{"id":10041,"date":"2017-09-22T00:46:46","date_gmt":"2017-09-22T00:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=10041"},"modified":"2017-09-23T00:49:43","modified_gmt":"2017-09-23T00:49:43","slug":"chasing-the-flame-does-media-coverage-of-wildfires-probe-deeply-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/chasing-the-flame-does-media-coverage-of-wildfires-probe-deeply-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Chasing the flame: Does media coverage of wildfires probe deeply enough?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adrianne Kroepsch<\/a>, Colorado School of Mines<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It is the dry season in western states, which means that large swaths of land are burning or smoldering and are likely to remain that way until the snows arrive. The 2017 wildfire year started earlier and has scorched more acreage than normal<\/a>. It is also far from over. <\/p>\n

As wildfire trends worsen, it is increasingly important for communities in fire-prone regions to learn from past blazes and adapt to a more flammable future. Communities located in what researchers call \u201cthe wildland-urban interface\u201d are due for tough conversations about the future. <\/p>\n

Indeed, some communities are already grappling<\/a> with the challenging policy questions that accompany catastrophic wildfires. To name a few: How much more development should local governments allow in landscapes that have evolved to burn? How should federal agencies manage the overgrown forests generated by wildfire suppression in the past? And as climate change further amplifies wildfire hazards<\/a>, how can residents of the wildland-urban interface adjust?<\/p>\n

Local media can be important players in those conversations. News reporting influences policymakers\u2019 agendas and shapes public memories of disasters. However, past research has argued that the press is more interested in fanning the flames than digging down to root causes and finding a smarter way forward.<\/p>\n

But in a newly published study<\/a> of wildfire coverage in Colorado, my co-authors and I found a more complicated story. When communities face multiple wildfires in a row, local media do in fact raise the tough policy questions that need to be asked in communities at the wildland-urban interface \u2013 at least for a little while. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Homes destroyed by the Waldo Canyon Fire in the Mountain Shadows neighborhood of Colorado Springs, Colorado, Monday, July 2, 2012.<\/span>
\n AP Photo\/Bryan Oller<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Looking for patterns in wildfire coverage<\/h2>\n

My colleagues and I set out to study the patterns that appear in local media coverage of wildfires so that we could better understand what policy problems local journalists bring up, how they assign blame or responsibility, and whether these trends change over time.<\/p>\n

Past research has suggested that the media are more likely to stymie disaster learning and adaptation than to encourage it. That\u2019s mostly because reporters often ignore catastrophic wildfires\u2019 systemic causes, while they focus on questions better tailored to urban blazes<\/a>, such as who or what is to blame for sparking the fire.<\/p>\n

That critique is largely fair, but it\u2019s also too simple. As it turns out, we know little about how local media engage with the increasingly common occurrence of repeated catastrophic wildfires, which might inspire a different style of reporting. As a former journalist myself, I was especially curious to know more. <\/p>\n

These questions sent us digging into a stack of 1,702 news articles published by local media in Colorado before, during and after the 2012 wildfire season \u2013 the state\u2019s worst in history<\/a>. As we analyzed these stories, an unexpected trend appeared: Articles published on wildfires\u2019 anniversaries were more likely to bring up tough policy questions than stories published at other times of year. <\/p>\n

This didn\u2019t match what we thought we knew about wildfire coverage or \u201canniversary journalism.\u201d Going into the study, we had believed that commemorative stories often failed to connect the past with the present in a meaningful or critical way, and therefore were not very useful for learning. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Rising temperatures are extending the fire season and drying out vegetation, creating more fuel for wildfires.<\/span>
\n FEMA<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Analyzing anniversaries<\/h2>\n

To explore this unexpected trend, we gathered a new sample of stories: commemorative coverage from the first, second and third anniversaries of Colorado\u2019s catastrophic 2012 wildfires, which burned simultaneously in Colorado Springs and Fort Collins. Colorado Springs experienced a second catastrophic fire in 2013, so we collected anniversary coverage for it as well. <\/p>\n

As we looked for patterns among the anniversary stories, and between those stories and articles from an 18-month period around the blazes, we paid close attention to whether stories raised policy problems and identified actions that government or individuals should take. We also looked closely at whether policy stories focused on systemic causes of wildfire disasters, such as human development in fire-prone areas, or merely on symptoms of these problems, such as needing more slurry bombers for fighting fires. <\/p>\n

Lastly, we looked for examples of local media connecting the past to the present and future in meaningful ways. Communication scholars call this \u201ccollective prospective memory-making<\/a>\u201d \u2013 the practice of identifying what needs to be done now and in the future based on a memory of a past event. <\/p>\n

Introspection at year one, then business as usual<\/h2>\n

We found a clear learning and adaptation \u201csignal\u201d during wildfires\u2019 anniversaries, which stood out against the \u201cnoise\u201d of wildfire reporting over the rest of our sample. Anniversary coverage was much more likely to bring up policy problems connected to the systemic causes of human vulnerability to wildfire hazards \u2013 development in the wildland-urban interface, legacies of wildfire suppression and climate change, to name a few examples. <\/p>\n

Many anniversary stories also made statements about what sorts of hazard mitigation actions still needed to be taken based on memories of past blazes. This \u201csignal\u201d was especially strong in wildfire anniversary coverage from Colorado Springs, the community that faced repeated catastrophic wildfires in consecutive years. <\/p>\n

But there was also a surprising twist. Wildfires\u2019 first anniversaries were the most promising periods for tough policy conversations. On later anniversaries, local media backtracked on this dialogue. As time passed, reporters took to comparing Colorado\u2019s three major burn zones against each other with a focus on which was rebuilding faster and bigger, framing these later commemorations as a race back to the status quo instead of asking what communities should be doing differently. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n By 2025, wildfire fighting is projected to consumer two-thirds of the U.S. Forest Service\u2019s annual budget.<\/span>
\n USFS<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Discussions that lead to change<\/h2>\n

Our findings show that local media coverage of wildfires appears to be more nuanced than originally thought. More specifically, the first anniversaries of catastrophic wildfires \u2013 especially repeated blazes \u2013 seem to be a salient time frame for getting to the roots of worsening wildfire hazards. If communities are going to have tough conversations about the future, these may be critical windows for doing so. <\/p>\n

\"TheGoing forward, it will also be important for communication scholars to study how local media signals affect policymakers and individuals. Ultimately, changing the conversation about wildfire matters only if the dialogue manifests in real changes on the ground. This year\u2019s grim wildfire season, the U.S. Forest Service\u2019s growing firefighting expenditures<\/a> and our increasingly flammable future demand that we ask tough policy questions and then work to answer them with meaningful change.<\/p>\n

Adrianne Kroepsch<\/a>, Assistant Professor, Division of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Colorado School of Mines<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adrianne Kroepsch, Colorado School of Mines It is the dry season in western states, which means that large swaths of land are burning or smoldering and are likely to remain that way until the snows arrive. The 2017 wildfire year started earlier and has scorched more acreage than normal. It is also far from over. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":10042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1862],"tags":[139,785,533,2540,2202],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10041"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10043,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10041\/revisions\/10043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}