Discussion Post

THE DIVERSIFIED NATURE OF “DOMESTICATED” NEWS DISCOURSE The case of climate change in national news media

Ulrika Olausson

Several studies have concluded that foreign news in national media is characterized by a national

logic largely caused by so-called “domestication,” i.e. the adaptation of news from “outside” to a perceived national audience. The domesticated news discourse counteracts discursive construc-

tions of the global, reinforcing instead nation-state discourse and identity. However, this paper

argues that we need to take the search for constructions of the transnational beyond the genre of

foreign news. The deterritorialized nature of today’s globalized risks and crises, such as climate change, blurs the boundaries between the domestic and foreign, and renders the distinction

between domestic and foreign news more or less obsolete. This, in turn, requires us to revisit the

concept and practice of “domestication” using context-sensitive analytical approaches to capture its discursive constitution. Guided by the theoretical and methodological framework of critical

discourse analysis (CDA), this paper aims to analyze and de-construct news discourses of

“domestication” by studying the reporting on climate change in Indian, Swedish, and US newspapers. It identifies three discursive modes of domestication: (1) introverted domestication,

which disconnects the domestic from the global; (2) extroverted domestication, which

interconnects the domestic and the global; and (3) counter-domestication, a deterritorialized

mode of reporting that lacks any domestic epicenter.

KEYWORDS climate change; critical discourse analysis; deterritorialization; domestication;

global journalism; global media; media globalization

Introduction

Several studies have come to the conclusion that foreign news in national media is characterized by a national logic largely caused by so-called “domestication,” that is to say, the discursive adaptation of news from “outside” the nation-state so as to make it resonate with a national audience as it is perceived (Clausen 2004; DeVreese 2001; Riegert 2011; Roosvall 2010). The domesticated foreign news discourse counteracts discursive constructions of the global, reinforcing instead nation-state discourse and identity. This paper argues, however, that we need to take the search for constructions of the transnational beyond the genre of foreign news (Roosvall 2013). The deterritorialized nature of today’s risks and crises, such as those caused by transnational terrorism, the so- called global war on terror, and climate change, provides a global outlook on the world, blurs the boundaries between the domestic and foreign domains, and renders the traditional distinction between domestic and foreign news more or less obsolete (Berglez 2013). As a case in point, the causes and consequences of climate change are not easily

Journalism Studies, 2014 Vol. 15, No. 6, 711–725, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2013.837253 © 2013 Taylor & Francis

reported within the frames of either of these news categories. In their capacity as pivotal constituters as well as constituents of globalization, global risks and crises need to be taken seriously in the study of how the news media frame a globalized world (Cottle 2011).

The proposed shift to an empirical focus on global risks and crises when searching for global news discourse urges us also to revisit the concept of domestication. What happens with constructions of the local and national in a context of proliferating transboundary risks and crises? Arguably, domesticated news discourse can only properly be assessed if examined in the context of other possible discourses that emerge against the backdrop of risks and crises of global scope. Thus, when analyzing the constitution of domestications, there is a strong need for context-sensitive analytical tools designed to capture the shifting relations between various discourses. Guided by the theoretical and methodological framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA), this study aims to analyze and deconstruct domestications in news discourse by studying the everyday reporting on climate change—described by Beck (2009) as emblematic of the “global interdependency crises,”—in three different countries.

The article consists of five sections including this introduction. The second section accounts for the research design (CDA), and the third for the empirical materials (newspapers from India, the United States, and Sweden). In the fourth section the results are presented and thematically structured around the central findings of the CDA, namely discourses of (1) introverted domestication, (2) extroverted domestication, and (3) counter- domestication. The final section discusses the results, and it is suggested that the domestic and the global might not be as far apart as sometimes is implied by previous research.

Analytic Framework

In order to uncover the constitution of domesticated news discourse, the theory of CDA has been utilized. While CDA often is used as an analytical means to detect hegemonic meaning, i.e. “meaning in the service of power” (Fairclough 1995, 14), the current study instead analyzes the discursive struggles that precede any creation of dominant meaning. This is motivated by this study’s interest in social transformation, which is simultaneously shaped by and shapes discourse in a dialectical relationship (Fairclough 1992); in the case at hand, a news discourse developing along with the social, political, and environmental changes associated with globalization. Obviously, these discursive struggles are not likely to be waged on equal terms, but are characterized by asymmetrical power relations (we already know that a national discourse is likely to dominate over a global one), yet nevertheless it would be wrong to assume that the struggle inevitably leads to the complete destruction of one side (Olausson 2013; Sparks 2007). Thus, the CDA of the current study revolves around the shifting relations between different discourses in the communicative event of climate change reporting, which makes it possible to situate the news media institution, as one particular “order of discourse” (Fairclough 1995, 55), in the context of the social, political, and environmental changes entailed by globalization.

