This paper analyzes the discursive struggle over the reach and containment of spectacle in environmental politics to provide (a) case study-based evidence of how, on one hand, transnationally shared environmental awareness and concern, emerging in part through spectacle, is translating into expectations of participation and demands for accountability, and (b) how this is already impacting the ways in which environmental politics is being understood and enacted locally, regionally and transnationally. Drawing on recent mediated debate over the Great Barrier Reef, it finds that while the transnational is clearly an ambition for environmental campaigners, and the perception that transnational publics are emerging is already impacting environmental politics, the potency of these publics and their capacity to meaningfully negotiate accountability is yet to be empirically confirmed. Nevertheless, measures to contain spectacle are providing a potency for a transnational public sphere, even if in reality it is still little more than a specter.
Funding
Australian Research Council
History
Publication title
Environmental Communication
Volume
10
Issue
6
Pagination
791-802
ISSN
1752-4032
Department/School
School of Social Sciences
Publisher
Routledge
Place of publication
United States
Rights statement
Copyright 2016 Taylor & Francis. Version of manuscript has been accepted for publication in Environmental Communication, published by Taylor & Francis.