Corporations, Consumerism and Culpability: Sustainability in the British Press

ABSTRACT

Sustainability and sustainable development are prominent themes in international policy-making, corporate PR, news-media and academic scholarship. Its definitions are contested, however sustainability is associated with a three-pillar focus on economic development, environmental conservation and social justice, most recently espoused in the adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. In spite of its common usage, there is little research about how sustainability is represented and refracted in public discourse in different national contexts. We examine British national press coverage of sustainability and sustainable development in 2015 in a cross-market sample of national newspapers. Our findings show that key international policy events and environmental and social justice frames are peripheral, while neoliberalism and neoliberal environmentalism vis-à-vis the promotion of technocratic solutions, corporate social responsibility and “sustainable” consumerism are the predominant frames through which the British news-media reports sustainability. This holds regardless of newspaper quality and ideological orientation.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability
• sustainable development
• UK newspapers
• discourse analysis
• consumption

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted as part of INTERSECTION: Intergenerational Justice, Consumption and Sustainability in Comparative Perspective, a multidisciplinary research project led by the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant number AH/K006215/1].