The choice of method, as noted by Wodak et al. (1999), is relatively open in CDA. In this article, the analysis is based on qualitative text analysis, which enables a context- sensitive and deepened exploration that is fruitful for the study of interdiscursive relations. To enable the systematic exploration of the domestication of news, the analysis focuses on constructions of (1) space, (2) power, and (3) identity. These analytical categories have

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been recommended by Berglez (2008, 849) for the investigation of how news media discursively frame the global, and have been analyzed by means of the discourse analytical tools described below, instruments designed to accomplish the task of unmasking the shifting relations between various discourses.

The analysis departs from Fairclough’s (1995, 5) overarching question “How is the world … represented?” as regards space, power, and identity, operationalizing it through the following sub-questions based on the CDA suggested by van Dijk (1988, cf. Olausson 2009):

. Themes and topics: What statements, discussions, questions, arguments, etc. are present and how do they relate to each other?

. Presence and absence: Which perspectives, views, opinions, etc., are present and which are absent?

. Local coherence: How are claims based on relationships of, for instance, cause-and-effect and problem-and-solution constructed?

. Choice of quotations or references: What are the origins of the chosen quotations and references?

. Choice of words: Which words are chosen in preference to other possible wordings?

. Distinctions: In what ways are distinctions made between people and places?

These questions have systematically been applied to each news item in the sample. In order to ensure the reliability and systematics of the analysis, the analytical operation of these questions is visible in the analysis presented in the results section. The quotations from the newspapers are intended to increase the transparency of the connection between the empirical material and the argumentation. They serve an illustrative function and are typical examples drawn from a larger body of empirical material. It should be underscored that the aim of this analysis is not to determine which discursive mechanisms appear most frequently in the material but to display the shifting relations between various discourses relevant to domestication processes in the context of a global environmental risk.

Empirical Material

The empirical materials consist of newspapers from three countries: Sweden, the United States, and India. The choice of these countries is not primarily motivated by comparative aims but rather the desire to create a broad and diversified empirical foundation for the analysis of the constitution of domestications. Sweden was selected because it is a small nation that is not very significant as regards greenhouse-gas emissions and mitigation effects. Sweden is quite dependent on the climate-related activities of other countries, yet actively pursues environmental issues on the domestic as well as international political arenas. The choice of the United States is primarily motivated by its incomparable global political power, as well as its position of being one of the world’s biggest greenhouse-gas emitters. At the same time the United States has a political climate that does not allow for any significant mitigation measures. India was selected because of its position as an upcoming strong economy, which implies drastically increasing greenhouse- gas emissions. India’s climate policy will be crucial for the future development of climate change. However, despite its significance in relation to climate change, India probably also demonstrates sensitivity to the world “outside” due to its colonial heritage. Selecting three countries such as these that are quite diverse historically, politically, economically, and environmentally makes it possible to avoid results which are heavily dependent on the

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conditions of one particular nation, and enables the identification of the more general discourses pertinent to the domestication of news on global risks and crises.

The newspapers included in the study have been selected according to a similar principle as in the selection of countries. The sample is intended to cover a diversity of different news outlets: local and national, broadsheets and tabloids. The rationale behind this selection is that domesticated (as well as globalized) discourse might emerge in any medium, and its presence should be treated as an empirical question and not as something that axiomatically can be ascribed to certain media beforehand (cf. Robertson 2008). The number of newspapers from each country varies; for instance, the sample includes three newspapers from Sweden in various formats, but only one from India. The reason for this is that the amount of reporting on the climate issue varied considerably between the newspapers, and in the Indian case this meant that one newspaper was considered enough. For the same reason, the investigated time periods vary between the newspapers. All of them, however, cover the worldwide event Earth Hour, a campaign that encourages households and businesses to turn off their electricity for an hour in order to raise awareness of climate change. This event with global ramifications was included in the studied time period as a “critical discourse moment” (Carvalho 2007, 226), with an assumed potential to trigger constructions of both the national and the global. The articles were identified by using the search words Earth Hour; climate change; global warming; greenhouse effect.1 The names and types of the newspapers selected (and their abbreviations), the number of news items analyzed, and the time periods covered are presented in Table 1.

