same sense of calculated mischief. This suggests a mode of activism that is both opportunistic and ingenious, fashioning criticism from the very resources it is attacking. Financial reward aside (which, in any case, is negligible, at best) the real pay-off for ®TMark saboteurs comes via media coverage of their projects. As such, it straddles an interesting divide, between public infamy and necessary stealth. ®TMark requires media attention to render its projects effective, yet must maintain the critical distance necessary for any activist potency. Indeed, the need to bolster ®TMark’s profile was one of the reasons it went from being a dial-in system to a website in 1997. Within its first eight months the site had received almost 20 000 visits. In this schema, the activism in question is assigned a somewhat smaller purpose than has been hitherto associated with protest movements generally. Rather than provide a grand panacea for all the world’s ills, ®TMark’s scale is, by its own admission, modest: “The value of ®TMark is, and has always been, not in any real pressure it can possibly bear, but rather in its ability to quickly and cheaply attract widespread interest to important issues. ®TMark is thus essentially a public relations agency for anti-corporate activism”. In this way, ®TMark is firmly positioned within that strand of activism often referred to as ‘culture jamming’. This type of protest relies on a distinct degree of media and cultural literacy, one that is consonant with, and a product of, the Information Age. As Mark Dery explains, these activists “introduce noise into the signal as it passes from transmitter to receiver, encouraging idiosyncratic, unintended interpretations. Intruding on the intruders, they invest ads, newscasts, and other media artefacts with subversive meanings; simultaneously, they decrypt them, rendering their seductions impotent”(http://levity.com/markdery/culturejam.html). Culture jamming draws on (and contributes to) critiques of contemporary consumer capitalism. Its premise is that too much public space has already been ceded to Hollywood, Madison Avenue et al, and that activists must seize whatever opportunities allow this space to be reclaimed, however fleetingly. Trading on publicity and shock value, jammers manipulate those icons, slogans and trademarks that will register immediate recognition, thereby rendering their efforts meaningful. It constitutes a politicised refusal to submit to the cheerful passivity scripted by the corporate class. As jammers resist this role, reclaiming rather than forfeiting public space, they create what Naomi Klein (2000) calls “a climate of semiotic Robin Hoodism” (280). This term aptly captures the spirit of moralistic idealism that is, almost inevitably, a part of the milieu. This is not to dismiss or deride the progressive agenda of most culture jammers; if anything, it is a positive endorsement of their activism, and a response to those that would deem the postmodern zeitgeist politically barren or overwhelmingly cynical. What it reveals, then, is a somewhat unexpected distribution of power, as expressions of criticism and opposition emerge at seemingly incongruous junctures. They are at once engaged and complicit, finding cracks in ‘the system’ (that is, corporate society) and co-opting them, what Linda Hutcheon (1990) calls “subversion from within” (157). Eschewing ‘big picture’ solutions, culture jammers prioritise temporary connections and hybrid forms over ideological certainties and operational rigidity. Tactical thinking, and the malleability and mobility it relies on, clearly informs and animates ®TMark’s work. As Graham Meikle (2002) explains, “Different actions and campaigns use whichever media are most appropriate at any given time for any given purpose. An event might call for making a documentary, making a website, making an A4 newsletter, or making a phone call” (120). ®TMark stops short of overstating its purpose or exaggerating its success. There is no lofty manifesto or ironclad strategy; without departing too far from its anti-corporatist stance, ®TMark encourages an almost playful combination of comedy and critique, with a thick ironic overlay. At its most ambitious, then, ®TMark can hope to alter the everyday behaviour of ordinary citizens, making inroads at the expense of powerful corporations. At the very least, it can prompt bemused surfers to rethink certain things – such as Nike’s labour practices or Shell’s environmental record. In a sense, though, the degree to which such perceptual jolts can ‘make a difference’ is almost immaterial: the fact that the status quo has been questioned is a minor triumph. Where some commentators bemoan the virtual stupor they deem characteristic of contemporary Western politics, projects like ®TMark prove that there are spaces and opportunities left for meaningful debate and dissent. Works Cited Dery, Mark. “Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs”. (http://levity.com/markdery/culturejam.html). Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernity. London: Routledge, 1990. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Klein, Naomi. No Logo. London: Flamingo, 2000. Meikle, Graham. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet. New York and London: Routledge, and Annandale, Pluto Press, 2002. Rtmark. (http://rtmark.com). Links http://levity.com/markdery/culturejam.html http://rtmark.com Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Khamis, Susie. "Jamming at Work " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/04-jamming.php>. APA Style Khamis, S. (2003, Jun 19). Jamming at Work . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/04-jamming.php>

IntroductionIn 2011, Four Corners — the flagship current affairs program of the Australian national broadcaster, ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) — aired an investigative report on the conditions in Indonesian slaughterhouses. Central to the report was a focus on how Australian cows were being killed for human consumption. Moral outrage ensued. The Federal Government responded with a temporary ban on the live export of cattle to Indonesia. In 2010 the Australian Government initiated legal action in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) opposing Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean, following a sustained period of public opposition. This article pays close attention to expressions of public opposition to the killing of what have come to be referred to as our cows and our whales, and the response of the Federal Government.Australia’s recent history with the live export of farmed animals and its transformation into an anti-whaling nation provides us with a foundation to analyse these contemporary disputes. In contrast to a focus on “Australian cow making” (Fozdar and Spittles 76) during the live export controversy, this article investigates the processes through which the bodies of cows and whales became sites for the mapping of Australian identity and nationhood – in other words, a relational construction of Australianness that we can identify as a form of animal nationalism (Dalziell and Wadiwel). What is at stake are claims about desired national self-image. In what we might consider as part of a history of cows and whales is in many ways a ‘history of people with animals in it” (Davis 551). In other words, these disputes are not really about cows and whales.The Live Export IndustryAustralia is the largest exporter of live farmed animals, primarily sheep and cows, to the Middle East and Southeast Asia respectively (Phillips and Santurtun 309). The live export industry is promoted and supported by the Federal Government, with an explicit emphasis on the conditions experienced by these farmed animals. According to the Government, “Australia leads the world in animal welfare practices … [and] does not tolerate cruelty towards animals and will not compromise on animal welfare standards” (Department of Agriculture and Water Resources). These are strong and specific claims about Australia’s moral compass. What is being asserted is the level of care and concern about how Australia’s farmed animals are raised, transported and killed.There is an implicit relationality here. To be a ‘world leader’ or to claim world’s best practice, there must be some form of moral