Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Wildfires present a growing risk to communities at a global scale. The 2018 wildfires in Sweden were mentioned as the worst emergency in modern history, where several rural villages were forced to evacuation. Media holds a significant role in constructing narratives about wildfires as these are likely to influence agenda setting and thus also policy-making processes that shape future responses to fire. This study therefore aims to shed light on how local and national newspapers framed the 2018 wildfires that encircled the village of Kårböle and forced all of its residents to evacuate, by seeking for salient and silenced narratives in news articles written during and in the aftermath of the wildfires. By employing a qualitative narrative analysis inspired by Narrative Policy Framework, combined with concepts derived from critical discourse analysis, this thesis shows how media constructed the wildfire as an emerging crisis which manifests certain human-nature relations and identity representations. The salient narratives illustrate how media enhances humans as external to nature and reinforces traditional gender divisions of labour in relation to wildfire management. Meanwhile, narratives concerning the socio-natural context in terms of modern forestry practices and rurality are largely silenced. These findings suggest that media reinforces the common response to wildfires whereby humans seek to control nature and traditional gender roles are maintained. The implication of these findings is that media fails to acknowledge other structural responses to wildfires which could contribute to more adaptive approaches to wildfires, and thus more resilient communities, in the future.