The sample consists of news articles only, and argumentative items such as editorials, commentaries, and op-ed articles were excluded, as were news items that mentioned climate change or Earth Hour only in passing. The empirical analysis thus consists of a qualitative CDA of 132 news items from six dailies in three countries.

Results: The Diversified Nature of Domesticated News Discourse

This section presents the analysis of domesticated news discourse. The CDA focuses on discursive constructions of space, identity, and power (Berglez 2008), and the section is

TABLE 1 Newspaper coverage

Country Newspaper Type Number of

items Time period

United States The Washington Post (WP)

National broadsheet (English language)

48 March 1 to April 3, 2012

United States USA Today National broadsheet (English language)

7 March 1 to April 3, 2012

Sweden Aftonbladet (AB) National tabloid (Swedish language)

6 March 1 to April 3, 2012

Sweden Dagens Nyheter (DN)

National broadsheet (Swedish language)

10 March 1 to April 3, 2012

Sweden Nerikes Allehanda (NA)

Local compact (Swedish language)

13 March 1 to April 3, 2012

India The Times of India (ToI)

National broadsheet (English language)

48 March 27 to April 3, 2012

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thematically structured around the central findings emerging from the CDA, namely the discourses of (1) introverted domestication, which disconnects the domestic from the global; (2) extroverted domestication, which interconnects the domestic and the global; and (3) counter-domestication, a deterritorialized mode of reporting that lacks any domestic epicenter (cf. Berglez 2013).

Discourses of Introverted Domestication

In this section, the introverted domestications, where the climate issue is deprived of its global character when constructed as an entirely domestic concern, are analyzed. The presence of these kinds of domestications has been confirmed several times before, above all in studies of foreign news (e.g. Clausen 2004; Riegert 1998), and they are also visible in the climate reporting of the newspapers included in this present study.

Disconnecting local phenomena from their global ramifications. One prominent way of constructing introverted domestications is to disconnect local happenings from their global ramifications. In the case of climate change, this is done, for instance, when the Times of India reports on national outbreaks of dangerous diseases—alleged conse- quences of climate change—linking them solely to causes at the national level:

doctors say climate change, sporadic spells of rain and extension of winter in northern India caused spread of the infection (H1N1) in states like Maharashtra and Rajasthan. (ToI, April 1, 2012)

Local space is constructed also in reports on extreme weather. Here, the local implications of climate change are highlighted, but they are disconnected from their global causes. The article cited below is devoted entirely to the local or national weather consequences of climate change.

Dozens of places in the Midwest, Great Lakes and Northeast have obliterated warm weather records for more than a week—in some cases, by more than 30 degrees. (WP, March 23, 2012)

An article in the Washington Post (March 4, 2012) stating that “the connection between climate change and tornado formation and intensity is a subject of ongoing research,” constitutes another example of introverted domestication, in that it constructs the issue within a strictly national news frame when locating the tornadoes to “Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Alabama, and Georgia.” When the reporting exclusively focuses on the local consequences of climate change, and omits the relationship between those consequences and their global causes, local space is constructed.

It is not only a narrow focus on domestic consequences of climate change that generates the introverted domestications. Constructing domestic solutions without connecting them to the underlying problems of global magnitude also serves introvertly to domesticate the climate issue. In the analyzed case, this is done by giving exclusive attention to adaptation responses, i.e. activities aimed at adapting society to the inevitable consequences of climate change, while refraining from connecting them to mitigation responses, i.e. activities aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Adaptation responses are often performed locally or nationally, and when the reporting disconnects them from mitigation responses, which are more often associated with international

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political institutions, introverted domestication of space appears as a result. This is evident in headlines that exclusively thematize adaptation responses to climate change such as “As Waters Rise, La. Seeks Federal Help to Lift Vital Road” (WP, March 19, 2012), and “City Corporation Launches Climate Disaster Resilience Initiative” (ToI, March 28, 2012). The introvertly domesticated discourse created through the disconnection of adaptation responses from mitigation responses is also evident in the following example through the choice of quoting an Indian expert:

“Health authorities in India are already very successful at controlling malaria cases, but this new research could support decision makers in keeping ahead of the more serious occurrences of the disease, which is starting to increase across the country alongside the changing climate conditions”, Dr Goswami added. (ToI, April 3, 2012)

Introverted domestications of power are visible mostly in the US newspapers, which thematize solutions to climate change either only in relation to President Obama alone (WP, March 5, 2012) or the “Obama administration” (USA Today, March 29, 2012), thereby disconnecting solutions to climate change from globally relevant political actors such as the United Nations, the European Union, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), etc. In this way, power is constructed according to the national logic, and with a lack of transnational connections.

All newspapers except for the US newspapers report on the global event Earth Hour.2 However, the global scope of the event does not ensure the absence of introverted domestications. For instance, the Swedish newspapers do find Earth Hour newsworthy, but they do not necessarily situate the event within its global framework. Instead, Earth Hour is thematized as a domestic issue, as in the headline and subsequent introduction “The Municipality Turns Off the Lights. Ljusnarsberg Municipality will take part in the world’s largest climate manifestation, Earth Hour” (NA, March 30, 2012), or the introductions “52 percent of Sweden’s population turned off their lights in the last Earth Hour” (AB, March 31, 2012) and “Now Globen3 is lit up—to remind us of the blackout on Saturday. Over 400,000 Stockholmers are expected to switch off their lights during Earth hour” (DN, March 30, 2012). By thematizing it within a completely domestic news frame without recognizing its global extension, the event is introvertly domesticated and deprived of its global character.

In sum, the analysis identifies three distinct ways of introvertly domesticating a global risk or crisis, such as climate change: first, by giving attention to the domestic consequences while disconnecting them from their global causes; second, by focusing on domestic solutions while disconnecting them from the underlying global problem; and, third, by disconnecting local events, such as Earth Hour, from their global context. These three constituents of the introvertly domesticated news discourse could be described as discursively creating “geopolitical disconnectivity.”

Discourses of Extroverted Domestication

In all probability, the introverted domestications demonstrated above suppress a global news discourse (Berglez and Olausson 2011), but it would not be fair to claim that all kinds of domestications obstruct the emergence of a global discourse and prevent it from emerging. The extroverted domestications, which will be demonstrated in more detail in the following, are rooted in domestic discourses but distinguish themselves from the introverted domestications by connecting the local and national with the global.

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Connecting local phenomena to their global ramifications. In conjunction with the above- analyzed processes of introverted domestications, which completely leave out the global dimension of climate change, there is another class of domestication processes which allow for global relations to appear. On the one hand, the discourse is domesticated in the sense of the thematization of local circumstances—Earth Hour as practiced in the Swedish municipality of Örebro, as in the citation below—but, on the other hand, it also acknowledges the global scope of the event when interconnecting the local city and a multitude of other locations around the world in the construction of global space.

Earth Hour began in 2007 in Sydney … The very next year Örebro joined in, as the first municipality in the country. Last year 135 countries and 5000 cities took part. (NA, March 30, 2012)

The fact that the above excerpt derives from a local newspaper, where introverted domestications might be expected, illustrates well the argument that the presence and nature of domestications must be treated as an empirical question and not something that can be ascribed to certain media beforehand.

The mixture of global and domestic discourses is also evident in the following news item. Here, the construction of climate change as the cause of changes in flooding and hurricane patterns is embedded within a global discourse when the article points to the multinational constitution of the research team, and no particular area is singled out as the site of the weather changes.

The report—from 200 authors in 62 countries—makes distinctions among weather phenomena. It shows there is “limited to medium evidence” that climate change has contributed to extreme weather patterns, for example, and there is “low confidence” that long-term hurricane trends over the past 40 years have been driven by the world’s growing carbon output. Coumou [climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany] pointed to heat waves in Western Europe in 2003 and western Russia in 2012, among others, as events made much more likely by climate change. (WP, March 29, 2012)

However, this global discourse is narrowed down later in the article, and the issue of extreme weather caused by climate change is made to fit within a domestic framework:

Although extreme weather in developing countries exacts a higher human toll than in industrialized nations, the high economic cost of recent U.S. disasters is shifting more of the financial burden to taxpayers. (WP, March 29, 2012)

Again, even if climate science eventually becomes discursively domesticated in this example, it should not unreservedly be taken as a simple case of domestication. Instead, it should be regarded as a case of extroverted domestication, which discursively constructs interconnections between the global and the domestic. This feature clearly distinguishes the extroverted domestications from the introverted ones.