or ethical measure to judge these practices against. We can locate these more clearly and directly in the follow-up sentence on the above claim: “Our ongoing involvement in the livestock export trade provides an opportunity to influence animal welfare conditions in importing countries” (Department of Agriculture and Water Resources). The enthusiasm expressed in this statement manifests in explicitly seeking to position Australia as an exporter of moral progress (see Caulfield 76). These are cultural claims about us.In its current form the Australian live export industry dates back to the early 1960s, with concerns about the material conditions of farmed animals in destination countries raised from the outset (Caulfield 72; Villanueva Pain 100). In the early 1980s animal activists formed the Australian Federation of Animal Societies to put forward a national unified voice. Protests and political lobbying lead to the formation of a Senate Select Committee on Animal Welfare, reflecting what Gonzalo Villanueva has referred to as a social and political landscape that “appeared increasingly favourable to discussing animal welfare” (Transnational 89-91).The Select Committee’s first report focussed on live export and explicitly mentioned the treatment of Australian farmed animals in the abattoirs of destination countries. The conditions in these facilities were described as being of a lower “standard of animal welfare” to those in Australia (Senate Select Committee on Animal Welfare xiii). These findings directly mirror the expressions of concern in the wake of the 2011 controversy.“A Bloody Business”On 30 May 2011, Four Corners aired a report entitled ‘A Bloody Business’ on the conditions in Indonesian slaughterhouses. The investigation followed-up on footage provided by Animals Australia and Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA Australia). Members from these groups had travelled to Indonesia in order to document conditions in slaughterhouses and prepare briefing notes which were later shared with the ABC. Their aim was to increase public awareness of the conditions Australian farmed cattle faced in Indonesia, provide a broader indictment of the live export industry, and call for an end the practice. The nationwide broadcast which included graphic footage of our cows being killed, enabled broader Australia to participate from the comfort of their own homes (see Della Porta and Diani 177-8).The program generated significant media coverage and public moral outrage (Dalziell and Wadiwel 72). Dr Bidda Jones, Chief Scientist of RSPCA Australia, referred to “28,000 radio stories, 13,000 TV mentions and 3,000 press stories” making it one of the top five national issues in the media for five weeks. An online petition created by the activist organisation GetUp! collected more than 260,000 signatures over a period of three days and $300,000 was raised for campaign advertising (Jones 102). Together, these media reports and protest actions influenced the Federal Government to suspend live exports to Indonesia. A front-page story in The Age described the Federal Government as having “caved in to public and internal party pressure” (Willingham and Allard). In her first public statement about the controversy, Prime Minister Julia Gillard outlined the Government’s intent: “We will be working closely with Indonesia, and with the industry, to make sure we can bring about major change to the way cattle are handled in these slaughter houses” (Willingham and Allard).The Prime Minister’s statement directly echoed the claims made on the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources website introduced above. Implicit is these statements is a perceived ability to bring about “major change” and an assumption that we kill better. Both directly align with claims of leading the world in animal welfare practices and the findings of the 1985 Select Committee report. Further, the controversy itself was positioned as providing an “opportunity to influence animal welfare conditions in importing countries” (Department of Agriculture and Water Resources).Four Corners provided a nationwide platform to influence decision-makers (see Della Porta and Diani 168-9). White, Director of Strategy for Animals Australia, expressed this concisely:We should be killing the animals here under Australian conditions, under our control, and then they should only be shipped as meat products, not live animals. (Ferguson, Doyle, and Worthington)Jones provided more context, describing the suffering experienced by “Australian cattle” in Indonesia as “too much,” especially when “a clear, demonstrated and successful alternative to the live export of animals” was already available (“Broader”; Jones 188). Implicit in these calls for farmed cows to be killed in Australia was an inference to technical and moral progress, evoking Australia’s “national self-image” as “a modern, principled culture” (Dalziell and Wadiwel 84). The clean, efficient and modern processes undertaken in Australia were relationally positioned against the bloody practices conducted in the Indonesian facilities. In other words, we kill cows in a nicer, more humane and better way.Australia and WhalingAustralia has a long and dynamic history with whaling (Salter). A “fervently” pro-whaling nation, the “rapidly growing” local industry went through a modernisation process in the 1950s (Day 19; Kato 484). Operations became "clean and smooth,” and death became "instant, swift and painless”. As with the live export controversy, an inference of a nicer, more humane and better way of killing was central the Australian whaling industry (Kato 484-85). Enthusiastic support for an Australian whaling industry was superseded within three decades by what Charlotte Epstein describes as “a dramatic historical turnabout” (Power 150). In June 1977, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) came to Canberra, and protests were organised across Australia to coincide with the meeting.The IWJ meeting was seen as a political opportunity. An IWC meeting being held in the last English-as-first-language nation with a commercial whaling operation provided an ideal target for the growing anti-whaling movement (Epstein, Power 149). In parallel, the opportunity to make whaling an electoral issue was seen as a priority for locally based activists and organisations (Pash 31). The collective actions of those campaigning against the backdrop of the IWC meeting comprised an array of performances (Tarrow 29). Alongside lobbying delegates, protests were held outside the venue, including the first use of a full-sized replica inflatable sperm whale by anti-whaling activists. See Image 1. The symbol of the whale became a signifier synonymous for the environment movement for decades to follow (see Epstein, Power 110-11). The number of environmental organisations attending exceeded those of any prior IWC meeting, setting in place a practice that would continue for decades to follow (M’Gonigle 150; Pash 27-8).Image 1: Protest at Australia’s last whaling station August 28, 1977. Photo credit: Jonny Lewis Collection.Following the IWC meeting in Canberra, activists packed up their equipment and prepared for the long drive to Albany in Western Australia. Disruption was added to their repertoire (Tarrow 99). The target was the last commercial whaling operation in Australia. Two months later, on August 28, demonstrations were held at the gates of the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company. Two inflatable Zodiac boats were launched, with the aim of positioning themselves between the whales being hunted and the company’s harpoon vessels. Greenpeace was painted on the side — the first protest action in Australia under the organisation’s banner (Pash 93-94).In 1978, Prime Minister Fraser formally announced an Inquiry into the future of whaling in Australia, seeking to position Australia as being on the right side of history, “taking a decisive step forward in the human consciousness” (Epstein, World 313). Underpinning announcement was a (re)purposing of whales bodies as a site for the mapping of relational constructions of Australian identity and nationhood:Many thousands of Australians — and men, women and children throughout the world — have long felt deep concern about the activities of whalers… I abhor any such activity — particularly when it is directed against a species as special and intelligent as the whale.