Cooperation, Media and Framing Processes: Insights from a Baltic Sea Case Study

Cooperation is closely linked to framing and can play an important role in the governance of complex environmental problems. This holds true for the Baltic Sea, one of the most disturbed ecosystems in the world (HELCOM 2010). In spite of awareness of these challenges four decades ago, few of the public objectives have been reached (Gilek et al. 2016). In the Baltic Sea area, institutional structures and processes are far from adequate for coping with the challenges at hand and insufficient cooperation between stakeholders is one key reason for failure to achieve goals (Gilek & Karlsson 2016).

Successful cooperation often presumes a basic common understanding among stakeholders about problems, causes and potential solutions, or in other words a common framing. This is sometimes also a prerequisite for cooperation to take place at all. Cooperation is also closely related to the ability to communicate, using different platforms and communication media. While a number of studies have analysed how competition among key stakeholders over the framing of problems and solutions in order to influence environmental politics is reflected in media, the linkages between framing and media, on the one hand, and environmental cooperation, on the other, have only been explored occasionally (Tynkkynen (2014) is one example). We aim to fill this gap and investigate how key stakeholders in a specific country, Sweden, strive to frame political processes and influence media in the context of Baltic Sea environmental policy, how their actions are perceived by others, and how this may influence cooperation.

The empirical case in focus is a negotiation round in 2012–2013 on the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP) (HELCOM 2007) adopted by HELCOM, the operative body of the Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the Baltic Sea Area (1974; 1992). The BSAP is the most central governance strategy in this context and we focus the analysis on the problem of anthropogenic eutrophication caused by nutrient emissions. The consequent effects in the Baltic Sea are severe and include oxygen-free bottom zones and huge algal blooms, which damage biodiversity and socio-economic values (HELCOM 2013a). The main sources of nutrient emissions are well known and include agriculture, sewage water and atmospheric deposition, but uncertainties exist regarding long-term effects and how ecosystems respond to mitigation (Karlsson et al. 2016). A previously contested issue concerned the roles of nitrogen and phosphorus, but a consensus emerged that it is necessary for levels of both nutrients to decrease; today the role of the background load of nutrients is debated (Conley et al. 2009; Karlsson et al. 2016).

The governance efforts concerning eutrophication consist of public and voluntary strategies, and the HELCOM collaboration has for long played a central role. The more specific BSAP targets on eutrophication are based on a decision support model that integrates environmental and economic parameters, the Baltic NEST, developed by scientists (Baltic Nest Institute 2014). When the BSAP was adopted in 2007, however, a number of issues were deferred to be dealt with later on, one being implementation of the eutrophication targets. Consequently, at the following HELCOM Ministerial meeting in 2010, the issue was on the agenda, partly based on reports on plans established by the convention parties (e.g. MOE 2010). The parties agreed “to carry out a review of the [BSAP] environmental targets for eutrophication, the maximum allowable inputs and the nutrient reduction targets, as well as the country-wise nutrient reduction targets … [and] based on the result of the review, to evaluate the need for additional measures at the 2013 HELCOM Ministerial Meeting”, which took place in Copenhagen. The more specific national implementation decisions have been in the last few years, the more questions have been raised by affected stakeholders (Linke et al. 2016). This turned out to be one of the key contested issues in the negotiation round studied in this paper.

Against this background, this article describes how the development of and debate around the negotiation round are framed in news media, and it analyses how this relates to stakeholders’ perceptions, strategies and actions. We further discuss how this in turn may influence the potential for enhanced cooperation, both within national and international contexts. Besides zooming in on eutrophication, we focus on Sweden, in order to see how the situation plays out in a country with a strong track record in environmental policy (Lidskog & Elander 2000). We examine how that record influences Swedish positions and what that has meant for the negotiations. Our intention is not to study all the factors explaining the international negotiation outcome, but instead to focus on the national context for one of the key players, Sweden. This is motivated by the fact that the Baltic Sea policy debate, despite concerning an international marine environment, is strongly national or local (Jönsson et al. 2016). Nevertheless we see a potential for learning from this selected example.