Above, it has been shown how the consequences of climate change in terms of extreme weather situations sometimes are introvertly domesticated without any connections being made to the global nature of climate change. However, it is also true that these introverted weather-related domestications do not preclude extroverted ones on the same theme, as in the example below where local weather situations are explained by distant climate patterns.

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Like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in Africa that helps cause a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, far-flung climate patterns hundreds or thousands of miles away are helping fuel the nation’s bizarre March heat. (USA Today, March 16, 2012)

Thus, the focus on and interest in the US weather notwithstanding, interconnections between distant geopolitical spaces are constructed in a relationship of cause and effect.

When it comes to discursive constructions of power, extroverted domestications are also present in the reporting. These are admittedly rooted in the framework of domestic interests, yet they display interconnections between various geopolitical scales. With its choice of a quotation, a local paper ties together a parish pastor, the local community, and the global in a subtle but recognizable way:

“Of course we [The Church of Sweden in Örebro] want to participate and show world leaders that climate change must be taken seriously,” says Annika Hansson, pastor in Längbro parish. (NA, March 30, 2012)

In the next example, regulations in India are discursively connected to changes in the world and references are made to the situation in “the West.” Thus, through the choice of words and quotations (from a member of the ministry of environment), a discourse of extroverted domestication is formed.

“India has started drawing up laws on environment for industries to follow since late seventies,” … said DS Ramteke, NEERI [National Environmental Engineering Research Institute] scientist and the organizing secretary of the conference. He added that the meet would also take into consideration the future course of action to keep in tune with the changing world. “The laws in the country are not too stringent, but desirably good. We have borrowed a lot from the more developed countries in the West,” … said Apurba Gupta, member of the ministry of environment. (ToI, March 30, 2012)

Parts of the reporting on Earth Hour also constitute examples of extroverted domestica- tion. It is true that the event is sometimes completely domesticated, as shown above, but these introverted domestications intermingle with extroverted ones; identities are connected across borders, and the global ramifications of Earth Hour, visible for instance in the word choices “global conscience” and “worldwide” in the examples below, are emphasized.

At eight-thirty this evening you and everyone else with a global conscience are expected to turn off the window lamp and devote an hour to contemplating the environment and the climate. (DN, March 31, 2012, emphasis added)

This year Hällefors municipality will again take part in the worldwide climate manifesta- tion Earth Hour … The idea is for as many people as possible to turn off their lights during this hour in order to demonstrate their concern about energy and climate issues. (NA, March 24, 2012, emphasis added)

The latter example, from the Swedish local newspaper, takes the local context (Hällefors municipality) as its point of departure and builds on a domesticated discourse. However, what prevents this piece of news from introvertly domesticating Earth Hour is its acknowledgment of the worldwide character of the event. Hence, the local event

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becomes tied to the global when citizens’ involvement in the climate issue is situated within a global context. In a similar manner, Nerikes Allehanda (March 30, 2012) thematizes the connection between the global, “two billion people all over the world,” and the national, “half of the Swedish population,” when describing the goal for how many people should turn out their lights during Earth Hour.

Linking local circumstances with global antagonisms. The analysis makes evident that the global and often extremely problematic and conflict-generating consequences of climate change might function as drivers of the extroverted domestications in which places and regions are linked together. The examples below are constructed within a domesticated news frame by centering on the United States and India, respectively, but the domestications are extroverted in character because the reporting highlights relations between these nations and the rest of the world. The thematization of strained global power relations as a consequence of climate change generates an antagonistic and domestically rooted, yet transnationally interconnected discourse.