(Qtd. in Frost vii)The actions of those protesting against whaling and the language used by Fraser in announcing the Inquiry signalled Australia’s becoming as the first nation in which “ethical arguments about the intrinsic value of the whale” displaced “scientific considerations of levels of endangerment” (Epstein, Power 150). The idea of taking action for whales had become about more than just saving their lives, it was an ethical imperative for us.Standing Up for (Our) WhalesThe Inquiry into “whales and whaling” provided specific recommendations, which were adopted in full by Prime Minister Fraser:The Inquiry’s central conclusion is that Australian whaling should end, and that, internationally, Australia should pursue a policy of opposition whaling. (Frost 206)The inquiry found that the majority of Australians viewed whaling as “morally wrong” and as a nation we should stand up for whales internationally (Frost 183). There is a direct reference here to the moral values of a civilised community, what Arne Kalland describes as a claim to “social maturity” (130). By identifying itself as a nation on the right side of the issue, Australia was pursuing a position of moral leadership on the world stage. The Whale Protection Act (1980) replaced the Whaling Act (1960). Australia’s policy of opposition to whaling was “pursued both domestically and internationally though the IWC and other organizations” (Day 19).Public opposition to whaling increased with the commencement of Japan’s scientific research whaling program in the Southern Ocean, and the dramatic actions of Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The Daily Telegraph which ran a series of articles under the banner of “our whales” in June 2005 (see, for example, Hossack; Rehn). The conservative Federal Government embraced the idea, with the Department of the Environment and Heritage website including a “Save Our Whales” page. Six months out from the 2007 federal election, opposition leader Kevin Rudd stated “It's time that Australia got serious when it comes to the slaughter of our whales” (Walters). As a “naturally more compassionate, more properly developed” people, we [Australians] had a duty to protect them (Dalziell and Wadiwel 84).Alongside oft-repeated claims of Australia’s status as a “world leader” and the priority placed on the protection of whales nationally and internationally, saveourwhales.gov.au wristbands were available for order from the government website — at no charge. By wearing one of these wristbands, all Australians could “show [their] support for the protection of whales and dolphins” (Department of the Environment and Heritage). In other words, the wearer could join together with other Australians in making a clear moral and ethical statement about both how much whales mean to us and that we all should stand up for them. The wristbands provided a means to individually and collectively express this is what we do in unobtrusive everyday way.Dramatic actions in the Southern Ocean during the 2008/09 whaling season received a broader audience with the airing of the first season of the reality TV series Whale Wars, which became Animal Planets most viewed program (Robé 94). As with A Bloody Business, Whale Wars provided an opportunity for a manifestly larger number of people to eyewitness the plight of whales (see Epstein, Power 142). Alongside the dramatised representation of the risky and personally sacrificial actions taken by the crew, the attitudes expressed reflected those of Prime Minister Fraser in 1977: protecting special and intelligent whales was the right and civilised thing to do.These sentiments were framed by the footage of activists in the series. For example, in episode four of season two, Lockhart McClean, Captain of the MV Gojira referred to Japanese whalers and their vessels as “evil” and “barbaric”, and their practices outdated. The drama of the series revolved around Sea Shepherd patrolling the Southern Ocean, their attempts to intervene against the Japanese fleet and protect our whales. The clear undercurrent here is a claim of moral progress, situated alongside an enthusiasm to export it. Such sentiments were clearly echoed by Bob Brown, a respected former member of federal parliament and spokesperson for Sea Shepherd: “It’s just a gruesome, bloody, medieval, scene which has no place in this modern world” (Japanese Whaling).On 31 May 2010 the Federal Government initiated proceedings against Japan in the ICJ. Four years later, the Court found in their favour (Nagtzaam, Young and Sullivan).Conclusion, Claims of Moral LeadershipHow the 2011 live export controversy and opposition to Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean have unfolded provide us with an opportunity to explore a number of common themes. As Dalziell and Wadiwell noted with regard to the 2011 live export controversy, our “national self-image” was central (84). Both disputes encompass claims about us about how we want to be perceived. Whereas our cows and whales appear as key players, both disputes are effectively a ‘history of people with animals in it” (Davis 551). In other words, these disputes were not really about the lives of our farmed cows or whales.The Federal Government sought to reposition the 2011 live export controversy as providing (another) opportunity "to influence animal welfare conditions in importing countries,” drawing from our own claimed worlds-best practices (Department of Agriculture and Water Resources). The “solution” put forward by White and Jones solution was for Australian farmed cows to be killed here. Underpinning both was an implicit claim that we kill cows in a nicer, more humane and better way: "Australians are naturally more compassionate, more properly developed; more human” (Dalziell and Wadiwel 84).Similarly, the Federal Government’s pursuit of a position of world-leadership in opposing whaling was rooted in claims of our moral progress as a nation. Having formally recognised the specialness of whales in the 1970s, it was our duty to pursue their protection internationally. We could individually and collectively express national identity on our wrists, through wearing a government-provided saveourwhales.gov.au wristband. Collectively, we would not stand by and let the "gruesome, bloody, medieval” practice of Japanese whaling continue in our waters (“Japanese”). Legal action undertaken in the ICJ was the penultimate pronouncement.In short, expressions of concerns for our cows whales positioned their bodies as sites for the mapping of relational constructions of our identity and nationhood.Author’s NoteFor valuable comments on earlier drafts, I thank Talei Vulatha, Ben Hightower, Scott East and two anonymous referees.References“Broader Ban the Next Step: Animal Group.” Sydney Morning Herald, 8 June 2011. 11 July 2018 <https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/broader-ban-the-next-step-animal-group-20110608-1frsr.html>.Caulfield, Malcolm. Handbook of Australian Animal Cruelty Law. North Melbourne: Animals Australia, 2009.Dalziell, Jacqueline, and Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel. “Live Exports, Animal Advocacy, Race and ‘Animal Nationalism’.” Meat Culture. Ed. Annie Potts. Brill Academic Pub., 2016. 73-89.Day, David. The Whale War. Random House, Inc., 1987.Della Porta, Donatella, and Mario Diani. Social Movements: An Introduction. 