Roy Samuel G, McGreavy Bridie, Quiring Tyler, Druschke Caroline Gottschalk
Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA.
School of Earth and Climate Sciences, University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA.
Environ Manage. 2022 Nov;70(5):840-854. doi: 10.1007/s00267-022-01715-7. Epub 2022 Sep 16.
Dams are a globally important social-ecological issue, and the practice of removing aging or obsolete dams is increasing in many countries where rivers have been used to fuel industrial growth. News media play an important role in providing information and raising awareness about dam-related decision making and patterns in news media coverage can shape public sense-making about potentially controversial dam decisions. This research focuses on spatial patterns of news media references to "dam removal" georeferenced to a New England dams database, the types of dam removal characteristics that contribute to newsworthiness, and specific media framing strategies. We develop a method, known as DAMMDA, that combines a large geodatabase of dam features and corpus of news media articles. We find that spatial patterns of "dam removal" news media coverage do not necessarily coincide with the actual occurrence of removed dams, nor the distribution of extant dams, in the landscape. Instead, a minority of dams with specific characteristics make up the majority of dam media references. Such "newsworthy dams" are capable of generating hydroelectricity, are situated on large rivers, are located in urban areas, or have already been removed. Further, references to newsworthy dams are often used to frame discussions about future dam decisions in other locations in New England and across the United States. We conclude by reflecting on how this approach is relevant for understanding complex and interconnected factors that can shape controversial sustainability issues, such as the relationships between news media and social-ecological characteristics of infrastructures within landscapes.
大坝是一个具有全球重要性的社会生态问题，在许多利用河流推动工业发展的国家，拆除老旧或废弃大坝的做法日益增多。新闻媒体在提供信息以及提高人们对与大坝相关决策的认识方面发挥着重要作用，新闻媒体的报道模式会影响公众对可能存在争议的大坝决策的理解。本研究聚焦于新闻媒体提及“拆除大坝”的空间模式（这些信息通过地理定位与新英格兰大坝数据库相关联）、有助于新闻价值的拆除大坝特征类型以及具体的媒体框架策略。我们开发了一种名为DAMMDA的方法，该方法结合了一个包含大坝特征的大型地理数据库和新闻媒体文章语料库。我们发现，新闻媒体对“拆除大坝”的报道的空间模式不一定与实际拆除大坝的情况相符，也不一定与现存大坝在景观中的分布情况相符。相反，少数具有特定特征的大坝构成了新闻媒体提及大坝的大部分内容。这类“有新闻价值的大坝”能够发电、位于大型河流上、位于城市地区或已经被拆除。此外，对有新闻价值的大坝的提及常常被用于构建关于新英格兰其他地区以及美国其他地方未来大坝决策的讨论。我们通过思考这种方法如何与理解可能影响有争议的可持续性问题的复杂且相互关联的因素相关联来得出结论，比如新闻媒体与景观中基础设施的社会生态特征之间的关系。