Fresh-water shortages and more droughts and floods will increase the likelihood that water will be used as a weapon between states or to further terrorist aims in key strategic areas, including the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa, a U.S. intelligence assessment released Thursday said. (WP, March 23, 2012)

In January, the European Union began implementing an Emissions Trading Scheme, which compels airlines to buy carbon allowances for flights landing in and taking off from Europe. The U.S. government—along with the governments of 79 other countries— objects to the program. (WP, March 29, 2012)

The government has also asked aviation sector players in India not to communicate with EU on the carbon tax it has imposed … India, along with other key countries, like China, Brazil, the US and Russia had agreed to a basket of actions against EU if the latter does not back off. The committee of secretaries agreed to take those measures in sequential manner upgrading the offensive against EU. (ToI, April 2, 2012)

It is also worth noting how, in the above excerpts, the climate issue actually has moved beyond its usual position as an environmental issue and become integrated into completely different news discourses. In general, one might assume that when a global issue becomes sufficiently established on the agendas of media and politics, it tends to successively transform in this direction and be implemented within other news categories as part of more general issues (Cottle 2011). In the studied case, this process leads to the emergence of an extrovertly domesticated (antagonistic) news discourse.

Another type of extroverted domestication stems from polarized discursive constructions of Us and Them in the construction of power. The introductions cited below both create an opposition and a distinction between the BRICS countries (Us) and the West (Them), thereby displaying interconnections between various geopolitical scales.

The West’s stand on climate change and, particularly for Russia, India and China, the future of Af-Pak, are very troubling. Most importantly, they are all concerned that the West’s economic troubles are chronic and will be consequential for them. They look

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increasingly, therefore, to sustain their growth prospects on the backs of each other’s economies. (ToI, March 31, 2012)

“Wastage is largely a problem of the West. Recycling, reusing and maximum utilization of resources has been a part of our culture and our way of living,” … said Srikanta Panigrahi, director general of a not-for-profit organization. (ToI, March 30, 2012)

Admittedly, the construction of polarized and sometimes overtly hostile relationships through processes of extroverted domestication is not without negative implications; there are plenty of reasons not addressed here for problematizing constructions of Us and Them, something which has been done many times before. Nonetheless, the mapping out of the entire field of discursive constructions of extroverted domestications, regardless of their nature, would provide valuable knowledge about what it is, more precisely, that triggers antagonistic and consensual constructions, respectively, and in which contexts they occur.

To conclude, extroverted domestications distinguish themselves from introverted ones by interconnecting various parts of the world. In the context of climate change, this is mainly achieved in two separate ways: first, by linking climate change with its global ramifications, for instance when highlighting both the local and the global character of Earth Hour; second, by connecting local circumstances, such as fresh-water shortages caused by a changing climate, with potential global threats, such as transnational terrorism. These two components of extroverted domestication, building on the mixture of domestic and global discourses, could be described as discursively generating “geopolitical interconnectivity.”

Discourses of Counter-domestication

The introverted and extroverted types of domestication analyzed above have in common that they both acknowledge the domestic in the construction of climate change. Contrary to this, the discourse of counter-domestication, identified in this section, constructs a borderless world without any epicenter. Local anchoring and discursive constructions of the domestic are absent.

Deterritorialization through community. Constructions of global identity in relation to Earth Hour are obvious examples of the counter-domesticated discourse on climate change. Here, the event is freed from local or national anchoring, and instead collective identity—the construction of “togetherness”—is thematized on a global scale, as in the examples below:

The Earth Hour 2012 will be observed on March 31 from 8.30 pm to 9.30 pm, when people all over the world will turn off the lights to create awareness about climate change. (ToI, March 30, 2012)

Green groups around the world are turning to social networking to drive their campaign for Earth Hour on Saturday, when lights are turned off for an hour to signal concern about global warming. (ToI, March 29, 2012).

Today Earth Hour will take place. The world’s largest manifestation of concern about the climate threat. The inhabitants of the world are called upon to spend an hour … with

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their lights turned off as a reminder that excessive energy consumption and the resulting carbon dioxide emissions threaten our climate. (NA, March 31, 2012)

Another discursive mechanism that creates deterritorialized identity, in the sense of dissolving any distinction between Us and Them, is the use of the voices of various celebrities who emphasize the global aspect of the event (Anderson 2011). In the Times of India, examples of this deterritorialized identity are constructed through the choice of quoting the various celebrities when they express their enthusiasm and support for Earth Hour on Twitter (ToI, March 31, 2012).

Amitabh Bachchan: “Earth Hour tomorrow … from 8:30 PM to 9.30 PM … put off the power and electricity … save the Earth … I WILL!”

