Northern Review

Introduction: Media Representations of the Arctic

Mathieu Landriault — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Advance Online Article first published September 2024. Page numbers not final.

Acknowledgements
The guest editor would like to thank the MINDS program (Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security) of the Department of National Defence of Canada and the Association of Part-Time Professors of the University of Ottawa for their financial support.

Practitioner Perspectives on Arctic Marine Mammals in Environmental News Reporting

Charlotte Gehrke — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Advance Online Article first published September 2024. Page numbers not final

The conservation and environmental policy literature suggests that featuring charismatic megafauna or flagship species—large animals with which humans are fascinated—in environmental communications helps to raise awareness and create public and political support for the protection of ecosystems or species. While a considerable body of literature is dedicated to such species, scholars have paid comparatively little attention to the human practitioners creating these flagship-based communications. To fill the literature gap, this article draws on agenda-setting theory and empirical evidence concerning the Arctic—the fastest-warming region on Earth—and its charismatic marine mammals. Through interviews and informal conversations with journalists, researchers, and policy-makers, the study asks 1) why these practitioners contribute to flagship-based news coverage, 2) how they interact with other practitioners in this process, and 3) how they view the content of the news coverage. The article highlights practitioners’ motivation to harness human fascination with Arctic marine mammals to draw attention to broader environmental issues, most notably the climate crisis. At the same time, the article outlines trends in flagship-based news coverage that practitioners perceived as problematic, including the representation of polar bears, human perspectives, and different systems of knowledge. Practitioners also discussed challenges hindering accurate and nuanced Arctic environmental news reporting, including budget, personnel, and time constraints. Through its analysis of first-hand practitioner accounts, the article provides valuable insights and practical information for researchers, journalists, and policy-makers seeking to engage with and improve environmental news reporting concerning Arctic marine mammals, as well as related conservation efforts.

Local (or Not) Insecurity on Arctic Twitter/X: Global Insecurity and Climate Change

Gabriella Gricius — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Advance Online Article first published September 2024. Page numbers not final.

While Twitter, now known as X, has been used to study political sentiments around elections and political discourse broadly speaking, less research has explored questions of insecurity. Using a data set of Arctic tweets between 1 January 2020 and 31 March 2023, and the R programming language, I asked how posts regarding this region framed the debate around insecurity. My work finds that spikes of insecurity on Arctic Twitter/X did not directly correlate with moments of global insecurity such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 or the COVID-19 pandemic from early 2020. Instead, they reference environmental insecurities such as the 2020 Norilsk oil spill in Russia and other Arctic-specific events that almost all have to do with climate change, both locally and globally. These findings suggest that similar to public opinion polls, local insecurities have more resonance with Arctic publics, rather than highly politicized moments of global insecurity.

Representations of Inuit Issues on X (Twitter): Who is Framing Inuit Issues and How?

Mathieu Landriault, Alexandre Millette, Gabrielle LaFortune — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Advance Online Article first published September 2024. Page numbers not final.

This article documents who speaks about Inuit issues on social media and how these issues are portrayed on social media. By drawing on data from the Twitter (now X) platform, we analyzed the most relayed messages posted about Inuit issues from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2022. We performed a content analysis in order to explore the tonality (through sentiment analysis) and the topics (through topic modelling) of the posts referring to Inuit issues. Inuit users on X formed a small but dynamic contingent, succeeding in playing a central role in defining Inuit issues on the platform. Their popularity could be partially credited to the positivity of their messages. The rare overlap of topics between Inuit and non-Inuit users on X points to the challenge of Inuit users reaching non-Inuit allies. We conclude that non-Inuit allies could do more to relay Inuit priorities and messages on the platform.