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IntroductionWe are increasingly being told to make ethical food choices, often by high-profile chefs advocating what they view as ethical consumption habits. Some actively promote vegetarian or vegan diets, with a growing number of high-profile restaurants featuring only or mainly plant-based meals. However, what makes food or restaurant menus ethical is not assessed by most of us using one standardised definition. Our food values differ based on our outlooks, past experiences, and perhaps most importantly, how we balance various trade-offs inherent in making food choices under different circumstances and in diverse contexts.Restaurants can face difficulties when trying to balance ethical considerations. For instance, is it inconsistent to promote foraging, seasonality, local products, and plant-based eating, yet also serve meat and other animal-derived protein products on the same menu? For example, Danish chef Rene Redzepi, co-owner of the Michelin-starred restaurant Noma in Copenhagen who recently had an extended stay in Australia (Redzepi), recently offered a purely vegetarian menu featuring foraged native ingredients. However, Redzepi followed this with a meat-based menu including teal, moose leg, reindeer tongue, and wild duck brain. These changes make clear that although Redzepi was still conflicted about serving animal products (Ankeny and Bray), he thinks that options for ethical eating are not limited to plants and that it is important to utilise available, and especially neglected, resources in novel ways.In this article, we argue that celebrity and other high-profile chefs have roles to play in conversations about the emerging range of new meat consumption norms, which might include humanely produced meat, wild meat, or other considerations. However, we contend that restaurants and popular media may be limited spaces in which to engage consumers in these conversations. Ultimately, celebrity and high-profile chefs can help us not only to reflect on our eating habits, but also to engage us in ways that help us to ask the right questions rather than encouraging reliance on set answers from them or other supposed experts.Chefs and New Meat NormsChefs are now key voices in the politics of lifestyle, shaping both the grammars and the practices of ethical consumption, which is further reinforced by the increasing mediatisation of food and food politics (Phillipov, Media). Contemporary trends toward ethical consumption have been much critiqued; nevertheless, ethical consumption has become a dominant means through which individuals within contemporary marketised, neoliberal economies are able to invest lifestyle choices with ethical, social, and civic meanings (Barnett et al.; Lewis and Potter). While vegetarianism was once considered a central pillar of ethical diets, the rise of individualized and diverse approaches to food and food politics has seen meat (at least in its “ethical” form) not only remain firmly on the menu, but also become a powerful symbol of “good” politics, taste, and desirable lifestyles (Pilgrim 112).Chefs’ involvement in promoting ethical meat initially began within restaurants catering for an elite foodie clientele. The details provided about meat producers and production methods on the menu of Alice Waters’ Californian restaurant Chez Panisse and her cookbooks (Waters), or the focus by Fergus Henderson on “nose to tail” eating at his London restaurant St. John (Henderson) has led many to cite them as among the originators of the ethical meat movement. But the increasing mediatisation of food and the emergence of chefs as celebrity brands with their own TV shows, cookbooks, YouTube channels, websites, sponsorship deals, and myriad other media appearances has allowed ethical meat to move out of elite restaurants and into more quotidian domestic spaces. High profile UK and US exposés including “campaigning culinary documentaries” fronted by celebrity chefs (Bell, Hollows, and Jones 179), along with the work of popular food writers such as Michael Pollan, have been instrumental in the mainstreaming of diverse new meat norms.The horrifying depictions of intensive chicken, beef, and pork farming in these exposés have contributed to greater public awareness of, and concern about, industrialised meat production. However, the poor welfare conditions of animals raised in battery cages and concentrated animal feeding operations often are presented not as motivations to eschew meat entirely, but instead as reasons to opt for more ethical alternatives. For instance, Hugh’s Chicken Run, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s 2008 television campaign for chicken welfare, resulted in making more free-range products available in British supermarkets (Johnston). More recently, there have been significant expansions in markets for variously defined categories such as grass-fed, free-range, organic, welfare-certified, humane, and/or environmentally friendly meat products in Australia and elsewhere, thanks in part to increased media attention to animal welfare issues (Arcari 169).As media has emerged as a “fundamental component of contemporary foodscapes, how they ‘perform’ and function, and the socio-material means by which they are produced” (Johnston and Goodman 205), ethical meat has increasingly been employed as a strategic resource in mainstream media and marketing. Ethical meat, for example, has been a key pillar in the contemporary rebranding of both of Australia’s major supermarkets (Lewis and Huber 289). Through partnerships that draw upon the “ethical capital” (290) of celebrity chefs including Jamie Oliver and Curtis Stone, and collaborations with animal welfare organisations such as the RSPCA, ethical meat has become central to supermarket advertising campaigns in recent years. Such campaigns have been especially successful for Coles supermarkets, which controls almost 30% of Australia’s highly concentrated grocery market (Roy Morgan). The retailer’s long-term sponsorship of MasterChef Australia (Network 10, 2009–)—a show that presents meat (or, as they term it, “protein”) as an essential component of most dishes and which regularly rates in the top 10 of Australian television programs (OzTAM)—further helps to emphasise that the solution to ethical problems is not to avoid meat, but to choose (Coles’) “better” meat (see fig. 1). This is promoted on the basis of a combination of ethics, price, and taste, and, remarkably, is able to deliver “better welfare at no extra cost to you” (Parker, Carey, and Scrinis 209). In short, chefs are making major contributions to awareness of ethical norms relating to meat consumption in a variety of settings. Figure 1: An example of a current meat product on the shelf at a major Australian retailer with packaging that makes a range of claims relating to production practices and quality, among other attributes. (Emily Buddle)“The Good Life”Lifestyle media has been a key site through which meat eating is normalised and recuperated into “ethical” frameworks (Arcari 169). Utopian visions of small-scale animal agriculture are a key feature of popular texts from the River Cottage Australia (Foxtel Networks, 2013–) series to Gourmet Farmer (SBS, 2010–) and Paddock to Plate (Foxtel Networks, 2013–). These programs are typically set in bucolic rural surrounds and centre on the host’s “escape” from the city to a more fulfilling, happier existence in the country (Phillipov, “Escaping”). Rural self-sufficiency is frequently framed as the solution to urban consumers’ alienation from the sources of their food, and a means of taking responsibility for the food they eat. The opening credits of Gourmet Farmer, for instance, outline host Matthew Evans’s quest to “know and trust what [he] eat[s]”, either by growing the food himself or being “no more than one degree of separation from the person who does”.This sense of connection to one’s food is central to how these programs make meat consumption ethical. Indeed, the production of animals for food reinforces particular notions of “the good life” in which the happiness of the animal is closely aligned with the happiness of its human producer. While texts sometimes show food animals’ full lifecycle from birth to slaughter, lifestyle media focuses mainly on their happy existence while still alive. Evans gives his pigs names that foreground their destiny as food (e.g., Prosciutto and Cassoulet), but he also pampers them as though they are pets, feeding them cherries and apples, and scratching them behind the ears much like he would his dog. These bucolic televisual images serve to anchor the programs’ many “spin-off” media texts, including blog posts, cookbooks (e.g. Evans), and endorsements, that instruct urban audiences who do not have the luxury of raising their own meat on how to source ethical alternatives. They also emphasise the deliciousness of meat raised and killed in humane, “natural” conditions, as opposed to those subjected to more intensive, industrialised production systems.Some argue that the notion of “ethical meat” merely masks the realities of humans’ domination over animals (Arcari). However the transition from “happy animals” to “happy meat” (Pilgrim 123) has been key to lifestyle media’s recuperation of (certain kinds of) meat production as a “humane, benevolent and wholly ‘natural’ process” (Parry 381), which helps to morally absolve the chefs who promote it, and by extension, their audiences.The Good DeathMeat consumption has been theorised to be based on the invisibility of the lives and deaths of animals—what has been termed the “absent referent” by feminist philosopher Carol J. Adams (14; see also Fiddes). This line of argument holds that slaughter and other practices that may raise moral concerns are actively hidden from view, and that animals are “made absent” within food consumption practices (Evans and Miele 298). Few meat consumers, at least those in Western countries, have seen animal slaughter first hand, and a disconnect between meat and animal is actively maintained through current retail practices (such as pre-packaged meat with few identifying cues), as well as in our language use, at least in English where most of the names of the meat are different to those of the animal (Plous; Croney) and where euphemisms such as “harvesting” abound (Abrams, Zimbres, and Carr). In many locales, including Australia, there is squeamishness about talking about slaughter and the processes by which “animal” becomes “meat” which in turn prevents open discussion about the origins of meat (Bray et al., “Conversation”).Campaigning culinary documentaries by chefs, including Matthew Evans’s recent For the Love of Meat (SBS, 2016), aim to reconnect animal and meat in order to critique modern meat production methods. In addition, Gourmet Farmer and River Cottage Australia both feature depictions of hunting (skinning and butchering of the animals is shown but viewers are rarely exposed to the kill itself) and emphasise the use of highly skilled hunters in order to bring about a quick death. By highlighting not only a good life but also what constitutes a “good death”, celebrity chefs and others are arguably generating discussion about what makes meat ethical by emphasizing that the quality of death is as important as the quality of life. In many of these programs, the emphasis is on more boutique or small-scale production systems which typically produce meat products that are higher priced and more difficult to source.Given that such products are likely out of reach for many potential consumers because of price point, convenience, or both, perhaps unsurprisingly the emphasis in many of these programs is on the consumer rather than the consumed. Hence these programs tend to be more about constructing an “ethical meat consumer”, defined implicitly as someone who acknowledges the meat/animal connection through conscious exposure to the realities of animal slaughter (for example, by watching a documentary), by “meeting your meat” such as in the BBC series Kill It, Cook It, Eat It (BBC, 2007; Evans and Miele), or by actively participating in the slaughter process as Evans did with his own chickens on Gourmet Farmer. As anthropologist Catie Gressier notes in her study of wild meat consumers in Australia, “hunting meat is seen as more noble than purchasing it, while wild meat is seen as preferable to farmed” (Gressier 58). Gressier also describes how one of her participants viewed hunting (and eating locally) as preferable to veganism because of the “animal violence that is the inevitable outcome of mass-crop agriculture” (58). However some scholars have argued that highly graphic depictions of slaughter in the popular media are becoming more commonplace as a masculinised type of “gastro-snuff” (a term referring to food-related visual depictions of brutal killings) (Parry 382). These types of efforts thus may fail to create dialogue about what constitutes ethical meat or even an ethical meat consumer, and may well reinforce more traditional ideas about human/non-human hierarchies.In contrast to coverage in popular media, detailed descriptions of commercial slaughter, in particular pre-slaughter (lairage) conditions, are yet to make it on to restaurant menus, despite the connections between meat quality and pre-slaughter conditions being well recognised even by consumers (Evans and Miele). Commercial slaughter conditions are one of the reasons that hunting is framed as more ethical than “ethically farmed” animals. As an Internet post, quoted in Adams (“Redneck” 50), puts it: “Hunting? A creature is peacefully in its own domain, it is shot. How is that worse than being carried for hours in a truck, being forced into a crush, hearing the bellows of other creatures, being physically restrained at the peak of terror, then culled?” Although determining precise rates of consumption of wild meat is methodologically difficult (Conservation Visions 28), available rates of hunting together with limited consumption data indicate that Australians currently eat less game or wild-caught meat per capita than those in Europe or North America. However, there is a sector of the community in Australia who pursue hunting as part of their ethical food habits (Bray et al., “Ferals”) with the largest proportion of wild-meat consumers being those who hunted it themselves (Gressier).In many cases, descriptions of animal lives (using descriptors such as “free range” or “grass fed”) serve implicitly as proxies for assurances that the animals’ deaths also have been good. One exception is the increasing awareness of the use of halal slaughter methods in part due to more transparent labelling, despite limited public awareness about the nature of these methods, particularly in the Australian context where they in fact comply with standard animal welfare requirements such as pre-slaughter stunning (Bergeauld-Blackler). Detailed descriptions of post-mortem conditions (e.g., aging conditions and time) are more common on restaurant menus, although arguably these no longer draw attention to the connections between the animal and the meat, and instead focus on the meat itself, its flavour and other physical qualities, rather than on ethical attributes.Thus, although it would seem obvious that ethical meat consumption should involve considerations about slaughter conditions or what makes a “good death”, most efforts have focused on encouraging people to make better and more reflexive consumer choices, rather than promoting deeper engagement with slaughter processes, perhaps underscoring that this domain may still represent one of the final food taboos. Although it might seem to be counterintuitive that wild or hunted meat could be viewed as an ethical food choice, particularly if vegetarianism or veganism is taken as the main point of comparison, these trends point toward the complexities inherent in food choice and the inevitable trade-offs in values that occur in these processes.Problems with Promoting Ethical Meat Norms: Ways ForwardIt is undeniable that many people are reflecting on their consumption habits in order to pursue decisions that better reflect their values. Attempting to be an “ethical meat consumer” clearly fits within these broader trends. However there are a number of problems associated with current approaches to ethical meat consumption, and these raise questions as to whether such efforts are likely to result in broader changes. First, it is not clear that restaurants are the most appropriate spaces for people to engage with ethical considerations, including those relating to meat consumption. Many people seek to try something new, or to treat themselves when dining out, but these behaviours do not necessarily translate into changes in everyday eating habits. Reasons are varied but include that people cannot reproduce the same types of dishes or concepts at home as what they get at restaurants (or see on TV shows for that matter), and that many products may be out of an acceptable price range or inconvenient for daily consumption. Others want to escape from ethical decisions when dining out by relying on those preparing the food to do the work for them, and thus sometimes simply consume without necessarily investigating every detail relating to its production, preparation, and so on.Perhaps more importantly, many are sceptical about the promotion of various meat-related values by high-profile or celebrity chefs, raising questions about whether ethical categories are merely packaging or window