Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Climate engineering, or geoengineering, is large-scale technological intervention in the global climate system. How is this understood within our culture, what power relations are implied in the idea, and what are geoengineering's implications for sustainability? This thesis begins to examine this topic through the lens of culture by presenting a media analysis. It combines the quantitative method of content analysis with qualitative methods of discourse analysis to examine how geoengineering is represented in the popular media, and discusses the implications of these representations for governance. In particular, the thesis examines how representations of geoengineering function in the landscape of new media, and how these representations might enable or disable public participation in geoengineering decision-making. After the dominant narratives by which we understand geoengineering are identified, the thesis discusses the historical and social construction of these narratives and how they might be changed to incorporate visions of a climate that is both democratically decided upon and sustainable.
Author: Holly Jean Buck
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1771436969