Dia Mirza: “Lights out between 8:30 pm and 9:30 pm tonight. Pledge to reduce the Earth’s carbon footprint on Earth hour.”

Akshay Kumar: “Turn off all lights for one hour today from 8.30 to 9.30 pm for a greener tomorrow. Small act, big impact.”

Another transnational event staged by a climate movement, Meatless Monday, generated news coverage in the Washington Post. Here, a deterritorialized identity is established in the construction of the problem, climate change, and the solution, Meatless Monday, and nations all over the globe become interrelated without any domestic anchoring:

You can reduce your carbon footprint by cutting back on meat just once a week … 21 nations across the globe have their own Meatless Monday movements, including Britain, Australia and Brazil. (WP, March 15, 2012)

In this way, the counter-domesticated discourse appears in relation to cross-border events calling on people to take collective climate-saving action. One should, however, keep in mind that Earth Hour also triggered both introverted and extroverted domestications, as shown above.

Deterritorialization through science. Apart from events such as Earth Hour and Meatless Monday, climate science also seems to trigger the counter-domesticated discourse. This is done not primarily by creating a sense of global identity, as in the cases above, but through the construction of deterritorialized space. In the example below, the technical solutions to the problems brought about by climate change do not center upon any specific location but embrace “societies all over the world.”

In fact, as global warming intensifies (noticed any strange weather lately?) and conventional fuels dwindle, societies all over the world have begun moving to develop clean, renewable-energy projects that match local resources. Sunny Arizona is moving forward with utility-scale solar. Iceland has developed staggering geothermal systems that tap volcanic heat … There are 49 offshore wind farms in Europe, zero in America. As wind farms are built along the Atlantic coast and economies of scale prevail, the price will come down significantly. And all this will happen as climate change intensifies, pushing governments to further hasten to phase out carbon fuels. (WP, April 2, 2012)

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Discursive counter-domestication also takes place when scientific findings about how climate change affects different areas of the world are thematized. Illustrative examples of such mechanisms are the introduction, “The world’s oceans are turning acidic at what could be the fastest pace of any time” (WP, March 2, 2012), and the headline “How Ecosystems Will Be Affected by Global Warming,” followed by the introduction

Global warming increases the risk for species extinction, especially in bio diverse ecosystems, because extreme weather conditions like hurricanes, droughts and torrential downpours become more frequent. (ToI, March 31, 2012)

Although the examples above point to science as a driver of a counter-domesticated discourse, there are also examples of introverted domestications in relation to science discourse, for example in the reports on national outbreaks of dangerous diseases mentioned above. As suggested by Berglez, Höijer, and Olausson (2009), it is probably not uncommon for scientific findings on a global issue such as climate change to, at least partly, be discursively transformed from a global news discourse to a domestic one in pace with its successive establishment on the news agenda.

In sum, the counter-domesticated discourse is characterized by a decentered worldview. In relation to climate change, the global environmental risk analyzed here, this is apparent in two distinct areas: first, in the discursive unification of the global through constructions of community and an all-embracing “We” in relation to events organized to call people to joint action; and second, in the science-based nature of climate change knowledge, which generates a discourse in which geographic anchoring becomes superfluous. These two constituents of the counter-domesticated discourse could be described as discursively creating “geopolitical deterritorizalization,” and this implies the presence of a full-grown global news discourse.

Discussion

This study has analyzed and deconstructed the domestication of news discourse, that is to say, the discursive adaptation of news from “outside” the nation-state so as to make it resonate with a national audience as it is perceived, and argued that we need to take its investigation beyond the genre of foreign news. In the climate reporting of Indian, Swedish, and US newspapers, the analysis has identified three distinct but related modes of domesticated news discourse: (1) introverted domestication, which creates geopolitical disconnectivity; (2) extroverted domestication, which creates geopolitical interconnectivity; and (3) counter-domestication, which creates geopolitical deterritorialization. This section discusses these three modes of domestication and evaluates their relationship to each other and to a global news discourse.

