Hunting the Beast on YouTube

Perceptions about humans’ relationship with nature and other species are of fundamental importance to sustainable development. As argued by Macnaghten and Urry (1998: 3), ‘an appropriate politics of nature would be one which stems from how people talk about and conceptualize nature in their day-to-day lives, in their localities and other “communities”’. Cultural meaning influences the ways in which humans interact with non-human life forms (Williams 1980), which means that discursive constructions of nature not only result in a material impact, but also serve to justify and reinforce these material practices (Milstein 2009). For instance, if people think and talk about nature as a threat, activities such as poaching will be legitimised and reproduced. Thus, improved knowledge is needed about nature representations among people in the everyday in order to meet the sustainability challenges ahead; different representations of nature – as commodity, as threatened, as threat, as sacred, as stable, as remote, etc. – imply different responses to future challenges (Cox 2007).

The body of research on representations of nature has grown in recent decades. There is extensive feminist scholarship on the parallels between sex vs. gender or female vs. male, and the nature-culture dichotomy (e.g. Merchant 1990; Ortner 1974; Plumwood 1997), with wildlife films on television being one case in point (Ganetz 2004). There are studies showing how modern zoos can be viewed as symbols of imperial power and celebrations of the domination of nature (DeLuca & Slawter-Volkening 2009; cf. Milstein 2009), and how the animal industry discursively reproduces an oppressive and exploitative view of non-human species (Stibbe 2001). Uggla and Olausson (2013) demonstrated ways in which nature is symbolically ‘otherised’ in tourist information, and as such is positioned as a commodity to be consumed by culture. The nature-culture dichotomy has been identified by Uggla (2010) in policy discourse on climate change and biodiversity, by Cassidy and Mills (2012) in a study of media representations of ‘urban foxes’, and by Seegert (2014) when demonstrating how ‘Bruno the bear’ rhetorically queered the anthropogenic landscape. Attempting to problematise this well-defined discursive division between nature and culture, Sowards (2006) demonstrated how identification with orangutans might provide an opportunity for humans to look beyond this dualism, and Milstein (2008) explored how communication mediates human-nature relationships by viewing nature not as mute but as an active agent in the communication process. Ecocritical studies of nature representations in movies, novels, poems, and other kinds of media texts have demonstrated that human’s relationship to nature shows signs of anxiety and ambivalence, in that it includes on the one hand the modern understanding of humans as superior to nature – the right of people to enjoy and exploit nature on their own terms – and on the other hand, the stewardship function of humans – to care for and conserve nature (e.g. Buell 2005; Garrard 2012).

For poststructuralist perspectives on the nature-culture relationship, see Latour (1993) and Haraway (2003).

In sum, there is quite extensive literature on nature representations in various discursive contexts. However, the ways in which nature is framed in everyday discourse have received scant attention. Champ, Williams and Lundy (2013) suggested the analysis of on-line communication, in their case blogs, to capture narratives about people’s relationship to nature and wilderness. In this connection, we would argue that social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube must be regarded as particularly relevant objects for empirical research. These media offer a wide range of opportunities for discursively framing nature; there are groups, hash-tags, videos, etc. pertaining to climate change, wildlife management, and green energy, just to mention a few. Network society (Castells 2005) has fostered a ‘participatory culture’ of prod-using and sharing (Cardoso 2012; Jenkins 2009), which means that nature frames are rapidly circulated among large groups of people, who, in turn, might reinforce, negotiate and oppose the frames as communicated in news feeds, tweets, visuals, and videos. Hence, social media constitute an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the framing of nature by people in different contexts.

The current study aims to contribute to our understanding of how nature is framed by people in the everyday by studying depictions of wild-boar hunting on the video-sharing site YouTube. Founded in the USA in 2005, and with several European local versions starting in 2007 and 2008, YouTube is the world’s largest archive of moving images as well as ‘a rupture in the producer/consumer model of the cultural industries’ (Stiegler 2009: 41). Anyone can upload their own videos or clips from films onto YouTube at any time (Burgess & Green 2009). In its capacity as one of the world’s most popular websites, YouTube serves as an enormous arena for not only entertainment but all kinds of public perspectives on culture, politics and society, including people’s perspectives on human being’s relationship to nature.

As shown above, previous research has used various paths for the analytical operationalisation of the concept of nature and orangutans, bears, and wild life in general have functioned as study objects. This present study builds on the assumption that the practice of hunting in many ways brings the nature-culture relationship to a head. Culture has traditionally capitalised on the resources that wild animals provide, today perhaps more for the purpose of relaxation and leisure than for survival, at the same time as hunting is embedded in claims of stewardship – a necessary part of wildlife management – something which has lent widespread social acceptance to the practice.

