Framing environmental policy by the local press: Case study from the Dadia Forest Reserve, Greece

Abstract

This paper critically examines the way environmental policy is framed by the press. Focusing on the Dadia Forest Reserve (Greece), we investigated the article content of a local newspaper across three subsequent periods of ecotourism development and three item topics, namely ‘ecotourism’, ‘forest management’ and ‘environmental awareness’. Content analysis of newspaper articles was based on a pre-defined coding scheme. Overall, time trends as reflected in the local press implied a change in environmental policy stirring from an expert-led towards a more participatory approach. Gradually, balanced schemes dominated environmental policy, where both environmental and economic considerations were taken into account under a diverse spatiotemporal range. Social consensus seems to have been established during the second period of ecotourism development. Ecotourism as an item topic was less connected to environmentalist motives compared to economic ones; the opposite was revealed for the forest management topic. However, our reconstruction of environmental policy in the local press, showed that environmental and economic motives did hardly intercross. Additionally, the ability of the local press to produce and limit meaning was manifested by the sealing of any production process including the one that apparently produces the ecotourism product. Implications for environmental policy and forest management are discussed.