This article presents an account of an empirical study of discourse on the environment, the media and political action in Denmark. The study applies an interdisciplinary framework for discourse analysis which draws on the fields of social psychology, communication studies and linguistics. It analyses the discourse of six couples in the light of key social developments involving a `democratization of responsibility' whereby individuals feel personal responsibility for solving public problems, including global and local ecological risks. The role of the mass media in producing and disseminating knowledge of the problems in stressed. Discourse analysis shows that people draw on discourses which provide them with ways of coping with the proliferation of ecological risks and the burden of responsibility for those risks. People's sense of responsibility is limited in its strength by being constituted within a discourse which constructs political action beyond a limited amount of political consumption as belonging to a separate realm to which they have access only via the mass media.
Adorno, T.
and M. Horkheimer (1972) `The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception', in Dialectics of Enlightenment (trans. J. Cumming). New York: Seabury Press.
2.
Atkinson, J.
and J. Heritage (eds) (1984) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3.
Baudrillard, J.
(1983) Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e).
4.
Bauman, Z.
(1991) Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press.
5.
Bauman, Z.
(1997) Postmodernity and its Discontents. Cambridge: Polity Press.
6.
Beck, U.
(1992) The Risk Society. London: Sage.
7.
Beck, U.
(1994) `The Reinvention of Politics: Towards a Theory of Reflexive Modernisation', pp. 1-55 in U. Beck, A. Giddens and S. Lash (eds) Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.
8.
Beck, U.
(1995) Ecological Enlightenment: Essays on the Politics of the Risk Society. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
9.
Beck, U.
(1997) The Reinvention of Politics. London: Routledge.
10.
Berking, H.
(1996) `Solidary Individualism: The Moral Impact of Cultural Modernization in Late Modernity', pp. 189-202 in S. Lash, B. Szerszynski and B. Wynne (eds) Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology. London: Sage.
11.
Billig, M.
(1992) Talking of the Royal Family. London: Routledge.
12.
Corner, J.
(1991) `Meaning, Genre and Context: The Problematics of “Public Knowledge” in the Audience Studies', in J. Curran and M. Gurevitch (eds) Mass Media and Society. London: Arnold.
13.
Cottle, S.
(1998) `Ulrich Beck, “Risk Society” and the Media: A Catastrophic View?', European Journal of Communication13(1): 5-32.
14.
Eder, K.
(1995) Framing and Communicating Environmental Issues, Report to the Commission of the European Communities. Florence: European University Institute.
15.
Eder, K.
(1996) `The Institutionalisation of Environmentalism: Ecological Discourse and the Second Transformation of the Public Sphere', pp. 203-223 in S. Lash, B. Szerszynski and B. Wynne (eds) Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology. London: Sage.
16.
Fairclough, N.
(1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
17.
Fairclough, N.
(1995a) Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold.
18.
Fairclough, N.
(1995b) Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage.
19.
Giddens, A.
(1991) Modernity and Self-Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
20.
Giddens, A.
(1994a) Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.
21.
Giddens, A.
(1994b) `Living in a Post-Traditional Society', pp. 56-109 in U. Beck, A. Giddens and S. Lash (eds) Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.
22.
Habermas, J.
(1989) The Structured Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (trans. T. Burger with F. Lawrence). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
23.
Hagen, I.
(1994) `The Ambivalences of TV News Viewing: Between Ideals and Everyday Practices', European Journal of Communication9(2): 193-220.
24.
Hall, S.
(1996) `Who Needs Identity?', in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds) Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage.
25.
Hollway, W.
and T. Jefferson (1997) `The Risk Society in an Age of Anxiety: Situating Fear of Crime', British Journal of Sociology48(2): 255-266.
26.
Jameson, F.
(1984) `Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Capitalism', New Left Review: 146.
27.
Jensen, K.B.
(1990) `The Politics of Polysemy: Television News, Everyday Consciousness and Political Action', Media, Culture and Society2: 57-77.
28.
Jensen, K.B.
(1995) `Borgerlige ord: Modtagerens perspektiv på nyhedsmedierne i den demokratiske proces', Copenhagen: Statsministeriets Medieudvalg.
29.
Jørgensen, M.W.
and L. Phillips (1999) Diskursanalyse som Teori og Metode. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur/Roskilde University Press. (To be published in English as Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London: Sage.)
30.
Kellner, D.
(1995) Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern. London: Routledge.
31.
Lash, S.
, B. Szerszynski and B. Wynne (eds) (1996) Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology. London: Sage.
32.
Livingstone, S.
and P. Lunt (1994) Talk on Television: Audience Participation and Public Debate. London: Routledge.
33.
Melucci, A.
(1995) `The Global Planet and the Internal Planet: New Frontiers for Collective Action and Individual Transformation', in M. Darnovsky, B. Epstein and B. Flacks (eds) Cultural Politics and Social Movements. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
34.
Merchant, C.
(1992) Radical Ecology. London: Routledge.
35.
Murdock, G.
(1993) `Cultural Studies at the Crossroads', pp. 80-90 in A. Gray and J. McGuigan (eds) Studying Culture: An Introductory Reader. London: Edward Arnold.
36.
Nava, M.
(1991) `Consumerism Reconsidered: Buying and Power', Cultural Studies5(2): 185-207.
37.
Ochs, E.
(1997) `Narrative', pp. 185-207 in T. van Dijk (ed.) Discourse as Structure and Process. London: Sage.
38.
Phillips, L.
(1996) `Rhetoric and the Spread of the Discourse of Thatcherism', Discourse and Society7(2): 209-241.
39.
Phillips, L.
(1998) `Hegemony and Political Discourse: The Lasting Impact of Thatcherism', Sociology32(3): 249-269.
40.
Phillips, L.
(1999) `Reconciling Egalitarianism and Royalism: Media Discourse and the Danish Monarchy', Media, Culture and Society21(2): 221-245.
41.
Pomerantz, A.M.
(1986) `Extreme Case Formulations: A New Way of Legitimating Claims', Human Studies9: 219-230.
42.
Potter, J.
(1996) Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction. London: Sage.
43.
Potter, J.
and M. Wetherell (1987) Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour. London: Sage.
44.
Schrøder, K.
(1995) Danskerne og medierne — Dagligdag og demokrati. Copenhagen: Statsministeriets Medieudvalg.
45.
Sloterdijk, P.
(1988) Critique of Cynical Reason. London: Verso.
46.
Thompson, J.
(1995) The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Cambridge: Polity Press.
47.
Tomlinson, J.
(1994) `A Phenomenology of Globalization? Giddens on Global Modernity', European Journal of Communication9(2): 149-172.
48.
Wetherell, M.
and J. Potter (1992) Mapping the Language of Racism. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
49.
Widdicombe, S.
and R. Wooffitt (1995) The Language of Youth Subcultures: Social Identity in Action. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