More precisely, we will answer the following questions:

Which BSAP-related positions do the main Swedish stakeholders advocate and how are they potentially trying to push for and frame their viewpoints?

After this introduction, a section theorising media, cooperation and framing follows. Next, the chosen methods and material are presented. The subsequent two descriptive sections present results, followed by a final analysis and discussion.

Intending to identify the main positions and frames in the Swedish public discourse on the BSAP negotiations in 2012–2013, we used a combination of quantitative and qualitative text analysis of the BSAP issue in media in 2012–2013, as well as in reports and position papers collected from the organisations in media focus (i.e. the stakeholders dominating the public media debate in Sweden). Besides these textual analyses we conducted a series of interviews with key stakeholders.

The media study was focused on Swedish print media, including newspapers (local and national) as well as journals and magazines from authorities and organisations. The debate was also present in broadcast media, mainly in webnews, and it was very similar to that in newspaper media, since it used much the same sources etc. For practical reasons, we chose to limit the in-depth media analysis to newspapers. We did however also look into the material from radio and television media and will comment on important differences when called for. To find relevant articles for our analysis we used the search engine “Retriever”. One methodological challenge was to find keywords that really identified relevant articles but after using a number of combinations we concluded that the keywords “Helcom” and “BSAP Baltic Sea” in different combinations were useful. In the analysis, we scanned and selected all the articles that met these keywords and the issue at hand.

There is no consensus on how to identify frames in news and other texts. In this study we first identified framing dimensions defined as topics, sources and mechanisms (cf. D’Angelo & Kuypers 2010) and drew conclusions on main frames and actors. In the next step we looked into the presence and functions of predefined generic frames (cf. de Vreese 2005; Matthes 2009). In this case we chose conflict, human interest, economy and attribution of responsibility

Conflict: journalistic practice of reporting stories of conflicting interpretation; human interest: brings a human face or an individual's story to the presentation of an event/issue; economy: focus on profit and loss; responsibility: presents an issue in a way that attributes responsibility for causing or soling to a particular group of actors (cf. de Vreese, 2005).

We conducted both a general and a specific analysis. The former was based on the broader selection of Swedish media and the mentioned communication material (i.e., news media texts as well as publications from NGOs and other organisations, political organs, authorities etc.). We analysed all identified articles, 124 in total. The material was studied by using a text analysis guide, which helped us inductively to identify issue-specific frame dimensions and elements (topics, sources, main problems, causes and solutions), mainly by looking at headlines, introductions, concepts used and actors’ positions in the text. We followed Entman (1993:52) who suggested that frames in the news can be examined and identified by “the presence or absence of certain keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments”. We then also conducted a deductive analysis looking for generic frames, following de Vreese (2005) and Semetko & Valkenburg (2000). The analysis was restricted to text and did not include images. Images do contribute to framing but we concluded that we did not need these to answer our questions. In order to understand the frame building process, mechanisms and framing elements, we also conducted a closer analysis of three articles published in Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet (two of the biggest national newspapers in Sweden). The reason for choosing these articles is that they occur in newspapers with a large readership. The articles also represent three typical articles in this media discourse and are of enough volume to work as illustrations of the relation between media and stakeholders.

In addition to the media and document analysis, three key stakeholders (four individuals) were interviewed: two from a national environmental NGO, which was also internationally active in the region in focus, one from a national and international part of the business community, and one from the governmental side (a civil servant). The interviewees were selected from among the key Swedish stakeholders and participants in the debate and the negotiations at the current time, from the governmental side and from the environmental and business spheres. The interviews were conducted in the first half of 2015; they were semi-structured and lasted from one to one and a half hours. The key themes concerned positions advocated (mainly in relation to our frame elements, as described above), framing strategies, the view on media and on other stakeholders’ positions and activities, and reflections on cooperation and governance.

