Searching for 'wilderness': environmental protests in The Mercury and The Age

'Wilderness' is a highly contested concept but one that has been used effectively by environmentalists to frame environmental issues and valorise wild places, particularly the wild rivers, lakes and old growth forests of Tasmania. Content analyses of articles sampled from The Mercury and The Age suggest substantial variation in the reporting of 'wilderness' between the two newspapers. In the Tasmanian Mercury 'wilderness' is only weakly associated with coverage of environmental campaigns in areas environmentalists claim to be wild places, but is more strongly associated with environmental campaigns in The Age. Over a similar period, the phrase 'forest protest' also emerges as a distinctive frame. Yet while 'forest protests' occurs more frequently in The Mercury than The Age over time, it is only associated with 'wilderness' in The Age. The findings suggest that while differences in the tone of 'wilderness' articles in the two newspapers may have softened since the Franklin campaign of 1982-83, when it comes to framing and reporting 'wilderness', substantial differences remain between the two papers.