Environmental Issues and Global Media: Critique, Analysis and Discourses

This chapter investigates the intricate relationship between environmental issues in the North Eastern (NE) region of India and the news media. Despite its rich natural resources, the NE region has remained largely untapped. The Indian government’s increasing presence in the area, marked by developmental projects, has also left its environmental footprint. While the media has extensively covered environmental discourse in India, it has paid relatively less attention to the NE region. This chapter contends that the absence of a critical space for the production and consumption of environmental meanings could lead to unsustainable development in the region, posing risks to the culture, society, and the people of NE India. Environmental issues serve as material conditions around which the media constructs narratives of existential threats. Consequently, when the media frames environmental issues in terms of ‘risk-responsibility’, it shifts the political and normative discourse towards development and economic growth. This chapter problematises such discursive practices that pit environmental concerns against national development projects, leading to cognitive dissonance among the public and undermining critical discussions on their adverse environmental impacts. The chapter adopts the conceptual framework of the ‘construction of threat’ within the environmental discourse of the NE region.