The study thereby included actors’ intentional framings as well as media outcomes and stakeholders’ perceptions of frames. Using these methods and empirical material we were able to identify positions, strategies and frames in the Swedish public discourse and among some of the dominating actors. Based on this we drew conclusions on possible implications for cooperation and if the media played predominantly a constructive or destructive role.

While our empirical material only includes Sweden, the outcome of the negotiations and possible success of cooperation also depends on positions and strategies from actors in other countries. Stakeholders cooperate nationally as well as internationally. The results also depend on the choice of environmental problem in focus – in this case eutrophication – and that problem's particular contexts. We do however argue that by analysing the relation between actors’ positions and media framing and the actual framing processes in Sweden we learn about important elements in (environmental) cooperation and the role of the media, even though the media landscape and the relation between media and different actors differ between the Baltic Sea countries.

The following sections present our empirical analysis. We start with a presentation of the BSAP-related positions that the main Swedish stakeholders advocated and the framing strategies used.

The preparatory process of the 2013 Ministerial started in June 2012. A draft report on potentially revising the BSAP eutrophication targets was presented by HELCOM at a meeting of the Heads of Delegations (HOD) (TARGREV 2012), in which stakeholders participated. The parties then agreed on a plan for preparing the Ministerial (HELCOM 2012a).

A preliminary draft declaration came at the next HOD meeting, but many delegations were not ready to discuss it. Our respondents clearly state that business interests and environmental NGOs were highly active, though, which for instance led to some adjustments in the model on effort sharing. In November, the parties discussed substance issues and the NGO Coalition Clean Baltic (CCB) gave oral input (HELCOM 2012b). A more thorough first draft was published in the beginning of 2013, and was discussed at both a HOD and a HELCOM meeting in March, at which CCB again added comments, also in writing (CCB 2013). CCB proposed that the Ministerial should agree on additional mandatory requirements for nutrient management.

Until then, farmers’ organisations had not participated. However, the Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF) had presented a text for the Swedish Environment Minister back in September 2012, arguing that the targets on eutrophication were impossible to reach, due to high background load and long environmental repair processes (LRF 2012). In addition, LRF (2013) sent a consultation paper to all stakeholders and argued that the targets were too high and the background loads not considered, and that national politics should be more influential. According to our respondents, this paper brought the controversies into the political sphere and fuelled debate, including debate between the environment and agriculture ministries, despite their respective ministers being of the same party. WWF Sweden and others responded with criticism (WWF 2013a).

A second draft in May (HELCOM 2013b) and a third draft in June (HELCOM 2013c) gradually became more precise, including on the issue of eutrophication. In parallel, stakeholders increased their efforts in terms of lobbying both the HODs and governments and on the public stage, where media played an important role, according to our respondents. They all clearly stated that neither the farmers’ nor environmental organisations were satisfied with the Swedish government's positions. WWF Sweden presented – just before the agenda-setting “Almedalen Week” in Sweden

During this annual event in July, thousands of politicians and stakeholders gather in Visby in Sweden for thousands of seminars, see http://www.almedalsveckan.info/6881.

In the governmental process it became increasingly clear that some nations had problems with various concrete proposals. Regarding eutrophication, and due to pressure from the farmers, the Swedish government questioned the entire basis for calculating national responsibilities to decrease nutrient emissions (HELCOM 2013d). This caused criticism from environmental NGOs and some countries, not least Denmark, the host for the Ministerial. The new Swedish position became difficult to defend, even in the eyes of the environment minister, according to our respondents. Sweden thus agreed on the modelling, but still managed to soften the language on compulsory measures for farmers (HELCOM 2013e).

Afterwards, environmental and farmers’ organisations took critical but opposing views on the outcome of the BSAP revision, according to our respondents. Judging from them, the decisions on measures against nutrient leakage were one of the most critical components in the negotiations and the dispute was far from resolved.

We now move on to the question of how the BSAP was framed in Swedish news media and how these framings related to the main stakeholders’ intentional framing and claims on knowledge and policy.