dressing designed to sell products, or if they are truly tied to deeper values and better products. Such concerns are reinforced by tendencies to emphasize one type of meat product—say free-range, grass-fed, or humanely-raised—as better than all others, or even as the only right choice, and thus can at times seem to be elitist in their approaches, since they emphasize that only certain (often extremely expensive boutique products) count as ethical. As scholars have noted about the classed nature of many of these consumption practices (see, for example, Bell and Hollows; Naccarato and LeBesco), these types of value judgments are likely to be alienating to many people, and most importantly will not foster deeper reflections on our consumption habits.However it is clear that celebrity and other high-profile chefs do get the public’s attention, and thus can play important roles in shaping conversations about fostering more ethical ways of eating, including meat consumption. We contend that it is important not to emphasize only one right way of eating, but to actively consider the various trade-offs that we make when choosing what to buy, prepare, and consume. Promoting answers by nominating certain meat products or production methods as always better in all circumstances, no matter how these might be in conflict with other values, such as preferences for local, organic, alignment with cultural or religious values, sustainable, fair trade, and so on, is not likely to result in meaningful public engagement. Critiques of Pollan and other food activists make similar points about the potential elitism and hence limited value of promoting narrow forms of ethical eating (e.g., Guthman et al.; Zimmerman).In addition, such food categories often serve as proxies for deeper values, but not necessarily for the same values for all of us. Simply relying on categories or types of products thus fails to allow engagement with the underlying rationale for various choices. More generally, promoting individual consumer decision-making and market demand as the keys to ethical consumption overlooks the broader systemic issues that limit our choices, and in turn limits attention to changes that might be made in that system (e.g., Lavin; Guthman et al.; DeLind; Ankeny).Thus instead of promoting one right way of eating meat, or a narrow number of acceptable choices, celebrities, chefs, and restauranteurs should consider how they can help to promote dialogue and the posing of the right types of questions to consumers and diners, including about trade-offs inherent in meat consumption and choices of other products, ethical and otherwise. They also should use their roles as change-makers to consider how they might influence the broader food system, but without promoting a single right way of eating. 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Introduction The first “Aquarius Festival” came together in Canberra, at the Australian National University, in the autumn of 1971 and was reprised in 1973 in the small rural town of Nimbin, in northern New South Wales. Both events reflected the Zeitgeist in what was, in some ways, an inchoate expression of the so-called “counterculture” (Roszak). Rather than attempting to analyse the counterculture as a discrete movement with a definable history, I enlist the theory of cultural memes to read the counter culture as a Dawkinsian cluster meme, with this paper offered as “testimonio”, a form of quasi-political memoir that views shifts in the culture through the lens of personal experience (Zimmerman, Yúdice). I track an evolving personal, “internal” topography and map its points of intersection with the radical social, political and cultural changes spawned by the “consciousness revolution” that was an integral part of the counterculture emerging in the 1970s. I focus particularly on the notion of “consciousness raising”, as a Dawkinsian memetic replicator, in the context of the idealistic notions of the much-heralded “New Age” of Aquarius, and propose that this meme has been a persistent feature of the evolution of the “meme cluster” known as the counterculture. Mimesis and the Counterculture Since evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins floated the notion of cultural memes as a template to account for the evolution of ideas within political cultures, a literature of commentary and criticism has emerged that debates the strengths and weaknesses of his proposed model and its application across a number of fields. I borrow the notion to trace the influence of a set of memes that clustered around the emergence of what writer Marilyn Ferguson called The Aquarian Conspiracy, in her 1980 book of that name. Ferguson’s text, subtitled Personal and Social Transformation in Our Time, was a controversial attempt to account for what was known as the “New Age” movement, with its late millennial focus on social and personal transformation. That focus leads me to approach the counterculture (a term first floated by Theodore Roszak) less as a definable historical movement and more as a cluster of aspirational tropes expressing a range of aspects or concerns, from the overt political activism through to experimental technologies for the transformation of consciousness, and all characterised by a critical interrogation of, and resistance to, conventional social norms (Ferguson’s “personal and social transformation”). With its more overtly “spiritual” focus, I read the “New Age” meme, then, as a sub-set of this “cluster meme”, the counterculture. In my reading, “New Age” and “counterculture” overlap, sharing persistent concerns and a broad enough tent to accommodate the serious—the combative political action of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), say, (see Elbaum)—to the light-hearted—the sport of frisbee for example (Stancil). The interrogation of conventional social and political norms inherited from previous generations was a prominent strategy across both movements. Rather than offering a sociological analysis or history of the ragbag counterculture, per se, my discussion here focuses in on the particular meme of “consciousness raising” within that broader set of cultural shifts, some of which were sustained in their own right, some dropping away, and many absorbed into the dominant mainstream culture. Dawkins use of the term “meme” was rooted in the Greek mimesis, to emphasise the replication of an idea by imitation, or copying. He likened the way ideas survive and change in human culture to the natural selection of genes in biological evolution. While the transmission of memes does not depend on a physical medium, such as the DNA of biology, they replicate with a greater or lesser degree of success by harnessing human social media in a kind of “infectivity”, it is argued, through “contagious” repetition among human populations. Dawkins proposed that just as biological organisms could be said to act as “hosts” for replicating genes, in the same way people and groups of people act as hosts for replicating memes. Even before Dawkins floated his term, French biologist Jacques Monod wrote that ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms. Like them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can fuse, recombine, segregate their content; indeed they too can evolve, and in this evolution selection must surely play an important role. (165, emphasis mine) Ideas have power, in Monod’s analysis: “They interact with each other and with other mental forces in the same brain, in neighbouring brains, and thanks to global communication, in far distant, foreign brains” (Monod, cited in Gleick). Emblematic of the counterculture were various “New Age” phenomena such as psychedelic drugs, art and music, with the latter contributing the “Aquarius” meme, whose theme song came from the stage musical (and later, film) Hair, and particularly the lyric that runs: “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius”. The Australian Aquarius Festivals of 1971 and 1973 explicitly invoked this meme in the way identified by Monod and the “Aquarius” meme resonated even in Australia. Problematising “Aquarius” As for the astrological accuracy of the “Age of Aquarius meme”, professional astrologers argue about its dating, and the qualities that supposedly characterise it. When I consulted with two prominent