Framing Environmental Risks and Natural Disasters in Factual Entertainment Television

Abstract

This article examines the framing of environmental risks and natural disasters in factual entertainment television programs of the early 2000s, a hybrid form combining techniques from documentary with techniques such as dramatic reconstructions and computer-generated imagery from entertainment genres. Using qualitative frame analysis, it examines a range of factual entertainment television programs' framing of environmental risk and natural disasters in terms of their attitudes, representation of human participants and visual composition. The article considers the similarities and differences in the framing of natural disasters as factual entertainment compared to the framing of natural disasters in news, documentary and fiction film. It argues that such programs offer representational frames both consonant with and distinct from other media and concludes that they problematically offer a predominantly fatalistic response to environmental risk, constructing natural disasters as voyeuristic spectacles for vicarious entertainment.

Keywords:

• factual entertainment television
• natural disasters
• environmental risk
• framing
• documentary

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the University of Leicester Study Leave Scheme which enabled me to complete this article.

Notes

1. The series and individual programs considered here were: BBC (UK)—Wild Weather (2002), Supervolcano (2005), Superstorm (2007); Channel 4 (UK)— Catastrophe (2008); Channel 5 (UK)—Perfect Disasters (2006); Discovery Communications (USA)—Super Comet: After the Impact (2007), Raging Planet (2008), Stormchasers (2007); The History Channel (USA)—Global Catastrophe (2007), Prehistoric Megastorms (2008), Life After People (2008–2010); ITV (UK)—Savage Planet (2000), Nature's Fury (2009)*; National Geographic Television (USA)—Restless Earth Collection (2003), Ultimate Disaster (2006)*, Aftermath: Population Zero (2008), Witness: Katrina (2010); The Weather Channel (USA): Storm Stories (2003–2009), Full Force Nature (2006). (* These programs were based on off-air recordings, all the rest were based on DVD releases.)

2. Generally speaking, the “money shot” is a shot where it is overt that the production expenses have been centered on producing that image, in pornography it refers to the moment of male ejaculation.