Framing and communication are central for the governance of complex environmental issues. In this case study on a debate that mainly came to concern eutrophication in the Baltic Sea, we see that media played an important role in Sweden for public communication of the problems and potential solutions at hand, both during the preparatory negotiations on the revision of the BSAP and at the time of the Ministerial meeting in October 2013. We also see that several key stakeholders participated actively in the Swedish public discourse and managed to influence the Swedish media coverage, even though we also acknowledge that each of them expected a greater impact. It is additionally clear that various stakeholders, like environmental NGOs and farmers’ organisations, deliberately tried to influence the frame building process and “use” media in order to communicate their own analysis of the situation and the positions they advocated themselves. This concerned both problem definitions and the policy outcomes they considered desirable. Moreover, the existing scientific uncertainties communicated by scientists and the disagreements communicated by stakeholders opened the way for positioning and debate.

In this “context of uncertainty”, both environmental NGOs and farmers’ organisations were able to place their own agendas on the public stage, although it was commonly done in different media and on different occasions. In Baltic eutrophication policy the pendulum has thus swung back towards conflict, after a period of more or less consensus (Karlsson et al. 2016). These views held by stakeholders on key issues and the disputes in the BSAP negotiations were furthermore framed in the media discourse in the desired way, according to the stakeholders, albeit not with the desired volume. All in all, organisations were at least somewhat successful in their campaigns, to judge from the fact that the limited media coverage, together with other measures taken by stakeholders, did lead to a wanted political debate. In addition, it is clear in the study that the Swedish societal debate, including in media, had an impact on the outcome of the Swedish preparatory process and also on the international negotiations, where the Swedish government's manoeuvring led to international reactions and counteracting policy proposals from other countries, albeit the details in this political game remains to be detailed more closely in forthcoming studies. It is nevertheless evident that individual organisations in individual countries can play a significant role in international policy processes.

Regarding the impact of the media debate on the potential to cooperate on governance issues, both between various stakeholder groups and between the different politicians who engage themselves on different sides in the process, we can conclude that the situation is problematic. The media debate with its preference for conflict framings obviously contributed to paint a more negative picture of “the others” and led to increased irritation and confusion, rather than to understanding and recognition of other perspectives and viewpoints. Our study, as well as previous research, shows that controversies often in themselves are paths to publicity, and we can thus see a negative spiral where media publicity fosters conflict rather than consensus and cooperation. Media also tend to reduce complexity; something that would decrease the possibilities for them to contribute to actors’ frame reflection. Based on these conclusions, a rather gloomy picture emerges in relation to our starting point that cooperation is pivotal for environmental governance, and that successful cooperation ought to be based on at least a basic common understanding about the problems at hand, as well as their causes and potential solutions.

If the debate in a single country with a large number of shared media – a situation that, according to Wolfsfield (2004), would mean a more constructive role for the media in negotiation processes – and with comparatively strong environmental ambitions, cannot foster a larger common “framing denominator” than we saw in this study, it is difficult to see how an international debate could be more fruitful at present. Linking this to previous studies on Baltic Sea environmental governance (Gilek & Karlsson 2016), we see a need for institutional initiatives that again can help building a strong science-based picture of problems and potential measures relating to eutrophication. While we of course cannot prejudge how that would impact on framing exercises, media and cooperation, we still consider it would be helpful when aiming for the internationally agreed BSAP objectives. Moreover, and in particular if the media debate were to be contested in countries around the Baltic Sea, it also seems important to develop international forums for dialogue, where stakeholders such as environmental NGOs, farmers and other business representatives can meet together with scientists and governmental policymakers, in order to build mutual trust and seek the largest common denominator on world-views and strategies from multiple governance perspectives. Similar arrangements for scientific consensus building and societal dialogue might be worth striving for as complementary strategies in completely different areas of complex environmental issues, where stakeholder framing attempts and contested media debates are not proving fruitful enough in relation to the need for cooperation on environmental governance.