workers in this field for the preparation of this article, I was astonished to find their respective dating of the putative Age of Aquarius were centuries apart! What memes were being “hosted” here? According to the lyrics: When the moon is in the seventh house And Jupiter aligns with Mars Then peace will guide the planets And love will steer the stars. (Hair) My astrologer informants assert that the moon is actually in the seventh house twice every year, and that Jupiter aligns with Mars every two years. Yet we are still waiting for the outbreak of peace promised according to these astrological conditions. I am also informed that there’s no “real” astrological underpinning for the aspirations of the song’s lyrics, for an astrological “Age” is not determined by any planet but by constellations rising, they tell me. Most important, contrary to the aspirations embodied in the lyrics, peace was not guiding the planets and love was not about to “steer the stars”. For Mars is not the planet of love, apparently, but of war and conflict and, empowered with the expansiveness of Jupiter, it was the forceful aggression of a militaristic mind-set that actually prevailed as the “New Age” supposedly dawned. For the hippified summer of love had taken a nosedive with the tragic events at the Altamont speedway, near San Francisco in 1969, when biker gangs, enlisted to provide security for a concert performance by The Rolling Stones allegedly provoked violence, marring the event and contributing to a dawning disillusionment (for a useful coverage of the event and its historical context see Dalton). There was a lot of far-fetched poetic licence involved in this dreaming, then, but memes, according to Nikos Salingaros, are “greatly simplified versions of patterns”. “The simpler they are, the faster they can proliferate”, he writes, and the most successful memes “come with a great psychological appeal” (243, 260; emphasis mine). What could be retrieved from this inchoate idealism? Harmony and understanding Sympathy and trust abounding No more falsehoods or derisions Golden living dreams of visions Mystic crystal revelation And the mind’s true liberation Aquarius, Aquarius. (Hair) In what follows I want to focus on this notion: “mind’s true liberation” by tracing the evolution of this project of “liberating” the mind, reflected in my personal journey. Nimbin and Aquarius I had attended the first Aquarius Festival, which came together in Canberra, at the Australian National University, in the autumn of 1971. I travelled there from Perth, overland, in a Ford Transit van, among a raggedy band of tie-dyed hippie actors, styled as The Campus Guerilla Theatre Troupe, re-joining our long-lost sisters and brothers as visionary pioneers of the New Age of Aquarius. Our visions were fueled with a suitcase full of potent Sumatran “buddha sticks” and, contrary to Biblical prophesies, we tended to see—not “through a glass darkly” but—in psychedelic, pop-, and op-art explosions of colour. We could see energy, man! Two years later, I found myself at the next Aquarius event in Nimbin, too, but by that time I inhabited a totally different mind-zone, albeit one characterised by the familiar, intense idealism. In the interim, I had been arrested in 1971 while “tripping out” in Sydney on potent “acid”, or LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide); had tried out political engagement at the Pram Factory Theatre in Melbourne; had camped out in protest at the flooding of Lake Pedder in the Tasmanian wilderness; met a young guru, started meditating, and joined “the ashram”—part of the movement known as the Divine Light Mission, which originated in India and was carried to the “West” (including Australia) by an enthusiastic and evangelical following of drug-toking drop-outs who had been swarming through India intent on escaping the dominant culture of the military-industrial complex and the horrors of the Vietnam War. Thus, by the time of the 1973 event in Nimbin, while other festival participants were foraging for “gold top” magic mushrooms in farmers’ fields, we devotees had put aside such chemical interventions in conscious awareness to dig latrines (our “service” project for the event) and we invited everyone to join us for “satsang” in the yellow, canvas-covered, geodesic dome, to attend to the message of peace. The liberation meme had shifted through a mutation that involved lifestyle-changing choices that were less about alternative approaches to sustainable agriculture and more about engaging directly with “mind’s true liberation”. Raising Consciousness What comes into focus here is the meme of “consciousness raising”, which became the persistent project within which I lived and worked and had my being for many years. Triggered initially by the ingestion of those psychedelic substances that led to my shocking encounter with the police, the project was carried forward into the more disciplined environs of my guru’s ashrams. However, before my encounter with sustained spiritual practice I had tried to work the shift within the parameters of an ostensibly political framework. “Consciousness raising” was a form of political activism borrowed from the political sphere. Originally generated by Mao Zedong in China during the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the vested colonial interests that were choking Chinese nationalism in the 1940s, to our “distant, foreign brains” (Monod), as Western revolutionary romantics, Chairman Mao and his Little Red Book were taken up, in a kind of international counterculture solidarity with revolutionaries everywhere. It must be admitted, this solidarity was a fairly superficial gesture. Back in China it might be construed as part of a crude totalitarian campaign to inculcate Marxist-Leninist political ideas among the peasant classes (see Compestine for a fictionalised account of traumatic times; Han Suyin’s long-form autobiography—an early example of testimonio as personal and political history—offers an unapologetic account of a struggle not usually construed as sympathetically by Western commentators). But the meme (and the processes) of consciousness raising were picked up by feminists in the United States in the late 1960s and into the 1970s (Brownmiller 21) and it was in this form I encountered it as an actor with the politically engaged theatre troupe, The Australian Performing Group, at Carlton’s Pram Factory Theatre in late 1971. The Performance Group I performed as a core member of the Group in 1971-72. Decisions as to which direction the Group should take were to be made as a collective, and the group veered towards anarchy. Most of the women were getting together outside of the confines of the Pram Factory to raise their consciousness within the Carlton Women’s Liberation Cell Group. While happy that the sexual revolution was reducing women’s sexual inhibitions, some of the men at the Factory were grumbling into their beer, disturbed that intimate details of their private lives—and their sexual performance—might be disclosed and raked over by a bunch of radical feminists. As they began to demand equal rights to orgasm in the bedroom, the women started to seek equal access within the performance group, too. They requested rehearsal time to stage the first production by the Women’s Theatre Group, newly formed under the umbrella of the wider collective. As all of the acknowledged writers in the Group so far were men—some of whom had not kept pace in consciousness raising—scripts tended to be viewed as part of a patriarchal plot, so Betty Can Jump was an improvised piece, with the performance material developed entirely by the cast in workshop-style rehearsals, under the direction of Kerry Dwyer (see Blundell, Zuber-Skerritt 21, plus various contributors at www.pramfactory.com/memoirsfolder/). I was the only male in the collective included in the cast. Several women would have been more comfortable if no mere male were involved at all. My gendered attitudes would scarcely have withstood a critical interrogation but, as my partner was active in launching the Women’s Electoral Lobby, I was given the benefit of the doubt. Director Kerry Dwyer liked my physicalised approach to performance (we were both inspired by the “poor theatre” of Jerzy Grotowski and the earlier surrealistic theories of Antonin Artaud), and