Furthermore, attention to those parts of nature that commonly are considered as somewhat distasteful and without a clear ecological purpose is largely missing from previous research. There are culturally rooted assumptions that certain elements of nature, such as wild boars, are not worthy of respect or even decent treatment. Boars are not under threat of extinction. There are no ‘save the boars’ sites on the internet and boars do not appear on the covers of environmentalist journals. In the words of Cassidy and Mills (2012: 506) these ‘animals’ failure to conform to human conventions has often resulted in them being categorized as pests’. However, this study aspires to bridge this gap in the literature since the seemingly superfluous element of nature, such as wild boars, could serve as a ‘critical case’ (Esaiason, Gilljam, Oscarsson, & Wängnerud 2012), with a potential to actualise straight-forward and uncensored framings of nature. Thus the critical case will facilitate the analytical identification of the ‘pre-existing ways of imagining the place of humans in nature’ (Garrard 2012: 2).

This article consists of four sections, including this introduction. The second section presents the analytical framework (framing theory), the materials, and the methods used for data analysis (qualitative content analysis and formal analysis). In the third section the results are presented and thematically structured around three interrelated frames that emerge from the analysis: (a) hunting as battle, (b) hunting as consumption, and (c) hunting as privilege. All of these constitute and are constituted by the notion of humans as superior to nature, implying a view of nature as something to be defeated, consumed, or dominated. The final section discusses the results and concludes that the hegemonic nature frames suppress alternative and more constructive ways of framing the human-nature relationship, but also that the identification of such counter-hegemonic frames paves the way for responses that involve their discursive manifestation.

This study employs framing theory (Goffman 1974) to capture how wild-boar hunting is represented on YouTube. Within the field of environmental communication, frame analysis has generally been used in studying news media texts (e.g. Boykoff & Boykoff 2007; Shehata & Hopmann 2012); however, drawing as it does on literature from a range of disciplines including sociology, communications, linguistics, and psychology (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007) it is applicable, as proposed by Uggla and Olausson (2013), to a wide range of textual materials.

Studying YouTube videos entails the inclusion of visual materials in the analysis. There is a growing body of visual analyses within the field of environmental communication (e.g. DeLuca 1999; Peeples 2001), but for a long time they were marginalised within this research field in general (Hansen & Machin 2013) and in frame analyses of the environment in particular. However, we would argue that visuals – stills as well as moving images – constitute excellent materials for the analysis of frames of any kind. The framing process should be seen as the construction of an interpretative framework for attaching meaning to events, processes, and phenomena (Goffman, 1974) and visuals arguably serve as powerful ‘cognitive window(s)’ (Pan & Kosicki 1993: 59) through which the world receives meaning (e.g. Olsen, Finnegan, & Hope 2008).

Framing is largely about salience; i.e. ‘to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text’ (Entman 1993: 52, italics in original). This means that some pieces of information are, not necessarily intentionally, made more salient than others, which means in turn that other information is obscured or even omitted. Due to their seemingly factual and documentary character, wildlife videos on YouTube might give the deceptive impression of being transparent depictions of reality, i.e. of being free from framing processes such as those described above. (It is quite likely that most of the events that take place in the YouTube videos were not arranged for the recording but would have occurred in a similar way even if the camera were not there.) However, in addition to the fact that the videos are edited and soundtracks often have been added, framing is not something optional in communication; reality is always mediated through epistemology (Lakoff 2010). Thus, YouTube videos, like all forms of digital communication, are ‘more than merely a reflection of unmediated experience with nature’ (Champ et al. 2013: 136, italics in original).

When analysing frames, the analysis should not be reduced to mere topics or themes, or to identifying frames on the basis of individual texts/visual items (Carragee & Roefs 2004; Reese, 2007). It is necessary to capture how frames work across various texts or visuals, and how they are organised around ‘a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events, weaving a connection among them’ (Gamson & Modigliani 1987: 53). The present analysis identifies three interrelated frames that cut across a number of videos. Along similar lines, several frames often co-exist within one single video even if, due to space constraints, the results presented below do not clearly show this.

The selected materials consist of videos on wild-boar hunting from different parts of the world. The keywords ‘boar hunting Europe 2012’ were used in order to find videos that most likely would be in English

Wild boars are called European boars primarily in Scandinavian, Germanic and Anglo-Saxon culture.

The final sample consisted of 27 DIY (Do-It-Yourself) videos which varied both in terms of national origin and form. 15 originated from the USA. One was shot in Argentina, one in Australia, one in New Zealand, one in South Africa, and one in Tanzania. Two were shot in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and one was from Croatia. Three were Hungarian and, finally, one video consisted of clips from other videos made in several different countries. The 11 videos used to empirically exemplify the analysis in the next section are typical examples of this larger body of analysed material, and presented in Table 1.