It is arguably necessary to acknowledge that discursive constructions of the national or local in the reporting on global issues do not inevitably constitute examples of “mere” domestication. Introverted domestications are, not surprisingly, present in the analyzed materials, and they probably suppress the emergence of a global news discourse by disconnecting local phenomena from their global ramifications. However, they do not completely preclude extroverted domestications, which are characterized by an ability to tie the domestic to the foreign by interconnecting local happenings and their global framework. Even if the domestic holds a salient position in the reporting, this mode of domestication cannot be reduced to the introverted mode. I would claim that the

722 ULRIKA OLAUSSON

extroverted domestications actually blur the boundaries between domesticated and globalized news discourse, assuming that one accepts geopolitical interconnectivity as their defining characteristic.

To extend this line of argument, what is conceptualized here as extroverted domestication is very similar to what Berglez (2008, 2013) theorizes as global journalism. In Berglez’s approach, global journalism is defined as the type of news discourse that succeeds in capturing and constructing politically relevant relations between various geopolitical scales (cf. Ibold and Ireri 2012; Olausson 2013; Reese 2008). In this approach to global journalism, the technological reach of the medium itself becomes irrelevant; what is interesting, instead, is the epistemological aspect: how journalism discursively frames the global.

Global journalism does not … simply imply extensive geographical or global reach, but depends rather on the extent to which news, whether about local, national, international, or transnational events and developments, becomes properly situated and explained in terms of wider and reciprocally interacting global social relations and contours of power. (Cottle in Berglez 2013, xiii)

The extroverted domestications analyzed here make evident that discursive constructions of the local and national are not inescapably counter-productive for the emergence of a global news discourse. The results have shown how they discursively construct a “multifaceted geography” as well as a “mixture of domestic and global powers,” both of which could be regarded as salient features of global journalism (Berglez 2008, 854). As argued elsewhere (Olausson 2010, 2013), the national and global are not mutually exclusive, but constitute two sides of the same coin.

Among the introverted and extroverted domestications, the counter-domesticated discourse can be found. This type of domestication functions as the introverted domestication’s opposite. Counter-domestications to a large extent resemble the cosmopolitan outlook outlined by Beck (2006), in which place is made redundant and antagonistic distinctions are dissolved in favor of all-embracing constructions of “human- ity.” This deterritorialized discourse seems to be triggered by specific events, such as Earth Hour, organized to call on people worldwide to take action for a global cause. Thus, judging from the results it is reasonable to suggest that the counter-domesticated discourse is contextually determined and is likely to appear both in connection with global events such as Earth Hour, for instance, and in relation to humanitarian crises, as previous research has demonstrated (Höijer 2004; Olausson and Höijer 2010; Robertson 2008). According to Beck (2006, 2009), it is transnationalized threats and the suffering they cause that by necessity pave the way for a cosmopolitan outlook, because such a perspective becomes essential in order to survive in “world risk society.” It should, however, be noted that Earth Hour—the global event examined in this study—also triggered both introverted and extroverted domestications, which shows that not even this kind of worldwide event can ensure the sole presence of a cosmopolitan outlook in the news reporting. Again, the three modes of domestication do not exclude each other, but they do become more pronounced in some contexts than in others, and it is a task for future research to investigate their contextual nature more in depth.

While this study has revolved around the epistemological aspects of the news media’s construction of global risks and crises, identifying the diversified nature of domestications, future research also needs to take the ontological aspects of the various

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modes of domestication into account. What are, for instance, the implications of constructions of geopolitical disconnectivity in some contexts, and of constructions of geopolitical deterritorialization in others?

To conclude, the results suggest that the domestic takes on many guises, and this insight calls for a more diversified understanding of domesticated news discourse than has been acknowledged by previous research, which mainly has been based on studies of foreign news. The co-presence of introverted domestications, extroverted domestications, and counter-domestications shows that it is not a question of either local or national discourse or global but both–and (Beck 2006; Olausson 2013). All things considered, the local and global might not be as far apart as sometimes believed.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thank my research colleague, Peter Berglez, for his invaluable advice.

NOTES

1. In Swedish: Earth Hour; klimatförändring; global uppvärmning; växthuseffekt. 2. It is noteworthy that the US newspapers included in the study did not report on Earth

Hour during the studied time period. However, it is beyond the scope of this article,

which does not have any quantitative nor comparative aims, to take this result further. 3. “The Globe,” or in Swedish nicknamed Globen, is the national indoor arena of Sweden

and located in Stockholm.

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Ulrika Olausson, School of Education and Communication, Media and Communication Studies, Jönköping University, Sweden. E-mail: ulrika.olausson@hlk.hj.se

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