Abstract
Communities living near oil extraction and coal mining sites face serious environmental and health risks, yet these risks are often absent from public conversation. This study examines how print media cover industrial pollution-linked health risks in two regions defined by extractive industries — the Niger Delta in Nigeria and Appalachia in the United States — between 2011 and 2020. Although these regions are geographically and culturally different, both bear the environmental and health costs of extraction while remaining underrepresented in media coverage that shapes public awareness and policy response. Using mixed methods content analysis of eight legacy print newspapers, the study examines how much coverage industrial pollution health risks receive, how they are framed, whether that coverage makes risks more or less visible to the public, and whose voices appear in reporting. Findings will shed light on how media narratives either acknowledge or obscure the lived experiences of communities most affected by industrial extraction, contributing to development communication efforts that treat media visibility as a tool for community empowerment and health-focused policy action.
Status
Graduate
Department
Communication and Development
College
Scripps College of Communication
Campus
Athens
Faculty Mentor
Lawrence Wood
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Silence and Visibility: Media Framing of Industrial Pollution and Health Risks in Appalachian and Niger Delta Print Media
Communities living near oil extraction and coal mining sites face serious environmental and health risks, yet these risks are often absent from public conversation. This study examines how print media cover industrial pollution-linked health risks in two regions defined by extractive industries — the Niger Delta in Nigeria and Appalachia in the United States — between 2011 and 2020. Although these regions are geographically and culturally different, both bear the environmental and health costs of extraction while remaining underrepresented in media coverage that shapes public awareness and policy response. Using mixed methods content analysis of eight legacy print newspapers, the study examines how much coverage industrial pollution health risks receive, how they are framed, whether that coverage makes risks more or less visible to the public, and whose voices appear in reporting. Findings will shed light on how media narratives either acknowledge or obscure the lived experiences of communities most affected by industrial extraction, contributing to development communication efforts that treat media visibility as a tool for community empowerment and health-focused policy action.