I was cast to play all the male parts, whatever they would be. Memorable material came up in improvisation, much of which made it into the performances, but my personal favorite didn’t make the cut. It was a sprawling movement piece where I was “born” out of a symbolic mass of writhing female bodies. It was an arduous process and, after much heaving and huffing, I emerged from the birth canal stammering “SSSS … SSSS … SSMMMO-THER”! The radical reversioning of culturally authorised roles for women has inevitably, if more slowly, led to a re-thinking of the culturally approved and reinforced models of masculinity, too, once widely accepted as entirely biologically ordained rather than culturally constructed. But the possibility of a queer re-versioning of gender would be recognised only slowly. Liberation Meanwhile, Dennis Altman was emerging as an early spokesman for gay, or homosexual, liberation and he was invited to address the collective. Altman’s stirring book, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, had recently been published, but none of us had read it. Radical or not, the Group had shown little evidence of sensitivity to gender-queer issues. My own sexuality was very much “oppressed” rather than liberated and I would have been loath to use “queer” to describe myself. The term “homosexual” was fraught with pejorative, quasi-medical associations and, in a collective so divided across strict and sometimes hostile gender boundaries, deviant affiliations got short shrift. Dennis was unsure of his reception before this bunch of apparent “heteros”. Sitting at the rear of the meeting, I admired his courage. It took more self-acceptance than I could muster to confront the Group on this issue at the time. Somewhere in the back of my mind, “homosexuality” was still something I was supposed to “get over”, so I failed to respond to Altman’s implicit invitation to come out and join the party. The others saw me in relationship with a woman and whatever doubts they might have carried about the nature of my sexuality were tactfully suspended. Looking back, I am struck by the number of simultaneous poses I was trying to maintain: as an actor; as a practitioner of an Artaudian “theatre of cruelty”; as a politically committed activist; and as a “hetero”-sexual. My identity was an assemblage of entities posing as “I”; it was as if I were performing a self. Little gay boys are encouraged from an early age to hide their real impulses, not only from others—in the very closest circle, the family; at school; among one’s peers—but from themselves, too. The coercive effects of shaming usually fix the denial into place in our psyches before we have any intellectual (or political) resources to consider other options. Growing up trying to please, I hid my feelings. In my experience, it could be downright dangerous to resist the subtle and gross coercions that applied around gender normativity. The psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott, of the British object-relations school, argues that when the environment does not support the developing personality and requires the person to sacrifice his or her own spontaneous needs to adapt to environmental demands, there is not even a resting-place for individual experience and the result is a failure in the primary narcissistic state to evolve an individual. The “individual” then develops as an extension of the shell rather than that of the core [...] What there is left of a core is hidden away and is difficult to find even in the most far-reaching analysis. The individual then exists by not being found. The true self is hidden, and what we have to deal with clinically is the complex false self whose function is to keep this true self hidden. (212) How to connect to that hidden core, then? “Mind’s true liberation...” Alienated from the performative version of selfhood, but still inspired by the promise of liberation, even in the “fuzzy” form for which my inchoate hunger yearned (sexual liberation? political liberation? mystical liberation?), I was left to seek out a more authentic basis for selfhood, one that didn’t send me spinning along the roller-coaster of psychedelic drugs, or lie to me with the nostrums of a toxic, most forms of which would deny me, as a sexual, moral and legal pariah, the comforts of those “anchorage points to the social matrix” identified by Soddy (cited in Mol 58). My spiritual inquiry was “counter” to these institutionalised models of religious culture. So, I began to read my way through a myriad of books on comparative religion. And to my surprise, rather than taking up with the religions of antique cultures, instead I encountered a very young guru, initially as presented in a simply drawn poster in the window of Melbourne’s only vegetarian restaurant (Shakahari, in Carlton). “Are you hungry and tired of reading recipe books?” asked the figure in the poster. I had little sense of where that hunger would lead me, but it seemed to promise a fulfilment in ways that the fractious politics of the APG offered little nourishment. So, while many of my peers in the cities chose to pursue direct political action, and others experimented with cooperative living in rural communes, I chose the communal lifestyle of the ashram. In these different forms, then, the conscious raising meme persisted when other challenges raised by the counterculture either faded or were absorbed in the mainstream. I finally came to realise that the intense disillusionment process I had been through (“dis-illusionment” as the stripping away of illusions) was the beginning of awakening, in effect a “spiritual initiation” into a new way of seeing myself and my “place” in the world. Buddhist teachers might encourage this very kind of stripping away of false notions as part of their teaching, so the aspiration towards the “true liberation” of the mind expressed in the Aquarian visioning might be—and in my case, actually has been and continues to be—fulfilled to a very real extent. Gurus and the entire turn towards Eastern mysticism were part of the New Age meme cluster prevailing during the early 1970s, but I was fortunate to connect with an enduring set of empirical practices that haven’t faded with the fashions of the counterculture. A good guitarist would never want to play in public without first tuning her instrument. In a similar way, it is now possible for me to tune my mind back to a deeper, more original source of being than the socially constructed sense of self, which had been so fraught with conflicts for me. I have discovered that before gender, and before sexuality, in fact, pulsing away behind the thicket of everyday associations, there is an original, unconditioned state of beingness, the awareness of which can be reclaimed through focused meditation practices, tested in a wide variety of “real world” settings. For quite a significant period of time I worked as an instructor in the method on behalf of my guru, or mentor, travelling through a dozen or so countries, and it was through this exposure that I was able to observe that the practices worked independently of culture and that “mind’s true liberation” was in many ways a de-programming of cultural indoctrinations (see Marsh, 2014, 2013, 2011 and 2007 for testimony of this process). In Japan, Zen roshi might challenge their students with the koan: “Show me your original face, before you were born!” While that might seem to be an absurd proposal, I am finding that there is a potential, if unexpected, liberation in following through such an inquiry. As “hokey” as the Aquarian meme-set might have been, it was a reflection of the idealistic hope that characterised the cluster of memes that aggregated within the counterculture, a yearning for healthier life choices than those offered by the toxicity of the military-industrial complex, the grossly exploitative effects of rampant Capitalism and a politics of cynicism and domination. The meme of the “true liberation” of the mind, then, promised by the heady lyrics of a 1970s hippie musical, has continued to bear fruit in ways that I could not have imagined. References Altman, Dennis. Homosexual Oppression and Liberation. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1972. Blundell, Graeme. The Naked Truth: A Life in Parts. 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