Environmental Management of the Media ― Policy, Industry, Practice

In recent years the widely held misconception of the media as an ‘ephemeral’ industry has been challenged by research on the industry’s significant material footprint. Despite this material turn, no systematic study of this sector has been conducted in ways that considers the role of the media industries as consumers and utilizers of a range of natural resources.

Filling this gap, this book discusses the environmental management of the Nordic media industries. These countries, both as a set of small nations and as a regional constellation, are frequently perceived as some of the ‘greenest’ in the world, yet, not only is the footprint of the media industries practically ignored in academic research, but the very real stakes of the industries’ global impact are not comprehensively understood. Here, the author focusses on four key areas for investigating the material impact of Nordic media: resources used for production and dissemination, regulation of the media, organizational management, and labour practices. By adopting an interdisciplinary perspective that combines ecocritical analysis with interrogation of the political economy of the creative industries, Kääpä argues that taking the industries to task on their environmental footprint is a multilevel resource and organizational management issue that must be addressed more effectively in contemporary media studies.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of media, communication and environmental studies.

Pietari Kaapa is Associate Professor in Media and Communications at the University of Warwick, UK