The boar-hunting videos were analysed qualitatively, and this study thus differs from the quantitative approaches (often content analysis) that dominate studies of media frames. The most suitable choice of qualitative method for frame analysis is not obvious, although established qualitative methods such as socio-semiotics or critical discourse analysis have successfully been employed in other studies (e.g. Gottdiener, 1995; Olausson, 2009). These methods are however primarily oriented towards text analysis, and in order to thoroughly operationalise the framing perspective in analysing moving images, we developed an analytical ‘toolbox’, drawing in part on the methodological devices of film studies (e.g. Bordwell & Thompson, 2012). These tools served to identify the frame-shaping elements of the videos that render information salient. The analysis was carried out in two steps, the first being a qualitative content analysis and the second a formalistic analysis that focused on how the videos were made:

This section presents the analysis of how boar hunting is framed in the YouTube videos analysed. The section is thematically structured around the central findings emerging from the analysis, where hunting is framed as (a) battle – viewing nature as an enemy to defeat; (b) consumption – viewing nature as a marketplace for consumption; and (c) privilege – viewing nature as something to be dominated in a traditional upper-class manner as a way to enact status.

The analysis presented here demonstrates how three distinct but related frames intersect in the YouTube videos: (a) hunting as battle; (b) hunting as consumption; and (c) hunting as privilege.

If one takes a closer look at the results of this study, the question of cultural differences in the framing of nature in social media arises. It appears as if the battle frame has an American bias, whereas the privilege frame seemingly occurs in the European videos. However, since the research design of this study does not allow for drawing such conclusions, the question must be left for future research.

Thus, the overarching organising idea of a human-nature divide, where humans are assigned the role as the superior party obliged to conquer and tame nature, permeates the three nature frames identified in this study. These hegemonic frames were detected through the analysis of what aspects of the hunt were made salient in the videos. However, for a frame analysis such as this one, it is important not only to attempt to determine the hegemonic frames, but also to point out what aspects are being omitted, obscured, or downplayed in the framing process, i.e. to identify the discursively suppressed counter-hegemonic frames (Carragee & Roefs 2004). In order to discuss what counter-hegemonic frames may be obscured in the studied materials, the three dialectics proposed by Milstein (2009) as generally permeating western discourse on the human-nature relationship, are helpful. These include mastery vs. harmony, othering vs. connection, and exploitation vs. idealism. The relationship between the two ends of each dichotomy is characterised by inequality; the discourses of mastery, othering, and exploitation are presumably hegemonic, whereas harmony, connection, and idealism should be seen as counter-hegemonic, i.e. as potential but rarely realised and manifested discourses.

When applying these dialectics to the results of the present study it becomes clear that all three identified frames, and perhaps the battle frame in particular, presuppose the othering of nature, a hegemonic discourse which ‘serves not only to justify exploitative views and practices, but also to divorce humans from the knowledge that they are, in fact, animals and part of nature themselves’ (Milstein 2009: 27). The very notion that non-human life forms are inferior ‘others’ informs and justifies the hunting frames, and the logical consequence is the discursive repression of the other pole of the dichotomy, connection. This counter-hegemonic discourse has the ability to neutralise the nature-culture divide and instead acknowledge the interconnectedness between humans and non-human species (Milstein 2009).

In a similar manner, the hegemonic discourse of mastery preconditions all three frames, but is perhaps most visible in the construction of the privilege frame. Hunting might be regarded a ‘deeply human practice’, and therefore as connected to dwelling, i.e. a complete immersion in the natural world (Carbaugh & Cerulli 2013: 10). However, the upper-class overtones of the privilege frame, suggesting that the right to dominate non-human species is given by inheritance and tradition, distinguishes it from dwelling. Arguably, the hunters of the privilege frame, despite their somewhat old-fashioned appearance, have little in common with the pre-colonial cultures that harmoniously adapted to and interconnected with nature (Milstein 2009). Thus, the counter-hegemonic discourse of harmony, which acknowledges a more equal and balanced relationship between humans and nature, is thus largely suppressed in the studied YouTube videos.

Finally, the discourse of exploitation works in a hegemonic manner across all three identified frames, and is particularly easy to recognise in the consumption frame. Here we find evidence that nature is framed ‘as something that exists to be appropriated and commodified for ever-increasing accumulation and profits within global political economic frameworks’ (Milstein 2009: 28). Such a framing implies the simultaneous repression of the other end of the dichotomy, the discourse of idealism which, according to Milstein (2009), can function as a creative force in rethinking the human-nature relationship to encompass more than just economic rationality.

To conclude, it is true that the present analysis might be regarded as yet another gloomy empirical confirmation that the discursive rift between nature and culture is utterly cemented and will never change. Nonetheless, however discouraging the results might seem at a first glance, they have also paved the way for the crystallization of the counter-hegemonic discourses (if only on a theoretical level) and this might bring some hope. As noted by Gamson (1988: 221) ‘one cannot invoke the theme without making the countertheme relevant as well, and therein may lie opportunity’. Admittedly, it is highly unlikely that we will ever see a hunting video on YouTube where such counter-hegemonic discourses are fully in play. However, by paying attention to these counter-hegemonic discourses and encouraging their empirical manifestation in public discourse in general and policy discourse in particular, more constructive and beneficial discursive pathways, which are able to ‘provide the ideational ground for being “native to this place” we call nature/culture’ (Willard 2008: 132) might not be entirely unthinkable.