Beyond clickbait and commerce

ecording the interviews, I engaged in an iterative examination of
photographs, videos, web pages, social media, other public relations
and journalism, ‘gradually allowing the case narrative to unfold from
the diverse, complex, and sometimes conflicting stories that people,
documents, and other evidence tell’ (Flyvbjerg 2001: 86). Previous
research has used image events as case studies of movementbuilding
by ENGOs (Sprain et al. 2011), and to investigate ‘how
environmental narratives are realised visually’ (Schwarz 2013: 170).
My own study is concerned with understanding the public sphere
issues raised by re-mediation, and ethical challenges for ENGOs
immersed in a public screen where image events intended to hold
corporations and governments to account must compete with the
spectacle of advertising and command space amid ‘the ceaseless
circulation of jarring juxtapositions’ (DeLuca et al. 2011: 152).
The Great Bear Rainforest RAVE is a useful case for this purpose
because its partners, participants and outputs spanned activist
media, mainstream media and multiple genres, and its objective
was to ‘blow the story as far and wide as we could’ (Mittermeier,
Cristina, personal communication, 8 July 2015). Interviewees were
chosen to bring a range of perspectives to the study – those of
ENGOs, photographers and tourism operators (ecotourism being
an important Indigenous business that has benefited from the
protection of the Great Bear Rainforest’s habitat and wildlife).
Details are provided in the case study and in Note 1 at the end of
the paper. 1
RESEARCH
PAPER
Case study
The Great Bear Rainforest, formerly known as the Mid Coast Timber
Supply Area, is a vast region of temperate rainforest on the coast
of British Columbia. Approximately half of the 35,000 people who
live in its 6.4 million hectares are First Nations. The forest and its
waterways are also home to salmon, whales, eagles, wolves, grizzly
bears, black bears and a small number of black bears with a genetic
trait that gives them a white coat, now known by their First Nations
name of spirit bears. In the mid-1990s the forest became the site
of contestation over logging and trophy-hunting. Environmental
groups, First Nations people, corporations and governments
became embroiled in the disputes, but by ‘branding the region
the “Great Bear Rainforest,” the ENGOs successfully used endemic
species to raise the region’s profile, particularly outside Canada’
(Affolderbach 2011).
The forestry dispute was brought to partial resolution in 2006, when
a proportion of the area was protected and the spirit bear became
British Columbia’s official provincial symbol, but the same year
energy company Enbridge announced plans to build the Northern
Gateway Pipeline to transport what ENGOs describe as the world’s
dirtiest oil from Alberta to British Columbia. The oil would then
Copyright 2016-2/3. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 13, No 2/3 2016 23